Evidence God Exists

[chadster1976]

I would contend that evidence needs to be given to support the existence of God. If he is defined as something that exists outside the normal limits of the universe, his existence becomes a philosophical argument. Just because you can't measure or observe something yet, does not mean it does not exist. Pluto existed for billions of years despite not being discovered until the last century.

[The Grand Nudger]

As long as claims to interaction aren't made then fine (that's the deist's god btw, the non tinkering type). Once god starts involving itself with our affairs or our world we have something to observe. By the by, we do have things to observe regarding "god"; fairy tales that can be demonstrated to exist, in books that can be demonstrated to exist, written by men that can be demonstrated to exist. Pluto and god aren't exactly equivalent. Pluto is a physical object that we lacked the ability to observe not because it was unobservable, but because we were technologically inept. Immaterial gods are unobservable, not because we are inept, but because they are removed from our reality (read: either factually non-existent or functionally non-existent). The Russel's Teapot defense of god isn't very compelling to me.

If you want to define god as unobservable that's okay with me, just be sure that you aren't piggybacking observable claims in the narrative of an unobservable god.

[dtango]

Sorry. The point I was hoping you might deduce from this is that whether we are hard-wired or whether it is shared experiences (from my studies, I find both are clearly true), neither are evidence for or against the existence of God.

The shared experiences theory means that the ancestors of all peoples on earth once had lived together, in the same society, speaking one language and brought up in the same culture.
If you believe that as clearly true, then you have to accept as real the memories that survived from that remote past.

The rain gods and the thunder gods, the water gods, and what not, they are all inventions of the philosophers and theologians. In popular traditions the gods are people of a race who make love with people of another race. Common people were terrified of the gods they believed into because they were taught by their mothers that the gods were dishonest murderers and rapists.

Therefore, once you come to think of the gods of our ancestors as the immoral monsters they are reported to have been, you understand that the meaning of the term “god” somehow (it is known how, it is written in the texts) lost its original meaning and ended up meaning nothing.

There is no generation that was satisfied with the essence of the idea of the gods/God as it was handed down to them and thus the concept of God is constantly changing.
Going towards the future, the image of the God would keep changing. If a permanent image of God is required, that image exists only in the past.
The point is that when that god of the past is proven to be the real one, today’s and every tomorrow’s God is automatically revealed to be a fake one.

[The Grand Nudger]

Where the hell do you get your comparative mythology from? I don't even have to accept my memories of this morning as real (and often I don't). "In popular traditions" the gods were many more things than just these two. Common people were terrified of some, and felt that others were absolutely on their side. Their mothers taught them all sorts of things (though sometimes the words of their mother meant jack shit-depending on the culture). "When the god of the past is proven to be the real one"....still waiting on that count, you might also be discounting the possibility of polytheism being factually accurate in your final words here.

[dtango]

Agricultural societies painted agricultural gods as their benefactors, nomadic societies preferred "transportation gods"(be they horses, or sea gods, or what have you) warrior cultures opted in for warrior gods. Some societies that developed into what we call "civilizations" incorporated all of these into their pantheons as they engaged in each activity(though their pantheons were still heavily weighted in favour of whatever they were primarily engaged in).

Agricultural societies are too young to be taken into account when seeking the origin of the idea of god.
You seem to prefer the philosophical approach to the subject of the idea of god but for the ancestors the story of the gods was the story of humans and for this reason solid proof is needed as it is History we are dealing with.

You wrote: Furthermore, man had already spread himself across the globe before we even begin to see traces of organised religious observance or structured myth. Long before near eastern culture and myth emerges.
50,000 years ago Homo sapiens sapiens from south Africa arrived in the Near East.
They remained there for a few thousand years, mated with Neanderthals and then the products of the interbreeding spread across the globe. Therefore Near Eastern culture and myth comes first (the oldest figurine of the Great Mother known dates to between 35,000 and 40,000 years ago with Virgin Mary being today’s Great Mother goddess).

By 40,000 years ago those who left Near East for Europe were already in Europe.
As regards organized religion, based on what we know about Egyptian religion and priesthood, it is approximately 15,000 years old.
Gods are 50,000 years old.

Sun gods where the sun shines…

The most famous of the Sun-gods is the Egyptian Ra (or Re). I hope you agree with this.
That famous god is also a famous fake produced by the Egyptian clergy. We are lucky enough to have original, unmolested hieroglyphic texts and thus we know who Ra was before been disguised into a Sun-god by the priesthood.
Isis, who wanted to take the place of Ra at the head of the gods, managed to have a snake bite the old god and when he could not bear the pain any longer handed his authority over to her.
In Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead Ra performs circumcision to himself.

Goddess Athena of the Greeks, whom the philosophers present as a goddess of wisdom, is actually a fully armed woman decided not to let any god rape her. An old myth has her killing her father who attempted to rape her, skin him and wear his skin.

Mythology is naïve only when we are naïve enough not to see that the last edition of each myth has degenerated into a fairy tale.

[Minimalist]

Evidence for the boats? (Fucking with you Min...lol.)

The fact is we are only going to get indirect evidence for boating. Organic materials used to build boats are not going to survive in a wet environment for 500,000 years.

When we find human artifacts on an island and date them to 800,000 years ago we really only have two choices. They either walked there or they sailed there. I'm assuming we can dismiss air travel 800,000 years ago?

When geology tells us that the waters surrounding the island have never been less than 6 feet deep in the last 2 million years it really only leaves one real means of humans getting to that island.

[5thHorseman]

god??

[The Grand Nudger]

Euhemerism? Sure, some mythologies are most likely embellished ancestor tales. This group is certainly not inclusive of all myth.

As far as agricultural societies, again, I don't know where you get your information but agricultural societies provided the necessary stability for organized systems of religion (and the free time to build temples etc). That they came out of the field with beliefs is obvious, but what happened to those beliefs when they did is profound. Find many temple complexes built by nomadic hunter-gatherers?

The virgin mary is definitely not the plump little booby doll used as a fertility idol. The only similarity is that they are both (ostensibly) female. WTF?

You know who Ra actually was, based on the Book of the Dead............?

These things haven't degenerated into fairy tales, they are fairy tales.

We're probably not disagreeing as wildly as it seems. I agree that myth can have a basis in reality. That doesn't mean that myth must have a basis in reality. Our ancestors were competent storytellers, as capable of spinning a fictional narrative as ourselves. Again, things like Mormonism, Scientology, and Cargo Cults are left woefully out of the loop by such a singular depiction of origins. One could ask "what is the origin of myth" in the general, but the minute we start discussing a particular myth the question becomes "what are the origins", plural.

[Epimethean]

Mmmm, I think we need to differentiate between myth and legend here.

[dtango]

When geology tells us that the waters surrounding the island have never been less than 6 feet deep in the last 2 million years it really only leaves one real means of humans getting to that island.

Homo erectus are believed to have crossed the Gibraltar Strait – not swimming, of course.

I believe that they were quite capable of building boats (The brain capacity of the novelist Anatole France was 1,000 ml. The brain capacity of Homo erectus was 750 to 1250 ml).

But as regards your claim that geology tells us that the waters surrounding the island have never been less than 6 feet deep in the last 2 million years I have to say that no geologist would dare say something like that (unless you are referring to an island into some river or lake). In 2 million years sea level has risen and fell many times and no one knows the exact rate and amount. At present, the sea has risen 130 meters and keeps rising.
What island are you referring to?