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This is merely your opinion and is not borne out by the evidence. We have found tribes who had no contact with civilization without concepts of gods. In ancient times before China met the west, the religions of China , Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, had no gods. Your statement just isn't supported by historical facts. What is true is that self aware but pre scientific man had a need to explain the world around them, but lacked the knowledge to do so. They had no understanding of plate tectonics, hurricane formation, causation of drought , why the Sun rose and set, etc, etc. In place of science they came up with the idea of gods being the causation. Thats why every problem of ancient man had its own god. The Sun god, the fertility god, the god of the hunt, the ocean god, the god that rules the skies, and so on. Rather than ancient man feeling some ineffable draw towards a loving monotheistic modern type god, the gods of the ancients were specific gods of specific problems or unexplainable phenomenon . They appear to have risen not from some deep yearning for communion with the ineffable, but as ways of explaining and also trying to control the world around them,by appealing to and appeasing the appropriate god for the specific problem. I do not think you will bother to consider this, but nonetheless history and anthropology supports this and not your opinion that everyone is drawn to a loving creator for the sake of communion.
bold above = post above
same for the opening two posts, your belief and opinion.
or in the parlance which you use "merely your opinion." merely your beliefs.
personally i wouldn't use that phrase as it does not promote "true dialogue."
using the phrase "historical fact" in a post
does not change at all the fact that you are expressing your beliefs. and opinions.
using the word "true" in a post
does not mean what is said in the post is true.
Quote:
You are imposing modern views onto ancient peoples who were more interested in dealing with daily life around them , and that doesn't work.
bold above=post above
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 10-22-2021 at 08:12 AM..
the above post expresses your beliefs. and your opinion.
everything in the opening two posts
is your belief and opinion.
or in the parlance which you use "merely your opinion." merely your beliefs.
using the phrase "historical fact" in a post
does not change at all the fact that you are expressing your beliefs. and opinions.
using the word "true" in a post
does not mean what is said in the post is true.
bold above=post above
post above (and opening two posts) stems from trying to explain lack of understanding
In your study of anthropology what evidence is there that the ancient people had no other thoughts other than hunting, gathering and procreation? Please cite some references, links, studies, peer reviewed research papers.
The evidence that i see, and will gladly present, are the ancient Upanishads which are all about the mind and thoughts, detailed examination of the physical body and the intellect and mind, and an awareness beyond it. These ideas persist to this day and we are still studying them, we still cannot grasp what Conciousness is. If you want to reject it all wholesale, without ever having studied it, i dont know what you will call but i will say it is willfull ignorance. And that is a safety position, from what only you can decide.
How about you not misquote him. He didn't say, "that the ancient people had no other thoughts other than hunting, gathering and procreation". He said, "...ancient peoples who were more interested in dealing with daily life around them".
In your study of anthropology what evidence is there that the ancient people had no other thoughts other than hunting, gathering and procreation? Please cite some references, links, studies, peer reviewed research papers.
The evidence that i see, and will gladly present, are the ancient Upanishads which are all about the mind and thoughts, detailed examination of the physical body and the intellect and mind, and an awareness beyond it. These ideas persist to this day and we are still studying them, we still cannot grasp what Conciousness is. If you want to reject it all wholesale, without ever having studied it, i dont know what you will call but i will say it is willfull ignorance. And that is a safety position, from what only you can decide.
We have evidence I have already given. It doesn't address the issue of "other thoughts" , as that is unknowable. We can draw conclusions from the evidence though. None of the major Chinese religions have a god in them . So we have proof of an entire nation in past history where the religions they developed are based on morals and nature , and no gods. We have Stone Age tribes that have no knowledge of gods when anthropologists make contact. And we can look at some of the earliest gods worshipped and see that they relate directly to immediate physical concerns of the early humans , crop success, hunting success, earthquakes, weather, the sun and moon, and such. Why craft a god that deals with the fertility of your crops? To appeal to this god for crop success.
The Upanishads are dated by experts at no older than about 1000 BCE. Anthropologists date early humans developing language, art , religion, and such at about 40,000 BCE. What the Upanishads have to say has no bearing on what the earliest religions of the first modern thinking humans were about. I'm talking about the very earliest types of religion and the gods they conceived of from essentially scratch , not the more advanced forms that developed 40,000 years later.
How about you not misquote him. He didn't say, "that the ancient people had no other thoughts other than hunting, gathering and procreation". He said, "...ancient peoples who were more interested in dealing with daily life around them".
Misquoting and crafting arguments from what you WANT the other guy to have said and arguing against that is fairly rampant among many here. Its easier than having an actual discussion of the facts, especially when the facts aren't going your way. I can name 4 at least here that continually bash atheists that regularly employ this tactic. It severely damages the quality of the place, IMO, but I think its the norm for chat sites. This is the only site I participate in to notice though . But I see it in the politics area also here.
bold above = post above
same for the opening two posts, your belief and opinion.
or in the parlance which you use "merely your opinion." merely your beliefs.
personally i wouldn't use that phrase as it does not promote "true dialogue."
using the phrase "historical fact" in a post
does not change at all the fact that you are expressing your beliefs. and opinions.
using the word "true" in a post
does not mean what is said in the post is true.
bold above=post above
Sorry, but the only opinion I have offered is the motivation of theists for continuing to argue that atheism is a belief system. That is conjecture on my part, and I qualified that by asking the question about why they seem to do it.
