Is God really a volcano

[Minimalist]

I think you must be talking about me (bitch).

Bitch has a banhammer, cunt.

And swings it with wild abandon!

[Shell B]

I admit to enjoying that one. The volcano crazy was nucking futs.

[Anomalocaris]

Kichi, cargo cults. The reason they're such a big deal is that they emerged within our modern experience, and we were able to document "the birth of a religion" exceedingly well. The locals used their own indigenous myth structure and wrapped it around a verifiable set of events (and people). Their explanations were understandable from their vantage point, and completely known to us (as we, and our equipment became the object of worship). The narrative became something that was entirely their own, very much an easily distinguished part of their culture, but completely divergent from anything that we are able to discern before that point. One of the more interesting things about this is that they did not actually completely abandon their previous religious observances, but we wouldn't have been able to tell that from our vantage point in the present had this happened a few thousand years ago. The similarities would have been lost to the sands of time (as would the original source material pre-contact).

Cargo cult is an example of a relatively innocent origin to religion, where a group is exposed to awe inspiring things genuinely far beyond the familiarity of their experience. But why do we overlook the other modern example of a much more fraudulent, sinister, murderous and relevent origin to religion - Mormonism?

Cargo cult might offer insight into how primitive beliefs arose in isolated primitive cultures. But surely Mormonism offer better insight into how full blown religions arise in relatively consmopolitan cultures, and spread and poison a sophisticated world.

[BoyWonder]

why do we overlook the other modern example of a much more fraudulent, sinister, murderous and relevent origin to religion - Mormonism?

Or Scientology?

[KichigaiNeko]

Kichi, cargo cults. The reason they're such a big deal is that they emerged within our modern experience, and we were able to document "the birth of a religion" exceedingly well. The locals used their own indigenous myth structure and wrapped it around a verifiable set of events (and people). Their explanations were understandable from their vantage point, and completely known to us (as we, and our equipment became the object of worship). The narrative became something that was entirely their own, very much an easily distinguished part of their culture, but completely divergent from anything that we are able to discern before that point. One of the more interesting things about this is that they did not actually completely abandon their previous religious observances, but we wouldn't have been able to tell that from our vantage point in the present had this happened a few thousand years ago. The similarities would have been lost to the sands of time (as would the original source material pre-contact).

Perhaps I've had one too many wines...Pants Off Friday night here... but if I am understanding you ...you are agreeing with me that people will take a story and make a fucking religion about it to the point that they forget what it was all about in the first place??

You have heard the one about Prince Phillip?? Apparently it is so, silly old coot is a god on some bumfuck Island in the Solomon / Melanesia islands somewhere...sad really.

Please don't misunderstand, I am just curious where this fucking abrahamic moses actually came from

[The Grand Nudger]

We could always hold out hope for a time machine, lol. The generalities of how beliefs regarding that deity converged and changed over time aren't a complete mystery, but whatever the driving factor behind it's genesis was it's likely lost to time. We have some solid examples of the winnowing of pantheons and the emergence of monotheism within some ancient cultures, but the people who would eventually become what we call Hebrew is just not one of them.

[KichigaiNeko]

We could always hold out hope for a time machine, lol. The generalities of how beliefs regarding that deity converged and changed over time aren't a complete mystery, but whatever the driving factor behind it's genesis was it's likely lost to time. We have some solid examples of the winnowing of pantheons and the emergence of monotheism within some ancient cultures, but the people who would eventually become what we call Hebrew is just not one of them.

But weren't they Canaanites?? They never left the Levant! According to current archaeological evidence.

I am thinking that like so much of the old and new "Testaments" the babble is nothing more than a patch work of oral stories that passed as history that were finally written down ...hence "holy writ" Ergo to the illiterate of that time they "Were wondrous decrees from the gods" and only the non-cognitive of god could decipher them!

I haven't even gotten to the CURRENT (2012) Illiterate who are incapable (after 12 years of schooling) of understanding them or their origins.

[The Grand Nudger]

Human motivations are often sadly lacking in the archaeological record. "Ambition and intention do not fossilize well".

[KichigaiNeko]

Human motivations are often sadly lacking in the archaeological record. "Ambition and intention do not fossilize well".

True that.

As far as I am aware, we can trace so much of the OT to Babylon and the sagas of Gilgamesh, stories from Zoroastrianism and Persia, Some inflections from Hindu culture.

Awww Fuck let's face it ...the Abrahamic cults are just a patchwork of previous cultures and superstitions from OTHER cultures at that time period and are certainly no "word of god"...... more like a fucking brain fart!

But I do like investigating primitive cultures and their deities trying to work out just WHERE they got their silly ideas from.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, when you strip this particular mythology bare of embellishment (embellishment isn't exactly difficult to explain, we tell stories about "big fish" incessently) you aren't left holding anything revolutionary. You have an anthropomorphic concept of "forces" and a notion of an "otherworld", combined with a longing for a specific set of societal circumstances. We seem so hardwired to deal with other human beings that we have a definite tendency towards treating almost everything in existence like a human being in one way or another. We get angry at inanimate objects and we externalize and personify notions like "luck" and "fate". Giving the cosmos itself (or even some part of it) a human face is the essence of what it means to manufacture a deity. We've been doing this for quite some time. Otherworlds are also fairly common in the human experience, even amongst those who have no religious beliefs. We all dream, we all imagine and wonder and fantasize. We all have memories, and we all suffer loss. Otherworlds and burial rites seem to be the very first expressions of spirituality that leave concrete evidence. The last bit is where I would diverge from your asessment. The OT narrative is very much about promoting a specific societal standard or situation. This is not the business of a primitive culture. Primitive in comparison to ourselves, sure, but not primitive with regards to their placement in time honestly. A small tribe of uncivilized people rarely requires a set guideline, we seem to be capable of dealing with issues individually and as they arise as long as our group is small enough. You only need to codify societal norms when the society becomes too large to grease on an individual level. God has been leveraged to explain a great many things, or pigeonholed into a great many urges. We see the authors desire for retribution, deliverance, and prosperity in the OT God.

Now, as I said, these are all generalities. The thing is, that when you consider all of these collective urges and motivations that are very well demonstrated in our species, you hardly require a single explanation as to what "caused" the Yahweh narrative. While it is definitely it's own deity the common trends of what and how gods are used are present in every case, and better attributed to ourselves than any external antagonist/protagonist, let alone a some immensely powerful cosmic entity (or even an immensely powerful physical object..such as a volcano). That these urges would take on a decidedly regional flavor is also far less than surprising. The people who authored the Yahweh myth didn't really require any external initiator beyond what was already present, and most of what is required for this sort of narrative is internal and relatively common to the human experience overall. The groundwork for all of this had been laid literally a hundred thousand years before the first words of the OT were ever spoken. Asking "what happened to us to make us believe this" is expressing exactly the same drive that the authors were expressing. Trying to explain things as "what [insert action here] -to us-". When it comes to gods, it seems to be much more accurate to consider ourselves the happening. We happened to us, that's why we believe.