Happy Atheist Forum

So I've been thinking lately about how the concepts of gods evolved over the past few thousand years.  What did it start as and how did it become "truth"?  I've heard lots of interesting hypotheses on the subject but none of them seem to cover all the bases (so to speak).  I was wondering everyones thoughts on the subject.  Here are a few I've heard and tell me what you think of them.

Early man was a tool maker.  One day early man looks at a forest or a sun set and thinks to him/herself, "I made this shovel and this ax, but who made this forest?"  Which is a flawed question to be sure but that is one origin theory for the gods.  Though that doesn't explain how it lead to worship (or really the many animal gods that early man believed in).

Then there is the gambler one.  A study was done on pigeons years ago where they taught it to hit a button and food would be dispensed.  After a while they changed it so the pigeon would only get food for hitting the button some of the time.  What they found was similar to what you see at casinos where people are superstitious when playing a machine.  The bird, for example, would look left and hit the button and get food then would think that looking left had something to do with it so it would always look left before hitting the button.  This was compared to religious rituals and such where the people would do something and something good would happen so they'd keep doing it.  This would explain how some of the ideas came about but not nearly all of them.

Also there is also the great lie.  An early man sees the biggest guy in the village kill someone for fun.  Knowing that this could be him next time he tells the biggest guy in the village that he could kill anyone he wanted ... but karma is a bitch and an invisible sky daddy would punish him.  The biggest are often times not the brightest ... but regardless he believed this and this was the beginning of the gods concepts.

Anyway these are just a few i've heard.  What do you all think about how the god concept originated of evolved?  How did polytheism or monotheism come into play?  And where do you think this god concept will go in the future?

Quote from: "LoneMateria"What do you all think about how the god concept originated of evolved?

Drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.

Pretend you're in a world where the concept of god or a higher being had never been conceived, but everything else is the same as today (technology, etc., yes i know tech would be way more advanced that's not the point).  Now imagine you are sitting around with your friends in a park/bar/whatever and some guy/gal starts talking about this being called god that loves you and created you but you must profess your love or after you die you're going to a place where you'll suffer for all of time.  What would be your first reaction?

Like I said.

Drugs.
[spoiler:25jd50ex]Jesus smoked opium[/spoiler:25jd50ex]

Quote from: "LoneMateria"What do you all think about how the god concept originated of evolved?

I think early man began to realize that certain acts of nature couldn't be explained. What was the sun? Why does it move across the sky? Why do the plants tend to grow better when the sun is out? It is warmer when the sun is out usually. This is a pretty important deal I reckon. What about the moon? Sometimes it's a circle, sometimes a sliver... but why? What about the stars. Some are slow movers, others wander. Some flicker, some don't. Some are reddish but don't show up all the time. What's going on here?

Lightning? Rain? Hail? Earthquakes? Floods? Volcanoes? Eclipses? Meteor showers? Tides? Snow? Tornadoes?

Of course, everyone of these things are explained, often by middle school science is complete.

All of these things couldn't be explained back then, but early man was beginning to question these and other types of ideas and needed an explanation. It's no wonder many gods have been nothing more than natural events anthropomorphized.

Hismikeness

To my mind, the most likely explanation of how gods originated is that they evolved out of ancestor and hero worhip and (as Hismikeness mentioned) the anthropomorhisation of natural phenomena. I don't think early man was looking for an idea to explain the world around them; I think it was largely based on assumption and not really questioned until much later.

How do you like this idea?

God did not create mankind. It was man who created godkind or should I say theoity? I do not know. What I do know, after reading about most of the ancient cultures in the world, is that gods are the product of a combination of ignorance and necessity. The men who dwelt in caves did not know how nature worked. Everything amazed them. Rain, volcanoes, thunders, and all natural phenomena were an enigma to them. Since they did not know why or how they came to be, they thought superior beings were behind them. If you notice, all the ancient cultures in the world were polytheist. No matter how far apart they were, they all drew the same conclusion: behind those phenomena there had to be divine beings. All those occurrences that made the things they needed to survive, they turned into “gods”.

       It is not surprising that the vast majority of the ancient cultures chose the sun as their main god. The sun not only provided them with light and warmth, it also gave to them plants and seasons. The moon was another deity. It gave them some light at night and controlled the tides. The rain was an important divinity, too. It gave to them crops and water to drink. Anything that yielded something they really needed, they tuned into a god.

