The Social Origin of the Concept of God.

And so we have to ask these two questions: 1) in what way has religion been instructive and 2) why do we increasingly react against religion?

The first answer, I would say, is that religion directs our life. Provides purpose and meaning.
To the second, I think modern man has trouble distinguishing between the sort of truth presented by science and the sort of truth presented by myth, by religion.

I just wanted to quote you here because you're right for all the wrong reasons. Religion does provide purposes and meanings - and there is confusion about the relative epistemological status of science and myth. Thus, religion provides confused meanings and purposes.

I do not wish to pull Ike's project onto a side road, so stop me if this in inappropriate...but here is my answer.

Religion has been instructive to man because it has gone hand-in-hand (making no comment on cause and effect) with the deepening of the way man thinks about himself, reality, and his relation to such. Religion has been a large part of the framework on which intellect has risen. Just as contemporary scientists don't curse the mistakes of Newton, neither should contemporary philosophers (if such a thing still exists) curse the mistakes of Aquinas. Thought builds upon thought.

That I have no further use for Christianity (as a belief system) in my life does not mean that I begrudge Jesus his existence.



There are as many answers to that question as...

For my part, I can't ever recall having believed in an anthropomorphic god, so Christianity, or at least its superficial forms, was behind the 8 ball of my intellect from day one. My rejection of Christianity (and all religion, though I still open the Tao Te Ching from time to time) has more to do with my intellectual curiosity, rigor and...can I say conscience?...than with reaction against any one model of belief.

As for the rest of humanity, though I cannot speak for them, I think mainly reaction against religion stems from a perceived tension between faith and science and the slow transformation of science into a new (?) form of faith.

Grim,

I give in. I'll not bother. If people are like that then what's the point of striving to enlighten them. Let them reap what they have sown. It's a shame because it's not thier fault. It's bad ideation that makes them sick in the head. Read post #19 - this is post #44. That's just not normal, is it? In years gone by he'd be burning witches on a pyre of manuscripts.

iconoclast.

You cannot enlighten anyone other than yourself. That's the problem with the world today... People think they have to enlighten and convert others without looking within.

The thing is, Ike, I don't even really see where you two disagree. He says that the sun and sky deities were both artifact and artificer. Ok.

Is that such a false statement? The identification: I made this...followed by a question: who made that? (rather than: who made me? - why is "me" in this case necessarily the original object of the thought?) is a perfectly plausible genesis for the idea that David Hume later chopped in half - that something exists implies it was created by cause-effect in the same way that man interacts with reality (tools, art, etc.) in a causal way (ie. that every "thing" is created by an act of "willing" and does not simply exist). As if prehistoric man was so introverted. I take him for just the opposite, a state of being from which he has been gradually "saved" by religion.

Perhaps an error of perspective: a god trying to see his reflection in the sun, only to find that it blinds him instead?

I will the creation of this spear (yes, it could have happened a long time before art); therefore something must have willed the creation of that awe-inspiring warm ball of light that I can't touch. I'd better be careful not to piss that something off. Hmmm...well, I've got nothing better to worship, so I'll worship the thing-in-itself as a symbol of the creator. Besides, it's warm. Don't forget that I'm just a troglodyte here. Later on, I become more spiritual and realize that no visual symbol can do it justice, so I'll say that my prophet on the mountain was only able to see God's ass.

Voila! The evolution of the priesthood. The eventual question: Who made me? - may well have been the last one asked rather than the first.

I don't see the "who" vs. "why" duality here as anything more than a skip over the brook. They need not be opposite values. As if there's a huge cognitive gap between "I made this spear" and "I made this spear because I'm hungry". "Why" is a backwards extrapolation from "because", not the other way around.

At any rate, we're talking about two different cognitive leaps here. The intelligibility of the question "why?" probably took form among the clever apes as soon as the existence of outside perspective was achieved. Even chimps can follow a pointed finger to its target rather than staring at the finger like a cat. "Why?" was a key to predicting the actions of other apes, and is probably a very, very old question in its genesis. But that doesn't mean that it always attached itself to some religious significance. In fact, that means there's a very good chance it did not - that "why?" came long before religion.

"Who made this?" seems something, else, entirely.

I don't think either point of view has to go down with the ship here.