I’m not sure why your last two posts were as hostile as they are, but it is a shame to see such attitudes creeping into what has been a relatively genial thread so far. Your simplistic and circular considerations of the distinctions that hotflungwok asked about would be interesting to follow up on, but I think that they would be getting too far afield from the OP. Besides that, I’m still waiting for a response from someone else on another matter, and there are just too many unanswered questions dangling already.
I’m neither a mod nor a god, but I would ask that you try to get your god of love to bestow upon you a touch more politeness or a hair less defensiveness.
Of course, but ITR asked what science has to say about the origin of religion, so it should not come as a surprise that I’ll set forth a natural alternative to the hypothesis that religions appeared by divine revelation. That is not to assume that gods or afterlives (of any description) don’t exist, it is just to explore it. And of course I understand that you’d only ever accept that religion could have emerged naturally, since if you accepted that it actually did, you would be an atheist.
In any case, the beauty of this exploration is that it is useful even if gods do exist, since there exists the possibility that some religions appeared due to actual divine revelation while, crucially, some didn’t. I would hope that you consider it entirely possible that some religions really were simply made up by someone, be they a prehistoric shaman or L. Ron Hubbard, such that no actual divine element whatsoever was necessary. The question which we will then explore is which came first, the “true” religion which was divinely inspired, or another one which wasn’t.
As for your warning about conflating gods which fill explanatory gaps with gods which fill hearts with love (or whatever distinction I’m not appreciating here), again, I still think you understand what it is I’m trying, perhaps clumsily, to explore. You have said yourself that love and goodness are irrelevant to atoms. I would further assume (though correct me if I’m wrong) that you would include robots, bacteria, lungfish and most mammals in the set of entities to whom goodness or gods of any kind are irrelevant. So the question is, what was the first organism to whom goodness wasn’t irrelevant? Now, you might place that organism further back or forward in time compared to the first organism which ascribed causal responsibility to an invisible intelligence, but it still lies somewhere on the timeline (unless goodness isn’t irrelevant to atoms or aggregates thereof, which I suggest would require a new thread on panpsychism or something like it) and we could then explore this fundamental new difference to the individual’s immediate ancestors, who would presumably look and act very similar to it in all other respects.
Of course giving another counterexample would be useless, god and God are not homonyms. God with a G is just one example of a god.
Um, what are you talking about? What is ‘force of law’?
The only difference is the one you fervently believe exists, so as to separate the old primitive gods from the one you have faith in. I don’t see a difference because one does not exist.
I’d just be more comfortable with the premise if it dealt with my objections. I mean, there came a time when I became aware of you, but it’s a useless point in establishing anything about your origin. It isn’t that it doesn’t mean I did or didn’t made you up; it’s that it doesn’t mean anything at all about you — only about me. It’s about my awareness, and not about your existence. Also, if we further generalize it to my becoming aware of posters in general, it is even further removed from being anything about you. Those are the problems I have with premise 4.
And that’s fine, because we would then be discussing the origin of SentientMeat-ology, whether or not I actually existed. Again, I am not seeking to establish whether religions emerged naturally or due to actual divine revelation, but exploring the possibility of the former. Premise 4 is a simple one really: at some point, a god of some kind was believed in by a hominid where beforehand no such beliefs were present. This premise can be held to be sound regardless of the natural or divine source of that belief.
By not being clueless, do you mean that they were smart but uninformed, smart and informed and misunderstood, or smart, informed and knowing of God, but not expressing it so we are aware that they knew?
I think that the problem may lie in the following:
I would take this to mean that someone had to value the god of love highly and express his love for him before he would then reveal himself. How they would know and then love him in advance of his exposing himself is a conundrum to me.
Okay, that’s cool. And I didn’t mean to pin you down on a point just to derail your idea. I apologize that it seemed to come across that way. If all we’re going to do is meander around the emergence of awareness with respect to God or to gods or to radio waves for that matter and draw no causative or ablative conclusions, then I’m okay with premise 4.
I want to expand on Liberal’s complaint. There are different understandings of the term “gods” because of lazy westerners who slapped the the word onto any being that any group of people believed in. Many of what we labeled “gods” or “godesses” weren’t thought of as having the characteristic we associate with the term. (For instance, such characteristics as power, creation, and moral leadership.) I would suggest the term ‘spirit beings’ for many of what we erroneously call “gods”. Obviously we know almost nothing about the spiritual beliefs of cavemen, but it seems likely that they believed in spirit beings who were far short of a god. nonetheless I’ll use “gods” for now.
