Some faiths certainly hold that the “higher power” is “non-physical” in nature; others do not.
As for man’s earliest religions, we do not know if they included such a strict separation between the physical/profane and the non-physical/sacred. Perhaps they did. Perhaps they didn’t. We simply do not know.
If you don’t trust Michener, look up Prof. Jan Assmann, who makes a similar argument about how pre-Mosaic religion was remarkably tolerant and chilled out towards other faiths. I don’t wish to clog up the thread with lengthy quotes, but for those interested, I recommend The Mosaic Distinction or The Price of Monotheism.
Anyway, in direct answer to the OP: The most amusing theory I have come across is that of James Harrod and Vincent W. Fallio, who argue that the earliest signs of proto-religion can be traced all the way back to the goddamn chimpanzees (!), and that early hominids such as Homo Rudolfensis took the proverbial ball and ran with it, developing religion in the Oldowan period, two million years ago! Delightful homepage here.
I’m sorry, but your faith can’t be honestly used as a trump card here. Historical proofs require something outside of your faith by definition. You can believe he existed on Faith but can’t dispute “there’s zero historical proof” based on that argument.
Of course not; most of the killing would have happened long before recorded history. And it would have consisted at least as much of internal conflicts not war with outsiders; things like parents abandoning or killing insufficiently pious children. We even see that sort of thing in modern times, with parents disowning atheist children, or trying to terrorize and abuse them into becoming believers.
But that isn’t factually possible. If there is no historical proof, then there isn’t any. You can’t have “faith” in something like that. It’s existence is based on readable human records. If the human records aren’t there you can’t just say “Oh, I have faith that they are!”. It’s as if I said, “Chuck Dubois isn’t in the phone book” and you replying “Oh, I have faith that he actually is in the phonebook”. Faith isn’t applicable. So believe all you like but as a real world commentary, you must accept Kobal2’s statement.
I accept Kobal2’s statement that there’s no evidence. I do not accept that Abraham did not exist. Just because there’s no evidence that someone did exist, doesn’t mean they did not. That is a different thing altogether than having definitive evidence that someone did not exist.
So, yeah, the way I stated it originally was not correct, and that’s probably your point.
Or maybe it only happened in the fevered imaginations of atheists with persecution complexes. I firmly believe that we’ve had some sort of religion throughout human existence, as a natural outgrowth of our inquisitive and structure seeking minds. I doubt any purge, of any level, was responsible for it’s predominance.
And yeah Bullitt, that was my only point. Keep on believing.
:smack: I’m just curious:
Where did the directions embedded in genes for the design, production and location of a clitoris come from?
Since the clitoris provides a woman with so much pleasure, it seems pleasure must have been the goal of whoever or whatever designed and produced it.
From an anatomical standpoint, why is the clitoris so sensitive and pleasurable? Is there more to it than a matter of specialized nerve endings close to its surface? (Is there a doctor in the house?)
Did it evolve to foster the production of kids, for pleasure, or for both? If both, how perspicacious of evolution to build redundancy into the reproductive process.
Frank Sganga
Hey Frank / sicari1921 I don’t think that’s relevant to this thread but if you want to start another thread please by all means do that and we can have a focused discussion on that topic.
Also. welcome to the Straight Dope. I hope you enjoy your time here. Looks like you’ve made two posts so far on the SDMB and both are in this thread and about your question (links pasted below), so again, please start a new thread if you want to discuss that.
you’re assuming a ‘creator’ did it (the bolded part) - there is no evidence of such a thing.
as for evolution/survival and why that particular ‘feature’ survived - consider it as simple as "those that found sex pleasurable continued having enough sex such that they produced offspring with that similar feature - those with a dead (or painful, perse) clitoris quit having sex and that version ‘died out’ - thats what natural selection, etc is all about.
As for location, anatomy - in the simplest terms, boy parts and girl parts start out ‘the same’ and during the development, hormones, etc move them around a bit (egg/testes, penal glans/clit/hood, etc).
With all the respect in my heart : your faith isn’t an authoritative argument !
Or to put it another way : once you start authoritatively throwing dates around, in an evolution thread no less, you’re not in faith-land any more. You’re in back-up-your-shit-with-cites-or-clay-pots land :).
Um… historically speaking ? Yeah, it kinda does. Or at least, it’s a strong suggestion they didn’t.
It’s not like historians and archeologists didn’t *look *for corroboration of the existence patriarchs. Quite a few of them wanted to prove they had existed in some shape or form. But there’s really nothing material to indicate that’s the case, be it directly, indirectly or even if-you-squint-just-rightly.
Which is what I meant by “zero historical proof”.
[QUOTE=CarnalK]
But I’ve never heard of any “war on atheists” in history. It’s always been one theist group versus another.
[/QUOTE]
And with like respect, I was not making an authoritative argument but one based on my faith. Issues of faith, by definition, are often (usually) not able to be backed up by proof or evidence. I believe faith to be a gift from God, and you either have it or you don’t. A faith-based argument will not satisfy the forensic evidence needed by a person looking for a factual-based argument. That’s what I meant when I said the two concepts, faith and fact, are not equivalent.
As for the dates, those are readily available from biblical scholars. A simple search should yield them. But also, I’m reading a book called “The Story” by Max Lucado and Randy Frazee, and the dates I gave are in there.
But you were when you made your first contribution to the thread. Had I not objected/qualified your initial assertion, a reader who didn’t know any better would have assumed you were making a factual argument, rather than a faith-based one. All the moreso in a thread dedicated to the historical evolution of man ;).
Which is what got my goat a little bit. Had you qualified the statement with “according to Bible scholars” or “if you trust Biblical accounts”, then that would have been fine.
Who themselves treat the Bible as if it was an authoritative, fact-based historical source (or pretend it is for the sake of argument).
But since those dates are usually reached by deriving from the genealogies provided by the Bible, and those genealogies include people who lived impossibly long among other things, they should be taken with a whole saltlick.
Then if you believe faith as gift from God, you are saying God is not just. There are many people even yet today that do not worship the God of Abraham . It seems to me that faith is a way for some to do certain things or not. Like any tool it can be used for good or evil. Surely if one believes God is a heavenly father he wouldn’t be considered a good human father, some of the descriptions of God were it used to being a good Father he would be put in Jail.
