Generally speaking, knowledge is hardly ever lost. It spreads, it disseminates, it outlasts its progenitors. If the Egyptians had some profound understanding of the natural world, their neighbors would have learned it from them, and would have ultimately passed it on to us.
As for their knowledge - they could keep track of the movement of the stars, but they had no idea what stars were, only that they were lights in the sky that moved in a certain pattern. Their math wasn’t that special, either: they could do a straight line and a right angle, and they could count high enough for effective logistics, but based on their buildings, that’s about it.
Which is why it’s likely that the more educated they were, the more religious they were. The educated were the ones who asked questions about the universe, and religion was the only place that offered answers.
Alessan, I remember reading about the Piraha people. It’s a wiki link about a culture from the Amazon that have no knowledge of modern science and are atheists.
I wasn’t able to remember many good examples of Afrocentric books on the topic, but I do know the Metu Neter has some themes of Ancient Egyptian gods = different aspects of the African Man.
Adding a few random, half-formed thoughts to the discussion soup…
I wonder how much a physical representation of the idea of a god/goddess would influence the average pre-literate masses to think of that deity as literally looking and existing in a particular way. If you are trying to explain the idea of fertility as an abstract concept, it is important to have a metaphor to explain it to someone else. Cows are fertile, so are women, so a drawing or statue of a woman with the head of a cow starts out as a convenient pictorial representation of the idea of fertility and in a generation or two becomes a literal goddess of Fertility. What starts as a metaphor reifies into an actual deity over time.
I am posting from work and so I am missing some parts of some posts. I missed this. For some reason, I thought they needed some serious math skillz to build those structures. I am so disappointed!
This is, as far as I recollect, a well-accepted hypothesis for the formation of deities.
It certainly makes sense from a modern point of view.
But, are we certain that the ancients looked at the world in the same manner that we do now?
The writings in the OT appear to depict an atheism-free (or at least atheism-rare) intellectual world. The usual infraction lamented by the priestly redactors of the OT was not atheism, but excessive worship - of the wrong gods.
One would imagine that if atheism had been a serious intellectual current in the ancient world, it would have been seriously resented by the priests, who would have put more energy into condemning it - as it would strike at the basis of their occupation and power.
I agree, but I have no basis other than a feeling that such is so.
Nevertheless, it is good to have others whom I respect such as you to agree with my surmise.
I think you are using too narrow a definition of atheism.
Modern atheism is usually a science-based “I know for sure there is no God because scientific evidence points to that conclusion” kind of thing.
But historically atheism can take a number of guises, most commonly the “religion as metaphor” one (and it’s buddy "religion keeps me in power and gets me paid.) When you view the God as not representing literal “man in the sky” truths, but rather inner truths or states of mind, that can be a form of atheism. Certainly Buddhism got it down pretty early, and I think it’s pretty clear some Hindu practices did as well. I bet all those wheelin’ and dealin’ early popes also got it. I see no reason why other ancient religions would be exempt.
But Buddhism, even of the philosophical and non-devotional variety, wasn’t overtly atheist. The Buddhist texts I’ve seen did not deny the existence of gods or the supernatural - they merely insisted that gods and the like were bound to the wheel of existence as much as everything else, and the supernatural wasn’t all that important compared with obtaining release from the wheel.
Atheism as a philosophical position seems a reasonably late development, though it predates modern science by quite a bit. Certainly, some Greek philosophers were atheist in this manner - one of whom wrote that if horses had gods, they would look like horses.
Yeah, to say the least. You could probably rattle off about 100 other instances of Greek philosophers alluding to atheism.
As for the Buddhist idea of god…I think we are getting to that meta area where we are going to start saying, 'Well, who can really define god? What does god really mean??
I mean, I had always thought it was pretty generally accepted that Buddhists don’t really believe in god in the way that any of us usually think of ‘god’.
My opinion is that all ancient theocracies are (generally) misunderstood.
I subscribe (in the essentials) to the Julian Jaynes theory of the bicameral mind, which I find the most coherent explanation of the origins of not only religion but human consciousness itself.
Holy moly, spark, all I want to do right now is go straight to the book store and buy The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. After reading the wiki summary, I am chomping at the bit.
It’s a phenomenal work. Everyone I know that has read it has found their thinking on ancient history, religion and psychology cast in new light. Even if you don’t accept all his conclusions, it’s a mind-expanding read.
One of my favorite back-cover blurbs is on this book:
It may be “generally accepted”, but it does not, as far as I know, appear to be true.
