Vicar Philip

From the earliest recorded history, we know human beings have always been superstitious. My question is, why have we always felt the need to ascribe something we don't understand to something mystical and magical?

The concept of god and religion are so firmly ingrained in the masses now I can't see people ever believing otherwise. We atheists constitute such a small fraction of the populace, I doubt we'll ever convince everyone else that our ideas are legitimate.

Could one say it is because of our intellect, our ability to think, imagine, postulate, etc. that we are prone to the belief in imagined "gods" to explain the unexplainable? Despite our early ignorance of scientific concepts, why have humans been so eager to jump on the supernatural bandwagon?

demoninho

because of evolution? i was wondering the same thing, i put up a thread a few days ago

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=57702

Jobar

Vicar, I approach this problem by trying to imagine the very earliest talking hominids, and just how they might have started believing in gods.

A hundred thousand years ago- perhaps more, perhaps less- there was a very clever caveman. He had some problem- maybe he was crippled by a wound, or maybe he had just gotten old and feeble. But he wasn't slow at all in the head. Compared to the others in his band, he was a genius- he remembered all the hunter's tales, and knew many things that he tried to pass on to the younger members. He used language better than anyone else alive, maybe better than any human ever before.

But like all people, he needed food and shelter- and his age, or his injury, made getting those very difficult.

So he figured out a scam- a way to get other members of his band to help him out, despite the fact that he was not physically able to return the favors he had to have to survive. He told a tale never told before.

Maybe it was that there had been more thunderstorms in their area lately, and some boy or girl had asked where the lightning came from. Maybe it was a new hunting tale, or one about why the moon changed its face, or why the seasons change. Maybe a tale of why the earth shook, and terrified all the tribe. I doubt we'll ever know precisely which- but it was a tale about some aspect of the world which primitive people could not understand.

He told of a giant cave man who lived in the sky, or beneath the earth, or of a never-dying stag which was the father of all the deer. Such tales may have been told before- but this primitive genius/con man claimed to be able to talk to this unseen power, and to intercede in the tribe's favor. So if the members of the tribe knew what was good for them, they'd better make sure the ur-priest survived the next winter!

His ruse succeeded so well that when some of his old cronies realized what was happening, they proclaimed their own ability to talk to the 'god'- or maybe even were clever enough to come up with a whole new god. As is true today, the most gifted bullshitters made the best living off this new scam, and the profession of priest was born.

(Of course it could as well have been a woman who did this, and there were priestesses before there were priests. Another thing I doubt we'll ever know.)

And so, down through the centuries, these tales were used by clever conmen to make their lives easier and cushier. The specific tales and rites came to be central to the tribe-they served to unify and identify the people, and thus became a survival advantage for the tribe (despite the fact that the tales were utter bunkum.) The priesthood became a goal for the most glib and most clever- and these types were certain to perpetuate their con from generation to generation. They were smart enough to usually ally themselves with the strongest and most powerful members of the tribe, and make sure that their interests paralleled those of the ones in power (and vice versa.)

This has been going on for so long that there may be some genetic predisposition for humans to believe in the gods of their tribes- or it may be entirely memetic and not genetic. Either way, I think this explains just why only a few of us openly disbelieve- we must be smart enough to see through the dogma, and at the same time honest enough not to use the con to further our own ends- become priests ourselves, IOW.

Until recently, the ones like us had to remain silent, or live as hermits, to avoid the wrath of the ones who perpetuate the con.

Let's hope that the slowly growing numbers of unbelievers is a sign that our race is growing smarter, and also more honest.

Vicar Philip

Thanks very much for that, Jobar. Awesome.

Depressing how few of us "see through the scam," so to speak. Not that I'm claiming atheists are smarter than theists, just willing to seek the truth, wherever that may lead them.

mosaic

I doubt thats how it went down Jobar. That is a very modern take on what certainly wasnt modern. I highly doubt caveman were as pragmatic, and theoritical as we are. Logic, Reasoning, all the tools of modern man grew out of somewhere. They were not as scientific as us. I think it is an error to assume what relgion as become to modern man, the reason it came to be. I view myths as a neccesary development in the progress of the human mind. Check out the philosopher Erbst Cassiere who I belive, gives a very sympathetic and well argued defense of myth not as either errors of langauge, thinking or what some bastard invented to tame his flock.

B. H. Manners

That sounds like a pretty good theory Jobar except do you think it was possible that the primitives may have started out worshiping ancestors or dead relatives as "gods"?

fishbulb

I'm not inclined to buy in to the con game hypothesis suggested by Jobar, though it is perhaps a possibility worth considering.

