Donn
Philosopher
Yes, but do your hols exist? Don't let any existential doubt prevent you from relaxing, however. 
Theists: Please give me a reason to believe in your superpowered invisible overlord
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Religions don't actually start with a preoccupation over agency. Enough modern scholarship has now been done outside "ecclesiastica", and the churchmen are not that comfortable with the types of conclusions that have been drawn. They would have liked each religion to have started with some revelation on the cosmos and causation. Wrong.
The earliest textual strata on Sumerian religions show, for instance, that Ningirsu texts start with the invocation of Ningirsu to safeguard a peace treaty between Lagash and Umma, duly established by Mesalim. The earliest stories about Krishna show him overthrowing a tyrant called Kamsa. The earliest stratum of text in the Torah includes stuff like the Miriam song rejoicing over the destruction of the chariots of the Pharoah and a talking bush stating that God hears the cry of the oppressed. The 7 days and Adam/Eve story was apparently written centuries later. Hesiod jumpstarted our texts on the Greek pantheon with tracts deploring predatory lending by the upper classes. The Zend Avesta of Zoroaster shows a grim struggle between good and evil. The earliest Buddha sermons show Gotama preaching on self-improvement, meditation and being slow to anger, with love "for all quarters of the universe". The six or seven earliest chapters of the Confucius Analects (not the first six or seven in the published sequence but in fact starting at around Chapter 4 or so) show Confucius concentrating on proper treatment of everyone while holding public office.
In each case, the woo comes in later, textually, and is not part of the earliest textual snapshot we have. Apparently, all these different traditions start with a preoccupation over gaining a safer, more just and fairer world, and then power-mongers bring in supernatural woo about cosmic eggs, mere days of creation, etc., designed purely to instill awe and establish power for themselves (the later textual stratum for the first chapter of Genesis has even been termed the "Priestly" stratum by modern scholars -- what could be more explicit?)
What is especially ironic is that the sloppy armchair guessers of today have it wrong and the earliest atheists have the generation of belief dead right. Back in ancient Greece, the atheist Critias describes exactly the phenomenon that only the most modern philological analysis is finally starting to unearth:
"A time there was when anarchy did rule
The lives of men, which then were like the beasts,
Enslaved to force. Nor was there then reward
For good men, nor for wicked punishment.
Next, as I deem, did men establish laws
For punishment, that Justice might be lord
Of all mankind, and Insolence enchain'd.
And whosoe'er did sin was penalized.
Next, as the laws did hold men back from deeds
Of open violence, but still such deeds
Were done in secret, -- then, as I maintain,
Some shrewd man first, a man in counsel wise,
Discovered unto men the fear of Gods,
Thereby to frighten sinners should they sin
E'en secretly in deed, or word, or thought.
Hence was it that he brought in Deity,
Telling how God enjoys an endless life,
Hears with his mind and sees, and taketh thought
And heeds things, and his nature is divine,
So that he hearkens to men's every word
And has the power to see men's every act.
E'en if you plan in silence some ill deed,
The Gods will surely mark it. For in them
Wisdom resides. So, speaking words like these,
Most cunning doctrine did he introduce,
The truth concealing under speech untrue.
The place he spoke of as the God's abode
Was that whereby he could affright men most, --
The place from which, he knew, both terrors came
And easements unto men of toilsome life --
To wit the vault above, wherein do dwell
The lightnings, he beheld, and awesome claps
Of thunder, and the starry face of heaven,
Fair-spangled by that cunning craftsman Time, --
Whence, too, the meteor's glowing mass doth speed
And liquid rain descends upon the earth.
Such were the fears wherewith he hedged men round,
And so to God he gave a fitting home,
By this his speech, and in a fitting place,
And thus extinguished lawlessness by laws. . .
- - - - - - - - - - - -[ lacuna ] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
. . .Thus first did some man, as I deem, persuade
Men to suppose a race of Gods exists."
In other words, societal alarm over how we treat each is the first trigger for any form of belief. What comes after that, including agency, is ad hoc rationalization for all sorts of impositions, including stories about the cosmos that practically read like crude (but successful) efforts to blunt the initial focus on social justice.
