For an atheist you sure put alot of faith and sweat into these scriptures and myths. History is important I agree, but I can't help but detect some righteousness in your pronouncement of these dusty old tomes. Some fervor or something. I don't know... Maybe your just a mythology enthusiast. How did you come about atheism Dimitrios, if you don't mind me asking?I was born atheist, as everyone else. I simply got lucky and was not brainwashed because my father was a non-believer and my mother was a believer who never went to the church. I respect the Tanakh and its writers (except for the priestly writer, of course) because no other people group on earth attempted to transform their oral tradition into their own history. My ancestors (I am of Greek, Turkish and Italian ancestry) had been recording Homer’s fairytales at the time the Israelites were writing the Tanakh. The Israelites wrote that their ancestors killed the people they found in the land they went to live. The Greeks wrote that it was a hero (Hercules) assisted by the gods those who committed the killings. The Israelite writers describe God as a criminal scumbag because such were the gods regarded by the people. The Tanakh is not a theological text. It is an atheist text, but the agnostics of the present time on top of being ignoramuses, are not very bright either. :-)
Just my 2 cents, but I think the brainwashing/cultural phenomena of religion is equal to the "religious" gene theory. We're predisposed to fear the unknown.I agree, the *flight or fight* instinct is fundamental to survival in animate organisms. A rustle in the grass could be a tiger. Just watch a flock of birds feeeding. Any unusual sound or movement and the entire flock takes flight instantly. It is a *mirror function* and the safest (direction of greater satisfaction).
Are we predisposed to anthropomorphism? I think we are? Are we pre-disposed to think things will act in a way that we would act?IMO, very much so, again the mirror function. We've just become very sophisticated at it. As Carlin put it, "we go to church every sunday to compare clothing."
In other words, millions of years ago did people think the rain didn't come because the rain was angry at the people?Or perhaps the *unknown* force that was angry. The potential enemy, a *rain god*?
That's thinking things will act the way we think. And perhaps it was very powerful thinking before people began to understand nature better.(science)IMO, it was and is a fundamental survival tool for all species on earth, except for man, because we are at the top of the food chain.
Some of that is still left over today. We talk to our cars sometimes. "Come on girl don't let me down." etc etc.. We project our self centered minds onto the workings of nature.Exactly, if we allow the mirror function, we can interpret it mathematically, "everything should function", but we're not certain.
Is this a pre-disposition to religion...yes. It had to have happened that way. Way before science came along. Dimitrios' idea of a hoax is just not good enough. The hoax would have worn out long ago. No. People believed that stuff, They believe it because it started along time before the Egyptians or the Sumerians.I agree, a very old survival technique evolving into *cognition* of familiar things and patterns and *suspicion* of unknown phenomena and its causality. IMO, somewhere along this long line of evolving awareness the gods awaken in man's mind. The rest IS history.
Monotheism is an improvement isn't that right Father Dimitrios?It certainly is! Monotheism does not demand from parents to kill their own children. Read the Bible! So we boiled my son (setup. Lamentations 4:10, "The hands of the pitiful woman have sodden their own children"), and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son.] A few additional examples; You need a passage urging people to kill their own children. You are confusing the description of the conduct of the gods/God, which is rightfully shown to be inhuman and criminal, with the attempt of the theologians to teach the people not to kill their children as they were used to do according to the demands of the polytheistic religions. Unfortunately, the people were not persuaded because as you will realize some of them continued to kill their children for another three thousand years. A report of the people’s reaction at that time we find in the book of Micah: Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? (Mic. 6:7) We come now to the situation as it was found when the Europeans discovered the rest of the world. Frazer writes in the “Golden Bough" that the Polynesians appear to be actually killing two thirds of their children and that in some areas of Eastern Africa the proportion is the same. Only those children born under certain circumstances were allowed to survive. The Mbaya Indians of South America used to kill all their children except the last one, or the one that they considered to be the last one. Some mothers would kill an infant coming after the ‘last one. Religious offerings, especially of the firstborn, are known from the Bible, as well as from the histories of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Firstborn sacrifice was once common among many peoples in India; here the motive was the offering of one’s most precious possession to the deities. (Infanticide, Encyclopedia Britannica) Except from Europe, Africa, India, the Pacific, and South America, already mentioned, infanticide is known from Australia, Japan, and the Eskimos; the motive given varies from ridiculous – a warlike tribe of Angola was said to kill all of their children so that the mothers would not be obliged to carry them around – to the plausible when it is interpreted as a primitive method of birth control and a means of ridding a group of its weak and deformed children. In many societies practicing infanticide, infants were not deemed to be fully human until they underwent a rite of initiation that took place from a few days to several years after birth, and therefore killing before such initiation was socially acceptable. (Population: Infanticide. Encyclopedia Britannica)
And your point?