       Then, a new kind of man appeared, the smart guy. His brain developed faster than the others’. He started noticing that nature gave some signals before the “divine” events happened. For example, they discovered that before raining, there were clouds in the sky and wind, and they decided to use that new knowledge to their own advantage. They usually were not the strongest ones, so they could not become chiefs. But they had something even better than brute force. They had knowledge. They told the people, “I can talk to the gods. If I ask the god of rain to send rain, he will send it to us.” To prove it, they started praying, or dancing or whatever they used to do. Short after that it rained, and everybody marveled. And whenever they needed rain, they would go to those shamans. But the services were not for free, they had to give them some “offerings” for the gods. Only they were not really for those gods, they were for them. After getting the reward, they started dancing; those who danced anyway, and rain came down. For it really rained! The trick was they did not dance whenever they were asked. They danced when they saw those sings in nature, thus deceiving the ignorant ones.

    Rain was not the only thing they “controlled”. They also discovered that some plants could cure some illnesses. They told the rest of the people, “I can intercede for the gods to cure you.” And they “talked” to the gods and gave a potion to the sick person. The person thought the gods cured him/her, not knowing that the real medicine was in the drink.

       Short after that, even great chiefs asked for counsel. Then the shamans realized that they could be even more powerful than the chiefs themselves. They only had to play their cards properly. And so, they became the power behind the throne.

       Civilizations flourished around the world and so did their gods. Shamans evolved into priests, and gods evolved into religions.  Gods had different names, but represented the same things: the sun, the moon, the rain.

Extracted from:       http://www.godmakers.info (http://www.godmakers.info)

Quote from: "theTwiz"Drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.

There's at least one professor who's thinking along the same lines.  I posted about it here (http://www.happyatheistforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4113&p=53380#p53380).

These are all very interesting (Recusant the professor probably isn't the best source but i'm sure s/he isn't the first to take drugs).  Here is a question though.  How do you think we wen't from polytheism to monotheism?  From a logical stand point polytheism is a much more supportable position then monotheism.  In polytheism there is a reason why there are constantly opposing forces at work in monotheism there is not (well people claim their monotheistic god had a rival for a short while who typically became the devil, or non-Christian equivalent but no one seems to be able to explain why their god can't do anything about it or chooses not to.)  Otherwise people are worshiping an inherently self-contradicting being who loves you like no one else can ... but will torture you for eternity for "thought crimes".  Or an all powerful all loving being who allows suffering in the world.  Or an all knowing being who fucks things up in half his book (seriously in the OT everything he touches turns to ash).  Anyway does anyone have thoughts on how we went from polytheism to monotheism (or how we went from animism, the worship of animals, to the worship of gods).

Quote from: "LoneMateria"...does anyone have thoughts on how we went from polytheism to monotheism

Here's one:

QuoteThe idea of Akhenaten as the pioneer of a monotheistic religion that later became Judaism has been considered by various scholars.[44][45][46][47][48][49]  One of the first to mention this was Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in his book Moses and Monotheism.[50]  Freud argued that Moses had been an Atenist priest forced to leave Egypt with his followers after Akhenaten's death. Freud argued that Akhenaten was striving to promote monotheism, something that the biblical Moses was able to achieve.[44]  Following his book, the concept entered popular consciousness and serious research.

read the full wiki entry here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten#Akhenaten_and_Judeo-Christian_monotheism)
and more here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotheism#Origin_and_development).

QuoteHere is a question though. How do you think we wen't from polytheism to monotheism?

we humans are social animals. and back then i dont think anyone could make it living all on there own. perhaps thats why exhile was a big deal for a punishment.
but if we are a social creature why wouldnt our god also be like us and live together. each with their own strenghth and weaknesses, jobs, and titles. one more powerful and more important than others.
however having thousands of gods has to be tricky, so perhaps out of convience (i will use yahweh) they chose to pray only to this at the time god of war. and it worked just as well as if they prayed to a dozen other gods(imagine that). so maybe thats what happened.

From my understanding Akhenaten was the first revolutionary, and then Zoroaster. Akhenaten had power, so it was easy for him to start such a revolution. My memory on the matter is rusty, but I believe he started, not by creating a new god, but by considering the sun god the most powerful and worshiping him above the others. There has been consideration that, at some point, Zeus, of the pagans, began to be worshiped in such a way by a similar movement, since he was, after all, the most powerful of the gods. Basically the hierarchy from within the polytheistic religions leads to the notion of one omni powerful God that rules over the other supernatural beings. Even in Christianity look at all of the angels and demons and other beings below god. Especially Catholicism! The hierarchy thought process still exists today. It's almost universal in religions that this must be better than that. The extent of that thinking is what changes throughout time.