Stone
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Donn
Philosopher
Gods provide the agency of ultimate justice and vengeance. ehcks' point still stands.
Not entirely. He wrote:
"First to explain the unknown. Second as a means to control other people."
In fact, the reverse of this is true. First comes the attempt to control man's inhumanity to man. Then comes the woo to explain the unknown, once the tradition is already well established.
Stone
Donn
Philosopher
Well, okay. Neither is much support for an actual 'god' behind the scenes.
The compulsive symbiosis between man's inhumanity to man and the delusion(?) of some sort of divinity is at least emphatic support for something universal in the human brain. Whatever is in the human brain here is something that has not yet been adequately explained.
And no, the ascription to agency is not what's involved. The notion of a fairer life for humanity is what's involved instead.
Why?
Stone
Donn
Philosopher
Why can't it be agency? We imagine other, bigger, wiser, human-likes that watch over us and ensure justice. I don't think that's at all radical.
It's agency in order to have a fairer life. You bow to the king, to whom does the king bow? A bigger king.
While I can't recall the details, a lot of Dennet's Breaking the spell is about this. Worth a read.
It's agency in order to have a fairer life. You bow to the king, to whom does the king bow? A bigger king.
While I can't recall the details, a lot of Dennet's Breaking the spell is about this. Worth a read.
O.K................ So why go to the headache of always changing the agent instead of just sticking with the one the culture finds comfortable?
(Was away for Memorial weekend.)
Stone
Donn
Philosopher
There was only one culture all along? Why did no one tell me?
Huh? Are you suddenly turning into Rip Van Winkle? What have we been talking about for the last 2+ pages? There's no one culture. Each of these ethics reformers jettisons the prevailing deity in their particular culture, in each case. That's been made crystal clear here.
My question is also crystal clear: Why does each social reformer go to the headache of always changing the culture's own particular "agent" instead of just sticking with the "agent" that each particular culture already finds comfortable? Dissing the culture's own "agent" just makes the ethics reformer's job tougher, not easier. So why do that?
Stone
His point is that cultures change. The religions change with them.
But why do the two so often change simultaneously, often due to one and the same individual?
Stone
tsig
a carbon based life-form
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Because god loves humans and sometimes gives them a nudge in the right direction, right?
You seem to be doing the equivalent of watching the tv golf highlights and assuming golfers never miss, history isn't a complete picture, its little more than a snapshot in time, its missing the daily grind of millions of individuals over thousands of years.
Drawing conclusions from such limited and often biased samples seems dubious to me.
Donn
Philosopher
Because things change as people change them.
Unless you want to start looping this argument, why not properly establish your bottom-line thesis, so we can argue to the point.
tsig
a carbon based life-form
- Joined
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Since it's your story why don't you tell us what the explanation is?
I have no bottom-line thesis. There is a set of odd facts that appears to be explainable through a rather limited number of answers. One of those possible answers, but only one, is that something that could be termed divine after all may have influenced certain trend-setting altruists throughout time. Another answer would be that those brains most prone to lifting up the downtrodden in the most far-reaching and long-lasting ways are also those who are most prone to delusions.
Stone
Fast Eddie B
Philosopher
Nice admission.
I think many of us suspected that, due to your apparent lack of ability to state it clearly. 12 pages of reading is a bit much to ask others to ingest without an idea of what is being put forth.
I'm reminded of this quote. To paraphrase Pascal, "I should have written a shorter thesis, but I did not have the time."
-- and just what is the "it" here? What a loaded disgusting dust-kicking ad hom. A thesis is an optimum idea framed to fit with a set of facts on the ground; but an answer is one option among a number that can fit those same facts. I have a minimum of two possible answers that fit a set of obstinate facts tied to age-old social reform -- two answers that I've already given in my previous. The charge that I have no inability to state a thesis here is a scurrilous charge for the simple reason that I don't have one optimum answer. But I do have a very limited number of answerS that can account for an obstinate and perplexing set of facts on the ground. I have a feeling that any pretense on your part to still not see the difference here is just that -- a pretense.
Stone