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My intent is not to prove any side as wrong, but to debate specific points, for mutual education. The goal of this is not meant to change anyone from being an atheist.
If religion has always entirely been nothing more than human imagination:
I could understand a belief in an afterlife. Early humans would have wanted to believe their loved ones existed after death. They would have had the imagination to do so. Humans think about the future so it would have been natural for them to do so. They likely got the idea for an afterlife based on sleep, imagining that after death, their comrade merely awoke somewhere else.
However, where would they get the idea for magical invisible beings who control the earth without some type of evidence for this? I would assume that such people likely lived subsistence existences. Knowledge that they ruled their own fate would be very helpful for their survival. I would assume they would know that magic doesn't happen. Where would they get the idea for magic and Gods from, then?
The idea that Gods would assist believers and the good in the afterlive, while punishing the wicked in the afterlife is a usefull concept to any civilization. However, I think the idea that Gods would assist believers and the rightious in this life is not. It would act as a parasitic idea, resulting in unnecessary building of temples, energy wasted on prayer rather than attempts to understand patterns in the world, and a reduction in creative thought. I would think that those civilizations which would conquer the world most easily would be those citizens believing Gods left the mortal world alone, and waited until the afterlife to choose anyone's fate. They'd have better rates of technological advancement, more productivity, and a more accurate view of reality. Instead, the idea that prayer, sacrafices, temple building, offerings, etc. can affect the mortal world due to God's appreciation or acknowledgement is a nearly worldwide concept. Why hasn't the concept of prayer been crushed from existence as hordes of coldly logical invaders chased the faithful from their lands, leaving behind only stories the invaders could tell their grandchildren, about how silly and dumb the old residents of the land were? Rather, the mightiest empires were extremely religious, with temples, and cathedrals, and entire ways of life devoted to their beliefs.
Theism, rather than any particular religion, is the best argument against atheism. I'm going to argue the likelyhood of theism being accurate, because nobody else seems to be doing it. I'll begin with a few arguments and probably add more with time.
The reason nobody else is making the argument is because there's no argument to be had. There's only a mere assertion.
I'll let the foaming at the mouth atheists argue the finer points but that just isn't a stronger stance than atheism.
The circular argument goes on, and on, and on.
Where does this come from? Atheists don't foam at the mouth when discussing a rational viewpoint about the prospect of design being the source of life. We may START to foam at the mouth when people want to legislate and educate with regard to biblical myth, but that's not the case here.
Most of the foaming I see comes from religious proselytizers.
This is meant to be primarily for fun. My intent is not to prove any side as wrong, but to argue specific points.
We evolved to try to find cause and effect relationships. Joe ate a strange berry; Joe got sick; the berry must have made Joe sick. But many times in life there is no apparent cause for an observed outcome. So, people get superstitious and see cause and effect relationships that aren't there, such as thinking the river is punishing you for pooping in it and that is why the river overflowed its banks and flooded your village.
We have the mental ability to project human motives on others. It is not that big of a stretch that we projected human motives onto animals and then onto the earth and sky. Believing that the river is punishing you is basically making a god out of the river. From there ideas about gods evolved. People are still projecting human motives on gods today.
My intent is not to prove any side as wrong, but to debate specific points, for mutual education. The goal of this is not meant to change anyone from being an atheist.
If religion has always entirely been nothing more than human imagination:
I could understand a belief in an afterlife. Early humans would have wanted to believe their loved ones existed after death. They would have had the imagination to do so. Humans think about the future so it would have been natural for them to do so. They likely got the idea for an afterlife based on sleep, imagining that after death, their comrade merely awoke somewhere else.
However, where would they get the idea for magical invisible beings who control the earth without some type of evidence for this? I would assume that such people likely lived subsistence existences. Knowledge that they ruled their own fate would be very helpful for their survival. I would assume they would know that magic doesn't happen. Where would they get the idea for magic and Gods from, then?
The idea that Gods would assist believers and the good in the afterlive, while punishing the wicked in the afterlife is a usefull concept to any civilization. However, I think the idea that Gods would assist believers and the rightious in this life is not. It would act as a parasitic idea, resulting in unnecessary building of temples, energy wasted on prayer rather than attempts to understand patterns in the world, and a reduction in creative thought. I would think that those civilizations which would conquer the world most easily would be those citizens believing Gods left the mortal world alone, and waited until the afterlife to choose anyone's fate. They'd have better rates of technological advancement, more productivity, and a more accurate view of reality. Instead, the idea that prayer, sacrafices, temple building, offerings, etc. can affect the mortal world due to God's appreciation or acknowledgement is a nearly worldwide concept. Why hasn't the concept of prayer been crushed from existence as hordes of coldly logical invaders chased the faithful from their lands, leaving behind only stories the invaders could tell their grandchildren, about how silly and dumb the old residents of the land were? Rather, the mightiest empires were extremely religious, with temples, and cathedrals, and entire ways of life devoted to their beliefs.
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Instead of offering evidence for the existence of some god, your basic point is that people thousands of years ago, who knew and understood immeasurably less than we do about the universe, must have had some evidence for the existence of gods that is not visible to modern humans. Why is there any reason to think this is true?
You also seem to think that there must have been evidence for the efficacy of magic and prayer, because otherwise why would those ideas have taken hold?
Haven't you ever heard of confirmation bias? People believe what they want to believe, and to do so they remember whatever random events tend to coincide with their presuppositions and forget the events that contradict them.
I will answer your two things in two different posts as they are both massive areas of discourse and I find it useful to split them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clintone
However, where would they get the idea for magical invisible beings who control the earth without some type of evidence for this?`
This question is a LOT easier to answer than you think.
