lmbarre

Ever since human beings have become aware that they are dependent upon higher forces, they have socially constructed a divine world through which they hoped to manage their situation. This effort often involved securing the blessings of their deity or deities or placating them to avert divine wrath. Christianity belongs to this primitive mode of thinking in that it advocates the view that a now cosmic sacrifice was necessary to secure divine favor and avert divine wrath.

It is important to note that the securing divine favor through sacrifice is most primitive, something that is far from the pratical reality of post-Enlightenment, modern human beigns. I know of no one who practices ritual sacrifice to influence higher powers and even holds to this primtive thinking. It is not something modern man does, and this lack separates him from primitives.

Christianity has as its central belief the idea of a (divine) sacrifice and for that reason is both primitive and intellectually antiquated. From this perspectivge, those who support and are supported by Christianity are (imho) dinosaurs, seduced by a superstitious, primitive, "magical" world view that is actually long . Since the practice of sacrifice is patently primitive and outdated, so is Christianity.

Barré

Toto

You may be right, but it may be that humans are still rather primitive and still need this sort of fantasy or archetype.

In any case, this seems more of a GRD topic than Biblical Criticism. If it doesn't get some textual responses, I will move it.

Casper

I don't see a real difference between that description and the notion of "appeasing karma".

I think your assumption is therefore partially flawed unless you can find a way to differentiate between Post-Enlightenment modern human beings and post-Enlightenment modern superstitious human beings.

JohnG

I agree that Christianity is just another in a long line of evolved primitive religions. I have never heard any dispute that could prove otherwise.

To go beyond what you're saying, is there any benefit to deity worship in the modern world? Does it serve any purpose?

I would be interested in seeing a list of pros and cons that deity worship has on society.

In terms of pros - it romanticizes existence to inspire art and literature, but is deity worship necessary for that? I think one can live a "spiritual" life in the knowledge of being connected on a molecular level to all the universe.

It may also be a lesser of two evils for someone who is battling personal problems...but again, is deity worship necessary to give someone a healthy perspective on life?

It is understandable in primitive humans, but it still exists today. I think the reason is that we are still primitive as a whole. Sometimes when I am working at night, I am fascinated by the callers that call into coast to coast radio. Many callers are very superstitious and very determined in their beliefs. Judging by the size of their following, I'd say that there are huge numbers of people still influenced by ancient perspectives.

I don't think we are as nearly advanced a culture as we would like to think.

Toto

I don't see what this has to do with appeasing karma - that usually involves some attempt to right wrongs or make up for past sins.

Securing divine favor through sacrifice does not involve doing justice to your fellow humans, but a pointless sacrifice of something valuable to a higher being who has no discernable need for a sacrifice.

Post-Enlightenment human beings may knock on wood, but no one actually believes in the tree spirits. Modern people may at times engage in old rituals, but usually as rituals, not as serious attempts to gain divine favor.

DCHindley

Barré,

Don't forget that the circumstances under which a tradition develops, which determines the function that the tradition first serves in a society, may be quite different from the function it later assumes, under different conditions, in that same society.

I can easily see ancient hunter gatherers, having only recently discovered fire and all that comes from it (warmth, scares away predators, and a jim-dandy means of processing meat for consumption), realizing suddenly that their quality of life is much rosier than it was.

They thought back ... the first fire came from heaven (say as lightening, sparking a blaze). Unexpected things, in human society, usually comes as a gift. Human condition continues to improve. Some hunter, later boring a hole in a stick to receive a spear point or something, discovers he has just created fire himself. What an epiphany! He knows nothing of friction or physics, only that he as a man has received another gift. When meat is killed and cooked, smoke rises up to heaven. The rationalizing processes of the human mind, on such limited information, reasons that something from the spirit realm gave this gift to man, and the smell of the smoke must be the reward it receives for this gift. Man is thankful! Offerings of smoke from animals killed specifically as return gifts to this god perhaps seemed only natural. It becomes a ritual.

Many thousands of years later, societies have advanced by leaps and bounds. The sophistication of social interactions also becomes more complicated. By now that same ritual is serving a social organizational function much different that the simple thank offering function it once had. They may still call it a thank offering, but it now has a symbolic meaning far exceeding what the name initially implies. THAT is what myth is all about.

However, realizing that the initial rationalization that started the ritual was mistaken does not immediately remove the function that the ritual plays in modern societies. Unless you can contribute to new social constructs that replace the need for old outdated rituals, you are just puffing smoke yourself.

As a practical matter, no society is just going to abandon its social fabric wholesale because you or any group says it is based on superstition. And replace it with what? The so-called humanistic viewpoint? It is not broadly developed and is a little naive in its current state.

What to do ... what to do ...

DCH

Clivedurdle

This disussion definitely belongs here, it is about the roots of xianity, and in fact, this

http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthr...88#post5198288

about synagogues and churches is exploring the same themes.

The enlightenment did not start in the 1200's but much earlier, say 500BCE, and people have reacted to life in two principle ways that have become institutionalised.

An emotional logic where someone or something has to be sacrificed to placate or please the gods - and xianity is definitely in this group with its central sacrifice of a son of a god who is also human. This way leads to priests and kings and empires and hierarchies and it is so thinking. (I am the way the truth and the life)>

A thinking way that asks how did that happen, why does that do that. This way leads to thinking and studying and democratic ways and mathematics and science and art and literature and what if thinking.

paarsurrey

Hi

I don't agree with you.

In my opinion, the first to start with, there were believers in ONEGOD; when they lost the guidance or their concepts got corrupted or they became superstitious they became believers in many gods or perhaps no god. This is what I understand from Quran the pristine Word of GodAllahYHWH.

Others could differ with me out of their free will, but I don't think they have got any solid proof; only conjectures.

Whatever you believe, I respect your faith or no-faith.

Thanks

I am an Ahmadi peaceful Muslim

Clivedurdle

But the records show a very different picture, a clear movement from animist ideas to priestly ideas in various civilisations to the invention of the Most High and equivalents in Egypt, unclear when, dependent on Zarathustra, and may even be earlier Arian idea.

Islam is only a restatement of the Most High concept.

lmbarre

They don't make ritual sacrifice. It is no longer part of our world. This is obvious.