So do you think that there is no such concept as ‘God’?
mswas, care to elaborate at all as to what makes psychology a “pseudo-science”?
Not really, I’ll leave that one be.
Hey, it’s not fair for you to keep writing things I agree with. 
Yes, we can study religion, its impact on people and cultures, and its evolution, without coming down one way or another about the existence and definition of god or God.
As an atheist, I have to go with the definition of God that someone else offers. (Any one I make up is a strawman by its very nature.) So, I’ll accept yours. Now, I think that people are (sometimes) the facilitators of goodness , so I can say, like Valentine Michael Smith, “thou art God.”
Again, I’ll keep to myself what I think of confusing concepts for the conceptualised entities. If you’re accepting that God is imaginary, you’re a funny old theist!
No, I am not making a statement of belief. I am saying that the question for science to study is, “What is God?”, not, “Is there a God?”, and that one of the possible outcomes could be that it is a meme that people found beneficial so it was transmitted throughout history and due to the power injected by human belief was an incredibly powerful force with tremendous historical consequences.
When people facilitate goodness they are indeed one with God. Whatever intellectual label they wear — Christian, atheist, pagan, what-have-you — is not relevant. “You have seen it written that you are gods,” Jesus declared. “You will do greater things than I.”
Actually, Lib, I’ve been thinking a little about this post of yours:
Of couse I agree that we cannot draw deductive conclusions from the premises regarding whether theism originated naturally or by divine revelation, but would you not say that thinking deeply about the emergence of theism in those small bands of hominids might help us to assess both options in order to form an opinion about which is more likely? (And note the crucial second premise of my OP in this regard.)
I am asking everyone here to imagine those hominids and their way of life, and would offer that any development which was relevant to the emergence of theism would be gradual. Thus, when you suggest that theism emerged when “goodness” became relevant to one creature or other, we could discuss whether previous, presumably very similar acts on the part of a slightly more ‘animal-like’ creature might also be characterised as “good”.
Your thoughts?
I took up Apathetic Agnosticism, and haven’t looked back since. “I don’t know, I don’t care.” answers ANY question that isn’t falsifiable. It could be more precisely rephrased ‘Can’t know, don’t care’, but I’m too apathetic to change it.
Certainly there’s value in studying religion, since ignoring its history and emerging trends would be as foolish as ignoring traffic as you cross the street. I recognize the world always needs experts in any field, even if to me the actual pursuit or religion its self seems to have less merit even than having that ‘TMZ’ show on TV.
I’ve always wondered why people who claim to be apathetic about the situation weigh into these discussions?
For me, it isn’t just a problem of theology. I’ve never bought into the causative and ablative arguments about astronomy arising from astrology, for example. There is only the weakest lexigraphical and taxonomic relation between the two. If anything, astronomy arose despite astrology. Yes, early astrologers tracked planetary and stellar movements across the sky, but it’s a composition fallacy to tie them together, especially inasmuch as the science of navigation is a far better candidate as a precursor to the science of astronomy.
In fact, if we wanted to be careful and tedious enough, we could trace the emergence of science from religion. (Which may be what you want to do.)
So, to answer your question directly, I think two different tools are required to examine the two different possibilities. Whether religion emerged naturally is an empirical question. But whether it emerged by revelation is an analytical question, unless you’re going to insist that God is just a part of the universe. In that case, though, there is no difference between the two. And so the answer is just a matter of what phrasing you prefer — i.e., shall we call our brain farts “god”?
I believe that a premise underlies both our arguments and is audiatur et altera pars. You will not acknowledge a supernatural reality, and I will not acknowledge a natural reality. So as I say, I’m willing to give you your postulates for the sake of argument. But they can’t convince me because of the premises left on the table.
Navigation grew out of astrology as well. It’s a bit pat to try and create these threads and act like they happened distinct from the rest of history. You think that early navigators were not looking at constellations? I don’t know why it’s politically incorrect to say that astronomy arose from astrology, but it clearly did. Isaac Newton was into astrology as well, it’s not like he was a scientist sometimes and an alchemist others. There was one person seeking the answers to the same questions who came up with many concepts that have been seen useful by the scientific community. Astrologists mapped the stars, pure and simple.
Why not? No more effort than watching TV, and occasionally I learn something.
I think I’ll stick with the modern separation of Astronomers and Quackery.
If they did something of scientific value, they were Astronomers.
If they spotted a planetary convergence and proclaimed something half-baked about plagues and gods and fates, and a personal impact from the position of a star in relation to a planet, then they were Astrologists.