The intentional Stance.
Firstly we have evolved something that has been labeled „The intentional stance“.
What this means is that we naturally impute design and intent into things before anything else.
The evolutionary reasons for this are clear. If a bush rustles for example it is safer to assume something with intent is there… and be wrong… than to assume nothing is there…. And be wrong. The former means you over react but survive. The latter means you under react and get surprise attacked by the lion or leopard etc.
We naturally therefore ask questions “What was that… what is it for… what does it want… what are its intentions” about everything that comes our way. It is no surprise therefore that we do the same about the universe itself.
Internal Representations
We also have evolved the ability to create representations of people or things in our heads and to run internal simulations about how those things think or will act. A sentence like “I wonder if he knows… that I know…. That he knows that I already know the secret” sounds simple enough on paper but actually involves massive computational power on the parts of our brains. Our brains also create a representation of “he” and runs simulations on it to decide conclusions based on different parametres… such as what knowledge “he” might already have or not have.
Such representations can almost be as real to us as the real person themselves. If not more so as any of us know when sneaking home from a party after curfew. The representations of our parents we hold in our brains while we wonder how they are going to react and what punishments they will pile on us are often more real and scary than the reality when we actually arrive home.
In creating such representations of inanimate things we often anthropomorphise. In other words we start thinking some of our representations are real. We act like we can bribe our car into starting (If you start I will get you a full lovely service with the best oil I promise) or that we can appeal to the weather to be good on the day of a planned picnic.
To answer your question another way therefore, people can similarly anthropomorphise the entire universe, and start wondering what it wants or by superstitious over how it is treating us. Where deism and theism comes in is when people think that that anthropomorphized representation of the universe actually exists, and worse can actually be petitioned or appealed to (such as in prayer) to act on our behalf in some way or other. Worse again is when people think they know what it wants and that we all need to act in the “right” way and make the correct propitiations to it. Such ideas then later become compounded with the notions that if you do NOT do things rights… things like hell await you.
Summary
So I think you will find that how people get this idea that invisible beings control everything is actually not just very easy, but has some very firm evolutionary grounding. Thinking in this way is actually quite natural, which is probably what leads people to think there is some kind of “god gene” for belief. Technically there is. Much of our instinctual make up predisposes us to belief in things like that.
However, I think the idea that Gods would assist believers and the rightious in this life is not. It would act as a parasitic idea, resulting in unnecessary building of temples, energy wasted on prayer rather than attempts to understand patterns in the world, and a reduction in creative thought.
It is amazing how close you are to actually being entirely correct, without actually seeing how correct you are. There are those who in fact do claim this very thing about religion.
You ask why would they expend so much energy on seemingly wasteful activities.
Imagine this. You are in a field and you see an ant in that field climbing a blade of grass. It falls off, but it tries again… and again… and again. It keeps doing this until it reaches the top of this blade of grass. It then stays there.
What stupidity you would think. Why this massive and seemingly useless expenditure of energy? What benefit accrues to the ant at all? The answer is that you are asking the wrong question. There IS no benefit to the ant at all. Quite the opposite. The ant ends up getting easily eaten by passing cattle.
So is it just a fluke? Well actually yes. It is a parasite called the Lancet fluke. It infects the brains of ants and essentially uses them as an all terrain vehicle to get into the belly of cattle, where it needs to be to continue it's reproductive cycle. There are similar parasites all through the world, such as for a random example the one that causes mice to not be scared of cats any more... so they run right up to cats and get eaten... therefore getting the parasite into the cat where it "wants" to be.
There is no benefit to the ant at all. The fluke is mindlessly, without any intent, just naturally using the ant for it's own ends. It's "ends" are one thing and one thing only.... to perpetuate itself and be reproduced again and again. Nothing else. It cares not for the massive amount of resources and energy expended by the ant.
So what different is there with religion. Religion is just a meme and memes "want" or "intend" nothing save that they ACT as if their sole desire is to perpetuate themselves. To make copies of themselves. They do so regardless of the amount of expenditure of energy they cause in the "host".
So you essentially hit the nail on the head and were so right without even realising it. It IS a parasitic idea. You said it perfectly. It "wants" nothing more than to perpetuate itself, and those religious memes that have evolved to do so better than others have survived... are being reproduced...
People point out that every civilisation ever has always had religion so therefore it MUST have some use right? And we must find out what that is. Well the answer to that is that every civilisation has ALSO always had the common cold. What use is the common cold? Clearly the question is the wrong one. Religion, and the common cold, HAVE no use to us. The question is exactly backwards. The question is what use are WE to the common cold and to religion.
The answer is that WE are useful because aspects of us are such that they can use us to reproduce themselves. Just as a virus (which is just a bit of information) can get into our cells and use parts of our cell to reproduce themselves.... religion is just an idea that gets into our minds and there are objective aspects of how our mind functions that that religion (which again is just a big of information) can use to reproduce itself.
That was brilliant. Yes, it is pointing up how natural selection gets a lot of lifeforms doing things, inexplicable, unknown to itself and sometimes self - destructive in pursuing some evolutionary end for some life - form or other.
In a discussion some time ago about true and false beliefs it came up that religion ought to have some evolutionary advantage if evolution was true. And thus once one looked for the advantage in could be clearly seen in ancient times, recent history and today.
Don't theists themselves trumpet how religion must be true because it gives them strength to win? Don't we see how a group that loses its individual and distinct religion tends to be absorbed into the mix and disappear as an individual entity, whereas those with a distinct and socially undigestible religion will survive no matter how strong the effort is made to assimilate or eliminate it?
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I'll begin with a few arguments and probably add more with time.
