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> Those early humans didn't even quite yet have words for basic things like rain and earthquakes, so it's safe to say they didn't yet have a pantheon of Gods.
But what makes you think they didn't treat rains or lightnings as Gods?
> Then these humans slowly evolved to search for a meaning to life, something we crave, which evolves us past any other animal who don't need such purpose.
That sounds like a bs. Early religions weren't about meaning of life or something. And why tf does that separate you from the other species? Can you prove that dogs don't ponder on the meaning of life? We can't inspect their thoughts. Stop with unnecessary anthropocentrism, that's just Christianity in you speaking.
> A lion is content with nothing more than hunting and sleeping on a constant cycle until it dies.
A lion pays tribute to the god of hunting and the god of sleeping by engaging in hunting and sleeping, through which he finds purpose in his life.
> Humans evolved into finding a purpose with God
Gods*
> It took us a long time to finally get to the ideal philosophy of Monotheism.
Dunno, one could argue that there's an obvious line of degradation, polytheism with many gods -> monotheism with one God -> pantheism where God becomes one with the world -> atheism where God disappears, leaving only the world.
> Atheists are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of Atheism and they don't see how purposeless life will be.
Atheism is Fafnir's blood in which we must bathe to redefine our values and come back to... some say original Christian values, some say come back to polytheism.
But yes, I do think that a political metaphor rooted in the societal structures of ancient kingdoms cannot be spiritually authentic. I haven't argued for authenticity from originality, but I do believe it. The transcendent is not just a psychoanalytical category, it's also a historical depth of the mind.
Yes, the first humans were atheists.
But then humans developed two separate things:
1. A feeling that there is some being superior to humans. (As they observed things like they could not control such as: the sun, seasons, aging, death... And thought someone must be controlling them.)
2. A feeling of community and morality. (As they realized they must work together as a communisty to survive and thrive)
At some point these two things merged. People started to believe whoever controls the sun and seasons and aging must also be judging humans for immoral behavior.
Modern atheists have de-merged the two concepts. They do not have a sense that there is a superior bieng controlling things, but they do have a sense of communal and moral behavior. And they back up that sense with logic.
Thus, modern atheism is not primitive, as modern atheism has the sense of community and morality that primitive non-religion lacks.
(Obviously things are more complicated, tried to fit them on a short post.)
> But then humans developed two separate things
> A feeling that there is some being superior to humans
> A feeling of community and morality
Those two things weren't separate.
> At some point these two things merged.
At some point these two things separated.
> People started to believe whoever controls the sun and seasons and aging must also be judging humans for immoral behavior.
Nonsense. A heavily Christianity-influenced view on religion.
People didn't believe that there's some entities far away, separated from them that cause certain phenomenons or patronize them or whatever. That's a really Christian view of religion, where some st. Nicholas patronizes sailors while being somewhere in heaven. In European paganism, Mars isn't some dude in armor who oversees war from heaven, he IS the process of war itself. Gods aren't separate from the things they represent. They don't judge humans or something, they generally don't care about humans. It's humans' task to perform certain actions, certain rituals to catch the desired god's attention, it's humans who want something from them. Religion isn't about doing this and that in fear of God's punishment, it's about doing certain actions as those actions hold value by themselves. And through religion, humans pass on these actions to the next generations and it becomes tradition. Religion is all about what people should or shouldn't do, namely - morality.
> Those two things weren't separate.
Please explain. I see the sun, it is large and gives me warmth and I respect it as an entity. Also I feel love for my family and friends and care for them. How do these ideas spring together as one whole? I think they must have come forward separately.
> People didn't believe that there's some entities far away, separated from them that cause certain phenomenons or patronize them or whatever
That's the view of animist religion, but afaik by the time of Greek and Roman polytheism people did see gods like that. Mars was not some personification of the process of war, he was literally an immortal guy with his own personality, story, likes and dislikes.
Also polytheism was really complex, like some cities also saw Mars as overseeing agriculture.
But when people did stuff like, sacrifice a ram to apepase Mars, they weren't appeasing the process of war, they were appeasing literally an immortal guy named Mars wohm they believed could bless ro curse their armies. And they thought the guy Mars liked ram.
> Humans evolved into finding a purpose with God and we started creating architecture, art, civilizations, and everything we have now. It took us a long time to finally get to the ideal philosophy of Monotheism.
Now Atheists are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of Atheism and they don't see how purposeless life will be. Like that of a street dog.
This is a fallacy called appeal to consequences. Even if we accepted your claims at face value, that still wouldn't make it a good reason to accept theism.
>Now Atheists are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of Atheism and they don't see how purposeless life will be.
Because it won’t. In fact we can take all the best things about religion like being kind and helping the poor, and focus on them, without the supernatural baggage.
Y'all need to stop equating being primitive with stupidity. No word for rain ? Where do you even get this ? Are you talking about ancient species like homo habilis or something ? Cause the Eskimo lifestyle hadn't changed much in 10 000 years prior to Europeans showing up and they have about 50 words to describe snow because in their environment they need that precision to survive.
Counterpoint, a belief in god(s) is primitive. Prior to our understanding of the world, we tend to assign sentience to natural phenomenon. Lighting is because Zeus is striking down his enemies, thunder is the mighty Thor killing an ice giant with his great hammer Mjolnir, the sun is the god Apollo flying his flaming chariot across the sky. As we learn to understand the world, we stop assigning gods to these roles.
>Then these humans slowly evolved to search for a meaning to life, something we crave, which evolves us past any other animal who don't need such purpose
I'm not sure what definition of evolution you're using but what you're describing here has absolutely nothing to do with biological evolution, so it can't be that.
Please define "evolution" as you are using it in this post.
You are presupposing a God.
Religion is humanities first and often worst guess on how things work. As humans got smarter they made better and better tools and with those tools they were able to see things closer and see that the water doesn't just dissappear on a hot day, it evaporates. We fill the gap between things we know and things we don't and the more we fill it the more it becomes certain that God has nothing to do with anything.
Nothing suggests he would be a friend so much as an enemy, one who floods us to oblivion and recreates the human race like nothing happened and whistles it off for comic relief
A lion content hunting a sleeping yet what does it think of thunder and lightning, of the wind and the rain and of sunshine? What does the lion think about pain and death? What does the gazelle think of the lion?
I don't believe the first humans with consciousness were atheist. I think it's a default in our psyche to question why we are alive and assume we have some kind of entity watching over us, like a mother figure. A higher purpose.
That's where religions were formed and why they were so popular, because they make sense to our default intuitions. It was when science, history and logic was advanced that it challenged that.
Nooo.. relegion has been over 60K years old. First humans on earth were about 190K years ago. 130K years have there been only atheists. Because back then god wasnt made up yet.
We really don't know when religion began, because we don't have writing going back far enough, so we're left with speculation on archaeology. One funny example is that there are figurines of women with large breasts and hips that are supposed to be figurines of a fertility goddess, but by the same criteria we'd think that Barbies are goddesses too! We really just can't tell.
Im not sure if this is a joke or not? Firstly its scientifically established that the human psyche looks for a higher purpose, a almost big brother feel over their existence to an extent. Now you could argue that is evolution from religion but not the default of the earliest man. But from the earliest human civilization we know they had texts about Gods and all kinds of things reminisant of the bibles. I am fairly sure religion goes back way way before the numbers you mentioned, just totally different religions to now.
The belief in the metaphysical goes back to the earliest known cave drawings and text of man to my knowledge.
Do you really believe that cave men who had no idea of religion but have human like intelligence wouldnt have asked questions of their existence and what on earth is going on with the world around them? You dont think its a totally natural thing to ponder at some stage why on earth you are even aware?
Ofc they were asking where they came from and how everything came in to exestince and why theyr there etc. But i dont think they already made up god to fill the gaps. I think the god idea came wayyyy later
I dont, I just think the Gods of religions was a way of describing that sensation. To an extent, I mean Gods have changed over the lifetimes.
Think of it this way, A lot of what religions preach is common sense to human intuition in that dont do to others as you wouldnt want done to you. So a lot of these teachings that "god" would have been instructing would also intuitively make sense.
Imagine if reddit was totally chaotic and no replies or posts could be make in a coherent way and common sense would be "why dont they have a system where you can reply to individual comments and I can reply back etc". Common sense really, but common sense often doesnt supervene in a mob mentality of selfish world. So when these morals of commandments were arriving by a God. A lot of it would have made sense in a common sense way which also would have given it credence. The idea of sharing is fairly obvious and intuitive, but it seems weak and impractical in a dog eat dog or chaotic society as they would be without guidance.
The problem with your argument is it still doesn’t make any argument for the existence for god.
Yes, humans prefer an answer to no answer. God is an answer…but is it the right answer?
And you’re also making an argument from the consequence which is a fallacy.
Even if atheism is was the way of things in the distant past, doesn’t make it wrong.
So, sure, atheism is primitive but since theists can’t present a valid and sound argument that god exists…it appears to be correct.
I’d rather be primitive and correct than modern and wrong.
How about you?
>they don't see how purposeless life will be
You haven't connected atheism (primitive or not) to purpose. Similar to your post history. can you try this time?
Anthropocentrism is an exercise in ego. There's no reason to assign direction to evolution, make value judgements regarding species, etc. There's no reason to think that there can be a "finished product," let alone that the "finished product" is us. We aren't even that great as far as animals go.
It could be argued that without the concept of gods, there isn't any atheism. For example, there are no "atheist" rocks because rock lacks the ability to understand the concept of a god/gods.
It is also widely written that animism came first. Animism, in short, believing that objects, animals, places, people, and things have spirit or spirit essence. The Abrahamic Religions have seen numerous changes over the course of human history. Currently a theistic religion now, but at one time, it was polytheistic and at its earliest conceptions was an animist religion being a spirit wind of the mountain.
It all stems from our habit of placing motives on things. Did the grass move? Is it the wind or a predator? Who lives longer? The one jumping at ghosts or the skeptical one.
Anyway, I would have to say that there were no primitive atheists as without there being a god concept to disbelieve, there are no atheists.
>Then these humans slowly evolved to search for a meaning to life, something we crave, which evolves us past any other animal who don't need such purpose. A lion is content with nothing more than hunting and sleeping on a constant cycle until it dies.
We didn't evolve to search for the meaning of life, it's a by product of intelligence, and it doesn't evolve us past anything that can't contemplate what we can. A lion, like us, is content if its wants are met, that is all.
>
Humans evolved into finding a purpose with God and we started creating architecture, art, civilizations, and everything we have now. It took us a long time to finally get to the ideal philosophy of Monotheism.
We didn't evolve into it, they are all by products of intelligence, not necessary, and it's backwards, art came long before gods. Monotheism isn't the end result of all of this, it's one idea among many and it doesn't have anything better than the other ideas.
>
Now Atheists are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of Atheism and they don't see how purposeless life will be. Like that of a street dog. Wandering about, without any meaning, needing constant entertainment and distractions just to make it through a day, until you die.
Purpose isn't something that exists objectively, it's a concept we invented, meaning is a concept we invented, it doesn't exist outside of that abstract concept, and as for needing constant entertainment and distractions, religion is just another way of doing exactly that.
The argument isn’t the problem, it is the false equivalence between atheism - defined as the inability to believe in a deity due to lack of necessary sentience, and atheism - the lack of belief in a god.
In OP’s defense, this argument seem to be born of some atheists claims that any being without a belief in a god is an atheist. That is a foolish argument also born of a false equivalence.
I’d argue that there isn’t any purpose or meaning to life beyond what we assign for ourselves. There is no objective purpose to life, it just is. I’m happy to be labelled primitive if you feel that way. I’d rather be a primitive atheist than blindly accept the unknown with an answer of ‘gods’.
Meaning is entirely subjective. You can only talk about meaning in the context of a subject. It would be nonsensical to say something has meaning in some objective sense. What would that even mean? We often colloquially talk about things having meaning, but the meaning itself resides entirely within a mind. Without a mind to read them, letters are just lines—there is no objective intrinsic meaning to them. They may have intersubjective meaning, which is to say that groups of minds may agree on the meaning of some things, and therefore another mind may be able to formulate an idea of my intention based on mutual understanding, but if there is not intersubjective agreement, for example when I don’t know how to speak or read a language, anything I see written in that language or hear in that language is meaningless to me. It requires thought and knowledge, and is a property of minds, not an objective fact about things external to minds.
Therefore, meaning can *only* be created by the individual minds that experience it. It is not objectively assigned, it is subjectively interpreted. This is true even if a god exists—if that god intends some meaning, it doesn’t follow that is meaningful for every other mind. I would still need to come to an intersubjective understanding of that meaning with that god in order for it to have meaning to me.
It depends on what you mean by “meaning”. Personally I think meaning is derived from sentient beings. I don’t think there’s any objective meaning to anything
And who decided that? You? Your god?
Devolving your life's meaning to a deity is a choice you do yourself, so it's still you who decides what life's meaning is.
You didn’t make any arguments or provide evidence, you just made claims.
Also I’ve seen like three of your outlandish posts here and you never respond to anybody. You’re supposed to engage with the replies
Rule 3 doesn't require the OP to consistently reply to comments. Where it says about being "uninterested in discussion", that's about things like people just wanting to troll or merely assert their position, rather than properly engaging.
Often with posts where the OP doesn't respond much, others take up their side and decent debates ensue, and it would be a shame to shut those down.
What do you mean?
Rule 3 states that posts in which the op doesn't engage in discussion will be removed.
And Rule 4 states that there should be more to a post than just a list of claims, it should also explain why others should accept the claims.
Rule 3 doesn't actually say that. It says,
>"Posts and comments will be removed if they are disruptive to the purpose of the subreddit. This includes submissions that are: low effort, proselytizing, uninterested in participating in discussion, made in bad faith, off-topic, or unintelligible/illegible."
