"How God got started", how god belief + basic reason + writing -> modern humans?

[Whateverist]

Those of us who do not start with an unseen, unmoved mover will never find one in our reality.  

I've never seen a quark either but I've been told that we can deduce their existence from what can be seen.

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What this author and I are after is a natural account of how the emergence of secular reasoning may have pushed polytheism to monotheism.

I do not have a problem with the notion that new intellectual tools could have changed how people relate with the world, including the Divine. To me that is not a challenge to theism.

And I don't think it is a challenge to theism either. That is why I thought it might interest you even though it is a challenge in that it looks for a natural account of something you prefer to receive through revelation.

Philosophical reasoning just opens up another way of approaching the Divine.

Otherwise, I think the article is a train-wreck, jumping from thought to thought without any clear line of reasoning.

Still don't understand why you think this. It brings a wide range of work together in a jargon free way I appreciate. Sure it is a big ideas sort of approach, but that seems appropriate coming from classics guy. Not my bailiwick but I would have thought you'd be comfortable enough with that sort of thing given your comfort with theology. But different strokes for different folks I guess.

[Succubus]

I've never seen a quark either but I've been told that we can deduce their existence from what can be seen.

Show us the evidence for a god that is anywhere near what is available for quarks.

The quark model explained existing evidence and makes testable predictions.

The first omega event that proved the existence of quarks:

All your baryons are belong to us.

[Minimalist]

200,000 years ago in the early days of our species, WE DIDN'T KNOW SHIT.

And 200,000 years later the religitards carry on that torch!

[Wyrd of Gawd]

The Bible, in the Book of Wisdom, tells how gods get started.

Wisdom 14:15-20 (CEB) = "15 Imagine a father overcome with grief at the untimely death of his child. In his grief, he makes an image of the child. The person who was once a corpse he now honors as a god. He passes it on to those under his authority, along with certain mysteries and special ceremonies. 16 As time goes by, his godless custom becomes tradition. Eventually, his custom becomes law, and rulers order the people to worship these carved images.
17 These rulers, moreover, lived far away from most of their subjects. So because the people couldn’t pay their respects in person, they imagined what the ruler looked like and made an image of their honored leader. By their diligent efforts, they were thus still able to shower the king with their flattery. 18 But the artist’s desire to be recognized for his work also incited the fools to an ever greater intensity of worship. 19 Perhaps out of a desire to please the person in power, the artist makes the most of his artistic skill to fashion an even more beautiful and perfect image. 20 The masses, charmed by the object’s workmanship, now begin to consider the object worthy of their worship, where not long before they had only honored the person as a human being."

[Edwardo Piet]

I've never seen a quark either but I've been told that we can deduce their existence from what can be seen.

Science is falsifiable and testable . . . God isn't. In fact he is defined in such a way that it makes his presence as completely indistinguishable from his absence as possible. That's kind of the point. You fucking idiot.

[Whateverist]

The Bible, in the Book of Wisdom, tells how gods get started.

Wisdom 14:15-20 (CEB) = "15 Imagine a father overcome with grief at the untimely death of his child. In his grief, he makes an image of the child. The person who was once a corpse he now honors as a god. He passes it on to those under his authority, along with certain mysteries and special ceremonies. 16 As time goes by, his godless custom becomes tradition. Eventually, his custom becomes law, and rulers order the people to worship these carved images.
17 These rulers, moreover, lived far away from most of their subjects. So because the people couldn’t pay their respects in person, they imagined what the ruler looked like and made an image of their honored leader. By their diligent efforts, they were thus still able to shower the king with their flattery. 18 But the artist’s desire to be recognized for his work also incited the fools to an ever greater intensity of worship. 19 Perhaps out of a desire to please the person in power, the artist makes the most of his artistic skill to fashion an even more beautiful and perfect image. 20 The masses, charmed by the object’s workmanship, now begin to consider the object worthy of their worship, where not long before they had only honored the person as a human being."

The bible is as worthless to answering this question as it is any other.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Why does it rain so hard?"

"Because somebody makes it rain so hard."

God is born.