Speaking here of Theravada Buddhism, the point is not that Buddhists didn’t believe in the gods - it was that the gods, and theology generally, were not considered significant to the main problem, which was the existence (and cessation) of suffering.
In short, the early Buddhists were, like most everyone else, of the opinion that gods existed, and were more or less as the Hindu pantheon said they were - but that they, in a fundamental sense, didn’t matter.
The Buddha himself, when pressed to state his opinion of metaphysical matters, allegedly equivocated: he compared his position to that of a physician on a battlefield, who is more concerned with extracting an arrow from a suffering victim, to finding out whom had shot it.
So, in its philosophical form, Buddhism was originally uninterested in gods or the supernatural - but did not by any means go so far as to deny their existence, or define them as being some sort of philosophical abstraction. Buddhism is a philosophy with a purpose and simply has nothing to do with existence (or non-existence) of god(s).
Of course, as I said, this analysis only applies to philosophical Buddhism as represented by the Theravada canon. Modern-day Buddhists, particularly in the West, are quite likely to be atheists, but strictly speaking the two (Buddhism and atheism) are quite independant. Philosophical Buddhism is equally approriate if one believes in gods or does not believe in gods.
Moreover, there are many forms of Buddhism which are basically theistic - in that they are “devotional” as opposed to “philosophic”. See for example “Pure Land” Buddhism, a form of Mahayana, in which devotees essentially call on the name of Amitabha Buddha, who will grant them entrance to the paradisical “Pure Land” after death.
Buddhism in some forms also embraces pure messianism: see for example the figure of Maitreya:
Both of these beliefs are reminicent of some forms of Christianity (salvation through faith, and a future saviour).
In short, philosophical Buddhism does not require any belief in a god or gods; nor does it deny them. It is perfectly possible to be an atheist Buddhist (and equally possible to be a theist Buddhist, so long as your god(s) don’t actively conflict with Buddhist philosophy). Additionally, some forms of Buddhism have definite theistic trappings - complete with heavens, deity-like figures, and future saviours.
Can’t say without reading his book, but the notion that everyone 3,000 years ago was fundamentally ‘not concious’ in that they were incapable of introspection I regard as highly suspect.
Basically theist ideas can have different levels of actual theistic belief. Let’s look at heaven and hell, which seems fundamentally theist.
Probably the most theist view is that Heaven and Hell are actual physical places, and some sort of entity assigns you to one of these places based on some criteria. There is real hellfire, a real river Styx, etc.
Then you have a semi-metaphorical view: Heaven and Hell are both simply being in the presence of God, and whether that is heaven or hell depends on what kind of person you are…if you are a bad person, being in the presence of God is going to be painful, but if you are a good person it is great. Still theist, although it starts to get blurred if your definition of “God” is too inclusive (as in “God is a force like gravity.”)
This is a short leap into the full metaphor view: Heaven and Hell are metaphors for life- if you generally follow the rules and try to be good, you are probably not going to have many problems, but if you walk around making trouble it’s going to suck. This view is not theist at all (and so I’ll think of it as atheist.)
On the side is are the cynical views: Heaven and Hell are an easy way to keep the masses in line, or they are a good threat to keep your flock from heading over to another congregation. These are also non-theist views.
Different groups and individuals can hold any combination of these views. How many faithful people do you know that actually have all of their beliefs mapped out in a systematic coherent way? Probably very few. Most religious people have a few core beliefs (“I just know ma went up to heaven”) and but either have a hazy or non-committal (just going along with what the church say) view of other details. Most people’s religious beliefs change and evolve in time, and fall in and out of synch with the organized religions around them.
The truth is that many people hold multiple, contradictory beliefs in their heads. You can believe that you are mostly into Catholicism for the ritual, instinctually pray to St. Jude in times of trouble, and believe in the divinity of Jesus while also suspecting the whole thing is kind of bullshit.
You aint the only one. The book seems interesting, but I don’t think spark has any ideas in his head that it is accepted in the scientific community. (I shouldn’t speak for spark, of course, I’m just guessing.).
Too late for me though. I’m down the rabbit hole. I have clicked too many wiki links and now I want to read all about Mythopoeic thought as written about by Henri Frankfort and his wife Henriette Antonia Frankfort.
As for Buddhism, I give up. Anytime I try to get a straight answer about whether or not they, as a movement, or religion or whatever they want to call themselves, actually believe in god or not, I get a different answer each time.