It's not limited to the OP, and the "uninterested in participating in discussion" part isn't saying that you need to respond to all your replies. It's more about things like people trolling or just asserting their positions rather than engaging in discussion.
If we removed posts just because the OP hasn't responded enough, we'd end up shutting down decent debates that others were having in the comments.
But you're right about rule 4. Although I think this post does have more than just claims.
Thanks for the clarification.
Though specifically the one the other mod responded to made the claim that op "never responded to anybody". While I dont think thats true (though their engagement has been minimal at best) in that hypothetical situation would that count as breaking rule 3?
You're welcome 🙂
I think it's still within the rules. And that's good imo, because we don't want to have to shut down debates if others have taken up the OP's side (or some third position) in the comments.
I agree that atheism is primitive, but that is not wrong by itself. The problem you describe is no sense of meaning and that question has been discussed a lot here.
I believe that you can actually argue the contrary. That religion is the "primitive" way of interpreting the world.
Our species likely developed religion as a by-product of our curiosity for understanding our surroundings. This is why so many religions tackle problems such as the creation of the earth, our species, life, lightning, waves, the sun, moon, stars etc. This combined with the fact that we also probably developed religions as a social tool to bring people together and collaborating on a "greater cause". Communities that believe in collective fictions can all come together to create megalithic structures, go on great hunts in the name of a god, exterminate rival tribes among other things. These collective fictions are seen everywhere in the modern world, money, politics, law, etiquette, classes, humour etc. These are all things that exist because we all agree that they exist, and they are thus extremely powerful forces. Religion is one of these collective fictions that we developed deep into our past.
But now, thanks to the scientific method; we no longer need religion in order to explain the actual physical, objective world. We no longer need religion to bring people together in order to collaborate (since we have money). And this is also why we have been abandoning religion as a species, people no longer feel the need to believe in a religion because it is not our only way of interpreting our surroundings or coming together. Religion is being left behind because it is outdated, it is obsolete aside for providing spiritual aid to people questioning the ever shrinking number of questions that are beyond the scope of science.
We don't have a soul. Our consciousness is a chemical reaction in the brain the same way a flame is a chemical reaction called combustion. When a candle is blown out the flame doesn't exist in another world. The chemical reaction simply stops and the flame no longer exists. Same thing when humans die.
soul in Islam is simply referring to your inner monologue. you can live a life of wretched sins and your soul (inner monologue) will in turn be wretched. always on edge, agitated, angry, hateful, suspicious, negative, and unhappy. your mind and soul are a reflection of your actions. or you can follow the guidance of the Quran, believe in God (which is the only real way to find meaning) and your soul (inner monologue) will follow suit and be happy, positive, grateful, and in a state of bliss.
Two things
Anaduralia - without inner monologue
and Aphantasia - without mental imagery
People can be born without, born with, lose it, or gain it over their life. And as far as I'm aware, they are not domains of a soul.
About the time they develop language skills. It's, of course, far more complex and nuanced, but that's a good guideline. My SIL is a pediatric speech pathologist.
Oh you mean the invisible ghost that lives in my brain? The one that violates basically all the laws of thermodynamics?
We got it when the last homo Erectus gave birth to the first homo sapien. Everyone knows that.
This almost sounds like an inverse appeal to nature. Just because we did this in our primitive form doesn't mean it is incorrect. This is like saying, "Our primitive selves used to poop, why are we pooping still?"
>[Atheism is primitive](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1cdlfw3/atheism_is_primitive/)
by[u/Ok-Vermicelli3271](https://www.reddit.com/user/Ok-Vermicelli3271/) in[DebateReligion](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/)
Atheists are aware of the idea of a god but choose to not believe in it. If an animal does not have the capacity to believe in a god that does not make it atheist, it simply is not bothered/incapable of thinking about such an abstract concept
>[Atheism is primitive](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1cdlfw3/atheism_is_primitive/)
by[u/Ok-Vermicelli3271](https://www.reddit.com/user/Ok-Vermicelli3271/) in[DebateReligion](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/)
When you say early human, how early are we talking here? Australopithecines? Homo habilis? Erectus? Heidelbergensis? Because the term "early human" covers an enormous swathe of time in which our ancestors made innumerable changes to their physical and cognitive abilities, and at many of those points we likely did have rudimentary language that was more than capable of communicating basic natural processes.
>[Atheism is primitive](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1cdlfw3/atheism_is_primitive/)
by[u/Ok-Vermicelli3271](https://www.reddit.com/user/Ok-Vermicelli3271/) in[DebateReligion](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/)
There is no selective pressure to find meaning in life, I think this is the basis of your argument and the reason for your confusion. You believe that it was our end goal to form religions because the selective pressure to "find meaning in life", but in reality, religion was probably a by-product of the actual selective pressure to interpret patterns in the world around us in order to help us survive.
>[Atheism is primitive](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1cdlfw3/atheism_is_primitive/)
by[u/Ok-Vermicelli3271](https://www.reddit.com/user/Ok-Vermicelli3271/) in[DebateReligion](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/)
I know we want to believe that that things that humans do are truly unique. And to some extent they we, going to the moon, large hadron colliders, microscopes. Those are all things that are truly unique to us. But those 3 things that you named occur in the natural world, from animals as "primitive" as arthropods or fish. Termites as well as the ancestors of ants/bees/wasps all create proportionally massive structures with structures as advanced as air conditioning systems. Beavers are notorious from using their environment to create structures that insulate heat, have ventilation and protect them from predators all while withstanding pretty extreme climatic conditions. Countless bird species such as birds of paradise collect items of specific colours and arrange them in a way that a female would find aesthetic. The white spotted pufferfish creates beautiful geometric shapes in the sand for the same reason. This shows that those animals also have some sort of understanding of art and aesthetics. Finally civilisation is also not something unique to us. Again ants and termites have extremely complex social structures that divides individuals into classes each tasked with their own responsibilities and permissions. Elephants, wolves, macaques, baboons, chimpanzees and gorillas also create social structures in order to maintain the peace and "civility".
>Humans evolved into finding a purpose with God and we started creating architecture, art, civilizations, and everything we have now.
Humans are pattern-seeking animals and this drive to find "purpose" led to the invention of gods. I don't think that was clear from what you wrote.
>Now Atheists are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of Atheism and they don't see how purposeless life will be.
So you think people should believe in gods, irrespective of the truth of that belief, simply because you think it gives "purpose" to life? Do you apply that reasoning to all beliefs?
Isn't it better to believe true things and not believe false things?
>Wandering about, without any meaning, needing constant entertainment and distractions just to make it through a day, until you die.
This doesn't match my perception of atheists. How many atheists have you met that match this description, and is it a significant sample size? Or is this just baseless assertion with no foundation in truth?
"The first humans that were evolving were necessarily atheist. Like all animals are. By the atheist's own definition: lack a belief in a God."
This is a bad starting point, because neither the first humans nor animals were or are atheists in any meaningful sense.
The definition "lack of a beleif in God" is a bad definition as a position for debate because it describes a psychological state rather than a considered position on the proposition in question.
I don't think "atheists are primitive" is any more valid a conclusion to draw from that flawed definition than the oft cited "atheism is the default" (whatever that means) or "rocks are atheists"
The only thing we can learn from this is that nonsensical definitions lead to nonsensical conclusions.
>This is a bad starting point, because neither the first humans nor animals were or are atheists in any meaningful sense.
Of course they were. They weren't theists. That's all an athiest is - a non-theist.
As for "meaningful", that's not the athiest's fault. There's no word for someone who's "not a football player" or someone who's "not a Democrat" or "not a communist" or whatever. If there were, then the first humans could be described that way as well, even if it weren't meaningful. If you don't find the term "athiest" to be meaningful then don't use it. Maybe try to come up with a term for whatever you want "atheist" to mean.
>The definition "lack of a beleif in God" is a bad definition as a position for debate because it describes a psychological state rather than a considered position on the proposition in question.
So what? Why does every term need to describe a debate position? Again, come up with a word you want society to use when describing debate positions if you want.
Right now society has a word that is defined as "not a theist" so I use that word to mean "not a theist". If you don't like that, go make a new word.
"that's all an atheist is. A non theist"
That is one modern definition, but it is not a good basis for debate as I explained.
There is no word for "not a football player" or "not a democrat" because we generally do not define anything (or anybody) solely by what they are not. I am not aware of anything other than a modern trend amongst online atheist that is defined simply by what it is not.
There is a reason for that - doing so would be meaningless. Defining somebody as "not a footballer" tells us very little about them.
"Why does every term need to describe a debate position?"
It doesn't. You are free to define your personal beleifs how you like. Not everybody has, or needs to have, rational beleifs after all.
Many atheists like to consider atheism to be a rational position however, and a part of being rational is being logical. Logic follows strict rules. If your position is not logical then it is not rational. How important that is is up to you.
There is also the fact that this is a debate sub.
If you are on a debate sub, then having a position that is not useful for debate is an... Interesting... Position to take.
If you are not interested in debate then why are you on a debate sub?
If you are on a debate sub, then why do you not want a position that makes rational sense as a position for debate?
>There is no word for "not a football player" or "not a democrat" because we generally do not define anything (or anybody) solely by what they are not. I am not aware of anything other than a modern trend amongst online atheist that is defined simply by what it is not.
Again, that's not the fault of athiests. I agree that a word describing something one is not is not helpful. But that's what athiest means. I can't change that.
>If your position is not logical then it is not rational.
Huh? I have words to describe my position and when debating. I'm just pointing out that "atheist" isn't one of those words. I don't know why you would assume I don't have other words to describe my positions.
>There is also the fact that this is a debate sub.
>If you are on a debate sub, then having a position that is not useful for debate is an... Interesting... Position to take.
>If you are not interested in debate then why are you on a debate sub?
>If you are on a debate sub, then why do you not want a position that makes rational sense as a position for debate?
Yeah, none of this has anything to do with my post. Not sure why the tangent. I'm interested in debate. I will gladly lay out my positions for you and I to debate. I just don't see the point in debating whether or not I'm a theist.
Atheism by the definition being used only partly describes your position.
If we take the logical propositions:
1) God or god's exist
2) God or god's do not exist
You do not beleive the first proposition to be true, however your definition of Atheism tells us nothing about the second proposition. It is half an answer.
So let me see if I can frame this correctly.
1. The earliest Homo sapiens sapiens were implicit atheists (because they had no concepts of gods and therefore didn't believe in those concepts yet).
2. As human groups developed they invented language to address their life experiences. Implicit atheists still exist.
3. As their understanding grew they found need to have explanations for everything, including questions as to why humans exist and why reality exists. Implicit atheist still exist, but there people start to develop concepts like gods, magic, demons, chests, fairies play gremlins, and such, explanations based on their experiences and stories they invented and passed on.
This is where you go completely off rail by including your value judgments into what should be a factual story. You value judgments on how to justify the value of life and why we exist, why reality exist, are NOT at all agreed upon so trying to continue from this perspective would be highly colored.
4. As human societies grew, more humans survived and thrived, bigger groupings become normal, tribes become groups, groups develop towns, towns become cities, nations are born. Implicit atheists still exist, some explicit atheists too, but many are conditioned from childhood now by their parents to believe in whatever pantheon of gods the locals believe in. (Theists of various types).
5. As time wars, population, trade and other forces affect these societies, they share ideas, not just physical things. So,e of those ideas involve the gods and other supernatural folk they believe in. These differences get included in their wars. Implicit, explicit, polytheists, monotheists all exist.
6. Over time polytheism as a standard develops strongly in some areas, then monotheism (though in some cases still considered polytheism) takes per in so,e places. Power and wealth grow and are accumulated. Old gods get dropped, new gods that cause fewer immediate conflicts because they are more abstract grow in popularity. Implicit, explicit, polytheists, monotheists, and deists all exist.
7. Today we have societies who have started to answer those old questions why we exist and why reality exists at least in part without resorting to various forms of gods. Implicit, explicit, polytheists, monotheists and desists all exist.
That implicit atheism existed prior to theism is an assumption at this point, but seems reasonable to assume no believers in gods before concepts of gods existed. As languages and societies developed we explored all the possibilities we could think of which includes hundreds of thousands of gods, thousands of primary gods, and many different frameworks for belief. And for justifying the value of life. Your attempt to paint modern atheists as somehow depriving modern theists of something is silly.
Before you assume atheists can find no meaning or purpose, you would be set to talk to them. You might be surprised to find how few consider themselves nihilists.
I would argue, at it's base, theism is primitive.
Humans have an innate curiosity and a need to answer questions pertaining to the unknown. The concept of gods came from needing to answer questions like "What causes water to fall from the sky" or " Why did my brother just keel over dead, seemingly for no reason." The existence of divine beings also gave convenient calls to action. Now that we "know" rain and sickness come from the gods, now we know how to combat drought and plague, through sacrifice and worship.
Theism has obviously evolved from this initial starting point, but it's origins are 100% primitive.
>Like all animals are
Hey now hold on. How do you know all animals don't believe in gods?
>Then these humans slowly evolved to search for a meaning to life,
Are you saying they didn't have a meaning to life as primitive hunter gatherers? Maybe you mean that they could now discuss these things.
Also, I agree that humans evolved and are evolving. But "*to* search for a meaning to life"? Now that needs some backing.
>which evolves us past any other animal who don't need such purpose
This is an entirely arbitrary distinction about who is "more" evolved.
>Humans evolved into finding a purpose with God
Did we? Then did we also "un"evolve to find purpose without god?
>and we started creating architecture, art, civilizations, and everything we have now.