I suspect that, as our ancestors developed the cognitive tools required to think abstractly and wonder and ponder why things happened the way they did, they naturally turned their attention to those natural events which were of life and death importance to them: things like the abundance of game, rainfall, and seasonal temperatures. It is easy to imagine early humans anthropomorphising nature: giving it a personality and a motive. Indeed, it seems to me that anthropomorphising is something we do by nature. We attribute human thoughts and desires to animals, nature, even "forces" like luck (lady luck is fickle, but we try to curry her favour by blowing on dice and performing other weird rituals), as well as to each other. It seems that we have the ability to empathise, but we don't instinctively differentiate between other humans who share our motives and non-human creatures and non-creatures who probably don't. I suspect that that's common animal behaviour: I'm sure that my dog knows that I am not another dog -- he is fully capable of distinguishing cats from dogs, so distinguishing humans from dogs shouldn't be hard -- but he treats me as though I have the same thoughts and feelings as a dog. The fact that we are of a different species doesn't seem to stop him from, for example, occasionally challenging me for leadership of the pack. It never occurs to him that I might be inclined to regard genital sniffing as aggressive, not friendly, behaviour, for example.

Once our ancestor's came up with the notion that nature is a force (or forces) with a will, it would only have been natural to try to communicate with nature: to try to make nature behave in a way that was helpful and not destructive. They would have surely seen that nature was more powerful than they and so, as with any human relationship between two groups of unequal power, it seems only reasonable that human efforts to influence nature would come in the form of worship, prostration, and appeasement through sacrifice, devotion, and general ego stroking. Think about what you would do if you needed something important from someone with vastly more power and influence than you. Would you boldy come forward and ask for a favour, or would you be humble, circumspect, and focus on the admittedly meagre things you could offer: gratitude, praise, service, perhaps even obsequiousness?

I would speculate that this is likely how the idea of a god was first invented. Once nature was recognized as a force, or as a pantheon of forces, and humans had made attempts to cajole nature into giving them what they wanted (and, of course, some of those attempts were bound to "succeed," fuelled by confirmation bias, post hoc reasoning, and other fallacious thinking that is common right to this day), it would only be a matter of time before more concrete theologies and mythologies developed, followed by the development of religion as a formal part of everyday life. I think that it is then that unscrupulous individuals would begin to enter the picture; it seems to me that dishonest people more often take advantage of existing beliefs and power structures than try to invent beliefs from scratch.

Of course, this is just speculation. We will never know for sure how it happened, how many times it happened, and in how many different ways. But it seems to me that we humans, by our very nature, are innately inclined to posit the existence of intelligent, supernatural beings and to try to communicate with them.

rainbow walking

I'm more inclined to think it started with fear, long before their cognitive skills developed enough to make such associations. The earth, during that period was probably undergoing some major changes along the lines of volcanos and earth quakes. Such phemonena are mentioned in the bible with references to gods or Baals, as they had come to be called during the early bronze age, but by this period baal worship had become quite sophisticated.

I'm leaning towards the volcano phenomenon because Molech worship required one's first born to pass through the fire and Ywyh was depicted as giving the law to Moses up on the mountain whose top was shrouded in smoke. Eden was depicted as being guarded by a flaming cherub which could have actually represented a time when hominids were driven from a favorite roost by an erupting volcano.

I think it was much later before the associations to weather surfaced, the Greek Pantheons, for instance, appear to have began from such associations.

But, I'm most inclined to the idea that all of it stems from fear and the human need to conjure up some kind of explanation for the unknown...like death...which is the last vestige and haunting ground of the gods.

diana

Hm. I like your theory, fishbulb, except I question this bit: how animals naturally anthropomorphize nature. Yes...we say things like "lady luck," but we're harking to a myth in which luck was a lady, none of which we believe. I know that was just an example, but I don't think any of our current linguistic expressions is necessarily good evidence of anything humans do naturally.

I wonder if this gap might be filled by pointing out that man simply didn't understand what caused certain things around him, and assumed--lacking understanding of basic geophysical phenomena--that some being had done it. This being, of course, must needs be far more powerful than himself, as he was incapable of making these things happen.

Mix this in with a naturally superstitious bent. Consider the case of the superstitious pigeons. Something fortunitous happens when we happen to be killing a cow for food--or while several people happen to be. Suddenly, we have a "worshipful" behavior and a being of some sort that is pleased with it.

Voila! Religion.

d

Evoken

God(s) were made by man out of ignorance and in some cases fear. The concept of God(s) has evolved with mankind hand to hand. Everything that mankind can't explain or it doesn't understands is attributed to God(s).

As man gets smarter and advances God(s) loses some of their powers.

In old times things like rain, the sun, the moon were controlled by God(s). Mankind still has many unsolved mysteries left..it will always have. For some people the answer is in God(s) for others there is simply not enough evidence.