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Early Evolution of Religion
86:0.1 (950.1) THE evolution of religion from the preceding and primitive worship urge is not dependent on revelation. The normal functioning of the human mind under the directive influence of the sixth and seventh mind-adjutants of universal spirit bestowal is wholly sufficient to insure such development.
86:0.2 (950.2) Man’s earliest prereligious fear of the forces of nature gradually became religious as nature became personalized, spiritized, and eventually deified in human consciousness. Religion of a primitive type was therefore a natural biologic consequence of the psychologic inertia of evolving animal minds after such minds had once entertained concepts of the supernatural.
85:0.1 (944.1) PRIMITIVE religion had a biologic origin, a natural evolutionary development, aside from moral associations and apart from all spiritual influences. The higher animals have fears but no illusions, hence no religion. Man creates his primitive religions out of his fears and by means of his illusions.
85:0.2 (944.2) In the evolution of the human species, worship in its primitive manifestations appears long before the mind of man is capable of formulating the more complex concepts of life now and in the hereafter which deserve to be called religion. Early religion was wholly intellectual in nature and was entirely predicated on associational circumstances. The objects of worship were altogether suggestive; they consisted of the things of nature which were close at hand, or which loomed large in the commonplace experience of the simple-minded primitive Urantians.
85:0.3 (944.3) When religion once evolved beyond nature worship, it acquired roots of spirit origin but was nevertheless always conditioned by the social environment. As nature worship developed, man’s concepts envisioned a division of labor in the supermortal world; there were nature spirits for lakes, trees, waterfalls, rain, and hundreds of other ordinary terrestrial phenomena.
85:0.4 (944.4) At one time or another mortal man has worshiped everything on the face of the earth, including himself. He has also worshiped about everything imaginable in the sky and beneath the surface of the earth. Primitive man feared all manifestations of power; he worshiped every natural phenomenon he could not comprehend. The observation of powerful natural forces, such as storms, floods, earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes, fire, heat, and cold, greatly impressed the expanding mind of man. The inexplicable things of life are still termed “acts of God” and “mysterious dispensations of Providence.”
Interesting perspective. Let me ask you....what caused you to see things in this way? What caused you to believe that "man was created for the purpose of worshipping God?" I also believe that the creation of human beings has a cause. We are a result of evolution (I know evolution is not something everyone agrees to).
I also believe religion has always existed....but to what extent? For example, Christianity, for a million years (or more) never existed.
To your question; I can't say what "caused" me to believe anything, other than as simply God's movements in my life. It's just the only consistent, reasonable, and irrefutable explanation for why we exist. We exist to love God and to share in His Goodness. A key part of this is our acts of worship -- i.e., giving God what He is due. What other explanation could there be for our existence?
Quote:
Originally Posted by compwiz02
Another question....do you take the bible literally as in word-for-word?
As you know, the Bible is a compendium of dozens of books that were written by dozens of different authors in different languages over the span of many centuries and covering multiple genres. Not every section of the Bible was intended to be understood "literally". For example, even Jesus sometimes used non-literal analogies "I am the vine, you are the branches..." etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by compwiz02
Do you believe in evolution?
Darwinian evolution and his theories on the origins of species is incompatible with some of the most fundamental tenets of Christianity, so on those grounds I reject it.
I tried to explain why in this thread, but the thread was locked.
Who came up with the idea of "God"? Who decided "hey, we need to worship God"?
No one back then would have thought in those terms. That's so incredibly 21st century
Much of primitive life and spirituality - not religion - can be learned simply by reading about the Native Indians of what constitutes modern America. They lived in nature, close to nature, watched the cycles of the seasons, observed the skies and storms, observed animals, watched the skies at night, etc. and tried to make sense of patterns.
Everything in nature would have been marvelous and miraculous. Everything would have pointed to a higher power and controller. It wouldn't have been about rules and doctrines and all this nonsense that devolved into religion. It would have been pure, simple, and closely aligned with nature and the universe.
Religion would have come later, when people found that they could control others by dictating rules and "truth". Religion is anathema to spirituality, and a corrupted diluted version of it, highly humanized.
No one back then would have thought in those terms. That's so incredibly 21st century
Much of primitive life and spirituality - not religion - can be learned simply by reading about the Native Indians of what constitutes modern America. They lived in nature, close to nature, watched the cycles of the seasons, observed the skies and storms, observed animals, watched the skies at night, etc. and tried to make sense of patterns.
Everything in nature would have been marvelous and miraculous. Everything would have pointed to a higher power and controller. It wouldn't have been about rules and doctrines and all this nonsense that devolved into religion. It would have been pure, simple, and closely aligned with nature and the universe.