That you altered my question by not including key words in your bolded quote is beyond question. Its there for all to see, no mere opinion on my part. The OP is not opinion either. It is either hard facts such as the discovery of Stone Age tribes with no concept of gods and the references to the Chinese whose religions don't contain gods , or the results of scientific research into early humans by anthropologists. Neither of these is my opinion, they are the conclusions of scientific research.
Your disagreement with information put forth by science does not make it opinion, it just makes it scientific conclusions you disagree with. Theists seem to have quite a few of these.
Yes, approaching theistic belief structures and the possible necessity of given conditions for them to be manifested/enacted from a religion neutral philosophical perspective can be heady stuff I suppose. If you could time travel back to a Parisian cafe and ask Jean-Paul Sartre how he would filter all this through "being and nothingness"...
I can see your point! I would imagine even the most base/primal/isolated group of humans would have innate fears/curiosity of something beyond themselves they would have to address or come to terms with either individually or as part of a collective.
There is a reason that the first lesson in the Bible fables is about knowledge of Good and Evil. That is a unique capability of consciousness only and cannot exist absent consciousness. As creatures of consciousness, our diverse experiences will automatically engender this inner evaluation leading to the development of some "spiritual awareness" or concerns that when instantiated religiously into our lives becomes a religion.
We have evidence I have already given. It doesn't address the issue of "other thoughts" , as that is unknowable[/b]. We can draw conclusions from the evidence though. None of the major Chinese religions have a god in them . So we have proof of an entire nation in past history where the religions they developed are based on morals and nature , and no gods. We have Stone Age tribes that have no knowledge of gods when anthropologists make contact. And we can look at some of the earliest gods worshipped and see that they relate directly to immediate physical concerns of the early humans , crop success, hunting success, earthquakes, weather, the sun and moon, and such. Why craft a god that deals with the fertility of your crops? To appeal to this god for crop success.
The Upanishads are dated by experts at no older than about 1000 BCE. Anthropologists date early humans developing language, art , religion, and such at about 40,000 BCE. What the Upanishads have to say has no bearing on what the earliest religions of the first modern thinking humans were about. I'm talking about the very earliest types of religion and the gods they conceived of from essentially scratch , not the more advanced forms that developed 40,000 years later.
Exactly. What they thought and wondered about is unknowable. You can only draw conclusions from material evidence but that is incomplete per your own admission. Not all belief systeMs have deities, that is a faulty assumption to start with.
All science and knowledge we have are incomplete. We surprise ourselves everyday about how much we don’t know, in every field of knowledge. For many things we have no answers at all. We may find them eventually but there is no guarantee.
In all this time we do have plenty of evidence for belief in something bigger than ourselves, something more out there than what we know.
Last edited by mensaguy; 10-22-2021 at 02:28 PM..
Reason: fixed quote
Exactly. What they thought and wondered about is unknowable. You can only draw conclusions from material evidence but that is incomplete per your own admission. Not all belief systeMs have deities, that is a faulty assumption to start with.
All science and knowledge we have are incomplete. We surprise ourselves everyday about how much we don’t know, in every field of knowledge. For many things we have no answers at all. We may find them eventually but there is no guarantee.
In all this time we do have plenty of evidence for belief in something bigger than ourselves, something more out there than what we know.
I'm not sure why you are telling me that not all belief systems have deities and that such a claim is a faulty assumption. I never made that point, in fact I pointed out 3 major religions in China and made the specific point that they do NOT have gods as part of my point that not all peoples created gods for themselves . Do you fully read what is written in posts before responding?
What the ancients thought and wondered about regarding the topic of gods is not totally unknowable. Not 100% knowable by any means , but not unknowable. We can know from the fact that they created various gods relating to important things in their world that they created concepts of gods to fit their problems. Fertility gods to beg for good crops, sun gods to explain the rising and setting of the sun, gods that attempted to explain earthquakes, volcanos, hurricanes, love , war, the stars, the planets and so on. The first monotheistic god that approaches the modern concept of an omnipotent god that is more advanced than the polytheistic ones of early humanity is the god of Zoroastrianism called Ahura Mazda . And yes, it is regarded as being much older than Judaism, despite the claim by some Jews that Judaism is the oldest monotheistic faith. It began at the earliest about 10,000 BCE , which puts the very first " advanced " one god religion originating about 30,000 years after the first polytheistic ones. Yep, thats right. 30,000 years. For 30,000 years the only record we have of gods are the specific polytheistic ones that are based on appeasing gods for various specific favors from them according to their specialty .
Science is incomplete in some areas, probably more than we even realize. But the fact that is incomplete in some areas doesn't diminish what it tells us in other areas. We don't know pi to the zillionth digit. That doesn't make our computation of pi to whatever number it is now wrong. We don't know how to completely eliminate the flu. This doesn't affect our ability to eliminate smallpox and create a completely effective vaccine against rabies. Claiming science is incomplete in some areas is not a rebuttal against what science does tell us in other areas, like the conclusions of anthropologists on the lives and beliefs of the very early humans.
Last edited by NatesDude; 10-22-2021 at 01:21 PM..
recognition of the sacred always exists.
always has. always will.
it is our natural state.
You are confusing "recognition of the sacred" with the question of "where did we come from and how did we get here?".
That is our natural state. Dreaming up the answer to that fundamental question is "the sacred"...
And in the case of the atheist it is a rejection of anything dreamed up being "sacred"...
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