Well, that says a lot to me. If natural selection generally led to man having faculties through which religious belief is an emergent property…
No. We don’t really know. A popular theory is that the discovery of farming and domestication of livestock is what grew civilizations (I think this is far more accepted as a “cause” than religion). It is a possibility that religion slowed things down. We don’t know. To assert it is what caused civilization is unfounded.
There is correlation with religion being introduced and scientific discovery dropping off a cliff (see Islam). The Arabs were leading the world in science and math, post Islam they are near the bottom of contributors. I only say correlation as this is what it is.
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We don’t know? It happened. Atheistic secularism was pretty much a non starter…
How do you know that?
It fed agricultural civilizations. Shared religious beliefs provided binding clue. A creed that existed even prior to agriculture. Even helping to make that even possible.
I’ll Just leave this here. JP did a biblical series where he went through Genesis. This is the first part. And he kinda addresses what you wrote above.
So if you have two and a half hours to spare or half that if you can watch on 2x speed check it out. Really worthwhile.
And just a bit of commentary for the lecture. I love his approach. He reduces it down to its most simplistic form and looks at it from an evolutionary perspective. Which has allowed an atheist like me to have such a newfound appreciation for religion. It is so much more than Bronze age fairy tales. I don’t think many people are capable of the sort of abstract thinking required to appreciate this. Including me. I had to have it spelled out for me in crayon. Hope you get a chance to check it out.
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That religious belief has by far been the dominant accompaniment to human society and civilization in comparison to atheistic secularism?
I’ll actually have to watch that. Been aware of it and curious. Just never got around to it.
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That isn’t an answer to how you know. You are just asserting that it bound people together and therefore growth of civilization. I understand that it is believable, but not provable with what you have given me.
That doesn’t show causation though. Belief in a flat earth has been the dominant accompaniment to civilization in comparison to a belief in a round earth. Maybe it was caused by a belief in a flat earth.
My friend, almost all religions transcend mere questions about the shape of the earth.
The how we ought to behave. Religion did/does a lot more than provide an after life because we’re too cowardly to be atheists. Those shared ideas provided enough tranquility to allow some sort of collection of people to even sit in place and tend to livestock and crops with at least some reasonable assurance about their neighbors and passer-bys.
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So, how do you know your world view could have done better with the earliest of humankind? Leading to societies and Civilizations? Are you trying to use this teensy tiny sliver of human history to cast backwards? And whose “good” and “better” are you using to judge it?
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So eternal annihilation of the consciousness is the worst fate?
Edit: I’ll try to keep up but might get too busy for the next few hours. Thanks for the civil chat!
This is a shifting of burden of proof. You claimed it was religion that caused the rise of civilization (and that other outlooks are based upon it). I am questioning how you know that. How does your question to me help us get to the truth of your claim?
No, I’m asking you. If you’re not trying to suggest as much, fine.
I’m offering you the utility of religion. And the fact that it did ascend with humanity far and wide. Atheistic secularism? Not so much. Infancy.
Seriously, gotta go. Time to get supper on the stove.
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I guess my position is that we don’t really know what exactly added to or took away from the building of civilization. I don’t think we can tell what would happen if religion never existed. Maybe we would be living in a terrible world that is like an apocalypse. Maybe we would be living in some star trek utopia.
There is correlation between new religions and the decline of math and science discoveries in the population that adopts the new religion. I admit this is only correlation, but it is contradictory to the idea that it helped build civilization (assuming math and science are good for civilization).
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Well, for one humankind likely wouldn’t either, I bet. Can you honestly imagine it not existing with the entry of mankind on the stage? I think the only way religion doesn’t come into existence is if man doesn’t either.
Maybe some kind of differently evolved reptilian thing.
Stew ain’t going to cook itself.
It was during Islam that “Arab” culture flourished as that’s when they came into possession of the writing of the ancient Greeks. They were also influenced by India (look at their number system). Political infighting, intrigues and war, as well the rise of fundamentalism (and Europe’s military and scientific advancements as well as the Age of Discovery), is what brought the Arab world back to the Dark Ages.
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Yeah I just read his post about Islam and immediately thought about the Islamic golden age, their preservation of Greek literature and advancement of science that Europeans only picked back up during the Renaissance …
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It could be argued that Catholicism/Christianity in Europe precipitated the Enlightenment.
I believe religion can be an adaptive component in society and that man evolved to be religious. However have you ever looked into societies with different religions?