Almost any nonsense has the ability to lure believers.
I suggest fear of death / fear of the unknown is a prime motivator for religious beliefs.
In a way, i think you oversimplify, Chumly. When religion arises (and we do have some pointers to when that might have been, as in the example of the temple societies of the middle east, which inferentially were predicated upon some earlier version of shamanism), i suspect that most of the "why?" and "wherefore?" of the world was a matter of mystery.
If you consider that most people did not make it past childhood, and that among those who did, most did not live many years beyond sexual maturity, it becomes apparent that not a lot of time was available to people to consider the mysteries of life. Anyone who had a good enough song and dance could have set themselves up as shamans. If nothing in their cosmology was blatantly contradicted by events, and they had even a rudimentary predictive ability, they are going to appear profoundly knowledgable to their peers. It only takes one shaman who institutes a system of acolytes to regularize the predictive process, and to begin to accumulate the authority evident in a temple society. We know a good deal about the temple societies of the middle east, because they became literate thousands of years ago. So long as the priests of the temple can effectively organize social activities of planting and harvesting and distribution, their authority will likely go unchallenged. Confronted with equally effective societies which "believe" in other "gods," theology becomes necessary to explain the putative superiority of one's own god or gods. If such conflict of belief systems leads to war, war leaders will be needed, and the seeds are sown for the rise of monarchs--and it is human nature that monarchs will challenge the supremacy of the authority of the temple.
In China, religious belief seems not to have devolved into theology, and nothing more specific in the way of theology arose than a belief in dichotomous principles, heaven and earth, the quickening and fecund principles--i.e., male and female--but no particularist theology, and only vague references to a spirit world which succeeds this life. Among the ancient Chinese, ancestor worship appears to have been the most enduring practice of the people in general, and was divorced from the practices of the high and mighty. Something similar seems to have been the case with the Meso-Americans, who were either illiterate, or only primitively literate. Although very elaborate theologies were devised, and among the Maya included higher order mathematics and astronomy, there is no evidence of if and to what extent the commonality were expected to participate in religion. Among the Tawantin Suyu (commonly known as the Inca), it appears that although society was highly organized in an effective social welfare system, religion was only the realm of the aristocratic, and largely functioned to prevent civil war in times of succession. Although these people had a primitive message system using knotted cords, they were functionally illiterate and no record survives of the elaborate societies which preceeded them, and which appear to have failed before the rise of the Inca. The Incan dynasties themselves only lasted for a span of a few centuries (i believe there were 13 monarchs), and what is known is only what was related by those among the conquered who became "christianized" and learned to write in Spanish.
The religiously motivated would have us believe that organized religion is universal and inevitable. The evidence increasingly suggests that this is not so, and that neither theology nor monotheism is inevitable. By and large, what i have gleaned from reading history is that religion in yet another thought device of humans to deal with a world about which they had many questions, and few answers.
farmerman wrote:Almost any nonsense has the ability to lure believers.
People love nonsense. I don't know why.
I think you miss that the nonsense has to be plausible, and at least with regard to the succession of seasons, has to be at least crudely predictive.
xingu wrote:So your saying God made the earth stop rotating for 24 hours, right?
Sure... it was no biggie back then; for one thing, the Newtonian Laws of Motion hadn't been enacted yet, and for another, Gallileo hadn't yet determined the heliocentric orbital nature of the Solar System.
So, no law of angular momentum, no effects of angular momentum, eh?
Shows how third grade science thinks -- no sun for 24 hours (at least on their half of the Earth?) doesn't mean it stopped rotating on it's axis but stopped rotating around the sun. Jeeshhh.
Actually, both are wrong.
If the Earth stopped orbiting, it would fall into the sun. It can't stop rotating on its axis, so in order for God to make 24-hour of darkness he either had to block the sun for 24 hours, which meant synchronising the moon's orbit so that it would always be in between the Earth and the Sun, or synchronising the earth's orbit, so one side would always face away from the Sun.
RexRed wrote:xingu wrote:Rex, if your going to make crazy statements about God putting light where ever he wants then you had better give the proof, not I.
The Bible is not proof. When it comes to science and evidence the Bible is rather silly.
Now will you please tell us how God made the sun stand still for a day.
Well if night did not come in a 24 hour period it would have seemed that the sun had stood still... The Biblical story does not focus on how the earth traverses around the sun but the survival of God's people.
I was being sarcastically facetious re RR's laughable description and you are correct.,
Setanta wrote:So, no law of angular momentum, no effects of angular momentum, eh?
Of course not. If God can "put light" where ever he chooses why can't he manipulate angular momentum?
Having the sun stop on its tracks would not seem unreasonable to those who wrote the Bible. But having the earth come to a screeching halt without so much a ruffling a feather on a bird, well that carries it a bit to far. I would think from this story we can conclude the authors of the Bible were definitely geocentric in mindset; which takes God out of the picture for the authorship of the Bible.
xingu wrote:So your saying God made the earth stop rotating for 24 hours, right?
I am saying that God kept it light out for 24 hrs in order for the battle to be won. God did not find it necessary to teach them about the specific physics of the universe at the time.
No, "god" only found it necessary to suspend all of the physicals laws of the cosmos it purportedly created in order to facilitate the good-old-fashioned biblical slaughter in which it delighted.
