oldest religion

One has no way(yet) of knowing which religion is the oldest. Religions tend to evolve from philosophies. So to date a religion (atleast to me) implicitly involves dating the philosophy.

Since religion usually implies a group belief, I'd say that since most sentient groups are capable of having philosophies (primitive or advanced in current day human terms) that govern their actions, one could in principle go back in time much before homo sapiens in pursuit of a religion/philosophy. I suspect Survival(explicitly) and Evolution(implicitly) might have been the religions back then.

BTW There is no Vedic Religion, it is a philosophy.

Bloody Hell!

This thread is waaay too clever for me!

I'm off........back to one of the sex, drugs or Rock and Roll threads.

I read it all though.....very interesting.......thanks!
:wink:

There is. It is philosophy as well as a religion and an indigenous name for 'so called' Hindu traditions as Devarshi accurately pointed out.

Some (hindus) refer this tradition also as 'Sanatana Dharma' literally meaning eternal order.

bluesky

I suppose to some extent one could say that the veda's can be thought of as philosophy as well as a religion since the older vedas are mostly philosophical in nature once one scratches the surface but the later veda's incorporate practices/codes of conduct which can be construed of as being the ceremonial part of a religion.

I suppose one could argue about code's of conduct being called a religion, and a religion where one is free to select their own set of code of conduct, evolve it or ignore it.

imo the 'dharma' in 'sanatana dharma' has more to do with 'code of conduct' than the translation into 'religion'.