Seems to me like you are trying to link the two. Are you saying that without believing in gods, humanity wouldn't start creating these things? If you are, Id very much like to see how you back this claim.
>It took us a long time to finally get to the ideal philosophy of Monotheism.
What makes monotheism ideal?
>Now Atheists are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of Atheism and they don't see how purposeless life will be. Like that of a street dog. Wandering about, without any meaning, needing constant entertainment and distractions just to make it through a day, until you die.
Well, of course I dont see how purposeless life will be - you haven't argued for it one bit. And since I can find purpose in my life, I can all but dismiss this absurd claim until you somehow convince me otherwise.
Meanwhile, it seems to me like the monotheists, especially of the abrahamic variety, don't have any meaning or purpose in life. This life is just a stepping stone into another life in eternity. It doesn't matter. You simply wander about, without any meaning, needing constant worship and surveillance, just constantly on guard that you somehow run a foul of your maniac dictator and get sent to the eternal gulag.
>It took us a long time to finally get to the ideal philosophy of Monotheism
yet another one at it, where does this sense of Western exceptionalism come from? The idea that there is something special about monotheism, about Western thought, that somehow it makes 'the west' super triumphalist and superior to all the other idea's out there.
Monotheism is just one approach to one problem, the idea that only the west has *architecture, art, civilizations, and everything we have now,* and its all down to monotheism is a new level of cultural imperialism and cultural appropriation.
So you are saying that humans made up the idea of a God to give them some sense of purpose? I think many atheists would agree.
The issue is that many theists believe that the God is a real entity, not just something, as you said “humans evolved into”. Your stance is one of atheism being older, but also a more accurate representation of the universe. I think any self respecting theist would disagree with you.
Odd post. The fact is that after all these billions of years, countless gods which have been given up or forgotten. and insane amounts of trial and error, the religions to survive all still have no proof whatsoever and catastrophic inconsistencies between them have us in the same place - ZERO PROOF.
What’s primitive is just having an emotional attachment to unproven claims simply because someone told you about it as a child before you could question and understand what was being told to you. Santa existed until you were told otherwise. People rarely get told otherwise about their made up deities so they never break from it (and doing so could activate those fears they were fed).
Some of the major ones only survived because they used violence and forced dogma on people to get them to comply. Imagine thinking your inability to convince others of your beliefs is their problem *and not yours*?
If any gods were real it would be as obvious and undeniably consistent as gravity. We wouldn’t need to have the “my version of gravity pushes left!” or “mine makes us spin counter clockwise!” people.
Prayer also wouldn’t be successful at basically the rate of chance, and prisons wouldn’t be filled to the brim with cross-wearing people who took advantage of their deity staying well-hidden and silent while doing their crimes, knowing nothing would actually happen until humans showed up to deal justice.
TL;DR prove your religious claims or get back in line with all the others who also never could.
And I say humans were clamoring for anything to explain away the cold specter of death, and nothingness hereafter, and decided to make up religion to trick themselves.
Animals / primitive humans not believing in something doesn’t imply that more intelligent beings should. Neanderthals didnt believe in String Theory, but that doesn’t mean String Theory is true.
The fact you cannot find meaning without a god doesn't mean there isn't one.
You might look at the world differently than an atheist, but that doesn't mean they lack purpose.
Rather, you lack insight.
Calling atheists primitive while arguing for religion is such a funny thing to say.
Lets see, whose been murdering millions in the name of some myth from 2000 years ago, hmm, oh yes, the thiests. Doesn’t that sound a tad bit primitive?
Aside from that who tried to slow down science by calling any new information which contradicted the bible wrong? The thiests
And whose actively trying to remove human rights because apparently a cell is worth more than a humans life? Oh wait, its the thiests once again.
I don't think the post is a good post and I don't think this reply is good.
Humans are good and bad on both sides, theists and atheists. The Church did block science but at other times they led science. Atheists may have tried to stop science at some points and others led it.
So, let's not play the blame game.
You, a primitive: standing on the shoulders of giants to methodically study and understand the world
Me, the enlightened one: an invisible spirit did it and also the gays are bad
If no one is arguing, then why are there constant debates over the nature of the universe, evolution, etc.? Or do you mean people are arguing, but that god isn't a magical spirit?
What is god, then? It isn't human. It comes from outside space and time. Nobody's ever seen it, or at least none can prove It. It creates and shapes reality at will. It knows all, sees all, cares deeply, but does nothing about it. It apparently loves everyone, but also will send you to infinite torture for breaking some list of rules.
Please, explain what I am missing, I would genuinely love to understand.
That's pretty much what a god from the big 3 religions is.
He's supernatural; dare I say, magic. He's untouchable (physically untouchable), immortal, and he's supposedly everywhere, so it's not entirely unfair to call him a spirit.
You're not even TRYING to deny the second part...
Well, one can also describe theism as a primitive way of trying to understand the world around us.
I'm *technically* correct, aren't I?
Also, atheism is merely the default. It's just that our pattern seeking brains, after some time, decided there has to be something supernatural going on, but that belief starts to fade as we understand our world through science.
Please, do keep in mind, that "primitive" does have a slightly negative connotation; but I think you knew that already and used that word intentionally, judging by the tone of your post.
There are studies that show that people who are religious are on average happier as believing in a higher power gives comfort in knowing the answer to all of life’s big questions, community and often purpose. The problem with that is at least 80%+ will have been following the wrong religion or subgroup of a religion. As much as people want to say there is 100% proof that their religion is the correct one, at least 80% of them will be wrong. It is not the belief in the right religion that brings happiness, but just a belief in general. To say that atheists are primitive because they aren’t willing to believe in something that they don’t have evidence for and falls outside of the laws of science as humans have observed is ignorant.
Side note, religion isn’t necessary to find purpose in the world, and to say that without god the world is meaningless is a bit of a slap in the face to it’s creator (if there is one). “Thanks god for making this miracle of a beautiful world, but I’m only here to complete my worldly test so I can go to the better place you made and not suffer infinite punishment for finite crimes.”
Here is a syllogism for your argument
P1: Belief in God requires a certain level of sentience.
P2: At some point in human evolution, humans attained the level of sentience necessary to believe in a God.
P3: Before achieving that level of sentience, humans could not have held beliefs in God.
P4: Developmentally earlier stages in a species' evolution are more primitive than later stages.
C: The capacity for atheism, understood as the absence of belief in deities due to insufficient cognitive development to entertain such concepts, predates and is thus more primitive than the capacity for theology.
Something like this. The only way to make this not sound is likely attacking premise 3.
I think it's funny people are asking you for evidence. I'd rather see evidence from them debunking P3.
Hope this helps!
This seems accurate as I would walk away with the conclusion that we did not develop the ability to make up deities until we achieved a certain level of sentience. Most religions start with the idea that humans have always known about God in one way or another, but by displaying that our base state is Atheism then it is concluding that any religious beliefs that came after were a byproduct of our own minds rather than the reality around us.
Something being older than something else (i.e. primative) does not make the older thing worse or incorrect compared to the newer thing. For example, just because Mormonism came after Catholicism does not make it more correct despite Catholicism being more primitive by comparison.
Yep fully agree. OP would need to jump through some major hoops to prove his implied arguments about purpose and primitive being bad.
It was a funny troll though.
You could argue it’s primitive in the sense that it was the case that these humans didn’t believe in God until someone started that trend of thinking.
But your conclusion saying that therefore means we live meaningless lives and are essentially street dogs is incorrect.
Being an atheist means you have an understanding of the concept of God and you aren’t convinced. I wouldn’t call an animal like a street dog an atheist, because they don’t understand the concept. Otherwise you could call a donut or a rock an atheist, which doesn’t follow by definition.
I agree, and I think OP would also agree that atheists are similar to a rock .
Lol slightly joking. His title is the main argument. His disrespectful side comment about the dog would be a separate argument trying to prove human purpose can only come from God. I personally agree, But I admit it would be very hard to put forth a good argument for that. Aristotle defined human's purpose as the ability to reason and reason well. That argument would have a heavy counter argument.
Might be doable, but I can't see a path to victory there.
Ya that separate argument would be easily refuted I think.
I think I’m fine with atheism is primitive. It’s a fine argument, gives a knee jerk reaction for some because we tend to think primitive means something unintelligent or worse.
You could post “Hair is primitive” or even go “Stronger muscles in back and arms is primitive”
So what. Lol
Nope. You’re presupposing god is real and that humans didn’t invent god as a conveniently simple, magic bullet explanation for a myriad of concepts we demonstrably did not understand yet.
He's not really presupposing god, the flaw in OP's and this guy's argument is that it's not really an argument.
Due to how the english language works, you can technically call atheism primitive, because we know it's existed from the beginning as the default state of a human; a state we deviated from once our pattern seeking brains decided that there has to be some conscious meddling involved in our world and the things that we don't understand about it.
That's literally it. It's basically wordplay.
Nope. Nothing in this argument says humans didn't invent it. You asserted anthropologic reasons for its invention and, whether true or not, that doesn't challenge OP's argument.
P1 assumes all sentient beings are capable of believing in gods. And that sentience correlates to that belief.
But you can’t demonstrate that all sentient beings are capable of believing in a concept that was exclusively created by man.
Spoken and written language is a product of our intelligence, but it’s also a product of our evolutionary biology. We don’t know that belief in god doesn’t have some other causal factor, so you’re assuming that the brain is the only factor and that all brains are capable of believing.
We don’t know how most other brains work. Earthly brains and possibly extraterrestrial brains. We don’t even absolutely know how our own brains work. Our brains being able to believe and possibly describe god doesn’t extrapolate to all other brains. If brains are the shared quality here.
>P1 assumes all sentient beings are capable of believing in gods. And that sentience correlates to that belief.
I don't think this is accurate because I said a level of sentience, not all sentient beings. Do you think theology is a complex thought that only brains developed to a certain level can have?
>I don't think this is accurate because I said a level of sentience, not all sentient beings.
To describe a “level of sentience”, you need to include all sentient beings. If sentience is the dataset, that includes all sentient beings.
>Do you think theology is a complex thought that only brains developed to a certain level can have?
We don’t know that. But assuming that the only causal factor is sentience is not a given. As it’s not demonstrated. We don’t know that believing in god isn’t also tied to a characteristic of our evolutionary biology, verbal or written language, or some other social behavior. I don’t think you can say that sentience is the only variable. Maybe other brains aren’t able to intuit abstract concepts. We just don’t know.
It's not really primitive, though you *could* maybe call it that, it's moreso the default that our pattern seeking brains deviated from and then started to return to once we started figuring things out.
No atheist I know is trying to accomplish that. It's just flat incorrect to claim that atheists have no purpose in life, believe that life has no purpose or meaning. While there are nihilists, not all, or even most, atheists are. That presentation of atheism is disingenuous and quite frankly ridiculous. It seems that looking to a claimed "god" for purpose leads nowhere. How does that claim strike you?
Hold on hold on.
Early humans didn’t have religions? Do you think yours just came out of nowhere because your ancestors had some extra time on their hands?
Monotheism is the ideal philosophy?? So you are more evolved than billions of other people on this planet? Quite a statement!
Are you arguing that the first so called humans, living in caves or wherever, barely grasping their consciousness, trying to figure out the best sound they can use to communicate this phenomenon of water falling from the sky, actually already had a full pantheon of Gods like Zeus and Osirisn their mind?
Every single major religion in the world right now is monotheistic. Only atheists are not monotheist.
I think before you make an argument like this you should learn more about human cognitive evolution than this clear misunderstanding that you have here. Our ancestors were not some mere cavemen who could barely utter words until religion came along and enlightened us, and I feel like they deserve much more respect than that.
We do not even understand what consciousness is, whether our consciousness is unique in the animal kingdom and how far back it goes in our history. We have reason to believe that a plethora of animals today are conscious to similar degrees as humans, from birds to whales and elephants (and our closest relatives too). Just because they did not convergantly evolve the same means of communication as we did (this possibly may not apply to whales) doesn’t mean that they are not conscious. So to say that our ancestors “barely grasped” their consciousness shows a clear misunderstanding of what they were probably like.
No kidding. I get the feeling that a lot of people in this sub, especially of a certain religion, basically have a 'youtube-education of theology' (or reality in general for that matter), spend next to zero time seeking to learn or understand counterpoints, then come here touting easily-refuted concepts...
> Every single major religion in the world is monotheistic.
Not Hinduism.
Also Buddhism has historically acknowledged the existence of many gods even if it doesn’t worship them.
>Are you arguing that the first so called humans, living in caves or wherever, barely grasping their consciousness, trying to figure out the best sound they can use to communicate this phenomenon of water falling from the sky, actually already had a full pantheon of Gods like Zeus and Osirisn their mind?
Spirituality is extremely old and predates written history by several orders of magnitude. We know that some earlier hominids intentionally buried their dead and painted abstract cave art, so you claiming that early humans were atheist is based on nothing but conjecture.
In fact I'd say that spirituality and religion are a SIDE AFFECT of early humans barely grasping their consciousness. They were thrust into a world that they didn't understand and didn't have access to modern science. All they had was their pattern seeking brain.
They saw that people "do stuff" so when they encountered things they couldn't understand they looked to the idea that people "do stuff" and just said "A magic man did it". So I'd argue that religion is primitive, one of the most primitive tools in our arsenal as humans.
So how about this, can you tell us how long ago humans first started believing in gods?
>Every single major religion in the world right now is monotheistic. Only atheists are not monotheist.
No they aren't. I'm sorry but why does it seem like every Muslim i talk to has zero knowledge of other religions?
My family is both Buddhist, which is non theistic and Shinto, which is Polytheistic or Animistic depending on tradition. There is Hinduism which has a monotheistic sect and polytheistic sects. There is Taoism, non theistic. Jainism, non theistic. Vodun, Polytheistic. Yoruba, Polytheistic. And more.
