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On the origin of religion
#21
RE: On the origin of religion
(February 7, 2017 at 7:50 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: And this is why most of the people in medieval times were slaves working for the king's land that was handed down to him by Jesus and clergy was there to make it official. That's why the Pope still criticizes social order wherever he goes and starts ranting about "secularism" because in medieval time Church just in England had 75% of the land. He no doubt thinks "If only people were stupid again. Believing in nonsense we feed them."

Which is why it will only take one generation of ignorants to dismantle all the work of previous generations. Education is so important to the longevity of our current civilization it's baffling how easily, and ironically, that people are swayed by emotive language.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard P. Feynman
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#22
RE: On the origin of religion
(February 6, 2017 at 7:46 pm)Mr Greene Wrote: The cultures of the North American plains do not qualify as civilizations no.
The origin points of civilization AFAIK are Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, Yellow River and Moche. All subsequent civilizations can trace their origins to one of these.

So the Mayans never reached civilisation, the Mali, the Aztec, Inca, the Mound People of the Mid West, the Cinese, Koreans, Japanese, Jawanese, Indians, etc.

These are all peoples you have denied civilisation because their social organisation wasn't founded on a Mesopotamian base.
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#23
RE: On the origin of religion
(February 6, 2017 at 7:23 pm)Mr Greene Wrote: It exists in tribal societies but doesn't penetrate civilizations to any great extent, these being the domain of the organised religions.
In essence I'm speculating that shamanism is the natural belief system of our hunter-gatherer ancestors but found itself ill adapted to the civilized world.
In effect the organised religions equate to evolutionary adaptations in order to survive in a hostile environment of which the polytheistic variety appear to be the more stable.

Why is "shamanism" not organized?

Why is a priest who raises the dead , exorcizes demons, and becomes a universal human sacrifice not a form of shamanism?
God thinks it's fun to confuse primates. Larsen's God!






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#24
RE: On the origin of religion
It was probably difficult to not have some sort of mystical belief when you didn't know what caused natural phenomena and didn't know what dreams were. It seems like a natural progression that 40,000 years ago; dreaming of talking to rocks and trees and dead people led to treating rocks and trees as if they were or contained conscious beings and dead people like they were still around invisibly while awake, becoming animism. The true old-time religion.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
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#25
RE: On the origin of religion
(February 8, 2017 at 6:05 am)Tazzycorn Wrote:
(February 6, 2017 at 7:46 pm)Mr Greene Wrote: The cultures of the North American plains do not qualify as civilizations no.
The origin points of civilization AFAIK are Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, Yellow River and Moche. All subsequent civilizations can trace their origins to one of these.

So the Mayans never reached civilisation, the Mali, the Aztec, Inca, the Mound People of the Mid West, the Cinese, Koreans, Japanese, Jawanese, Indians, etc.

These are all peoples you have denied civilisation because their social organisation wasn't founded on a Mesopotamian base.
? Mayans, Incas and Aztecs derived their civilization from the Moche.
Chinese, Japanese and Koreansderive from the Yellow River civilization.
Indian and Javanese derive from the Indus Valley civilization.
Did you you actually read what I wrote in the first place?
Quote:I don't understand why you'd come to a discussion forum, and then proceed to reap from visibility any voice that disagrees with you. If you're going to do that, why not just sit in front of a mirror and pat yourself on the back continuously?
-Esquilax

Evolution - Adapt or be eaten.
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#26
RE: On the origin of religion
Doesn't seem to have been difficult...the oldest atheist on record is older than the big three religions and expresses a viewpoint that doesn't exactly sound like it was dreamt up by that one guy, that one night.

Even if we dial it all the way back to red ochre burial time, not everyone got such a burial...and such burials appear to have been looted with regularity.  It seems as if there might have been a few skeptics in Uncle Og's crew...who didn't think Og needed that axe after he died, after all...and would rather have handed it to their kids when they finally bit the bullet from stepping on a tetanus laced acorn or whatevs.  

This isn't to say that there isn't a pronounced trend of religiosity, or practiced ritual (or seeming superstition) that begs for an explanation...but none of these things are actually interchangeable with uncritical belief in their objects of veneration or systemic approaches - of a cognitive difficulty in lacking belief.  How many people with a rabbits foot keychains actually believe that a rabbits foot is lucky, or seek to explain their unexplained good fortune by the presence of a synthetic tuft of fur on their chains?  If we found all of the rabbits foot keychains, 10k years in the future, would we be justified in assuming that vast swaths of people actually bought the rabbits foot magic hook line and sinker?  

Conversely, is there any reason to suppose that for some ancestors in the near or distant past these sacred objects weren;t dual or multi-purpose..or that they weren;t themselves the paleolithic versions of todays nominal christian..who go through the motions while lacking any identifiable belief or faith? Food for thought.

To put it in truncated form, it doesn't take a knowledgeable, 21st century scientific mind to realize that spells and cantrips don't work. Were no more or less capable of noticing that now than we were at the dawn of magical beliefs and trinkets, coinciding nicely with full modernity. To imagine that it would have been more difficult for people entirely like ourselves to do something that we are trivially capable of doing is to imagine something...strange.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#27
RE: On the origin of religion
(February 7, 2017 at 5:59 am)pocaracas Wrote:
(February 5, 2017 at 6:48 pm)Mr Greene Wrote: As I've stated elsewhere searching for the origin point of religions led to Lascaux and the Venus figurines of 40,000 years ago. This would tend to indicate some form of shamanism and shamanism is widespread across the planet being found on all populated continents.
Further thoughts flag up those areas where shamanism isn't generally found - civilizations.
Extrapolating from this it would appear that shamanism and civilization are somehow incompatible and civilization forces beliefs to mutate forming organised religions.

Ah... Venus figurines... Archaeologists are so naive, sometimes...
Why attribute religious value to something when porn will do the same job? Tongue

Oh, look... some seem to think like me! who'd have thought?!
Quote:There's no way to know what the statuette was used for or what meaning it carried, although scientists theorize that it might have been used in shamanistic rites or was simply pornography. Anthropologist Paul Mellars of Stony Brook University in New York state says the focus on exaggerated sexual features fits with other artifacts found from the period, including phalluses carved out of bison horn and vulva inscribed on rocks. "It's sexually exaggerated to the point of being pornographic," Mellars says. "There's all this sexual symbolism bubbling up in that period. They were sex-mad."
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/05/e...ornography

Yes I have my own axe to grind with the view that the first representative art is co-opted as the earliest evidence for religion. However if we dismiss it we need to find something else that can stand in and I'm not out reinvent the wheel here, (These square ones will do fine... Next they'll be telling me mammoth is off the menu...)
Quote:I don't understand why you'd come to a discussion forum, and then proceed to reap from visibility any voice that disagrees with you. If you're going to do that, why not just sit in front of a mirror and pat yourself on the back continuously?
-Esquilax

Evolution - Adapt or be eaten.
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