Religion

[geeraff]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blazer06

So some guy in the dessert along time ago thinks to himself "How can I get these people to fight for me and give me their money?"

He thinks and thinks and comes up with a revolutionary idea. He would convince a few of his friends (by cutting them a share) that their is a ... "God" and that this "God" wants them to teach people how to act, what to do.

So here you have this small group of people walking around going "Follow us. Or you will die. Becuase you must do what this God has told us. You must fight with us, or you are against the God and will suffer"

The first farmer that declined, randomly got his farm burned to the ground, and his sheed slaughtered.

Well now people are afriad not to follow this "God" and start doing what the first man tells them to. They fight other nations because they belive in this "God" and give him all their money, because that is "God's" will.

The rest is history.


Blaze

What's wrong with this, in short:

1a. "Religion" wasn't something that was just hatched by "some guy in the dessert." There are tens of thousands of religions that differ widely and have their origins in different times and places throughout the world.

1b. Dessert is a sweet dish, usually served at the end of a meal.
Desert is an arid, often sandy, scarcely inhabited region.

2. The first farmer that refused - "randomly got his farm burned to the ground." Wouldn't be "random" at all, it would be systematic, which is the opposite of random.

[Epidemic]

Quote:

Tell me where in the Bible it says not to eat meat on Friday, and that we should worship idols (or an inanimant object). The old law given to the Jews said not to eat certain meat, mostly for sanitary cautions (?). Now-adays though, most Christians do not follow that (or many of the other laws originally given), and eat many different kinds of meat. I myself like to eat bacon, and if I'm not mistaken, that was one of the meats. And also, explain this evolution to me. It is impossible for the bacterial flaggellum to have evolved. If something that simple can't be evolved, then what about the many other complex organelles, tissues, and organs. If evolution didn't happen, then the big bang couldn't have happened. And even if it did happen, what caused it? Where did it all come from? In my opinion, there might have been a sort of big bang, created by God that is though, when he created the universe.

Who says that bacterial flaggellum could not have evolved? I am quite sure there are some pretty smart people who insist differently. How do you justify the statement of the impossibility of evolution of bacteria. Even if god exists who is to say that he did not use the big bang and evolution to create man in the merest of the blink of a galactic eye.

If the big bang did happen where did it come from. (that begs the same question of gods origin) I find it no more difficult to conceive of nothingness spawning the universe than nothingness spawning god.

I also find it hard to believe that from the beginning of always and never God sat in a void of nothingness and then 7000 years ago decided Hmmm let me create space and time. In the time scale of forever to never ago even if the universe is 15 billion years old the same question still remains why wait until then.



As for the genesis of religion I feel that it can be explained by our fertile minds.

We hungered to know why bad things happened, with no understanding of death, or drought, disease, or storms. We needed something to bring it all together, a unifying theory of the day. Shamen of the day were spawned out of fear of the unknown. the hundreds of religions that have come and gone are a result of these individual shamen, each with their own take on life death and the universe.

Stars became lost souls and planets became gods. Each unknown was assigned a god or religious purpose. As cultures merged and people learned more about their world old gods died and new more rational ones were spawned. Once the relationship between clouds was identified the lightning god died. When all is said and done there remains one unanswered question which affects us all. Why do we die and where do we go. virtually every god now dead the one comprehensive god is spawned. It is kinda the ultimate final leg of religious evolution one omnipresent god to explain the unexplainable.

I believe that if you could magically spawn a population of humans on an island in complete isolation from the modern day culture they would follow a similar path. Starting with the many god (including the god to explain the what those large silver birds were flying over head) system and ultimately ending up with a religion that says dont kill your neighbor and steal their wife and one god.

some proof of that is the fact that Aztecs thought the men riding horses were gods simply because they did not know better. Also the african tribes which thought airplanes were gods when they appeared.

Finally I feel that 7000 years is simply not long enough to spawn all these religions if we were on a first name basis with god round bouts the time of Adam and Eve.

All coming from such a common tie with god watching the magic of seeing animals created and having named each one. Something makes me think that for the first few 500 years while adam and eve taught each child the rules that some cominality in religion would remain for quite some time. At the very least a monotheistic religion.

[Epidemic]

oops wrong thread.