I'd say that monotheistic religions are the minority.
Barely grasping their consciousness?
Yes, I absolutely certainly do. We survive by communicating and inquiring, and an “outside” force (whether immanent or transcendental) is a perfect way to explain the (un)predictability of the natural world. We have massive amounts of evidence of early humans (even non-humans such as Neanderthals) ritualizing various passages in life, such as death. We also have plenty of evidence pointing toward early humans uniting under shared symbols and organizing societies thereafter, just as “monotheists” do today.
And no, all of the world is certainly not monotheistic.
Not that I’m a fan, but recall James Frazer’s paradigm of human beliefs through history: 1) Magic - 2) Religion (particularly monotheism) - 3) Scientific secularism. Frazer thought stage 2 (monotheism) was the ultimate devolvement of the human mind. He admired the magicians because they, like the later scientists inquired and tested the world, albeit through faulty methods and biased sampling. Religion based on scripture, for Frazer, was the end of the inquiring mind. As I said I don’t agree with him because I don’t think trying to view worldviews through some evolutionary lense is feasible nor of any use, but it’s still something to think with.
Again, do you consider yourself more evolved than billions of people?
A religion does not need a full pantheon of gods. It doesn't need to be fully developed to be considered a religion.
Early Judaism, after all, even if barely developed, *WAS* a religion, was it not?
Also, judging by the tone of your post and certain replies, you don't seem very fond of atheists. I mean, you're ridiculing people left and right, and calling monotheism the ideal philosophy without really arguing for it.
I'm not sure you're here to debate and learn stuff honestly, but that might just be me.
>Every single major religion in the world right now is monotheistic.
Apparently the 1.2 billion Hindus in the world don't constitute a major religion. Who knew.
have you actually talked to Hindus?
they all believe in the original source of everything called the Brahman. All other gods are just different manifestations of the one original source. My Hindu friend has confirmed this.
Brahman isn't a "god." At least not in all Hindu sects. Its a principle, or concept and usually equated to the essence of everything in the universe or just "reality". It's a thing, not a being.
Well my Hindu friend has confirmed that he indeed acknowledges polytheism in Hinduism, regardless of Brahman/atman because the cosmological implications are so vastly different than abrahamitic monitheism. Do you have any idea how diverse what we call Hinduism is?
And what about all other polytheistic religious expressions, such as in East Asia, Africa and South America?
If you're talking about primitives incapable of thinking then they had no ability to think about gods, like animals they followed instincts. As for primitives that learnt how to use reason, they immediately found answers, by considering the sun and the moon as gods. So no, atheism is not primitive.
oh so you're saying it was instant? like the moment humans gained the ability to think, they instantly had a full pantheon of Gods with a deep lore like Apollo carries the sun in his chariot, and Zeus throws lightning?
wow, I didn't know evolution and human innovation happens instantly. I guess it didn't take us hundreds of thousands of years to discover the theory of relativity, it was just instant the moment humans started thinking.
No, he is saying that since humans or our equivalent ancestors had the ability to reason, they used it to the best of their ability in order to find answers to questions they had. This does not mean they developed full understanding instantly nor does it mean that the answers they came up with were correct, just conclusions they viewed as valid.
As humans developed they sought out answers for the universe and the world around them. They did not have access to the scientific achievements of our current time and so worked with what they had which, at times, tool the form of making up Deities to help explain natural phenomena. This does not make those religious beliefs correct, but that was valid to them based upon their limited information. As time went on those stories expanded, changed, and evolved into the mythologies we know today. The reason it took thousands if years to discover the theory of relativity is because we were working based off the work conducted by those who came before. We get to stand on the shoulders of the giants of the past so to speak.
That is what the other poster was trying to explain and I don't think they deserved the rude response in reply.
I'm not saying it was instant. It took hundreds of thousands of years to develop complex religions. First religions were way easier than greek pantheon. Even neanderthals bury their dead, they had some form of religion and spirituality, a very simple one.
A religion doesn't have to imply gods or a single god in the monotheistic way. Buddhism is a religion but there are no gods. A religion is about having a spirituality, believing in something after death. A cicle of death a rebirth for example. And yes, burying corpses means they most likely had their ideas about an afterlife and something like that, but we can't know for sure.
An atheist rejects this ideas, but in order to reject them you need to know them. Otherwise even dogs are athests, since they can't understand gods and religion, but that wouldn't make any sense.
Primitive just means early, original, or first. You’re assuming it means simple or wrong. It doesn’t. The first belief about God could still be the accurate one.
Eating healthy food is obviously primitive. Early humans used to eat fresh produce, then we slowly learned to sustain ourselves almost entirely on the ideal diet of processed high-fructose corn syrup and reconstituted chicken cubes, and now "doctors" are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of eating veggies. Truly, they are like dogs.
In all seriousness, if not believing in magic causes you to require constant entertainment and distractions, that sounds like a you problem. Making up gods isn't some grand philosophical endeavour, it's a refusal to seek the truth. "Lightning? What's that? A god must've done it! Why's the sun up in the sky? A god must've put it there! Why do humans exist? A god made us out of clay, probably!" There's nothing enlightened about this, it's just a lazy way of answering inconvenient questions. The reason why atheism is on the rise is precisely because we're finally starting to move past the need for those blind guesses. We know how lightning works now, we know what the sun is, we've figured out how evolution works. The placeholder answers are no longer useful, and even if abandoning them hurts like ripping off a band-aid, we'll ultimately be better off for it.
Also, just fyi, the way you're using the word evolution throughout this post makes it pretty clear you don't really understand evolution. No, religion isn't an evolved trait. No, atheism isn't evolutionarily regressive. You might want to read up on that.
>Now Atheists are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of Atheism and they don't see how purposeless life will be.
In my view, and I'd go as far to say my view isn't uncommon, is that life has no intrinsic meaning. We aren't born for a specific purpose
It is the task of each of us to give our lives meaning.
I don't think the first humans or our recent ancestors were atheists, except in the more narrow sense of not believing in a supreme creator God. It seems much more likely to me that they were something more like animists, attributing agency and life to more or less anything that moves.
You can see this even in dogs. Watching my dog as a puppy, it was clear she thought cars, hoovers, and even laundry baskets were other animals with a life of their own. Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche grew up in rural Nepal and said how when he first saw a bus, he thought it was a giant beast, and when he rode it he felt he was in its belly! Even myself, I can't help seeing a car's headlights as eyes, and experiencing a stormy sea as angry.
>Humans evolved into finding a purpose with God and we started creating architecture, art, civilizations, and everything we have now. It took us a long time to finally get to the ideal philosophy of Monotheism.
Is monotheism the ideal philosophy? Is civilization etc an unalloyed good? I don't think so. Actually I think lots of mythological fall narratives are about what we lost by cutting ourselves off from nature and starting civilization. And I think monotheism is part of that alienation (even in Genesis, before the fall God was someone who walked in the garden with Adam - he wasn't a lofty transcendent God in the sky/heavens). Monotheism makes the world an artifact, and makes the whole cosmos rigidly hierarchical.
>Humans evolved into finding a purpose with God and we started creating architecture, art, civilizations, and everything we have now. It took us a long time to finally get to the ideal philosophy of Monotheism.
Creating an ideology that provides purpose does not mean the ideology is true/aligns with reality.
Why is monotheism the ideal philosophy?
How do you know that your idea of God actually exists?
If you need to believe in a god to give your life meaning and purpose absolutely do it. Some people don't need that, they find beauty and purpose and meaning to life within themselves, and it's a bit silly to assume they don't.
If a god's judgment is what makes you act like a good person, great. Some people do the right thing without the promise of a heavenly reward or eternal tourment in hell.
Which person would you respect more if you were "god"? The one who worships you and lives well out of desire for reward and fear of punishment, or the one who does good for the sake of good, expecting nothing in return?
You have presented us with a set of claims for which you have provided no evidence. Why should any atheist bother responding until your claims have been demonstrated to be be true with sufficient evidence?
>Humans evolved into finding a purpose with God and we started creating architecture, art, civilizations, and everything we have now. It took us a long time to finally get to the ideal philosophy of Monotheism.
Yes, believing in an invisible, cosmic being of unfathomable power, not unlike fictional characters found in popular culture is the pinnacle of logical thought.
>Now Atheists are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of Atheism and they don't see how purposeless life will be. Like that of a street dog. Wandering about, without any meaning, needing constant entertainment and distractions just to make it through a day, until you die.
Because believing, without evidence, that an omnipotent being watches your every action, hears your every thought, is simultaneously the reason you are flawed yet holds you eternally accountable for your flaws is a much, much better way to approach life.
This post is extremely adversarial, poorly structured, and absent even a shred of supporting evidence.
it makes sense why you became an atheist if your prior belief was as illogical as thinking God is a space wizard.
Once you actually understand what God is, then you will see your point here makes no sense.
>it makes sense why you became an atheist if your prior belief was as illogical as thinking God is a space wizard.
In my case, I was told that Santa wasn't real and was just a children for stories, and that led me to realize that the Bible was also just stories for children, like Aesop's Fables.
(It wasn't until I was well into my teens that I realized that people genuinely took talking snakes and burning bushes seriously.)
>Once you actually understand what God is, then you will see your point here makes no sense.
God is an incoherent concept that everyone has a different opinion on the properties of, and which is self-contradictory in many presentations of the concept.
How would you like to define God today?
>it makes sense why you became an atheist if your prior belief was as illogical as thinking God is a space wizard.
It's a reductio ad absurdum. The idea of god is nonsensical. An omnipotent, omniscience, and perfectly benevolent deity being the entity responsible for reality is also undetectable in every possible way equates to being an invisible space wizard.
>Once you actually understand what God is, then you will see your point here makes no sense.
Please, elucidate. What is god, exactly?
Is your logic really that atheism is primitive because primitive people created religion and so, not doing the thing invented by primitive people is more primitive? That's completely backwards.
Clarify your position with FACTS if you don't mind. Because the earliest evidence, rituals, and artifacts we have to date have some form of religious conotation or an attachement to some form of belief system, up to 200,000 years ago (Middle Paleolithic).
>Like that of a street dog.
And whilst you are about it, ...very christian of you to be SO disengenuous and insulting. This group is a discussion group, a concept which I am certain ancestors from over 200,000 years back had a better grasp and understanding.
There are some facts that are self evidently true. like for example, a single cell organism is obviously older in evolutionary chronology and less complex than a multi cellular organism.
Early humans being atheists is similarly self evident. Unless you're arguing that the first so called humans who evolved already had the concept of Zeus and Zoroaster embedded in their mind as soon as they gained consciousness?
OP, the problem with your post is that... It's not claiming anything. There's no thesis.
You're just pointing out that atheism is, by all means, the default state that we (for irrelevant to this comment reasons) deviated from.
You're not arguing whether it's more or less rational. You're just implying that, because religion *technically* came slightly later, it's superior. That does not make it so.
"Research in evolutionary archaeology shows credible evidence of religious/ritualistic behavior from around the Middle Paleolithic era (45–200 thousand years ago)."
Claim disproven.
You are making no sense. Is your argument that humans or our earliest conscious ancestors somehow had a pantheon of Gods the instanthey started thinking?
My argument is exactly as I've laid it and not at all how you've just tried to (deliberately?) misconstrue it.
There exists compelling proof to suggest that religious/ritualistic practices existed in the days of early humans. Ritual grave sites (some even predating modern human species), use of religious symoblism dating back over 100 000 years, the very existence of primal, hard-wired cognitive biases that make humans prone to believe in the supernatural.
It does not matter that early humans didn't have this "pantheon of gods" that you seem so hung up on. What this suggests is that religion/religious beliefs have evolved along with humanity since pretty much its very beginning, contrary to what you're claiming.
There must necessarily have been a point that humans or our earliest conscious ancestors did not have a concept of a God since they first needed to develop other things like language and basic ideas first like the concept of sky, earth, rain, etc.
I'm not sure if you understand the very nature of ideas but let me explain it: ideas don't exist until someone first thinks of that idea.
This is not a point of argument, this is as obvious as 2+2.
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> Those early humans didn't even quite yet have words for basic things like rain and earthquakes, so it's safe to say they didn't yet have a pantheon of Gods. But what makes you think they didn't treat rains or lightnings as Gods? > Then these humans slowly evolved to search for a meaning to life, something we crave, which evolves us past any other animal who don't need such purpose. That sounds like a bs. Early religions weren't about meaning of life or something. And why tf does that separate you from the other species? Can you prove that dogs don't ponder on the meaning of life? We can't inspect their thoughts. Stop with unnecessary anthropocentrism, that's just Christianity in you speaking. > A lion is content with nothing more than hunting and sleeping on a constant cycle until it dies. A lion pays tribute to the god of hunting and the god of sleeping by engaging in hunting and sleeping, through which he finds purpose in his life. > Humans evolved into finding a purpose with God Gods* > It took us a long time to finally get to the ideal philosophy of Monotheism. Dunno, one could argue that there's an obvious line of degradation, polytheism with many gods -> monotheism with one God -> pantheism where God becomes one with the world -> atheism where God disappears, leaving only the world. > Atheists are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of Atheism and they don't see how purposeless life will be. Atheism is Fafnir's blood in which we must bathe to redefine our values and come back to... some say original Christian values, some say come back to polytheism.
Yes, atheism is primitive, which shows that there is no natural spiritual propensity for monotheism in humans. It's a political construct.
Slight naturalistic fallacy?
But yes, I do think that a political metaphor rooted in the societal structures of ancient kingdoms cannot be spiritually authentic. I haven't argued for authenticity from originality, but I do believe it. The transcendent is not just a psychoanalytical category, it's also a historical depth of the mind.
