free12thinker

I am convinced that people would make no claims of feeling god, or hearing god, or getting messages from god, if they were never told about god, or read about god. If there were no stories of god, there would be no belief in god.

I wish I could test this theory by starting a 'Truman Show-esque' civilization, completely removed from the rest of the world, and watching them as they grew up, never mentioning anything about a spirit, or a feeling they had, or butterflies in their stomach that had them looking for a higher calling or cause.

Of course, this isn't going to be feasible, but I wish I could, so that I could prove to theists that people don't have ANY contact with god, like we claim they do. It would also prove that a civilization without the words and morals of god, would still be civilized. Of course, it would take some time, like our civilizations did, to go through the motions and learn from mistakes and develop food and things like that...but,

Point is: Take away the stories and the passing of gods word from generation A - generation B, and what you have is a godless world.

The AntiChris

Seems blindingly obvious to me.

Chris

Philosoft

One more for the oxymoron thread, wherever that thing is.

free12thinker

Blindingly obvious to you, and me my friend. Unfortunately, the theist crowd is going to chime in and say "Nope, god is inside of us, we feel him everyday, and even if we weren't open about religion and god, he would still be a part of us".
I'm particularly waiting for RJS, WJ or Falcon.

Jamie_L

Well, you'd still get the "big" questions. Why are we here? Where did the universe come from? What happens after we die. Etc. The SOURCE of religion would be there, but if all you gave them were rational answers (including honest ones like "we don't know") I doubt anyone would dream up gods.

Well, you could always move to the middle of nowhere, have kids, home-school them, and raise them in total isolation. They'd have never heard of god - of course, they'd be pretty screwed up. But it's all for science!

Jamie

Hans

free12thinker

Your arguments seem to imply that the human concept of a god is the result of an act by a god.

You have discounted it as being of human origin by claiming that if we were not told of a god we would not believe in a god.

MadMordigan

I disagree actually.

The original concept of 'god' came from somewhere. At some point in human history, a person looked at some unknown phenomenon and said 'god dit it'.

Since it has happened before that people have made up bullshit to salve the mental discomfort of not knowing, I see no reason why it would not happen again.

GunnerJ

I disagree in a very nit-picky way.

Religion might very well disapear without indoctrination from cradle till grave. But the god concept, I have come to conclude, is little more than the biggest argument from ignorance of all time. Thus, as long as we have a better way of answering questions about the world (like, say, the scientific method) than revelation,. and as long as "I don't know" is an acceptable answer, then the lack of indoctrination might kill the god concept.

But people are very rarely satisfied with ignorance, and are even more rarely motivated enough to find out true answers...

free12thinker

No, the human concept of a god is a result of having a society with few questions to answers that people are naturally going to raise. It also was a result of an overly oppressed group (peasants) being manipulated. What I was bringing up, was the possibility of a society forming today that would already have these questions answered through textbooks and such. People wouldn't have to dream up god, because the creation of life and the happenstance of weather and all of that, can be answered now.

I wasn't talking about starting society from scratch again, I was talking about a test civilization (that would be impossible to conjur up I know), placed in a bubble town, free from religious coercion. They would be going to school and learning evolution, like we all do, and they would be carrying on in life, learning from everything.

I guess a better way to put it would be this: If we could rid everyone of religious thought (somehow, who knows), yet we maintained all other knowledge, than our current knowledge could answer questions and no one would have to make up a god to explain them. And in this, we would never hear another peep about someone hearing god, or talking to god, or whatever. His legend would cease to exist.

Hans

free12thinker

I see the difference.

God of the gaps would always apply, however. Explain everything, but from where it comes will always be asked. Question is, would an answer be invented yet again? I couldn't say for sure.