Religion would have come later, when people found that they could control others by dictating rules and "truth". Religion is anathema to spirituality, and a corrupted diluted version of it, highly humanized.
What makes me curious is that science has also evolved since then. What was considered "marvelous and miraculous" back then is also marvelous know but can now be explained by what we know in science.
I wonder if the earliest humans who lived millions of years ago experienced supernatural and unexplainable things. If so, were they able to record or write down what they experienced? Of yes, I wonder if any evidence has been found. Assuming there is evidence, I wonder if we have the capability to correctly interpret what was written.
Man was created for the purpose of worshipping God. The origin of man was not accidental or without intention.
There was never a time that man was not religious, nor will there ever be a time.
There was no "idea of God" to come up with. God created the first man directly and "walked" with him in the garden according to Genesis 3.
The first man damaged mankind's relationship with God through his act of disobedience; but the knowledge of God and the knowledge of what was lost remained with him.
If we accept the Eden account as literally true, then somehow every ancient culture spiraled out of control and developed its own, often highly sophisticated, set of religious beliefs without even a historical memory of the biblical account or (seemingly) any attempt by God to rein in their gross errors. This just isn't believable to me. Even if one accepts the account of the Flood as literally true, the same analysis applies. The godly survivors of the flood spawned a myriad of cultures and religions bearing no relation to the biblical revelation. This just isn't believable to me. It often seems as though the literalist view of history and archaeology exists completely independently of everything the evidence tells us, as though it simply didn't exist.
I happen to be a pretty serious student of Egyptology. The religion of ancient Egypt was fantastically complex and sophisticated. How and why did it arise out of Eden and the Flood? There's just no resemblance at all.
Things like Gobekli Tepe (9500 BCE) are pushing back fairly sophisticated civilization and religion thousands of years beyond what was believed just a few decades ago. How do the residents of Gobekli Tepe fit into a biblically literalist worldview?
The Genesis account has the very first generations of humans engaged in agriculture, metallurgy and other aspects of civilization that simply didn't exist until the period I'm talking about - roughly 20,000 to perhaps 5,000 years ago.
God's revelation to humanity seems to me to have been a very gradual and progressive one with lots of fits and starts until the covenant with the Jews a mere 3,000 or so years ago.
I tend to think the origin of religion was more or less as I suggested: some combination of puzzlement over anomalous phenomena together with fear and awe produced by inexplicable natural phenomena. Another religious perspective is the Calvinist sensus divinitatis, "sense of the divine," that Calvinists believe is programmed into everyone and with which I tend to agree even though I'm not a Calvinist. I think to some extent humans are wired by the Creator to think in religious terms.
What makes me curious is that science has also evolved since then. What was considered "marvelous and miraculous" back then is also marvelous know but can now be explained by what we know in science.
I wonder if the earliest humans who lived millions of years ago experienced supernatural and unexplainable things. If so, were they able to record or write down what they experienced? Of yes, I wonder if any evidence has been found. Assuming there is evidence, I wonder if we have the capability to correctly interpret what was written.
While you seem to ignore my posts, which leads me to suspect you have some agenda, the Egyptians left writings suggesting that they induced something like near-death experiences as part of some initiation ceremonies.
Since anomalous experiences have been reported around the globe for all of recorded history, why would we not think they were experienced in prehistory?
If we accept the Eden account as literally true, then somehow every ancient culture spiraled out of control and developed its own, often highly sophisticated, set of religious beliefs without even a historical memory of the biblical account or (seemingly) any attempt by God to rein in their gross errors. This just isn't believable to me. Even if one accepts the account of the Flood as literally true, the same analysis applies. The godly survivors of the flood spawned a myriad of cultures and religions bearing no relation to the biblical revelation. This just isn't believable to me. It often seems as though the literalist view of history and archaeology exists completely independently of everything the evidence tells us, as though it simply didn't exist.
I happen to be a pretty serious student of Egyptology. The religion of ancient Egypt was fantastically complex and sophisticated. How and why did it arise out of Eden and the Flood? There's just no resemblance at all.
Things like Gobekli Tepe (9500 BCE) are pushing back fairly sophisticated civilization and religion thousands of years beyond what was believed just a few decades ago. How do the residents of Gobekli Tepe fit into a biblically literalist worldview?
The Genesis account has the very first generations of humans engaged in agriculture, metallurgy and other aspects of civilization that simply didn't exist until the period I'm talking about - roughly 20,000 to perhaps 5,000 years ago.
God's revelation to humanity seems to me to have been a very gradual and progressive one with lots of fits and starts until the covenant with the Jews a mere 3,000 or so years ago.