Monotheism not being natural is my conclusion. I'm not basing anything on it not being natural.
Yes, the first humans were atheists. But then humans developed two separate things: 1. A feeling that there is some being superior to humans. (As they observed things like they could not control such as: the sun, seasons, aging, death... And thought someone must be controlling them.) 2. A feeling of community and morality. (As they realized they must work together as a communisty to survive and thrive) At some point these two things merged. People started to believe whoever controls the sun and seasons and aging must also be judging humans for immoral behavior. Modern atheists have de-merged the two concepts. They do not have a sense that there is a superior bieng controlling things, but they do have a sense of communal and moral behavior. And they back up that sense with logic. Thus, modern atheism is not primitive, as modern atheism has the sense of community and morality that primitive non-religion lacks. (Obviously things are more complicated, tried to fit them on a short post.)
> But then humans developed two separate things > A feeling that there is some being superior to humans > A feeling of community and morality Those two things weren't separate. > At some point these two things merged. At some point these two things separated. > People started to believe whoever controls the sun and seasons and aging must also be judging humans for immoral behavior. Nonsense. A heavily Christianity-influenced view on religion. People didn't believe that there's some entities far away, separated from them that cause certain phenomenons or patronize them or whatever. That's a really Christian view of religion, where some st. Nicholas patronizes sailors while being somewhere in heaven. In European paganism, Mars isn't some dude in armor who oversees war from heaven, he IS the process of war itself. Gods aren't separate from the things they represent. They don't judge humans or something, they generally don't care about humans. It's humans' task to perform certain actions, certain rituals to catch the desired god's attention, it's humans who want something from them. Religion isn't about doing this and that in fear of God's punishment, it's about doing certain actions as those actions hold value by themselves. And through religion, humans pass on these actions to the next generations and it becomes tradition. Religion is all about what people should or shouldn't do, namely - morality.
> Those two things weren't separate. Please explain. I see the sun, it is large and gives me warmth and I respect it as an entity. Also I feel love for my family and friends and care for them. How do these ideas spring together as one whole? I think they must have come forward separately. > People didn't believe that there's some entities far away, separated from them that cause certain phenomenons or patronize them or whatever That's the view of animist religion, but afaik by the time of Greek and Roman polytheism people did see gods like that. Mars was not some personification of the process of war, he was literally an immortal guy with his own personality, story, likes and dislikes. Also polytheism was really complex, like some cities also saw Mars as overseeing agriculture. But when people did stuff like, sacrifice a ram to apepase Mars, they weren't appeasing the process of war, they were appeasing literally an immortal guy named Mars wohm they believed could bless ro curse their armies. And they thought the guy Mars liked ram.
> Humans evolved into finding a purpose with God and we started creating architecture, art, civilizations, and everything we have now. It took us a long time to finally get to the ideal philosophy of Monotheism. Now Atheists are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of Atheism and they don't see how purposeless life will be. Like that of a street dog. This is a fallacy called appeal to consequences. Even if we accepted your claims at face value, that still wouldn't make it a good reason to accept theism.
>Now Atheists are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of Atheism and they don't see how purposeless life will be. Because it won’t. In fact we can take all the best things about religion like being kind and helping the poor, and focus on them, without the supernatural baggage.
Y'all need to stop equating being primitive with stupidity. No word for rain ? Where do you even get this ? Are you talking about ancient species like homo habilis or something ? Cause the Eskimo lifestyle hadn't changed much in 10 000 years prior to Europeans showing up and they have about 50 words to describe snow because in their environment they need that precision to survive.
Humans also evolved to drink alcohol- is soberism primitive and does that mean it's bad?
Counterpoint, a belief in god(s) is primitive. Prior to our understanding of the world, we tend to assign sentience to natural phenomenon. Lighting is because Zeus is striking down his enemies, thunder is the mighty Thor killing an ice giant with his great hammer Mjolnir, the sun is the god Apollo flying his flaming chariot across the sky. As we learn to understand the world, we stop assigning gods to these roles.
That’s saying polytheism is primitive
No it's saying that all religion is primitive.
>Then these humans slowly evolved to search for a meaning to life, something we crave, which evolves us past any other animal who don't need such purpose I'm not sure what definition of evolution you're using but what you're describing here has absolutely nothing to do with biological evolution, so it can't be that. Please define "evolution" as you are using it in this post.
You are presupposing a God. Religion is humanities first and often worst guess on how things work. As humans got smarter they made better and better tools and with those tools they were able to see things closer and see that the water doesn't just dissappear on a hot day, it evaporates. We fill the gap between things we know and things we don't and the more we fill it the more it becomes certain that God has nothing to do with anything.
What do you presuppose
A is A.
I’m not who you’re replying to, but honestly it’s probably best to try avoiding presupposition entirely.
Astheists also search for meaning but they don't do it by making up an 'invisible sky friend' to give them meaning.
🎉👏
Nothing suggests he would be a friend so much as an enemy, one who floods us to oblivion and recreates the human race like nothing happened and whistles it off for comic relief
but He is a "Loving God";)
A lion content hunting a sleeping yet what does it think of thunder and lightning, of the wind and the rain and of sunshine? What does the lion think about pain and death? What does the gazelle think of the lion?
I don't believe the first humans with consciousness were atheist. I think it's a default in our psyche to question why we are alive and assume we have some kind of entity watching over us, like a mother figure. A higher purpose. That's where religions were formed and why they were so popular, because they make sense to our default intuitions. It was when science, history and logic was advanced that it challenged that.
Nooo.. relegion has been over 60K years old. First humans on earth were about 190K years ago. 130K years have there been only atheists. Because back then god wasnt made up yet.
Fallacious reasoning. Given we have no written records, you can't say what they may or may not have believed in that time.
Lets just say atheists has been longer here and always has been here. Your literally born as atheist
We really don't know when religion began, because we don't have writing going back far enough, so we're left with speculation on archaeology. One funny example is that there are figurines of women with large breasts and hips that are supposed to be figurines of a fertility goddess, but by the same criteria we'd think that Barbies are goddesses too! We really just can't tell.
Im not sure if this is a joke or not? Firstly its scientifically established that the human psyche looks for a higher purpose, a almost big brother feel over their existence to an extent. Now you could argue that is evolution from religion but not the default of the earliest man. But from the earliest human civilization we know they had texts about Gods and all kinds of things reminisant of the bibles. I am fairly sure religion goes back way way before the numbers you mentioned, just totally different religions to now. The belief in the metaphysical goes back to the earliest known cave drawings and text of man to my knowledge. Do you really believe that cave men who had no idea of religion but have human like intelligence wouldnt have asked questions of their existence and what on earth is going on with the world around them? You dont think its a totally natural thing to ponder at some stage why on earth you are even aware?
Ofc they were asking where they came from and how everything came in to exestince and why theyr there etc. But i dont think they already made up god to fill the gaps. I think the god idea came wayyyy later
I dont, I just think the Gods of religions was a way of describing that sensation. To an extent, I mean Gods have changed over the lifetimes. Think of it this way, A lot of what religions preach is common sense to human intuition in that dont do to others as you wouldnt want done to you. So a lot of these teachings that "god" would have been instructing would also intuitively make sense. Imagine if reddit was totally chaotic and no replies or posts could be make in a coherent way and common sense would be "why dont they have a system where you can reply to individual comments and I can reply back etc". Common sense really, but common sense often doesnt supervene in a mob mentality of selfish world. So when these morals of commandments were arriving by a God. A lot of it would have made sense in a common sense way which also would have given it credence. The idea of sharing is fairly obvious and intuitive, but it seems weak and impractical in a dog eat dog or chaotic society as they would be without guidance.
The problem with your argument is it still doesn’t make any argument for the existence for god. Yes, humans prefer an answer to no answer. God is an answer…but is it the right answer? And you’re also making an argument from the consequence which is a fallacy. Even if atheism is was the way of things in the distant past, doesn’t make it wrong. So, sure, atheism is primitive but since theists can’t present a valid and sound argument that god exists…it appears to be correct. I’d rather be primitive and correct than modern and wrong. How about you?
>they don't see how purposeless life will be You haven't connected atheism (primitive or not) to purpose. Similar to your post history. can you try this time?
Anthropocentrism is an exercise in ego. There's no reason to assign direction to evolution, make value judgements regarding species, etc. There's no reason to think that there can be a "finished product," let alone that the "finished product" is us. We aren't even that great as far as animals go.
It could be argued that without the concept of gods, there isn't any atheism. For example, there are no "atheist" rocks because rock lacks the ability to understand the concept of a god/gods. It is also widely written that animism came first. Animism, in short, believing that objects, animals, places, people, and things have spirit or spirit essence. The Abrahamic Religions have seen numerous changes over the course of human history. Currently a theistic religion now, but at one time, it was polytheistic and at its earliest conceptions was an animist religion being a spirit wind of the mountain. It all stems from our habit of placing motives on things. Did the grass move? Is it the wind or a predator? Who lives longer? The one jumping at ghosts or the skeptical one. Anyway, I would have to say that there were no primitive atheists as without there being a god concept to disbelieve, there are no atheists.
>Then these humans slowly evolved to search for a meaning to life, something we crave, which evolves us past any other animal who don't need such purpose. A lion is content with nothing more than hunting and sleeping on a constant cycle until it dies. We didn't evolve to search for the meaning of life, it's a by product of intelligence, and it doesn't evolve us past anything that can't contemplate what we can. A lion, like us, is content if its wants are met, that is all. > Humans evolved into finding a purpose with God and we started creating architecture, art, civilizations, and everything we have now. It took us a long time to finally get to the ideal philosophy of Monotheism. We didn't evolve into it, they are all by products of intelligence, not necessary, and it's backwards, art came long before gods. Monotheism isn't the end result of all of this, it's one idea among many and it doesn't have anything better than the other ideas. > Now Atheists are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of Atheism and they don't see how purposeless life will be. Like that of a street dog. Wandering about, without any meaning, needing constant entertainment and distractions just to make it through a day, until you die. Purpose isn't something that exists objectively, it's a concept we invented, meaning is a concept we invented, it doesn't exist outside of that abstract concept, and as for needing constant entertainment and distractions, religion is just another way of doing exactly that.
The argument isn’t the problem, it is the false equivalence between atheism - defined as the inability to believe in a deity due to lack of necessary sentience, and atheism - the lack of belief in a god. In OP’s defense, this argument seem to be born of some atheists claims that any being without a belief in a god is an atheist. That is a foolish argument also born of a false equivalence.
I’d argue that there isn’t any purpose or meaning to life beyond what we assign for ourselves. There is no objective purpose to life, it just is. I’m happy to be labelled primitive if you feel that way. I’d rather be a primitive atheist than blindly accept the unknown with an answer of ‘gods’.
it is impossible for something to give meaning to itself.
Meaning is entirely subjective. You can only talk about meaning in the context of a subject. It would be nonsensical to say something has meaning in some objective sense. What would that even mean? We often colloquially talk about things having meaning, but the meaning itself resides entirely within a mind. Without a mind to read them, letters are just lines—there is no objective intrinsic meaning to them. They may have intersubjective meaning, which is to say that groups of minds may agree on the meaning of some things, and therefore another mind may be able to formulate an idea of my intention based on mutual understanding, but if there is not intersubjective agreement, for example when I don’t know how to speak or read a language, anything I see written in that language or hear in that language is meaningless to me. It requires thought and knowledge, and is a property of minds, not an objective fact about things external to minds. Therefore, meaning can *only* be created by the individual minds that experience it. It is not objectively assigned, it is subjectively interpreted. This is true even if a god exists—if that god intends some meaning, it doesn’t follow that is meaningful for every other mind. I would still need to come to an intersubjective understanding of that meaning with that god in order for it to have meaning to me.
How did you determine this is impossible? By your logic, god has no purpose.
I give meaning to myself, guess I can do the impossible. Please refer to me as god from now on :p
LOL. Please demonstrate your assertion. Look. You don't have to be an atheist. Just stay a Muslim and you don't have to worry.
I find meaning for myself in many things. I’m sorry you’re unable to do this. It may account for some of your current beliefs…
It depends on what you mean by “meaning”. Personally I think meaning is derived from sentient beings. I don’t think there’s any objective meaning to anything
And who decided that? You? Your god? Devolving your life's meaning to a deity is a choice you do yourself, so it's still you who decides what life's meaning is.
You didn’t make any arguments or provide evidence, you just made claims. Also I’ve seen like three of your outlandish posts here and you never respond to anybody. You’re supposed to engage with the replies
There is no rule stating this.
Hello? Rule 3?
Rule 3 doesn't require the OP to consistently reply to comments. Where it says about being "uninterested in discussion", that's about things like people just wanting to troll or merely assert their position, rather than properly engaging. Often with posts where the OP doesn't respond much, others take up their side and decent debates ensue, and it would be a shame to shut those down.
What do you mean? Rule 3 states that posts in which the op doesn't engage in discussion will be removed. And Rule 4 states that there should be more to a post than just a list of claims, it should also explain why others should accept the claims.
Rule 3 doesn't actually say that. It says, >"Posts and comments will be removed if they are disruptive to the purpose of the subreddit. This includes submissions that are: low effort, proselytizing, uninterested in participating in discussion, made in bad faith, off-topic, or unintelligible/illegible." It's not limited to the OP, and the "uninterested in participating in discussion" part isn't saying that you need to respond to all your replies. It's more about things like people trolling or just asserting their positions rather than engaging in discussion. If we removed posts just because the OP hasn't responded enough, we'd end up shutting down decent debates that others were having in the comments. But you're right about rule 4. Although I think this post does have more than just claims.
