The Origin of the Religions - Part 1: Egomania

[notself]

Perhaps Dagda is a Poe.  He has claimed to be a Christian but objects when poster start applying logic to the Christian god.  He says that his definition is different.  Dagda said that if I started a thread he would explain his definition of his god.  I started it some time ago and he has yet to answer my questions.  

Dagda, why won't you answer my questions?

[Dagda]

I do apologies for my last post. Being dyslexic I usually run my posts through a spell check, but for some reason it decided to switch itself off. With no red lines under my work I assumed (rather foolishly) that I had just completed a post error free. Apparently not. The ‘atheists believe in God’ was a typo. Even people as perfect as me make mistakes from time to time.

I see I can’t argue with you Ivan, you have already decided you have won. For instance, as I am very interested in the subject matter I would like to read some of your source material. For some reason you think having to state your source material would be a sign of weakness. And why do you keep mentioning tit-for-tat? I actually agree with Dawkins that anyone making a claim should back it up with hard evidence. As I have already written, your statement does not class as evidence. Where is the science, philosophy or even archaeological source to back up your claim?

Notself, I am not objecting to logical claims made about the Christian God, I object to claims being made about religion (or anything else for that matter) without verifiable evidence. How can you compete with someone who thinks his/her opinion is valid evidence for the Origin of Religion?
I haven’t answered because I have not been online. Work and all that.

[Kylyssa]

There is a theory that religion began around 25000 BCE. The evidence comes from archeological finds of artifacts and drawing found in different locations around the globe. At this time god was a woman commonly known as the"Mother goddess" or "Earth Mother. The most famous artfact is the so called "Venus of Willendorf".

http://witcombe.sbc.edu/willendorf/

Statues similar to this have been found in India, China, Europe, Africa, The Middle East, Egypt and Crete.
Some of the suggested reasons for worshipping this "Earth mother" include the representation of the fertile earth, the fact that mothers were seen as the source of life (this was before the knowledge that men played a part in fertilisation) and the deification of ancestoral females.
Here are some references:
http://www.carnaval.com/goddess/#Marija
http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2000/stone2.html
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/pia/pr ... vol5/9.pdf
http://www.inhumandecency.org/christine/eisler.html
http://www.kaogu.cn/en/detail.asp?ProductID=2158

I've always wondered if maybe it wasn't just some art form.  Artists often create the female form and a fat woman in ancient times would likely have been va-va-va-voom!  There weren't little descriptive plaques found with them, after all.

It seems like people build up a lot of speculation around an artifact or two and create whole ancient religions based on them sometimes.  People also see religion in everything if they are religious or hoping to find religious significance.