I don’t see how it could have started in just one place and spread. I mean, the need to explain stuff surely arose independently many times—how else to explain so many things? Humans just seem to take to belief pretty easily. You can explain it by considering that the fact that so many people believe in Something might be proof that there is Something to believe in...or you can accept the rational explanation. Take your pick and lay your bet.
I don’t think it started in one place, but I do think it started very early when most human groups were near each other geographically. Surely two separated groups of people would wonder what lightning was, and the human drive to explain things would result in a belief arising. These two groups would then have bumped into each other and exchanged beliefs. They would then incorporate or reject any new beliefs they encountered, possibly replacing or augmenting their own. I think that very likely an organized belief system first arose among these groups, growing and solidying as they intermingled. By the time large groups started migrating to Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Americas these systems were already in place, though they then evolved into quite distinct forms once it became harder to share beliefs because of distance.
I don’t see how it could have started in just one place and spread. I mean, the need to explain stuff surely arose independently many times—how else to explain so many things? Humans just seem to take to belief pretty easily. You can explain it by considering that the fact that so many people believe in Something might be proof that there is Something to believe in...or you can accept the rational explanation. Take your pick and lay your bet.
Agreed.
By the way, as I slowly left Christianity, for a long time, I held that belief that you talk about. (With the Something.)
It just struck me as so interesting that, for example, basically ever major religion has a version of The Golden Rule. And even Jesus, when asked what was the most important Commandment, said it was that.
My opinion has change somewhat since that time, though. A study of human evolutionary history shows that no groups of humans arose without that basic idea of “reciprocal altruism”, which even chimps and bonobos exhibit.
Still, it’s very interesting to note that most major religions have The Golden Rule at their core.
I don’t see it as being all that unusual. The idea of ‘Don’t hurt me or I’ll hurt you’ is a very basic concept in our interactions with others. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is simply the same concept, just worded a bit less threateningly. And frankly such behaviour is shown by almost all animals, I suspect. Certainly ones that have any sort of social organization.
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Of course “organized religion,” which I think is what you really mean by “religion,” ...
You’re quite right, m’ dear. I just like to simplify things. From the dictionary. religion: “a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices” faith:"firm belief in something for which there is no proof” which could also mean the doctrines of a religion.
But yes, it’s all about potential and use. One can believe in the end of the world and kill people, and one can be part of a religious organisation to live in servitude to others.
To quote from Terry Pratchett’s “the Hogfather”. Death:"The sun would not have risen.”, Grandaughter:"Then what would have happened?” Death:"A mere ball of flaming gas would have illuminated the world.” ... Death:"Humans need fantasies to be human.”
When making these fantasies into an explanation for the “Why” of the world you deal with, they become faith. Something quite natural for humans, if you remember your own childhood, and so assumingly also for the early humans.
It is when people come together and talk that faith grows, changes and becomes a religion. Either personal or for the whole group. Which in itself is good, as it can prevent grand delusions and give a guideline for your life and that of the group. You can even add direct social rules to it, rather than implied ones.
Religion becomes dangerous when it is not from the individuals, but from the group. Meaning that instead of originating from ever changing stories, following the changing world and needs of the group, it becomes a defining trait of the group, to be held unchanging, a doctrine, set in stone (or a book), that becomes the purpose for the group’s existence. Then the individuals that do not fit according to the religion, can never be part of the group. And a world that cannot be explained by the doctrines is either ignored or destroyed.
I don’t see it as being all that unusual. The idea of ‘Don’t hurt me or I’ll hurt you’ is a very basic concept in our interactions with others. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is simply the same concept, just worded a bit less threateningly. And frankly such behaviour is shown by almost all animals, I suspect. Certainly ones that have any sort of social organization.
Not nearly in the degree you see in chimps, bonobos, and humans. Animals will hurt each other all the time. Heck, a lot of social animals that are pack animals will fight (even to the death) just to be Alpha.
But the most important concept here is the idea of group punishment. If someone is found to be defecting (harming others without cause) they are removed from the group in one way or another. (Even bonobos do this.) We do it with shunning to jail to execution - depending on the offense. That’s the different. If you have a pack of woloves and two fight and one kills the second, the first will remain in the pack with no problems. That’s a major difference.
The thing I wonder about is whether religion arose independently among separate human groups or if it arose just once very early on and was spread around the globe via contact and migration. I tend to think any solitary human group will create a belief system as part of their attempts to understand the world around them, and that this belief probably started very early in our development into societies. The seeds for a belief system would then have been carried everywhere humans eventually wound up, often bumping into other original beliefs along the way. Things one group believed that seemed to make sense would be incorporated into another group willingly at first, and unwillingly later as such beliefs became more organized and concrete.
I personally believe that religion or a belief in a supreme other is inherent in all of mankind. Religion, developed both seperately and grouply,(grouply?) is what man develops in order to deal with that hole we often see in ourselves when alone in the dark with our own souls. Trapped in these ivory cells we call skulls, we yearn to reach out and not remain totally isolated. Even in the best of relationships, there is still some distance because no two brains percieve the world in the same way. Many religions grow out of this need to ‘be one’ with something greater than ourselves.
Many, unable to ‘feel’ this connection, tout religion as a construct and immaterial. I personally have seen amazing changes in persons and lifestyles overnight when people come to a realization and acceptance of this ‘other’. I have a tough time seeing this as anything else than a distinct reaction to an active interaction between that person and something. If it were just a set of rules and regs that were imposed upon society in order to control the masses, one would not see this level of personal change, in my opinion.
I think the major problem one finds with ‘organized religion’ is not in the rule/belief systems themselves, but rather with injecting them with the ‘human factor’. No matter what system you look at, there are always going to be those people who want to have control and tell others what to do. They want power. Pure and simple. One sees this whether they look at economic, political, or yes, religious systems. These people quite often ‘poison the well’ for those who cannot seperate the offending person from the system they operate within. In their eyes, all members of that system are guilty of the offense, perhaps because they did not stop it from occuring in the first place.
When one takes an unbiased (hard to due when eveything we do is in some way biased) look at many religions, at their intent, one finds that the offender is guilty of breaking one or more of the tenants of the very system they operate within!The offender therefore cannot represent the belief system, only their own version of it.
I know I am probably rambling. What I am trying to say in short, is that most of the time people that have a problem with religion, actually have a problem with the people in that religion, not the religion itself. They just blame the religion for allowing those people to exist! (Instead of understanding that people like that is the reason that the religion exists in the first place!)
I have a tough time seeing this as anything else than a distinct reaction to an active interaction between that person and something.
And I see it as an inbalance in an otherwise stable mind.
Weeeelllll. I guess you could call it schizophrenic or something when someone goes from be an alcoholic. wife beating schlub overnight to being what one would consider a pillar of the community. (Full time job, counselling alcoholics, etc.) Not something I’ve read, something I have seen. One night he is raging drunk, unable to break his grip on a bottle/can, the next day he is cleaned up, sober, and never has another drink (or by his admission the desire for one...)
And his wife says he is a defferent, kind, caring person now. Never lays a hand on her in anger or to cause pain.
I just like to simplify things. From the dictionary. religion: “a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices” faith:"firm belief in something for which there is no proof” which could also mean the doctrines of a religion.