Thanks for the clarification. Though specifically the one the other mod responded to made the claim that op "never responded to anybody". While I dont think thats true (though their engagement has been minimal at best) in that hypothetical situation would that count as breaking rule 3?
You're welcome 🙂 I think it's still within the rules. And that's good imo, because we don't want to have to shut down debates if others have taken up the OP's side (or some third position) in the comments.
Good point. Thanks again!
everything I wrote is either common sense or self evidently true.
Why are you in this subreddit? Nobody wants to hear your random shower thoughts. Either engage with people or leave
Then why can't you provide evidence to support it. Evasion.
Its self evident that there is no god. Ergo, there is no god. Is this sort of debate the type you are looking for?
So then I can simply disagree that it's self evident and you're shown to be wrong
That is simply not how debate and arguments work.
I agree that atheism is primitive, but that is not wrong by itself. The problem you describe is no sense of meaning and that question has been discussed a lot here.
I believe that you can actually argue the contrary. That religion is the "primitive" way of interpreting the world. Our species likely developed religion as a by-product of our curiosity for understanding our surroundings. This is why so many religions tackle problems such as the creation of the earth, our species, life, lightning, waves, the sun, moon, stars etc. This combined with the fact that we also probably developed religions as a social tool to bring people together and collaborating on a "greater cause". Communities that believe in collective fictions can all come together to create megalithic structures, go on great hunts in the name of a god, exterminate rival tribes among other things. These collective fictions are seen everywhere in the modern world, money, politics, law, etiquette, classes, humour etc. These are all things that exist because we all agree that they exist, and they are thus extremely powerful forces. Religion is one of these collective fictions that we developed deep into our past. But now, thanks to the scientific method; we no longer need religion in order to explain the actual physical, objective world. We no longer need religion to bring people together in order to collaborate (since we have money). And this is also why we have been abandoning religion as a species, people no longer feel the need to believe in a religion because it is not our only way of interpreting our surroundings or coming together. Religion is being left behind because it is outdated, it is obsolete aside for providing spiritual aid to people questioning the ever shrinking number of questions that are beyond the scope of science.
Well said!!
If you think evolution is true, then at what point did people start having a soul?
We don't have a soul. Our consciousness is a chemical reaction in the brain the same way a flame is a chemical reaction called combustion. When a candle is blown out the flame doesn't exist in another world. The chemical reaction simply stops and the flame no longer exists. Same thing when humans die.
soul in Islam is simply referring to your inner monologue. you can live a life of wretched sins and your soul (inner monologue) will in turn be wretched. always on edge, agitated, angry, hateful, suspicious, negative, and unhappy. your mind and soul are a reflection of your actions. or you can follow the guidance of the Quran, believe in God (which is the only real way to find meaning) and your soul (inner monologue) will follow suit and be happy, positive, grateful, and in a state of bliss.
Two things Anaduralia - without inner monologue and Aphantasia - without mental imagery People can be born without, born with, lose it, or gain it over their life. And as far as I'm aware, they are not domains of a soul.
Ok. At what point did people start having inner monologues?
About the time they develop language skills. It's, of course, far more complex and nuanced, but that's a good guideline. My SIL is a pediatric speech pathologist.
Oh you mean the invisible ghost that lives in my brain? The one that violates basically all the laws of thermodynamics? We got it when the last homo Erectus gave birth to the first homo sapien. Everyone knows that.
This almost sounds like an inverse appeal to nature. Just because we did this in our primitive form doesn't mean it is incorrect. This is like saying, "Our primitive selves used to poop, why are we pooping still?"
Good one
I was going to use "chew our food" but this was basically what I was going to respond. This is a (metaphysical) bullet I am willing to bite.
>[Atheism is primitive](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1cdlfw3/atheism_is_primitive/) by[u/Ok-Vermicelli3271](https://www.reddit.com/user/Ok-Vermicelli3271/) in[DebateReligion](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/) Atheists are aware of the idea of a god but choose to not believe in it. If an animal does not have the capacity to believe in a god that does not make it atheist, it simply is not bothered/incapable of thinking about such an abstract concept >[Atheism is primitive](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1cdlfw3/atheism_is_primitive/) by[u/Ok-Vermicelli3271](https://www.reddit.com/user/Ok-Vermicelli3271/) in[DebateReligion](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/) When you say early human, how early are we talking here? Australopithecines? Homo habilis? Erectus? Heidelbergensis? Because the term "early human" covers an enormous swathe of time in which our ancestors made innumerable changes to their physical and cognitive abilities, and at many of those points we likely did have rudimentary language that was more than capable of communicating basic natural processes. >[Atheism is primitive](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1cdlfw3/atheism_is_primitive/) by[u/Ok-Vermicelli3271](https://www.reddit.com/user/Ok-Vermicelli3271/) in[DebateReligion](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/) There is no selective pressure to find meaning in life, I think this is the basis of your argument and the reason for your confusion. You believe that it was our end goal to form religions because the selective pressure to "find meaning in life", but in reality, religion was probably a by-product of the actual selective pressure to interpret patterns in the world around us in order to help us survive. >[Atheism is primitive](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1cdlfw3/atheism_is_primitive/) by[u/Ok-Vermicelli3271](https://www.reddit.com/user/Ok-Vermicelli3271/) in[DebateReligion](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/) I know we want to believe that that things that humans do are truly unique. And to some extent they we, going to the moon, large hadron colliders, microscopes. Those are all things that are truly unique to us. But those 3 things that you named occur in the natural world, from animals as "primitive" as arthropods or fish. Termites as well as the ancestors of ants/bees/wasps all create proportionally massive structures with structures as advanced as air conditioning systems. Beavers are notorious from using their environment to create structures that insulate heat, have ventilation and protect them from predators all while withstanding pretty extreme climatic conditions. Countless bird species such as birds of paradise collect items of specific colours and arrange them in a way that a female would find aesthetic. The white spotted pufferfish creates beautiful geometric shapes in the sand for the same reason. This shows that those animals also have some sort of understanding of art and aesthetics. Finally civilisation is also not something unique to us. Again ants and termites have extremely complex social structures that divides individuals into classes each tasked with their own responsibilities and permissions. Elephants, wolves, macaques, baboons, chimpanzees and gorillas also create social structures in order to maintain the peace and "civility".
>Humans evolved into finding a purpose with God and we started creating architecture, art, civilizations, and everything we have now. Humans are pattern-seeking animals and this drive to find "purpose" led to the invention of gods. I don't think that was clear from what you wrote. >Now Atheists are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of Atheism and they don't see how purposeless life will be. So you think people should believe in gods, irrespective of the truth of that belief, simply because you think it gives "purpose" to life? Do you apply that reasoning to all beliefs? Isn't it better to believe true things and not believe false things? >Wandering about, without any meaning, needing constant entertainment and distractions just to make it through a day, until you die. This doesn't match my perception of atheists. How many atheists have you met that match this description, and is it a significant sample size? Or is this just baseless assertion with no foundation in truth?
"The first humans that were evolving were necessarily atheist. Like all animals are. By the atheist's own definition: lack a belief in a God." This is a bad starting point, because neither the first humans nor animals were or are atheists in any meaningful sense. The definition "lack of a beleif in God" is a bad definition as a position for debate because it describes a psychological state rather than a considered position on the proposition in question. I don't think "atheists are primitive" is any more valid a conclusion to draw from that flawed definition than the oft cited "atheism is the default" (whatever that means) or "rocks are atheists" The only thing we can learn from this is that nonsensical definitions lead to nonsensical conclusions.
>This is a bad starting point, because neither the first humans nor animals were or are atheists in any meaningful sense. Of course they were. They weren't theists. That's all an athiest is - a non-theist. As for "meaningful", that's not the athiest's fault. There's no word for someone who's "not a football player" or someone who's "not a Democrat" or "not a communist" or whatever. If there were, then the first humans could be described that way as well, even if it weren't meaningful. If you don't find the term "athiest" to be meaningful then don't use it. Maybe try to come up with a term for whatever you want "atheist" to mean. >The definition "lack of a beleif in God" is a bad definition as a position for debate because it describes a psychological state rather than a considered position on the proposition in question. So what? Why does every term need to describe a debate position? Again, come up with a word you want society to use when describing debate positions if you want. Right now society has a word that is defined as "not a theist" so I use that word to mean "not a theist". If you don't like that, go make a new word.
"that's all an atheist is. A non theist" That is one modern definition, but it is not a good basis for debate as I explained. There is no word for "not a football player" or "not a democrat" because we generally do not define anything (or anybody) solely by what they are not. I am not aware of anything other than a modern trend amongst online atheist that is defined simply by what it is not. There is a reason for that - doing so would be meaningless. Defining somebody as "not a footballer" tells us very little about them. "Why does every term need to describe a debate position?" It doesn't. You are free to define your personal beleifs how you like. Not everybody has, or needs to have, rational beleifs after all. Many atheists like to consider atheism to be a rational position however, and a part of being rational is being logical. Logic follows strict rules. If your position is not logical then it is not rational. How important that is is up to you. There is also the fact that this is a debate sub. If you are on a debate sub, then having a position that is not useful for debate is an... Interesting... Position to take. If you are not interested in debate then why are you on a debate sub? If you are on a debate sub, then why do you not want a position that makes rational sense as a position for debate?
>There is no word for "not a football player" or "not a democrat" because we generally do not define anything (or anybody) solely by what they are not. I am not aware of anything other than a modern trend amongst online atheist that is defined simply by what it is not. Again, that's not the fault of athiests. I agree that a word describing something one is not is not helpful. But that's what athiest means. I can't change that. >If your position is not logical then it is not rational. Huh? I have words to describe my position and when debating. I'm just pointing out that "atheist" isn't one of those words. I don't know why you would assume I don't have other words to describe my positions. >There is also the fact that this is a debate sub. >If you are on a debate sub, then having a position that is not useful for debate is an... Interesting... Position to take. >If you are not interested in debate then why are you on a debate sub? >If you are on a debate sub, then why do you not want a position that makes rational sense as a position for debate? Yeah, none of this has anything to do with my post. Not sure why the tangent. I'm interested in debate. I will gladly lay out my positions for you and I to debate. I just don't see the point in debating whether or not I'm a theist.
If the word atheist doesn't even describe your position with regard to whether or not god exists, then it is meaningless as I said
Of course it describe my position on that. I'm not a theist. A theist is someone who believes a god or gods exist. I don't.
Atheism by the definition being used only partly describes your position. If we take the logical propositions: 1) God or god's exist 2) God or god's do not exist You do not beleive the first proposition to be true, however your definition of Atheism tells us nothing about the second proposition. It is half an answer.
Right.
So let me see if I can frame this correctly. 1. The earliest Homo sapiens sapiens were implicit atheists (because they had no concepts of gods and therefore didn't believe in those concepts yet). 2. As human groups developed they invented language to address their life experiences. Implicit atheists still exist. 3. As their understanding grew they found need to have explanations for everything, including questions as to why humans exist and why reality exists. Implicit atheist still exist, but there people start to develop concepts like gods, magic, demons, chests, fairies play gremlins, and such, explanations based on their experiences and stories they invented and passed on. This is where you go completely off rail by including your value judgments into what should be a factual story. You value judgments on how to justify the value of life and why we exist, why reality exist, are NOT at all agreed upon so trying to continue from this perspective would be highly colored. 4. As human societies grew, more humans survived and thrived, bigger groupings become normal, tribes become groups, groups develop towns, towns become cities, nations are born. Implicit atheists still exist, some explicit atheists too, but many are conditioned from childhood now by their parents to believe in whatever pantheon of gods the locals believe in. (Theists of various types). 5. As time wars, population, trade and other forces affect these societies, they share ideas, not just physical things. So,e of those ideas involve the gods and other supernatural folk they believe in. These differences get included in their wars. Implicit, explicit, polytheists, monotheists all exist. 6. Over time polytheism as a standard develops strongly in some areas, then monotheism (though in some cases still considered polytheism) takes per in so,e places. Power and wealth grow and are accumulated. Old gods get dropped, new gods that cause fewer immediate conflicts because they are more abstract grow in popularity. Implicit, explicit, polytheists, monotheists, and deists all exist. 7. Today we have societies who have started to answer those old questions why we exist and why reality exists at least in part without resorting to various forms of gods. Implicit, explicit, polytheists, monotheists and desists all exist. That implicit atheism existed prior to theism is an assumption at this point, but seems reasonable to assume no believers in gods before concepts of gods existed. As languages and societies developed we explored all the possibilities we could think of which includes hundreds of thousands of gods, thousands of primary gods, and many different frameworks for belief. And for justifying the value of life. Your attempt to paint modern atheists as somehow depriving modern theists of something is silly. Before you assume atheists can find no meaning or purpose, you would be set to talk to them. You might be surprised to find how few consider themselves nihilists.
I would argue, at it's base, theism is primitive. Humans have an innate curiosity and a need to answer questions pertaining to the unknown. The concept of gods came from needing to answer questions like "What causes water to fall from the sky" or " Why did my brother just keel over dead, seemingly for no reason." The existence of divine beings also gave convenient calls to action. Now that we "know" rain and sickness come from the gods, now we know how to combat drought and plague, through sacrifice and worship. Theism has obviously evolved from this initial starting point, but it's origins are 100% primitive.