Real monotheism came in with the Fall of Rome basically.  (Constantine, Nicaea... that whole mess).  The reason was simple: control.  All the polytheist religions offered options.  You don't think Apollo is doing it for you?  Go worship Neptune.  But Xianity offered something really important: the idea of reward in an afterlife (controlled by a single god).

What this meant was that no matter how crappy an miserable your life was, the religious leaders could hold you in check because the "reward" in Xianity was a far-off never-never land that you never see until you are dead.  There was no chance to get pissed with the god/s because they were there to get you to an eternal life.  

In Hellenism (Rome's polytheism) god worship was usually all about deals for better crops. You agree to worship a certain god and he or she agrees to do stuff for you.  Note that Judaism is founded on the same principle.  The Covenant at Sinai was exactly this kind of contract.  The idea of worshiping a god didn't come around until Samuel I think it was.

(This is where we get the word RELIGION from btw.  It means "contract with a god".  "RE" meaning god, "LIGION" [think LIGament or LInk] meaning a contract or bond].

Anyway, monotheism was a way to limit people's options and keep them in check no matter how bad their lives were.  Only by telling people their eternal fate rested on keeping the gods [read: priests] happy could they keep post-Hellenistic Rome from screwing off and ignoring the Yahweh cults.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"These are all very interesting (Recusant the professor probably isn't the best source but i'm sure s/he isn't the first to take drugs).  Here is a question though.  How do you think we wen't from polytheism to monotheism?  From a logical stand point polytheism is a much more supportable position then monotheism.  In polytheism there is a reason why there are constantly opposing forces at work in monotheism there is not (well people claim their monotheistic god had a rival for a short while who typically became the devil, or non-Christian equivalent but no one seems to be able to explain why their god can't do anything about it or chooses not to.)  Otherwise people are worshiping an inherently self-contradicting being who loves you like no one else can ... but will torture you for eternity for "thought crimes".  Or an all powerful all loving being who allows suffering in the world.  Or an all knowing being who fucks things up in half his book (seriously in the OT everything he touches turns to ash).  Anyway does anyone have thoughts on how we went from polytheism to monotheism (or how we went from animism, the worship of animals, to the worship of gods).

Quote from: "Heathen's Guide"(This is where we get the word RELIGION from btw.  It means "contract with a god".  "RE" meaning god, "LIGION" [think LIGament or LInk] meaning a contract or bond)

Well I'll be damned... you learn something new every day!

Where else is it (meaning in what other words) is RE meant to mean god? Does it have anything to do with Ra, the Egyptian Sun god?

Just curious...

Hismikeness

Yup... the word comes from RA.  Like English today, Latin in  its time adopted words from all kinds of cultures, including the Egyptians.  (That whole Cleopatra influence???)

This is also what makes both Latin and English so damn hard to learn.

(Four years university in Religious Studies makes you a font of useless information like this.)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well I'll be damned... you learn something new every day!

Where else is it (meaning in what other words) is RE meant to mean god? Does it have anything to do with Ra, the Egyptian Sun god?

Just curious...

Hismikeness[/quote]

Quote from: "Heathen's Guide"Yup... the word comes from RA.  Like English today, Latin in  its time adopted words from all kinds of cultures, including the Egyptians.  (That whole Cleopatra influence???)

This is also what makes both Latin and English so damn hard to learn.

(Four years university in Religious Studies makes you a font of useless information like this.)

Quote from: "Online Etymology Dictionary"religion Look up religion at Dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion)
    c.1200, "state of life bound by monastic vows," also "conduct indicating a belief in a divine power," from Anglo-Fr. religiun (11c.), from O.Fr. religion "religious community," from L. religionem (nom. religio) "respect for what is sacred, reverence for the gods," in L.L. "monastic life" (5c.); according to Cicero, derived from relegare "go through again, read again," from re- "again" + legere "read" (see lecture). However, popular etymology among the later ancients (and many modern writers) connects it with religare "to bind fast" (see rely), via notion of "place an obligation on," or "bond between humans and gods." Another possible origin is religiens "careful," opposite of negligens. Meaning "particular system of faith" is recorded from c.1300.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=religion&searchmode=none

Quote from: "Dictionary.com"Word Origin & History
re-
prefix meaning "back to the original place, again," also with a sense of "undoing," c.1200, from O.Fr. and directly from L. re- "again, back, against." Often merely intensive.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
re-  
pref.  
   1.      Again; anew: rebuild.
   2.      Backward; back: react.
   3.      Used as an intensive: refine.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin; see re- in Indo-European roots.]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/re-

elliebean:

I hate to sound like an obnoxious idiot, but the etymology of "religion" you found comes from St, Augustine, not scholars.  (I really do not consider Augustine a scholar.  Personal bias.)

