U.S. Lags World in Grasp of Genetics and Acceptance of Evolution

@Leadfoot,

the "Evolution" of gods is an interesting study in itself. To deny it as factual is one of the many problems I have with many religious worldviews.
We go from personal gods to trnscendent ones etc etc. Some of the Fundies even deny the validity of radiometric dating or other well proven science

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@rosborne979,

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Don't make me bring up Unicorns and Fairies and Zeus and Apollo and Thor and Osiris (and on and on and on it goes) again. Does the mass belief in any of those in any way support the contention that they exist... no, it does not. And the same applies if you change the spelling to "God". It's all the same thing. Exactly the same thing.

I enjoy these discussions but you're taking all the fun out of it by making it too easy.

There is no mass belief in unicorns, fairies, etc. If it WAS "Exactly the same thing", there could possibly be a mass belief in them.

But there isn't. So it's not.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

the "Evolution" of gods is an interesting study in itself. To deny it as factual is one of the many problems I have with many religious worldviews.

Yes it is but I didn't know many religions denied that history. Of course I do not know that much about the details of most religious beliefs.

I will admit to the guilty pleasure of following the relatively new 'UFO religions' The arrival time has been 'within weeks' since before 2000. I justify my curiosity as research.

I write off all the myths and bizarre beliefs to 'mass distortion'.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

There is no mass belief in unicorns, fairies, etc. If it WAS "Exactly the same thing", there could possibly be a mass belief in them.

Many people even today still believe in Unicorns and Fairies, and you conveniently glossed over Zeus and Thor with the word "etc", even knowing that entire cultures believed in them for centuries.

It's exactly the same thing.

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@rosborne979,

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Many people even today still believe in Unicorns and Fairies,

You're stretching there...

Quote:

and you conveniently glossed over Zeus and Thor with the word "etc", even knowing that entire cultures believed in them for centuries.

you are conflating unrelated things. Those are examples of a God, a completely different thing than unicorns. My point was that a belief in God has been part of humans' belief since before the start of recorded history, not that their concepts were un distorted. Even modern Christianity's belief in God has many distortions.

Quote:

It's exactly the same thing.

For the reasons cited above, no it's not.

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@Leadfoot,

You're gonna need to get your indoctrinated head out of the sand before you see this clearly.

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@rosborne979,

Just curious. What do you think I'm indoctrinated with?

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Just curious. What do you think I'm indoctrinated with?

Faith-Based Thinking.

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@rosborne979,

Ok, but indoctrination implies another party's involvement.
I have only myself to blame for my current state.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Ok, but indoctrination implies another party's involvement.
I have only myself to blame for my current state.

Self indoctrinated? Somehow that doesn't bother me as much, although it comes dangerously close to the definition of Delusional doesn't it?

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@rosborne979,

Icelanders still believe in, and in many cases passionately, fairies or elves. They call them the huldufolk, the hidden people. They will protest and block infrastructure projects which they say will disturb the elves.

Why So Many Icelanders Still Believe in Invisible Elves

Of course, the god botherers always try to claim that such things are silly, but that their invisible friend is quite serious. It reminds me of Frank. I once asked him why he is "agnostic" about "god," but not about fairies, pixies and elves. That was years ago and he answered honestly that he didn't know why he attached greater importance to the question of peoples' imaginary friends. In later years, he'd just sneer at people and tell them to grow up. Spoken like a true god botherer, no matter what he said about agnostics and guesses, etc.

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@Setanta,

It sounds like elves ARE God to that tribe. In which case, there ya go..

But you don't have to go to such remote places to find even more aberrant beliefs. There are educated people right here in the US (and UK) that fervently believe God is earth, that Jesus will arrive in a UFO and that he and/or his helpers will usher you into inner earth where you will be placed in crystal chambers for your transformation into your former self. Most people were really beings from other star systems and volunteered for this learning experience in which you forget who you were etc. etc. etc...

I am not making the case that there are not wrong ideas about God, just that the drive to believe in one is virtually universal with humans.