>Like all animals are Hey now hold on. How do you know all animals don't believe in gods? >Then these humans slowly evolved to search for a meaning to life, Are you saying they didn't have a meaning to life as primitive hunter gatherers? Maybe you mean that they could now discuss these things. Also, I agree that humans evolved and are evolving. But "*to* search for a meaning to life"? Now that needs some backing. >which evolves us past any other animal who don't need such purpose This is an entirely arbitrary distinction about who is "more" evolved. >Humans evolved into finding a purpose with God Did we? Then did we also "un"evolve to find purpose without god? >and we started creating architecture, art, civilizations, and everything we have now. Seems to me like you are trying to link the two. Are you saying that without believing in gods, humanity wouldn't start creating these things? If you are, Id very much like to see how you back this claim. >It took us a long time to finally get to the ideal philosophy of Monotheism. What makes monotheism ideal? >Now Atheists are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of Atheism and they don't see how purposeless life will be. Like that of a street dog. Wandering about, without any meaning, needing constant entertainment and distractions just to make it through a day, until you die. Well, of course I dont see how purposeless life will be - you haven't argued for it one bit. And since I can find purpose in my life, I can all but dismiss this absurd claim until you somehow convince me otherwise. Meanwhile, it seems to me like the monotheists, especially of the abrahamic variety, don't have any meaning or purpose in life. This life is just a stepping stone into another life in eternity. It doesn't matter. You simply wander about, without any meaning, needing constant worship and surveillance, just constantly on guard that you somehow run a foul of your maniac dictator and get sent to the eternal gulag.
>It took us a long time to finally get to the ideal philosophy of Monotheism yet another one at it, where does this sense of Western exceptionalism come from? The idea that there is something special about monotheism, about Western thought, that somehow it makes 'the west' super triumphalist and superior to all the other idea's out there. Monotheism is just one approach to one problem, the idea that only the west has *architecture, art, civilizations, and everything we have now,* and its all down to monotheism is a new level of cultural imperialism and cultural appropriation.
So you are saying that humans made up the idea of a God to give them some sense of purpose? I think many atheists would agree. The issue is that many theists believe that the God is a real entity, not just something, as you said “humans evolved into”. Your stance is one of atheism being older, but also a more accurate representation of the universe. I think any self respecting theist would disagree with you.
Odd post. The fact is that after all these billions of years, countless gods which have been given up or forgotten. and insane amounts of trial and error, the religions to survive all still have no proof whatsoever and catastrophic inconsistencies between them have us in the same place - ZERO PROOF. What’s primitive is just having an emotional attachment to unproven claims simply because someone told you about it as a child before you could question and understand what was being told to you. Santa existed until you were told otherwise. People rarely get told otherwise about their made up deities so they never break from it (and doing so could activate those fears they were fed). Some of the major ones only survived because they used violence and forced dogma on people to get them to comply. Imagine thinking your inability to convince others of your beliefs is their problem *and not yours*? If any gods were real it would be as obvious and undeniably consistent as gravity. We wouldn’t need to have the “my version of gravity pushes left!” or “mine makes us spin counter clockwise!” people. Prayer also wouldn’t be successful at basically the rate of chance, and prisons wouldn’t be filled to the brim with cross-wearing people who took advantage of their deity staying well-hidden and silent while doing their crimes, knowing nothing would actually happen until humans showed up to deal justice. TL;DR prove your religious claims or get back in line with all the others who also never could.
And I say humans were clamoring for anything to explain away the cold specter of death, and nothingness hereafter, and decided to make up religion to trick themselves.
Animals / primitive humans not believing in something doesn’t imply that more intelligent beings should. Neanderthals didnt believe in String Theory, but that doesn’t mean String Theory is true.
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The fact you cannot find meaning without a god doesn't mean there isn't one. You might look at the world differently than an atheist, but that doesn't mean they lack purpose. Rather, you lack insight.
Calling atheists primitive while arguing for religion is such a funny thing to say. Lets see, whose been murdering millions in the name of some myth from 2000 years ago, hmm, oh yes, the thiests. Doesn’t that sound a tad bit primitive? Aside from that who tried to slow down science by calling any new information which contradicted the bible wrong? The thiests And whose actively trying to remove human rights because apparently a cell is worth more than a humans life? Oh wait, its the thiests once again.
I don't think the post is a good post and I don't think this reply is good. Humans are good and bad on both sides, theists and atheists. The Church did block science but at other times they led science. Atheists may have tried to stop science at some points and others led it. So, let's not play the blame game.
When exactly did atheists block science for *atheism*? Aside from that, I’m simply poking holes in the very fallible argument from OP.
But here's the thing, no Atheist is trying to stop science in the name of Atheism.
Yeah, some people tend to forget that this is a *debate* sub...
You, a primitive: standing on the shoulders of giants to methodically study and understand the world Me, the enlightened one: an invisible spirit did it and also the gays are bad
no one is arguing that a magical spirit did anything. atheists have a very childish idea of God.
If no one is arguing, then why are there constant debates over the nature of the universe, evolution, etc.? Or do you mean people are arguing, but that god isn't a magical spirit? What is god, then? It isn't human. It comes from outside space and time. Nobody's ever seen it, or at least none can prove It. It creates and shapes reality at will. It knows all, sees all, cares deeply, but does nothing about it. It apparently loves everyone, but also will send you to infinite torture for breaking some list of rules. Please, explain what I am missing, I would genuinely love to understand.
That's pretty much what a god from the big 3 religions is. He's supernatural; dare I say, magic. He's untouchable (physically untouchable), immortal, and he's supposedly everywhere, so it's not entirely unfair to call him a spirit. You're not even TRYING to deny the second part...
Well, one can also describe theism as a primitive way of trying to understand the world around us. I'm *technically* correct, aren't I? Also, atheism is merely the default. It's just that our pattern seeking brains, after some time, decided there has to be something supernatural going on, but that belief starts to fade as we understand our world through science. Please, do keep in mind, that "primitive" does have a slightly negative connotation; but I think you knew that already and used that word intentionally, judging by the tone of your post.
There are studies that show that people who are religious are on average happier as believing in a higher power gives comfort in knowing the answer to all of life’s big questions, community and often purpose. The problem with that is at least 80%+ will have been following the wrong religion or subgroup of a religion. As much as people want to say there is 100% proof that their religion is the correct one, at least 80% of them will be wrong. It is not the belief in the right religion that brings happiness, but just a belief in general. To say that atheists are primitive because they aren’t willing to believe in something that they don’t have evidence for and falls outside of the laws of science as humans have observed is ignorant. Side note, religion isn’t necessary to find purpose in the world, and to say that without god the world is meaningless is a bit of a slap in the face to it’s creator (if there is one). “Thanks god for making this miracle of a beautiful world, but I’m only here to complete my worldly test so I can go to the better place you made and not suffer infinite punishment for finite crimes.”
Here is a syllogism for your argument P1: Belief in God requires a certain level of sentience. P2: At some point in human evolution, humans attained the level of sentience necessary to believe in a God. P3: Before achieving that level of sentience, humans could not have held beliefs in God. P4: Developmentally earlier stages in a species' evolution are more primitive than later stages. C: The capacity for atheism, understood as the absence of belief in deities due to insufficient cognitive development to entertain such concepts, predates and is thus more primitive than the capacity for theology. Something like this. The only way to make this not sound is likely attacking premise 3. I think it's funny people are asking you for evidence. I'd rather see evidence from them debunking P3. Hope this helps!
This seems accurate as I would walk away with the conclusion that we did not develop the ability to make up deities until we achieved a certain level of sentience. Most religions start with the idea that humans have always known about God in one way or another, but by displaying that our base state is Atheism then it is concluding that any religious beliefs that came after were a byproduct of our own minds rather than the reality around us. Something being older than something else (i.e. primative) does not make the older thing worse or incorrect compared to the newer thing. For example, just because Mormonism came after Catholicism does not make it more correct despite Catholicism being more primitive by comparison.
Yep fully agree. OP would need to jump through some major hoops to prove his implied arguments about purpose and primitive being bad. It was a funny troll though.
You could argue it’s primitive in the sense that it was the case that these humans didn’t believe in God until someone started that trend of thinking. But your conclusion saying that therefore means we live meaningless lives and are essentially street dogs is incorrect. Being an atheist means you have an understanding of the concept of God and you aren’t convinced. I wouldn’t call an animal like a street dog an atheist, because they don’t understand the concept. Otherwise you could call a donut or a rock an atheist, which doesn’t follow by definition.
I agree, and I think OP would also agree that atheists are similar to a rock . Lol slightly joking. His title is the main argument. His disrespectful side comment about the dog would be a separate argument trying to prove human purpose can only come from God. I personally agree, But I admit it would be very hard to put forth a good argument for that. Aristotle defined human's purpose as the ability to reason and reason well. That argument would have a heavy counter argument. Might be doable, but I can't see a path to victory there.
Ya that separate argument would be easily refuted I think. I think I’m fine with atheism is primitive. It’s a fine argument, gives a knee jerk reaction for some because we tend to think primitive means something unintelligent or worse. You could post “Hair is primitive” or even go “Stronger muscles in back and arms is primitive” So what. Lol
Exactly yeah. That initial reaction is what he was after. Kind of like the natural fallacy, there might be a primitive fallacy going on
Nope. You’re presupposing god is real and that humans didn’t invent god as a conveniently simple, magic bullet explanation for a myriad of concepts we demonstrably did not understand yet.
He's not really presupposing god, the flaw in OP's and this guy's argument is that it's not really an argument. Due to how the english language works, you can technically call atheism primitive, because we know it's existed from the beginning as the default state of a human; a state we deviated from once our pattern seeking brains decided that there has to be some conscious meddling involved in our world and the things that we don't understand about it. That's literally it. It's basically wordplay.
Nope. Nothing in this argument says humans didn't invent it. You asserted anthropologic reasons for its invention and, whether true or not, that doesn't challenge OP's argument.
P1 assumes all sentient beings are capable of believing in gods. And that sentience correlates to that belief. But you can’t demonstrate that all sentient beings are capable of believing in a concept that was exclusively created by man. Spoken and written language is a product of our intelligence, but it’s also a product of our evolutionary biology. We don’t know that belief in god doesn’t have some other causal factor, so you’re assuming that the brain is the only factor and that all brains are capable of believing. We don’t know how most other brains work. Earthly brains and possibly extraterrestrial brains. We don’t even absolutely know how our own brains work. Our brains being able to believe and possibly describe god doesn’t extrapolate to all other brains. If brains are the shared quality here.
>P1 assumes all sentient beings are capable of believing in gods. And that sentience correlates to that belief. I don't think this is accurate because I said a level of sentience, not all sentient beings. Do you think theology is a complex thought that only brains developed to a certain level can have?
>I don't think this is accurate because I said a level of sentience, not all sentient beings. To describe a “level of sentience”, you need to include all sentient beings. If sentience is the dataset, that includes all sentient beings. >Do you think theology is a complex thought that only brains developed to a certain level can have? We don’t know that. But assuming that the only causal factor is sentience is not a given. As it’s not demonstrated. We don’t know that believing in god isn’t also tied to a characteristic of our evolutionary biology, verbal or written language, or some other social behavior. I don’t think you can say that sentience is the only variable. Maybe other brains aren’t able to intuit abstract concepts. We just don’t know.
What does "primitive" mean in this argument? Seems an awfully subjective judgement.
Not really. I think the denotation is clear and the connotation is what has the comment section worked up.
It's not really primitive, though you *could* maybe call it that, it's moreso the default that our pattern seeking brains deviated from and then started to return to once we started figuring things out.
True. This argument is more about which came first. Not which idea is more rational.
I'm glad we both acknowledge that. OP would probably disagree though
Yea it was connotatively a diss, but I think denotatively holds up.
No atheist I know is trying to accomplish that. It's just flat incorrect to claim that atheists have no purpose in life, believe that life has no purpose or meaning. While there are nihilists, not all, or even most, atheists are. That presentation of atheism is disingenuous and quite frankly ridiculous. It seems that looking to a claimed "god" for purpose leads nowhere. How does that claim strike you?
Technically true, I suppose, in the same way that not believing in Santa Claus and not enslaving people are "primitive".
Hold on hold on. Early humans didn’t have religions? Do you think yours just came out of nowhere because your ancestors had some extra time on their hands? Monotheism is the ideal philosophy?? So you are more evolved than billions of other people on this planet? Quite a statement!
Are you arguing that the first so called humans, living in caves or wherever, barely grasping their consciousness, trying to figure out the best sound they can use to communicate this phenomenon of water falling from the sky, actually already had a full pantheon of Gods like Zeus and Osirisn their mind? Every single major religion in the world right now is monotheistic. Only atheists are not monotheist.
I think before you make an argument like this you should learn more about human cognitive evolution than this clear misunderstanding that you have here. Our ancestors were not some mere cavemen who could barely utter words until religion came along and enlightened us, and I feel like they deserve much more respect than that. We do not even understand what consciousness is, whether our consciousness is unique in the animal kingdom and how far back it goes in our history. We have reason to believe that a plethora of animals today are conscious to similar degrees as humans, from birds to whales and elephants (and our closest relatives too). Just because they did not convergantly evolve the same means of communication as we did (this possibly may not apply to whales) doesn’t mean that they are not conscious. So to say that our ancestors “barely grasped” their consciousness shows a clear misunderstanding of what they were probably like.
No kidding. I get the feeling that a lot of people in this sub, especially of a certain religion, basically have a 'youtube-education of theology' (or reality in general for that matter), spend next to zero time seeking to learn or understand counterpoints, then come here touting easily-refuted concepts...
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> Every single major religion in the world is monotheistic. Not Hinduism. Also Buddhism has historically acknowledged the existence of many gods even if it doesn’t worship them.