btw. You may want to edit your quotation marks.
73.“The firstborn of thy sons thou shalt give unto me." (As a burnt offering?) 22:29
And this is the essence of where you and I disagree. You flat out deny any inherent human predisposition towards religious, or supernatural thinking.What I flat out deny is involvement of any predisposition towards the supernatural in the production of the idea about gods and their actions. That is the reason of my insisting on reconstructing the history of religion: we have to find out what the people originally believed and then form our conclusions. Ask yourself: why don’t we know the history of religion? Why most people do not even know that for the ancients there was a time that there were no gods? Why most people do not know that it was the Giants (or Titans) who gave birth to the gods? Philosophy, i.e. arriving at conclusions by just assuming, imagining and meditating, is poisonous to the brain. With the exception of some philosophers I respect, I heartily hate philosophy.
What I flat out deny is involvement of any predisposition towards the supernatural in the production of the idea about gods and their actions. That is the reason of my insisting on reconstructing the history of religion: we have to find out what the people originally believed and then form our conclusions. Ask yourself: why don’t we know the history of religion?Because succeeding religions destroyed all records of previous religions? As they are definitely wont to do at times. I don't know? The burning of the Great Library at Alexandria...what was in that Library that we will never know about?
Why most people do not even know that for the ancients there was a time that there were no gods? Why most people do not know that it was the Giants (or Titans) who gave birth to the gods?Which if I was an Empire, and wanted to spread my religion around, that's exactly what I would force people to believe.
Link to what? Haven't you read about the bead makers?No, please enlighten me. Don’t be a bad boy. :-P It's difficult to be intellectually honest with you because you change what you say from post to post. You use some information to make a point, then change the reason for using it later. You say monotheism is an improvement, but refuse to address all the evil Bible passages we have presented. You say no one knows what the ancient people believed, but what you mean is, no one agrees with what you think the ancient people believed.
I understand your strategy. Mine is just a little different. You want to humanize sentient gods, by exposing their human frailties, so they lose their divine status. You are doing this through following the history of the God Kings. I want to mathematize gods, which alters their divine status from emotional functions to purely mathematical functions. It does offer an *understandable* alternate to spiritualism through meta-physics, the inherent potentials of the Universe.The difference being that you offer a theory that no institution would be obliged to teach and promote, while I am revealing the untold human history which universities will be obliged, sooner or later, to teach. 10 points on the crackpot index. Believing that your theory will become the theory that everyone accepts. This is the opposite of science and modern. Rule #1 - Find the evidence, then see where it leads you.
And your point?My point?... You are not going to like it, but you deserve it. So, my point is that you were shown that people all over the earth were killing their children in order to satisfy the gods, but you did not express any interest to know why they were doing it. You do not care about the ancient world or the ancient people but you know what they were thinking and that they were predisposed to imagine gods and then kill their children for the sake of the gods they imagined!!
btw. You may want to edit your quotation marks.What quotation marks?
73.“The firstborn of thy sons thou shalt give unto me." (As a burnt offering?) 22:29I presented the passages where the killing of the children by the parents is prohibited on pain of death, but you keep fishing irrelevant passages. This page] supplies information about the verb “nathan" which is translated as “give". With ancient texts you should trust nobody’s translation, especially if the original is available. Moreover, there is no historical event recorded about monotheist Israelites having ever killed their children to satisfy Yahweh, Adonay, or Elohim. They were doing it in the past in order to obey the demands of the sons of El. I believe, however, that most of the agnostics attacking the Tanakh they do not do it because they lack the intelligence to realize that the Tanakh contradicts what the Christian theologians preach, but because it is Jewish. It is no use, therefore, defending the Tanakh while in a hostile environment.