[QUOTE=SentientMeat]
[li]Premise 4: Some time in the last 10 million years in that continuous ancestral line, there was an individual or group who first had the idea of gods.[/list]Do you question any of these premises? (Given your habit of leaving whole swathes of my posts without comment on your part, an explicit yes or no would be very helpful, thanks.)[/li][/QUOTE]
Obviously like Liberal, by preferred explanation for the first idea of gods beings would involve gods, rather than an individual or a group forming a hypothesis. But I’ll lay that aside for now and try to address your post on its own terms.
Knowing human history we know that religion is normal, and its absense is highly abnormal. Thus we shouldn’t assume that hominids started out generally non-religious until some individual or group came up with the idea. Rather, we should assume that all individuals and groups were religious from the start, until someone came up with the idea of atheism (or non-belief). I can’t see any argument for there being a point when only one individual or group believed in a god or gods.
I honestly don’t think smartness has anything to do with it. As I’ve often said, God cannot be known by the brain but only by the heart (as you’ve seen me define “heart” many times by now.) Jesus, in fact, once said, “Father, I praise you for hiding these things from the learned and erudite and revealing them to the simple minded and to children.”
It isn’t a matter that a God notion is required to explain love (qua the facilitation of goodness) in the way that a god be required to explain fire until fire is understood; rather, it’s that love (or more precisedly, goodness) is not a part of the universe, and therefore cannot have arisen from it. (Note: that is taking the premise that something cannot arise from nothing since nothingness implies the lack of any potential for anything to arise.) We aren’t waiting for something to be discovered. There are no morality waves or goodness particles not because we haven’t found them yet, but because they can’t be there. It’s the difference between an epistemic assurance and a metaphysical assurance.
The universe is neither moral nor immoral. It is amoral. An asteroid smashes into a planet without aforethought or malice. A photon emerges not to illuminate but only as the effect of a particle’s orbit collapsing. A man as a biological animal lives and dies for no purpose, his birth having been a natural accident and his death being without moral significance — just like the death of a tree or a slug. The only moral significance the universe has at all is to serve as a quasi-reality in which man as a moral being (i.e., spiritual being) may act out his moral choices. Its amorality is key to this moral freewill being possible. Were the universe itself moral and/or immoral, then man’s morality would serve merely to execute the greater morality exercized by the greater being (the universe).
And so, it doesn’t matter what a man thinks or what he knows or what he has written down or how smart he is. What matters is that he values goodness enough to facilitate edification. It is in valuing goodness that a man discovers God because God is what he is placing value upon.
It’s possible that Patriarchal religion formed out of the worship of the Father, and that all religion is ancestor worship. It is certainly possible. It’s also possible that as civilization progressed and the need to broaden one’s sense of the in group increased those Patriarchs became more and more remote. All possible.
What is interesting to me then is the history of abstract thought, how these ideas became more and more remote from an actual anthropomorphic figure to manifest in ideas such as Judaism with its formless deity, and Hinduism with its Deity of many forms.
I am far more interested in those subjects from a scientific perspective as I believe it is the evolution of abstract thought that is the origin of science. This is deeply rooted in religion. Science is immutably rooted in history, so it is the descendant of God, even if God is merely a construct of the psyche.
Even if God is merely a construct of the psyche, it is the most powerful meme ever to hit the scene, and as such is an immutable fact that we are bound to through our participation in the species historical narrative. God exists period. The question to me is, “What is God?”, whether he be a meme created to fulfill a function in the psyche of mankind, or an actual transcendant being that orders the entire universe. If it is a construct, and generally this is the strict definition of a pagan deity from a Judeo-Christian mindset, the pagan worships a God that resembles the tribe that worships it, then it was a mediator between us and the grand mystery of the universe. The divine the separation and unity of the abstract/physical.
It should be axiomatic that God exists. The debate affirms that God exists at least conceptually. I think it is a category error to say that God does not exist. You said yourself you were once a religious person. So you were shaped by God, but like your teddy bear you outgrew the meme, and replaced the role it fulfilled with a set of impersonal principles.
Maybe at some point in history we really dealt with our own thoughts as though they were another being speaking to us. Maybe that’s where the notion of God comes from. Maybe dualistic separation causes the notion of God. Eastern thought seems to be untroubled by the question in many cases, such as Daoism, which is quite monistic. So maybe at the root of Western dualism is the notion of God.
Lacan would call it ‘The Other’, and considers ‘The Other’ to be very relevant to our interaction, even if it is something wholly imaginary. It’s an interesting idea worth exploring.
There was a Christian theologian whose name escapes me that reduced spiritual concepts to something like memes, or so I am told, I have not read him myself. He did this many years before there ever was a St. Dawkins.
