Ron Singh

If an isolated civilization were to develop sans the knowledge of God, I am confident that eventually God would be present in the culture, and with enough time, this would result in a monotheistic dogma. Does the supposed lack of revelation or intrinsic knowledge of God mean that there is no god? An arguement implying that if there is no intrinsic belief in God implies that there is no God would fail Non sequitur, merely by its premise.

Moreover, assume the same for science. If a primitive civilization were to aggregate without any knowledge of any complex sciences, they would eventually find scientific facts through trial and error and such.

~Your friendly neighborhood 15yr old Sikh

anarchocyclist

sikh:

Religion and science are part of a continuum; they are attempts to explain the universe. They differ in that religion is a simplistic, chaotic attempt, and science is ordered and complex.

When ancient people observed that a giant yellow ball rose into the sky from the East every morning, they created diverse explanations for it, from Phoebus riding his chariot across the sky to other, simpler Sun God myths. However, we now understand the complex nuclear reactions which explain the existence of stars by testable and empirical means.

Where religion claims that many things are unknowable, it cuts off discovery and inhibits further inquiry into the supposedly unknowable subject. Science, in contrast, is based on ordered, careful inquiry. When many religions claim that God is unhindered by the laws of physics, causality, or logic, they are attempting to fill the spaces created by their religious forebears' childish mythmaking.

Of course people isolated from every other society would develop God-belief as an attempt to explain the existence of themselves, and by extension the universe, but only if they lacked other scientific means, and only until they developed such means.

Ron Singh

Sigh. Anarchocyclist, I don't think you have an arguement, generalize theism all you want. No offence, but I see no deduced conclusion in your response, unless it is intentionally stated as an observation. The foundation of your arguement commits Petitio principii, in which it fails to show me any evidence of theism in such a way, rather broad generalizations. Here's the premise of your arguement, the definition of theism:
the·ism
Function: noun
belief in the existence of a god or gods

Now, prove me wrong.

~your friendly neighborhood 15yr old Sikh

Veil of Fire

Doesn't this suffer from a sort of diluted "First Cause" fallacy? Namely that if there are no stories of God, there will never be any stories of God.. but where did the first stories of God come from, and why couldn't that phemonena reproduce itself in the Truman Show Experiment?

free12thinker

Because in the Truman Show experiment, people would not create Appolo and other sun gods when a yellow ball arose every morning. They would have books that explained things to them, so they would need not create their own explanations.

Let me throw one more part of the Truman Show experiment into the mix. Add in fifty coordinators who were like the President and his/her supporters, that guided this civilization. Say these fifty came into the Truman Show experiment from the outside, knowing that their goal was to run this test, and find out what the results would be. They would be the teachers, the law & order, the rule makers, and in this, people would already be in the civilization that knew science and knew the explanations of the world and so on..so forth.

I ask you guys, under these conditions, would god still enter peoples hearts, minds and souls, as people claim they do.

My take is; he would not. When people read about god and hear about god, they are enthralled by his legend and it's a pretty easy way to buy the world in a nice little package. But if no one ever mentioned god, and all literature and media about him were destroyed, starting today, when we have answers surrounding the many questions of earth at our fingertips, future societies would have no concept of god for they would not need it. The answers would be in science.

I should have written it better from the opening post...but



[ May 16, 2002: Message edited by: free12thinker ]</p>

Pomp

I'll chime in as another who thinks that some sort of god-belief would develop eventually. Our brains are the result of thousands of years of evolution in a social environment. The most significant feature of the ancestral human environment (and, indeed, the present human environment) was other humans, and our cognitive facilities are designed to deal with other humans. As a result, we have an innate tendency to anthropomorphise the Universe and everything in it. When your only tool for understanding is designed for thinking in terms of volition and purpose, you will see volition and purpose everywhere. I think that, as long as we are human, we will ask ultimately meaningless teleological questions such as "Why are we here?" and from these will flow god belief.

The AntiChris

Of course there'll always be people who'll attempt to explain the world without logic or reason, but would these people ever be any more than a mild curiosity in a rational world?

Bear in mind that in a "re-start without a god-concept" situation, our history would clearly demonstrate that scientific method had been an extremely successful tool in explaining the way the world works. It seems to me that it would be extremely unlikely that a "god" theory, particularly in the absence of the crutch of a god "history", would ever be taken seriously again.

Chris

anarchocyclist

sikh:

...I see no deduced conclusion in your response...

Conclusion? I'll repost it, and then attempt to clarify.

Of course people isolated from every other society would develop God-belief as an attempt to explain the existence of themselves, and by extension the universe, but only if they lacked other scientific means, and only until they developed such means.

I repeat for emphasis: only if they lacked other scientific means, or until they developed such means. If the proposed "society in a bubble" possessed knowledge of the scientific method (and if societal importance were placed on it), then perhaps god-belief would exist, but only as a curiosity, an anomaly. If, however, the society relied only on superstition to explain what they didn't understand, i.e. if they possessed no knowledge of the scientific method, god-belief would be present as a substitute for science, as it was before humanity developed other means of learning.

There are a couple other societal factors which I think would have to be present in order to create such a "godless" society. One is the aforementioned societal importance of the scientific method, and education in general. The superstitions of the masses have been exploited by rulers since it developed in prehistory. Which brings us to the second condition: the society would have to be egalitarian; equality would have to be an important societal value in order to create an atmosphere of honest, scientific inquiry into the nature/origins of existence.

No gods, no masters.

SteveD

I think that a god belief, or at least a belief in an afterlife, would develop. I just think that many people cannot come to grips with the thought of their own non-existence. I think that is one of the main reasons that many theists can tolerate such cognitive dissonance in their belief system. It is less psychologically painful to believe in god than to believe that they will someday cease to exist.

Steve

AJ113

Really? I think that it is non-believers have the easy option. I believe that the main attraction of atheism is that it negates the need for any morals.