That is the reason of my insisting on reconstructing the history of religion: we have to find out what the people originally believed and then form our conclusions.I was just reviewing this totally awesome thread and noticed this. This is exactly what you are NOT doing. Instead, you are assuming what a bunch of people from long, long ago thought, believed and even said. Then you are looking at old clay figures and using them as proof that you are right. You are confirming your bias. You are defending your precious Tanakh while showing how other ancient writings are evil. Everyone else here is insisting you reconstruct history by looking for evidence. But you keep telling us there is something we haven't done.
Because succeeding religions destroyed all records of previous religions? As they are definitely wont to do at times. I don't know?You mean to say that the professors of Oxford, Cambridge, Heidelberg or any other university announced that they tried but they could not reconstruct the history of religion due to lack of material to work with?
The burning of the Great Library at Alexandria...what was in that Library that we will never know about?The truth maybe? Why were the ancient Greeks prohibiting, on pain of death, the revelation of the secrets taught in the Eleusinian mysteries? Why are the stories in the Tanakh so obviously childish and insane? Because the truth cannot and must not be told? Why do the Egyptologists keep deceiving with their translations scholars and laymen alike? Maybe because the truth about religion stinks?
The belief that the Giants existed before the gods, and therefore there was a time that there were no gods on earth or above the earth, and that the Giants were the progenitors of the gods, obtained among many cultures before any theocratic empire was established.Why most people do not even know that for the ancients there was a time that there were no gods? Why most people do not know that it was the Giants (or Titans) who gave birth to the gods?Which if I was an Empire, and wanted to spread my religion around, that's exactly what I would force people to believe.
It's difficult to be intellectually honest with you because you change what you say from post to post.Expose me at the time you catch me doing that, as I do with you.
You use some information to make a point, then change the reason for using it later.The same applies here.
You say monotheism is an improvement, but refuse to address all the evil Bible passages we have presented.You presented passages to show that the killing of the children by their parents was acceptable by the monotheist Israelites, but everything you presented was irrelevant. I never denied that there are rude passages (there are no evil passages, there are only evil deeds described in those passages) in the Tanakh. Moreover that proves that the writers were honest persons. They confessed the crimes their ancestors committed. Read history written by modern historians about their own ancestors, no one admits the genocides committed.
You say no one knows what the ancient people believed, but what you mean is, no one agrees with what you think the ancient people believed.No, it is simpler than that: I know what the ancient people believed. You do not know what the ancient people believed. I do not care whether you agree with me or not because you are indifferent towards the subject and you have not studied the ancient texts. ;-)
10 points on the crackpot index. Believing that your theory will become the theory that everyone accepts.Pity! I was expecting you to congratulate me on my self-confidence. :-)
10 points on the crackpot index. Believing that your theory will become the theory that everyone accepts.Pity! I was expecting you to congratulate me on my self-confidence. :-) Obviously, that's what you think it is. Self-confidence is not always equal to accuracy. Your post above this boils down to "No, you are." In case that is lost in translation, it's a response a child would give on the schoolyard when someone insults them. They don't have a comeback, so they say that. FYI, the analogy does not extend to what I said, it is only for how you responded. I evaluated your case and have critiqued it on several levels, as have others. You don't care what others think.
Why were the ancient Greeks prohibiting, on pain of death, the revelation of the secrets taught in the Eleusinian mysteries? Why are the stories in the Tanakh so obviously childish and insane? Because the truth cannot and must not be told?Add conspiracy theory to your crackpot index. And it's not just some current rich people, but every powerful person going back to the beginning of human thought. One hell of a conspiracy.
I was just reviewing this totally awesome thread and noticed this.Be careful what you confess. By reviewing it you betray your interest in it!
This is exactly what you are NOT doing. Instead, you are assuming what a bunch of people from long, long ago thought, believed and even said.Reference is made not to a bunch of people but to the ancestors of almost all living Eurasians, of whom we know quite a few things.