Astronomers studies and measured the stars, and by in large had math skills.
It didn’t take either kind to invent stellar navigation. Even the Micronesians did it.
To make a science of it took, well, SCIENCE. Getting longitude needs a chronometer of some sort.
Yeah but your argument is for emotional reasons. If you actually read anything about the history of astrology it was much more involved than is given credit. As I pointed out Newton was an astrologer. People are trying to make arbitrary distinctions based on their own emotional identification with an aesthetic. Aesthetically it bothers them to think that the precursors to scientists resemble modern crystal gazers. Really what is considered to be science today was developed in the past by alchemists, astrologers, mystics etc… Because the separate distinction, ‘scientist’, did not exist. It’s a strange sort of dogma that can’t simply recognize the fact that mysticism played a huge role in teh development of what we today call ‘science’, but it’s simply the reality of the situation.
At a certain point we’ll get past this revisionist historical perspective where recognizing the roots in astrology will just be a matter of course. People who gazed at the stars and made records of their findings were astronomers, even if they were doing it trying to find some pattern of the gods dictating our movements. I hope we get past such politically correct revisionism sooner rather than later.
The whole religion vs science thing is getting rather tedious.
It’s always interesting. People are more than willing to credit the ancient greek philosophers, who were, in their own right mystics for scientific progress, but it is more difficult for them to credit Aquinas or Anselm. It’s simply a matter of personal egoic identification. They think it will somehow diminish what science is to recognize the lineage that bore it.
Here’s the scenario we’re working with. Ten million years ago, we had a bunch of apes flinging poo at each other. Somewhere between there and Albert Einstein came the development of everything that is unique to humanity, including beliefs in gods. This all happened continously. In other words, the strands of ape consciousness developed by very small steps into modern human self-awareness. Whatever strands became religious belief were in all individuals from the start. And since the development of religious belief occurred by tiny steps, there was never a moment when one individual had it while the others didn’t. The individual with the most advanced beliefs was always just a tiny bit more advanced than the rest. That’s the point I was trying to make.
(All this assumes the secular version of events. If a god were getting involved then it would make perfect sense for one group of humans to make a big jump ahead of the rest.)
As an astrologer, Newton produced nothing. Just one of many dalliances, including alchemy. If he’d stuck to the astrology and alchemy, he’d have been a nobody. Other people would have done his work later.
It was as a mathematician and physicist that he made his name.
Actually, apes (and probably their flinging response) hadn’t evolved yet – Toumai was a common ancestor. Pedantic in this context, perhaps, but crucial enough in others to note here.
Precisely! So you no longer consider it ludicrous to present a natural origin of religion, then? After all, that is the entire point of the debate we’re having: that natural explanations are, in your opinion, inadequate for eg. the origin of religion. Shall we choose another example instead?
The start? Bacteria? Mammals? You’re suggesting that religious belief was (and presumably, is) present in animals?
Then we centre the debate on the speciation of an individual or small group, don’t we? It is still the case that there are nonreligious animals and a small group of religious animals, even if that threshold is arbitrary.
But I acknowledge the possibility of a supernatural reality, just as you surely acknowledge that it is possible that my natural worldview is correct. I am suggesting that an exploration of what constitutes “goodness” in hominids or earlier animals helps us assess those possibilities. Agreed?
I hope this doesn’t make you mad at me. 
But I can acknowledge the possibility of a natural reality only for the sake of argument, and even then I need to redefine “reality” to do it. Just to remind you, I do not believe the universe meets any one of the three criteria that together identify what is real.
Yes, that’s what I said when I acknowledged the lexography. But phrenologists — people who read bumps — named parts of the skull, and you surely wouldn’t say they were the pioneer neurologists. It isn’t enough to attach labels to things. Every human does that by virtue of his disposition toward language.
Please pardon my interjection…assuming the existence of a supernatural reality, can religions eventually be considered logical by adopting transcendology?
Spirituality and theology has intrigued man since the beginning of rational thought. Many propose that religious rationality today is an oxymoron and this may be true since much of the monotheistic belief system is based on superstitions.
I propose that religious rationality may be possible if it is based on transcendology; it asserts that truthfulness and rationality in religions are truths that can be substantiated by science or those that cannot be proven to be incorrect. It is a doctrine and proclamation that spiritual transcendence and spiritual interaction, if one believes this to be an actuality, could only be possible between the spiritual existence and the spirit of man. Supernatural acts performed by physical or spiritual beings in the physical universe are not capable of existing or transpiring.
The existence of God cannot be proven or disproved. The existence of spirituality is a fact.