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@rosborne979,

You can no more say there is a God than you can say there is not. You are no more enlightened than any other person who has lived on earth. The 'excuse' that our science fails to understand everything that we see in our lives is just a metaphor for existence-and is totally unimportant. Just because humans understand practically nothing of our own beginning-perhaps we understand our own ending much better-can't be just set aside qualitatively.
If I ask you 'Tell me how big our galaxy is?" or How can our radio telescopes detect matter so far away that time itself-as we know it-is meaningless and we simply do not exist, or better, the world outside this window is in a state of 'nonexistence'. Because, according to our own physical laws, we simply exist spiritually, our physical being is impossible.
That, of course, is conjuncture and is debatable however no one single person that lives, or has ever lived on Earth, understands our beginning and end better than anyone else.
Zeus to Apollo, and every one in between, were figments of human imagination. An endeavor to understand the world around them made possible by superior intelligence that gave Homo Sapiens the advantage to continue evolving-and not die out as all their forebears did. That is not conjecture and without this ability I would not be writing this-nor existing at all-and neither would you.
The presence of God is forever linked to us all.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

I am not making the case that there are not wrong ideas about God, just that the drive to believe in one is virtually universal with humans.

I don't find it surprising that our ancestors tended to default to Magic or God when they didn't understand something. I have argued in the past on this forum that if you live in a prehistoric culture which doesn't have enough information or understanding of the world around them, then anthropomorphising the situation and thinking that nature works the way we work, is not an unreasonable extension of the logic. It only becomes unreasonable when it conflicts with an actual understanding of what is really happening.

If you look back at all the things in nature that our ancestors didn't understand you quickly get a laundry list of all the original Gods: Thunder, Lightning, The Sun, The Moon, the Planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars), The Seasons, The Rain, Volcano's, Earthquakes... and on and on it goes, if our ancestors didn't understand it, it was magic and they anthropomorphised it into a God, something like themselves in some way.

But as our understanding of nature increased, our Gods passed away. This is a normal process for me, an evolution of human thought and understanding. I'm not surprised in the least that we started off believing in Gods, or that even now, where understanding is absent, the local God fills the cracks.

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@rosborne979,

Quote:

The Sun, The Moon, the Planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars), The Seasons, The Rain, Volcano's, Earthquakes... and on and on it goes, if our ancestors didn't understand it, it was magic and they anthropomorphised it into a God, something like themselves in some way.

But as our understanding of nature increased, our Gods passed away. This is a normal process for me, an evolution of human thought and understanding. I'm not surprised in the least that we started off believing in Gods

I find it completely implausible that the current widespread belief or the tendency to believe is completely the result of Greeks and Romans seeking to explain lightning, thunder, etc. I can't believe anyone could find that plausible. Even in more recent history there are litterally hundreds of firmly held beliefs that are completely forgotten today. Why should something as unlikely as 'God' have such staying power?

How do you reconcile your statement that "our Gods have passed away" with the wide spread belief in God today? You can legitimately make that statement for yourself but beyond that, your statement is obviously false.

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@Leadfoot,

The christian god is a recent phenom compared to many older cultures with other gods.
http://www.ancient.eu/religion/

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@Leadfoot,

So your argument is God is real because over the last 5,000 years people have believed in 5,000 different Gods and people believe in probably 100 version of God today?

As has been pointed out to you, that would make mythical creatures real because people have believed in mythical creatures for 5,000 years and many people believe in mythical creatures today.

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@cicerone imposter,

And even earlier cultures had other names for their concept of God and Christ came on the scene only ~2000 years ago.

Your point is?

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@Leadfoot,

Seems like a late-comer to save lives. Also, the christian god is similar to other ancient gods from Greece/Egypt.

Also,
http://www.liberalamerica.org/2015/03/17/5-near-identical-jesus-christ-myths-that-predate-jesus/

1 Reply

@parados,

Quote:

So your argument is God is real because over the last 5,000 years people have believed in 5,000 different Gods and people believe in probably 100 version of God today?

No, I simply said that the tendency to believe in a God is universal and that the tendency remains even when science disproves many of the myths that man surrounded that belief in God with.

Although atheists commonly use the multiple God argument against God's existence, there is no wide spread arguments about how many there or 'whose God is best, real, etc. For example, Christianity and Islam have no problem accepting each other's God. Their differences are about what God wants or expects.

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As has been pointed out to you, that would make mythical creatures real because people have believed in mythical creatures for 5,000 years and many people believe in mythical creatures today.

One more time - I have never claimed that people's belief makes anything real. What is real is that the drive to believe in God is universal.
You can of course ignore or deny that drive.

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U.S. Lags World in Grasp of Genetics and Acceptance of Evolution

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