Setanta wrote:In a way, i think you oversimplify, Chumly. When religion arises (and we do have some pointers to when that might have been, as in the example of the temple societies of the middle east, which inferentially were predicated upon some earlier version of shamanism), i suspect that most of the "why?" and "wherefore?" of the world was a matter of mystery.
If you consider that most people did not make it past childhood, and that among those who did, most did not live many years beyond sexual maturity, it becomes apparent that not a lot of time was available to people to consider the mysteries of life. Anyone who had a good enough song and dance could have set themselves up as shamans. If nothing in their cosmology was blatantly contradicted by events, and they had even a rudimentary predictive ability, they are going to appear profoundly knowledgable to their peers. It only takes one shaman who institutes a system of acolytes to regularize the predictive process, and to begin to accumulate the authority evident in a temple society. We know a good deal about the temple societies of the middle east, because they became literate thousands of years ago. So long as the priests of the temple can effectively organize social activities of planting and harvesting and distribution, their authority will likely go unchallenged. Confronted with equally effective societies which "believe" in other "gods," theology becomes necessary to explain the putative superiority of one's own god or gods. If such conflict of belief systems leads to war, war leaders will be needed, and the seeds are sown for the rise of monarchs--and it is human nature that monarchs will challenge the supremacy of the authority of the temple.
In China, religious belief seems not to have devolved into theology, and nothing more specific in the way of theology arose than a belief in dichotomous principles, heaven and earth, the quickening and fecund principles--i.e., male and female--but no particularist theology, and only vague references to a spirit world which succeeds this life. Among the ancient Chinese, ancestor worship appears to have been the most enduring practice of the people in general, and was divorced from the practices of the high and mighty. Something similar seems to have been the case with the Meso-Americans, who were either illiterate, or only primitively literate. Although very elaborate theologies were devised, and among the Maya included higher order mathematics and astronomy, there is no evidence of if and to what extent the commonality were expected to participate in religion. Among the Tawantin Suyu (commonly known as the Inca), it appears that although society was highly organized in an effective social welfare system, religion was only the realm of the aristocratic, and largely functioned to prevent civil war in times of succession. Although these people had a primitive message system using knotted cords, they were functionally illiterate and no record survives of the elaborate societies which preceeded them, and which appear to have failed before the rise of the Inca. The Incan dynasties themselves only lasted for a span of a few centuries (i believe there were 13 monarchs), and what is known is only what was related by those among the conquered who became "christianized" and learned to write in Spanish.
The religiously motivated would have us believe that organized religion is universal and inevitable. The evidence increasingly suggests that this is not so, and that neither theology nor monotheism is inevitable. By and large, what i have gleaned from reading history is that religion in yet another thought device of humans to deal with a world about which they had many questions, and few answers.
Nice post! Particularly interesting about how the "predictive" ability of early religions gave them authority, and how religious wars might lead to the questioning of religious authority.
xingu wrote:Setanta wrote:So, no law of angular momentum, no effects of angular momentum, eh?
Of course not. If God can "put light" where ever he chooses why can't he manipulate angular momentum?
Having the sun stop on its tracks would not seem unreasonable to those who wrote the Bible. But having the earth come to a screeching halt without so much a ruffling a feather on a bird, well that carries it a bit to far. I would think from this story we can conclude the authors of the Bible were definitely geocentric in mindset; which takes God out of the picture for the authorship of the Bible.
It's also kinda strange that nobody else on earth noticed it.
P
I wasn't suggesting that religious wars lead to questioning religious authority. I was suggesting that as competing temple societies advanced the claims of their respective gods, they would have come into conflict. That would necessitate providing dedicated military leaders, which would have been the origin of "kings"--and that such military leaders would have challenged the social authority of religious leaders. It would have been to the advantage of any "king" to keep the temple society in place, with the full panoply of priestly authority, so long as the priesthood recognized the supreme authority of the "king."
1) "conflict of belief systems leads to war"
2) "war leaders will be needed, and the seeds are sown for the rise of monarchs"
3) "it is human nature that monarchs will challenge the supremacy of the authority of the temple"
OK you were not suggesting that "religious wars lead to questioning religious authority". Are you saying it does not follow that "religious wars might lead to the questioning of religious authority"?
I am simply saying that that was not the point of what i wrote. Much of the history of the early middle ages in Europe revolves around the attempt of the Papacy to control the Holy Roman Empire, and the resistance by the HR Emperor, up to and including making war on the Papal States, and therefore, indirectly, making war on the Pope. That does not mean that the HRE wanted to unseat religious authority, nor to challenge religious authority in religious matters. Rather, it simply meant that the HRE did not intend to countenance religious meddling in temporal matters. So long as the monarch does not perceive a challenge to his or her temporal authority by organized religion, organized religion functions as an effective tool for the imposition of monarchical power on the people--divine right of kings, etc.?
You fools, God cannot suspend the LAws of Angular momentum as this would spread far and wide throughout the solar system and the galaxy. The total angular momentum of all the planets are components of the vector summations of
Ltotal=Lplanetary orbits+L earth orbit and spin. This g"goes up the ladder for solar systems, then galaxies etc. God cant break the laws of physics without doing massive damage to the entire energy balance :wink:
Sure she can . . . she's God, fer chrissake . . .
Just ask Rex . . .