The Wikki on it [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion#Etymology] is closer to how it is taught in university these days, but again it falls back on the Augustinian [post-Hellenistic] concept of Xian communion.  The word is much older than the Xian empire.  Kind of like how the Latin Pagani (which means rural) came to mean a religion, Paganism.  Paganism was not a real religion, just rural customs, until Christianity deemed it so in about the 5th century.

The Wikki link above reads as follows:


Religion is derived from the Latin religiō, the ultimate origins of which are obscure. One possibility is derivation from a reduplicated *le-ligare, an interpretation traced to Cicero connecting lego  "read", i.e. re (again) + lego in the sense of "choose", "go over again" or "consider carefully". Modern scholars such as Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell favor the derivation from ligare "bind, connect", probably from a prefixed re-ligare, i.e. re (again) + ligare or "to reconnect," which was made prominent by St. Augustine, following the interpretation of Lactantius.[3][4]  However, the French scholar Daniel Dubuisson notes that relying on this etymology "tends to minimize or cancel out the role of history"; he notes that Augustine gave a lengthy definition of religio that sets it quite apart from the modern word "religion".[5]

 

Quote from: "elliebean"

Quote from: "Heathen's Guide"Yup... the word comes from RA.  Like English today, Latin in  its time adopted words from all kinds of cultures, including the Egyptians.  (That whole Cleopatra influence???)

This is also what makes both Latin and English so damn hard to learn.

(Four years university in Religious Studies makes you a font of useless information like this.)

Quote from: "Online Etymology Dictionary"religion Look up religion at Dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion)
    c.1200, "state of life bound by monastic vows," also "conduct indicating a belief in a divine power," from Anglo-Fr. religiun (11c.), from O.Fr. religion "religious community," from L. religionem (nom. religio) "respect for what is sacred, reverence for the gods," in L.L. "monastic life" (5c.); according to Cicero, derived from relegare "go through again, read again," from re- "again" + legere "read" (see lecture). However, popular etymology among the later ancients (and many modern writers) connects it with religare "to bind fast" (see rely), via notion of "place an obligation on," or "bond between humans and gods." Another possible origin is religiens "careful," opposite of negligens. Meaning "particular system of faith" is recorded from c.1300.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=religion&searchmode=none

Quote from: "Dictionary.com"Word Origin & History
re-
prefix meaning "back to the original place, again," also with a sense of "undoing," c.1200, from O.Fr. and directly from L. re- "again, back, against." Often merely intensive.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
re-  
pref.  
   1.      Again; anew: rebuild.
   2.      Backward; back: react.
   3.      Used as an intensive: refine.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin; see re- in Indo-European roots.]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/re-

An added note... The last citation in the Wiki drives me nuts:


[4] However, the French scholar Daniel Dubuisson notes that relying on this etymology "tends to minimize or cancel out the role of history"

The idea that etymology would "cancel out" the role of history is ridiculous.  The etymology IS the history.  Find out where a word came from and what it originally meant and you're a long way toward understanding its place in history.  Without it, you are left to modern interpretations (re-interpretations) designed to make history more palatable to those in the present.

[Note that this is one of my things that I obsess over... the whole Augustinian influence on re-creating religions.  Please do not count anything I say as even a remote criticism of you.]

Oh, you don't sound like an obnoxious idiot at all; I hope I don't, either. I'm far from an expert on etymology and linguistics, having never studied them formally, but they are a fascination of mine. I was just trying to be the responsible skeptic and check everything, at least in a cursory manner, before accepting it as fact. I would have looked into it more, but all my language books are buried away at the moment and the first few online sources I found on the subject seemed to corroborate each other. I suppose I could have simply asked you to support your assertions.  

Quote from: "Heathen's Guide"An added note... The last citation in the Wiki drives me nuts:


[4] However, the French scholar Daniel Dubuisson notes that relying on this etymology "tends to minimize or cancel out the role of history"

The idea that etymology would "cancel out" the role of history is ridiculous.  The etymology IS the history.  Find out where a word came from and what it originally meant and you're a long way toward understanding its place in history.  Without it, you are left to modern interpretations (re-interpretations) designed to make history more palatable to those in the present.

[Note that this is one of my things that I obsess over... the whole Augustinian influence on re-creating religions.  Please do not count anything I say as even a remote criticism of you.]

I've often wondered how much the etymology changes the meaning of the Biblical messages. Some of them I find hard to believe it really means what it says, even for the Bible. For example

Quote from: "(Luke 14:26)""If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."

Does the original context really translate into "hate"?