I tend to think the origin of religion was more or less as I suggested: some combination of puzzlement over anomalous phenomena together with fear and awe produced by inexplicable natural phenomena. Another religious perspective is the Calvinist sensus divinitatis, "sense of the divine," that Calvinists believe is programmed into everyone and with which I tend to agree even though I'm not a Calvinist. I think to some extent humans are wired by the Creator to think in religious terms.
Tradition tells us and Scripture infers that there was much more interaction between angels and men in ancient times. Much of this interaction is mysterious and the details are vague to say the least; but fallen angels were worshipped as gods by all different peoples. Because the fallen angels were different from each other and no doubt competed with each other, that explains the religious differences between cultures and differing levels of sophistication.
The books of Enoch and Jubilees provide a window into this tradition.
Tradition tells us and Scripture infers that there was much more interaction between angels and men in ancient times. Much of this interaction is mysterious and the details are vague to say the least; but fallen angels were worshipped as gods by all different peoples. Because the fallen angels were different from each other and no doubt competed with each other, that explains the religious differences between cultures and differing levels of sophistication.
The Book of Enoch provides a window into this tradition.
The late Dr. Michael S. Heiser (Unseen Realm) had a sophisticated view of this notion that you might find interesting if you aren't familiar with his work. The distinction I make is between "what the Jews believed about the ancient world" and "what the evidence actually suggests." To explain the Egyptian religion in terms of fallen angels just isn't believable to me.
I wonder if the earliest humans who lived millions of years ago experienced supernatural and unexplainable things. If so, were they able to record or write down what they experienced?
It's entirely possible that reality and evident life may have been a different back then, to where they could see and/or experience matters that are harder to see or impossible now.
The experiences could have been shared among people - real time - and related from those who came before. But the recording part is more uncertain.
Gurdjieff certainly has related "lost" teachings and knowledge going back to Egypt, that connect with Christianity, which would be by far the oldest recordings of Christianity. That's much more recent than the time frame you mentioned, but on the fringe of recorded history.
Last edited by Thoreau424; 10-25-2023 at 12:30 PM..
I saw an article the other day of a fossilized praying mantis that was found. Scientists found the fossil to be around 110 million years old. It made me curious... what was society like during that time? The first dinosaur, according to science, existed over 200 million years ago. Science says the evidence of the first human beings existed 2 million years ago. Again I ask, what was society like? Did religion exist?
Who came up with the idea of "God"? Who decided "hey, we need to worship God"? Christianity definitely did not exist until Jesus came. For a million years, there was no Christianity on a planet inhabited by humans, which also makes me wonder if the first humans ever asked themselves "what happens after we die?" or if they themselves had near-death experiences.
The knowledge of our assured coming death - we are the only creatures conscious of our mortality as far as we know - and the ever present suffering in everyday life leading up to our & our loved ones inescapable deaths has caused mankind to wonder & come up with reasons & meaning for existence.
Why are we here, why is there so much suffering & what happens to us after death?
"Who decided "hey, we need to worship God"?
So in every tribe, clan or group of people there are leaders & followers, leaders can't show weakness or project doubt to maintain the group's cohesiveness or their own position. One of their traits is to present a reason for existence & to maintain those beliefs through group discipline. This maintains a tribe's identity & survival in tough times. Religious myths supply identity, meaning & a hope for the future especially what happens after death.
For a leader it is a very pragmatic issue. There are always those in any group who naturally rise to dominate & tend to tell others what/how to do/believe & don't express doubt but project "strength". Tribal (political) rulers tended to also be the spiritual leaders but that tended to diffuse & spin off as tribes grew & civilizations progressed but there is always a tension between state/church power over us.
Certain people have claimed spiritual experience to buttress belief. Various strains of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism & Hinduism have succeeded the most is giving meaning to life & death among believers & these are roughly distributed among the geographic areas they evolved in.
"Christianity definitely did not exist until Jesus came."
Christianity did not exist until after Jesus was long dead. According to the NT he was born, raised & taught in the Jewish faith & when he was killed, again according to the NT, he was noted on the cross as the "King of the Jews". When he was alive it was noted that his followers were of the (Jewish) "cult of the Nazarene".
It wasn't until Paul/Saul, someone who lived years later in another region of the Mediterranean & never met with Jesus & didn't speak Aramaic... after he fell off a horse, went temporarily blind, heard voices & had an apparent personality change - either a spiritual experience or a TBI with common after effects due to the fall, take your choice... It was only then, with Paul suddenly assuming leadership of the new cult & introducing new doctrines, arguing with Peter over some of them despite Peter's long discipleship with Jesus & speaking the same language as Jesus. Apparently Paul knew better than those early disciples & he began to shape the faith to eventually become Christianity.
Paul had those traits of leadership that attract followers. It should be noted that several of the early "churches" in various locales didn't go along with him & the new teachings he introduced.
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