Let me respond twice: first in the context of this thread, and second more in the context of your response.
How did religion develop, and how did the ancients obtain the concept of god? Primitive enough cultures wouldn’t have it at all, no more than animals do, so that was what I meant by smart. (And remember the fool says in his heart quote). But at a certain point, long before the known existence of God, both good and love were recognized. Were they explained? Probably not any more or less than your explanation.
But the gods these cultures devised supported good in the context of their cultures. The good for Odin was far different from our good today.
So, culture A has a god. Is this god
a) made up of whole cloth trying explain volcanoes, lightning and such?
b) an imperfect representation of love and good, because the culture had not quite understood these? A culture that did would find God.
c) a misunderstanding of communications from God. Perhaps God is not required to explain love, but maybe he at least gave hints?
All of this assumes that God is a pre-existent entity, and didn’t spring into being when people stumbled upon love. To the best of my understanding you believe in an actual God, not the “god is the universe” type of non-personal god. Let me know if I’m wrong.
Before you said you agreed with me up to the God shows up part, which makes me think that you agree with my choice a, but your response confused me again.
Now this I agree with, pretty much totally. Some people might quibble that it is meaningless to speak of what matters in an amoral universe. I don’t, since our intelligence and concern about things mattering is enough to make the concept of what matters significant. If God is defined as what we place value on, that is a God I believe in. As long as we don’t extend the concept to include the creation of things we might place value on, or of those who do the placing.
Culturally it is an issue since God is such an overloaded term in our society, but if we ignore that, I’m okay with it.
It does not make sense to me that Consciousness would be solely a function of integrating synapses. Integrating synapses are merely material objects. So if the consciousness cannot exist in one synapse or another, but exists within their communication, ie their relationship, that in the dynamic act of integration is where the consciousness actually occurs, that seems sort of arbitrary to me. Consciousness requires a relationship between subject and object just as much as it requires a relationship between integrating synapses. So the somatic and sensory neurons in the PNS are just as relevant to the act of thinking as the integration neurons in the cortex, as are the limbic functions that tell us how we feel about something. How we feel about something is as important as what we think it is. But why stop there? Why stop at the nervous system? The jellied mass of tissue that the proprioceptive bundles interact with are a part of the sensory experience, they mediate the waves of interaction to the proprioceptive bundles, so why not all tissue as part of the mind? I have heard of, but not had the occasion to read studies talking about transmission of information through intercullar matrices in the fascia. This would make sense as tension in the fascia is itself a form of information. It tells me something about the form my body is in.
Now, why stop at my skin? Why consider consciousness merely a function of my body? I need to sense the outside world for their to be any relevance. In order to relate to the world around me I need to have an object to relate to, so why is consciousness a function only of the subject and not subject and object? As the body from fascia to CNS is merely a transmission medium, why not the air that carries the signal waves to me? Why is not the wind created by the approaching subway train not part of the communication?
It just seems rather arbitrary to me to say that consciousness resides in the cortex and nowhere else. That’s all.
Here’s my understanding of it, and you may offer further explanations as events warrant. Dawkins says that some genes survive and spread for Darwinian reasons, while others survive and spread randomly without any reason. In other words, certain processes in chemistry and biology are genetic coin tosses, and enough coin tosses sometimes lead to a gene becoming widespread even when it has no survival value.
He then says that the same is true for ideas. Sometimes many people believe an idea because it has survival value, other times they believe it randomly without reason. And he says we should consider whether this applied to religion.
(Now I have yet to meet anyone who chooses all or part of their religious beliefs by coin tosses, literal or metaphorical, so it doesn’t make much sense to me. But that’s my understanding of what Dawkins says.)
OK, but note that I have now addressed it to his satisfaction. Do my replies to him satisfy you too?
But surely a tribal religion based on spirit beings is a religion too? At the very least, one must admit that religions change and develop over time such that “belief in gods” would eventually emerge after “belief in spirit beings”? And if you look around the world at tribal religions today, you’ll see a cornucopia of creation myths accompanying those spirit being stories in which the beings involved are as powerful and “good” as any gods in the more widespread religions.
Of course it is your preference, you’re a theist! But follow your own train of thought here. In your first post here you said that you disagreed that gods were scientific hypotheses, and said that scientific materialism is not adequate by itself for dealing with the world. (See? This is called quoting someone accurately.) When pressed for a subject you feel science does not deal with adequately, you suggested the origin of religion. So to then suggest that the reason science is inadequate there is because it tries to explain how religion could originate naturally, rather than by divine intervention, would be an entirely circular step which I’m glad you’ve decided to avoid taking. You asked what science has to say on the subject of the origin of religion, so don’t be surprised if supernatural entities don’t feature.
