I don’t usually post questions that I have the “correct” answer to, I mean really, what would be the point?
I’m not well versed in history, but for example I’d say that once Newtons ideas where well known there would be some significant clues in circulation. I guess one could argue that once the world was discovered to be a sphere (ancient greece?) that should be a big clue that at least some religions got it wrong. But I like the idea of multiple perspectives and answers to this, not just scientific history but cultural or political as well.
How so? Scientists of and near Newton’s day didn’t see any conflict between science and the existence of God—if anything, they thought that the existence of an orderly, explainable universe pointed to a Creator. The Wikipedia article on Isaac Newton’s religious views quotes him as saying
[QUOTE=Isaac Newton]
Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done.
This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being.
[/QUOTE]
I’d actually answer the OP’s question with a question.
What were the first clues that there was a god?
The simple answer is, there has never been any clues that there was a god. There has never been any verifiable proof of a divinity, period.
For Christianity at least, the whole point is faith anyway. I’ve never understood why some Christians are obsessed with finding “proof” of God, or get so angry when someone says something “disproves” God. Christianity makes it very clear that belief is faith based, faith means there can never be any “proof.”
If God lived on a mountain top in Greece faith wouldn’t exist, it’d just be accepted fact.
Science can’t ever prove God doesn’t exist. There was some drama recently concerning Stephen Hawking’s new book. All Hawking has done is come up with a plausible concept as to how the big bang could have been started entirely on its own, without any “outside” interference. From there, all the planets and stars and life just came about because of the trillions of interactions between all of the elements spread apart by the big bang. The force of gravity caused dust to coalesce into stars and some of it into planets orbiting those stars and some of it into configurations that could support complex life.
I don’t have any problem with that, and think it’s a plausible explanation.
Any smart Christian can easily reconcile that with God, though.
The first time I read a fantasy book probably made me an atheist. About grade 3-4. Not having a religious upbringing, I read this before any ‘real’ religious book.
Probably from the first time that someone said “There is a god” and someone else said “Cite?”.
Seriously, though…I would imagine that people questioned the existence of a god from the moment they were told about it. That’s why religions are so adamant that you give them your children for brainwashing at an early age.
I was about 10. I was a devout Christian, but there were some things that confused me. No one could or would answer my questions, so I started trying to find out the answers for myself. By the time I was about 16 or so, I had learned conclusively that religion is a lie from start to finish, nothing more than a massive con game.
Nonsense. Lightning was a ‘clue’ that there was a god, if you want to call such clear proof a “clue”. It was inexplicable and creating it was certainly beyond the ability of anything mankind could imagine. It was absurdly powerful and obviously targeted attack from the sky - seriously man, somebody’s up there, and they’re pissed.
Obviously once alternate explanations for these sorts of things were figured out this stopped applying, but until then “goddidit” was actually the most plausible explanation available.
Natural phenomena were never proof of a god, they were proof that smart humans were good at creating myths and legends to explain things. And hey, the dude that knows all the myths and legends coincidentally was usually pretty important in society and held a position of power and prestige, sometimes even greater than the secular leadership of the tribe/group/society/city-state/whatever.
Not really. Polytheists have no problem believing in (if not worshiping) other gods. Alexander the Great, who was such a believer he thought himself descended from gods, wed a Persian princess in her religion. Remember the First Commandment doesn’t deny the existence of other Gods, but only forbids them being worshiped (or worshiped before the Hebrew god.) Only monotheists necessarily reject the existence of other gods.
Assuming that the God in question is the god of the group or tribe, not some other tribe’s god: As soon as people could apply logic to religion. Remember Socrates was accused of atheism. Finding secular explanations for physical events which were supposedly divinely inspired helped, as did showing Biblical history was wrong. But logic was primary.
Of course, being able to utter this thought without being killed helped a lot.
When I read in the introduction to the Bible used for senior English about the various authors who wrote the Bible. I didn’t care much before then, but more or less believed, and assumed that the Mosaic authorship I learned in Hebrew School was widely accepted. The moment I had a glimmer otherwise, the whole thing fell apart. Of course I never believed in the Jesus God from the very beginning.
Stop wiggling - you asked for a clue, and lighting is a pretty darned overt clue. One that is pretty good proof of the existence of powerful supernatural entities (in the usual, non-formal-logical sense of the word), at least until better information about the phenomena is collected.
Seriously, if you want to play this game, then atoms are a myth. They’re just one that fits all the available evidence really well, just like lightning did when there was less evidence around to be had.
The question is complex, ambiguous and has conflicting answers but …
I think this is one key answer. I’m not even sure the Gods had to be vastly different; just the fact “our” God was defeated by another might begin a cycle of doubt.
Julian Jaynes’ thoughts are worth reading. His book contains a provocative image of a Mesopotamian God deserting his people in a time of conquest. This was about the same time that ludlul bel nemeqi was written, sometimes considered a source of the Book of Job.
The lack of any evidence whatsoever would have been a hint.
I was never much of a believer, but the “deep field” image from Hubble showing thousands of galaxies in a tiny point of the sky did it for me. It might not be proff of NO God of any kind, but it proved that whoever wrote the Bible had no clue of what the real universe was all about.
The universe is not only larger and stranger than we imagine, but also than we CAN imagine.
Darwin period. For the first time there was a plausible explanation for the existence of different species outside of a creator. Hence a clear contradiction of the bible, presumably the only serious account of creation previously known to the society in which Darwin operated .
Just about everything religion has said about life the universe and everything has been shown to be untrue. While at the same time, especially since Darwin, the predictions made by science have proven to be much closer to the mark.