Then you are looking at old clay figures and using them as proof that you are right. You are confirming your bias.Well, while it is true that among the figurines there is one of the oldest ceramics fired in a low temperature, most of the figurines were made of stone, bone or ivory. Trusting your holy spirit inspired wisdom, you decided that the figurines are object for arousing ancient masturbators and so there was no discussing the figurines. Now you are invoking the figurines of which you showed no interest to be informed about!!
You are defending your precious Tanakh while showing how other ancient writings are evil.I respect all ancient texts and the expression “evil writing" is wrong.
Everyone else here is insisting you reconstruct history by looking for evidence.Only that you cannot refute that evidence.
But you keep telling us there is something we haven't done.What you have not done is study in order to comprehend the ancient world.
The belief that the Giants existed before the gods, and therefore there was a time that there were no gods on earth or above the earth, and that the Giants were the progenitors of the gods, obtained among many cultures before any theocratic empire was established.The Giants? How circular! "They were the Giants! They gave birth to the gods, but they weren't gods themselves." Come on man... Can't you just say what you mean please? Giants, Tree People, Angels, Mermaids, it's all the same to me. Stop quoting all of this garbled nonsense and say what you mean. You think religion and the concept of gods was invented sometime about 3000-4000 years ago. Correct? Is that the basis of your proposition?
Trusting your holy spirit inspired wisdom, you decided that the figurines are object for arousing ancient masturbators and so there was no discussing the figurines. Now you are invoking the figurines of which you showed no interest to be informed about!!You're getting me confused with someone else. Not that it matters. You're just plain confused about everything. Really though, slow down, think about what you're saying. Respond to concepts instead of picking something like clay vs bone. Basically quit being a douche.
The belief that the Giants existed before the gods, and therefore there was a time that there were no gods on earth or above the earth, and that the Giants were the progenitors of the gods, obtained among many cultures before any theocratic empire was established.The Giants? How circular! "They were the Giants! They gave birth to the gods, but they weren't gods themselves." Come on man... Can't you just say what you mean please? Giants, Tree People, Angels, Mermaids, it's all the same to me. Stop quoting all of this garbled nonsense and say what you mean. You think religion and the concept of gods was invented sometime about 3000-4000 years ago. Correct? Is that the basis of your proposition? Imagine some 20,000 years ago a hominid discovered the fossil of a dino. There is you giant. Everyone tries to make is so complicated. Can anyone dispute the fact that the bones of a dinosaur are the bones of a giant? It just wasn't human and did not spawn any gods, except in our imagination.
The belief that the Giants existed before the gods, and therefore there was a time that there were no gods on earth or above the earth, and that the Giants were the progenitors of the gods, obtained among many cultures before any theocratic empire was established.The Giants? How circular! "They were the Giants! They gave birth to the gods, but they weren't gods themselves." The Giants (proper name) and the Titans (proper name too) were not gods because the Giants were never worshiped as gods. You should try to read a little bit. It is good for the brain! The people, according to Hesiod and the Indian legends, were happy at that period before the appearance of the gods.
Come on man... Can't you just say what you mean please? Giants, Tree People, Angels, Mermaids, it's all the same to me.That goes without saying.
Stop quoting all of this garbled nonsense and say what you mean.What I mean is that you should take into consideration all this… garbled nonsense before pretending to be the omniscient persons who knew what the ancient people believed without having ever bothered to read mythology. To the ancients, Giants and Titans were a race of men and so were the gods. Then Giants evolved into gods and therefore there was a time without gods. Now you can realize how idiotic is the view that humans are psychologically primed for religion. That is what I am telling you since the op but you bias is to heavy for you to lift and get rid of it.
You think religion and the concept of gods was invented sometime about 3000-4000 years ago. Correct? Is that the basis of your proposition?No! The “Venus" figurines, which are 40,000 years old, depict the Mother of gods and men and therefore the people (the Cro Magnon) who reached Northern Europe 40,000 ago were telling stories of the Mother which had taken place in the Near East, the land of provenience of the Cro Magnon. The people who remained in the Near East, they naturally have the same stories to tell, as do the other who headed eastwards from Mesopotamia. I am presenting to you a theory. Accept it as such and learn something more or you may go on pretending to know everything without ever having studying anything relevant.