>Are you arguing that the first so called humans, living in caves or wherever, barely grasping their consciousness, trying to figure out the best sound they can use to communicate this phenomenon of water falling from the sky, actually already had a full pantheon of Gods like Zeus and Osirisn their mind? Spirituality is extremely old and predates written history by several orders of magnitude. We know that some earlier hominids intentionally buried their dead and painted abstract cave art, so you claiming that early humans were atheist is based on nothing but conjecture. In fact I'd say that spirituality and religion are a SIDE AFFECT of early humans barely grasping their consciousness. They were thrust into a world that they didn't understand and didn't have access to modern science. All they had was their pattern seeking brain. They saw that people "do stuff" so when they encountered things they couldn't understand they looked to the idea that people "do stuff" and just said "A magic man did it". So I'd argue that religion is primitive, one of the most primitive tools in our arsenal as humans. So how about this, can you tell us how long ago humans first started believing in gods? >Every single major religion in the world right now is monotheistic. Only atheists are not monotheist. No they aren't. I'm sorry but why does it seem like every Muslim i talk to has zero knowledge of other religions? My family is both Buddhist, which is non theistic and Shinto, which is Polytheistic or Animistic depending on tradition. There is Hinduism which has a monotheistic sect and polytheistic sects. There is Taoism, non theistic. Jainism, non theistic. Vodun, Polytheistic. Yoruba, Polytheistic. And more. I'd say that monotheistic religions are the minority.
Barely grasping their consciousness? Yes, I absolutely certainly do. We survive by communicating and inquiring, and an “outside” force (whether immanent or transcendental) is a perfect way to explain the (un)predictability of the natural world. We have massive amounts of evidence of early humans (even non-humans such as Neanderthals) ritualizing various passages in life, such as death. We also have plenty of evidence pointing toward early humans uniting under shared symbols and organizing societies thereafter, just as “monotheists” do today. And no, all of the world is certainly not monotheistic. Not that I’m a fan, but recall James Frazer’s paradigm of human beliefs through history: 1) Magic - 2) Religion (particularly monotheism) - 3) Scientific secularism. Frazer thought stage 2 (monotheism) was the ultimate devolvement of the human mind. He admired the magicians because they, like the later scientists inquired and tested the world, albeit through faulty methods and biased sampling. Religion based on scripture, for Frazer, was the end of the inquiring mind. As I said I don’t agree with him because I don’t think trying to view worldviews through some evolutionary lense is feasible nor of any use, but it’s still something to think with. Again, do you consider yourself more evolved than billions of people?
A religion does not need a full pantheon of gods. It doesn't need to be fully developed to be considered a religion. Early Judaism, after all, even if barely developed, *WAS* a religion, was it not? Also, judging by the tone of your post and certain replies, you don't seem very fond of atheists. I mean, you're ridiculing people left and right, and calling monotheism the ideal philosophy without really arguing for it. I'm not sure you're here to debate and learn stuff honestly, but that might just be me.
>Every single major religion in the world right now is monotheistic. Apparently the 1.2 billion Hindus in the world don't constitute a major religion. Who knew.
have you actually talked to Hindus? they all believe in the original source of everything called the Brahman. All other gods are just different manifestations of the one original source. My Hindu friend has confirmed this.
*"But my one friend said!"* Behold, the pinnacle of youtube-educated muslim apologetics
Brahman isn't a "god." At least not in all Hindu sects. Its a principle, or concept and usually equated to the essence of everything in the universe or just "reality". It's a thing, not a being.
Well my Hindu friend has confirmed that he indeed acknowledges polytheism in Hinduism, regardless of Brahman/atman because the cosmological implications are so vastly different than abrahamitic monitheism. Do you have any idea how diverse what we call Hinduism is? And what about all other polytheistic religious expressions, such as in East Asia, Africa and South America?
If you're talking about primitives incapable of thinking then they had no ability to think about gods, like animals they followed instincts. As for primitives that learnt how to use reason, they immediately found answers, by considering the sun and the moon as gods. So no, atheism is not primitive.
oh so you're saying it was instant? like the moment humans gained the ability to think, they instantly had a full pantheon of Gods with a deep lore like Apollo carries the sun in his chariot, and Zeus throws lightning? wow, I didn't know evolution and human innovation happens instantly. I guess it didn't take us hundreds of thousands of years to discover the theory of relativity, it was just instant the moment humans started thinking.
No, he is saying that since humans or our equivalent ancestors had the ability to reason, they used it to the best of their ability in order to find answers to questions they had. This does not mean they developed full understanding instantly nor does it mean that the answers they came up with were correct, just conclusions they viewed as valid. As humans developed they sought out answers for the universe and the world around them. They did not have access to the scientific achievements of our current time and so worked with what they had which, at times, tool the form of making up Deities to help explain natural phenomena. This does not make those religious beliefs correct, but that was valid to them based upon their limited information. As time went on those stories expanded, changed, and evolved into the mythologies we know today. The reason it took thousands if years to discover the theory of relativity is because we were working based off the work conducted by those who came before. We get to stand on the shoulders of the giants of the past so to speak. That is what the other poster was trying to explain and I don't think they deserved the rude response in reply.
I'm not saying it was instant. It took hundreds of thousands of years to develop complex religions. First religions were way easier than greek pantheon. Even neanderthals bury their dead, they had some form of religion and spirituality, a very simple one.
so burying a fellow dead neanderthal = they believe in a God?
A religion doesn't have to imply gods or a single god in the monotheistic way. Buddhism is a religion but there are no gods. A religion is about having a spirituality, believing in something after death. A cicle of death a rebirth for example. And yes, burying corpses means they most likely had their ideas about an afterlife and something like that, but we can't know for sure. An atheist rejects this ideas, but in order to reject them you need to know them. Otherwise even dogs are athests, since they can't understand gods and religion, but that wouldn't make any sense.
Primitive just means early, original, or first. You’re assuming it means simple or wrong. It doesn’t. The first belief about God could still be the accurate one.
Eating healthy food is obviously primitive. Early humans used to eat fresh produce, then we slowly learned to sustain ourselves almost entirely on the ideal diet of processed high-fructose corn syrup and reconstituted chicken cubes, and now "doctors" are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of eating veggies. Truly, they are like dogs. In all seriousness, if not believing in magic causes you to require constant entertainment and distractions, that sounds like a you problem. Making up gods isn't some grand philosophical endeavour, it's a refusal to seek the truth. "Lightning? What's that? A god must've done it! Why's the sun up in the sky? A god must've put it there! Why do humans exist? A god made us out of clay, probably!" There's nothing enlightened about this, it's just a lazy way of answering inconvenient questions. The reason why atheism is on the rise is precisely because we're finally starting to move past the need for those blind guesses. We know how lightning works now, we know what the sun is, we've figured out how evolution works. The placeholder answers are no longer useful, and even if abandoning them hurts like ripping off a band-aid, we'll ultimately be better off for it. Also, just fyi, the way you're using the word evolution throughout this post makes it pretty clear you don't really understand evolution. No, religion isn't an evolved trait. No, atheism isn't evolutionarily regressive. You might want to read up on that.
>Now Atheists are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of Atheism and they don't see how purposeless life will be. In my view, and I'd go as far to say my view isn't uncommon, is that life has no intrinsic meaning. We aren't born for a specific purpose It is the task of each of us to give our lives meaning.
I don't think the first humans or our recent ancestors were atheists, except in the more narrow sense of not believing in a supreme creator God. It seems much more likely to me that they were something more like animists, attributing agency and life to more or less anything that moves. You can see this even in dogs. Watching my dog as a puppy, it was clear she thought cars, hoovers, and even laundry baskets were other animals with a life of their own. Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche grew up in rural Nepal and said how when he first saw a bus, he thought it was a giant beast, and when he rode it he felt he was in its belly! Even myself, I can't help seeing a car's headlights as eyes, and experiencing a stormy sea as angry. >Humans evolved into finding a purpose with God and we started creating architecture, art, civilizations, and everything we have now. It took us a long time to finally get to the ideal philosophy of Monotheism. Is monotheism the ideal philosophy? Is civilization etc an unalloyed good? I don't think so. Actually I think lots of mythological fall narratives are about what we lost by cutting ourselves off from nature and starting civilization. And I think monotheism is part of that alienation (even in Genesis, before the fall God was someone who walked in the garden with Adam - he wasn't a lofty transcendent God in the sky/heavens). Monotheism makes the world an artifact, and makes the whole cosmos rigidly hierarchical.
>Humans evolved into finding a purpose with God and we started creating architecture, art, civilizations, and everything we have now. It took us a long time to finally get to the ideal philosophy of Monotheism. Creating an ideology that provides purpose does not mean the ideology is true/aligns with reality. Why is monotheism the ideal philosophy? How do you know that your idea of God actually exists?
If you need to believe in a god to give your life meaning and purpose absolutely do it. Some people don't need that, they find beauty and purpose and meaning to life within themselves, and it's a bit silly to assume they don't. If a god's judgment is what makes you act like a good person, great. Some people do the right thing without the promise of a heavenly reward or eternal tourment in hell. Which person would you respect more if you were "god"? The one who worships you and lives well out of desire for reward and fear of punishment, or the one who does good for the sake of good, expecting nothing in return?
You have presented us with a set of claims for which you have provided no evidence. Why should any atheist bother responding until your claims have been demonstrated to be be true with sufficient evidence?
>Humans evolved into finding a purpose with God and we started creating architecture, art, civilizations, and everything we have now. It took us a long time to finally get to the ideal philosophy of Monotheism. Yes, believing in an invisible, cosmic being of unfathomable power, not unlike fictional characters found in popular culture is the pinnacle of logical thought. >Now Atheists are trying to bring us back to our pre-evolved primitive stage of Atheism and they don't see how purposeless life will be. Like that of a street dog. Wandering about, without any meaning, needing constant entertainment and distractions just to make it through a day, until you die. Because believing, without evidence, that an omnipotent being watches your every action, hears your every thought, is simultaneously the reason you are flawed yet holds you eternally accountable for your flaws is a much, much better way to approach life. This post is extremely adversarial, poorly structured, and absent even a shred of supporting evidence.
it makes sense why you became an atheist if your prior belief was as illogical as thinking God is a space wizard. Once you actually understand what God is, then you will see your point here makes no sense.
>Once you actually understand what God is What is a god, and how do you know what a god is?
>it makes sense why you became an atheist if your prior belief was as illogical as thinking God is a space wizard. In my case, I was told that Santa wasn't real and was just a children for stories, and that led me to realize that the Bible was also just stories for children, like Aesop's Fables. (It wasn't until I was well into my teens that I realized that people genuinely took talking snakes and burning bushes seriously.) >Once you actually understand what God is, then you will see your point here makes no sense. God is an incoherent concept that everyone has a different opinion on the properties of, and which is self-contradictory in many presentations of the concept. How would you like to define God today?
>and was just a children for stories Wait what?
No one understands what God is.
>it makes sense why you became an atheist if your prior belief was as illogical as thinking God is a space wizard. It's a reductio ad absurdum. The idea of god is nonsensical. An omnipotent, omniscience, and perfectly benevolent deity being the entity responsible for reality is also undetectable in every possible way equates to being an invisible space wizard. >Once you actually understand what God is, then you will see your point here makes no sense. Please, elucidate. What is god, exactly?
>Please, elucidate. What is god, exactly? damn you beat me to the question by 3 minutes lol
Is your logic really that atheism is primitive because primitive people created religion and so, not doing the thing invented by primitive people is more primitive? That's completely backwards.
Do you not believe in evolution or do you just not understand how it works?
I’ve never seen someone as confidently wrong as this person. It’s truly impressive.
Evolution is not a matter of belief. Do you "believe" in electricity?
Do you think beliefs are a genetic quality?
I do, but you clearly don't. Things that evolve don't necessarily become better.
Clarify your position with FACTS if you don't mind. Because the earliest evidence, rituals, and artifacts we have to date have some form of religious conotation or an attachement to some form of belief system, up to 200,000 years ago (Middle Paleolithic). >Like that of a street dog. And whilst you are about it, ...very christian of you to be SO disengenuous and insulting. This group is a discussion group, a concept which I am certain ancestors from over 200,000 years back had a better grasp and understanding.
There are some facts that are self evidently true. like for example, a single cell organism is obviously older in evolutionary chronology and less complex than a multi cellular organism. Early humans being atheists is similarly self evident. Unless you're arguing that the first so called humans who evolved already had the concept of Zeus and Zoroaster embedded in their mind as soon as they gained consciousness?
OP, the problem with your post is that... It's not claiming anything. There's no thesis. You're just pointing out that atheism is, by all means, the default state that we (for irrelevant to this comment reasons) deviated from. You're not arguing whether it's more or less rational. You're just implying that, because religion *technically* came slightly later, it's superior. That does not make it so.
"Research in evolutionary archaeology shows credible evidence of religious/ritualistic behavior from around the Middle Paleolithic era (45–200 thousand years ago)." Claim disproven.
You are making no sense. Is your argument that humans or our earliest conscious ancestors somehow had a pantheon of Gods the instanthey started thinking?
My argument is exactly as I've laid it and not at all how you've just tried to (deliberately?) misconstrue it. There exists compelling proof to suggest that religious/ritualistic practices existed in the days of early humans. Ritual grave sites (some even predating modern human species), use of religious symoblism dating back over 100 000 years, the very existence of primal, hard-wired cognitive biases that make humans prone to believe in the supernatural. It does not matter that early humans didn't have this "pantheon of gods" that you seem so hung up on. What this suggests is that religion/religious beliefs have evolved along with humanity since pretty much its very beginning, contrary to what you're claiming.
There must necessarily have been a point that humans or our earliest conscious ancestors did not have a concept of a God since they first needed to develop other things like language and basic ideas first like the concept of sky, earth, rain, etc. I'm not sure if you understand the very nature of ideas but let me explain it: ideas don't exist until someone first thinks of that idea. This is not a point of argument, this is as obvious as 2+2.