A very interesting point, and thanks for engaging here properly. But do you realise the logical consequences of this? “Hominids” covers a timescale of millions of years, and the further one goes back the more animal-like the individuals become. As I said to Lib, consider Toumai, then Orroin, then Lucy. Toumai is an 8 million year old ancestor of both apes and humans, such that even gorillas have had millions of years to develop further. Would you really ascribe theism to gorillas? If so, we can simply move back further (precisely like another Dawkins work, * The Ancestor’s Tale*, ironically enough) and ask whether theism is the “default” for ancestral monkeys, aye-ayes and marsupials. If not, that transition from non-theism to theism must occur within the last few million years, just as Premise 4 states.
This bolded question is of crucial importance since it causes you to reject Premise 4, and we cannot move on until you accept it. Apologies if hereafter I mither you repeatedly to address it if I feel you’re avoiding it.
No particular survival value compared to other genes, that is, but I’d say this is a good enough description, and thanks for providing it. (This is how useful debate proceeds – without mischaracterisation. Let’s keep it up.)
Again, think of the rabbit analogy. “Pet ownership” in general suggests that there is something important in the human psychological makeup which pets satisfy. But the particular pet, or the particular individual of that pet species which one chooses in the pet shop? Those choices tell us much less, since they are generally so much more arbitrary. Bringing this back to religion, “belief in supernatural agents” in general suggests that such beliefs satisfy some widespread human need, while the particular features of the vast diversity of religions, such as the names, stories and characteristics of the founding gods, are much more arbitrary. Agreed?
If we can hack it out of you without you losing your consciousness, then it is not part of your consciousness. So it’s not arbitrary to limit it to what’s inside the skull - It’s one of the few things that we can’t retain conscious for even a few moment’s after it’s been reduced to goo (or artificially replaced).
Sorry, this omits a crucial point: at this level of “arbitrariness”, the environment can be the overriding factor in the choices made. Just as a person who spent some time with rabbits on a farm on holiday might subsequently choose rabbits as pets, or someone brought up as a rabbit expert might choose rabbits for their own children, so most people choose their religion based on their environment in much the same way.
It’s hard to figure out whether it’s sticky or slippery, isn’t it.
There is practically no end to which we might clarify what we mean by all these things. I would not, for example, even say that religion necessarily has anything to do with God since, as we all know, religious people can be quite evil. But going too far in that direction would result in the same sort of discomfort **Sentient ** felt when I was trying to clarify his postulate about gods.
But it does seem to me that religion is particularly suspect in trying to talk about all this. If we are to assume a loving God Who edifies those He loves, then it is inexplicably crazy to aver that religion has represented Him properly through the ages. Who knows, maybe the most primitive ideas are more correct than some modern ideas. For example, I don’t see how the religious right treating Jesus like the captain of their football team is any more advanced than a caveman treating his god like the bringer of sun’s warmth. The whole “my god can whip your god’s ass” mindset is theologically infantile in its conception.
And so if we are to discuss religion as a political entity, then whatever god or gods we’re talking about really doesn’t matter. One will do as well as another to be a placeholder for that which explains things or makes us better off than those other guys. It is clear that this business has exactly nothing to do with the God Jesus taught about, as is illustrated by this story: Once there was a religious leader who was praying. Nearby, there was a beggar praying. “Thank you, Lord,” the man in the fine robe said, “for not making me a sinner like that beggar over there.” The man in the filthy robe, meanwhile, was saying, “Forgive me, Lord, for not being as good a man as your servant over there.” Upon telling that story, Jesus asked those with Him, “Whose prayer do you believe God heard?” (For the sake of bystanders, it was the latter.)
Clearly, He is differentiating the God worshipped in purity of heart from a god that is the keystone of some particular religion.
And so, it’s hard to answer your question with a pithy response because I do agree with you that (A) was the way religion and religion’s gods came to be. But if someone is going to say to you, “I love you,” then at some point that person is going to have to make himself known to you in such a manner that you can know he has expressed his love. For me, that is a much more interesting question to pursue — namely, who was the first person (or people) contacted by the God of love and assured by Him that they enjoyed His. Hotflungwok’s opinion notwithstanding, I think it is critically important to define what we mean so that we’re not trying to figure out the mass and acceleration of the baseball player who has made a force play.
I would define God in this context as the facilitator of goodness. If you value the facilitation of goodness, then you believe in the same God I do. I do believe that God gives us whatever it is that we value most, and in so doing never forces Himself upon a man against his will if that man holds Him to be of no value.
