Fantasy thinking versus reality

[guillaumeb]

Archeological evidence suggests that humanity has experienced the religious impulse for over 300,000 years.

When humanity developed writing, these religious impulses were written down and the resultant writing constitutes direct evidence of the religious impulse.

The religious impulse is so strong that, 300,000 years into the human journey, the vast majority of humans state that they are believers in religion.

Some people will argue that the religious impulse is a vestige of the past, and some suggest that they feel that humanity will evolve in some fashion and that religion will slowly wither on the vine.

Some people will argue that religious belief is illogical, that because something cannot be proven according to science, that it cannot be correct.

I would argue that equally illogical is assuming that an impulse that has existed for 300,000 years will magically evolve into non-belief. This seems to me to be magical thinking and wishful thinking.

The reality is that religion persists, and has persisted, for 300,000 years. Fantasy is assuming some sort of evolution into homo logicae, or logical man. No matter how much we advance, there are things that science cannot answer, and can never answer. And as long as science has such limits, humans will look for answers that science cannot provide.

[tonedevil]

1. On what do you base this?

there are things that science cannot answer, and can never answer.

Just because there are things science hasn't answered till now doesn't guarantee those answers won't be found in the future. Are you positing that for 300,000 years religion and the "religious impulse" has been expressed in the same way? What constitutes this "religious impulse" anyway?

[guillaumeb]

2. The religious impulse is not necessarily the same as formal religion.

The impulse can be expressed in many ways, such as burial practices that suggest a belief in the afterlife. The impulse can be expressed as a search for a deity.

Science cannot answer what existed prior to the Big Bang, for one thing. It cannot answer as to the possibility of an afterlife.

[tonedevil]

3. What prevents "science"...

from answering what existed prior to the Big Bang? If an afterlife exists why would you think it would never yield to human investigation? You are naming off things that haven't been answered, but present no reason to think they can not be answered.

[guillaumeb]

6. I have no idea if science will ever be able to answer that question.

As to an afterlife, and a deity, we all might have an opinion on the matter, but that opinion is not based on science, or logic.

If an afterlife exists, we can only speculate as to what form it would take.

And all of my answers to your questions are only my opinions. Science might never be able to penetrate what existed prior to the Big Bang. Or where the material that caused the Big Bang came from.

[tonedevil]

8. If an afterlife exists...

and you can never know that it does what difference does it make? The same with a deity. If there is something creating or manipulating the existence that I exist in that I can never have evidence of I don't see how it is anything I can care or do anything about. There could be an ultimate creator who kicked off an event that we at this stage of our history have come to understand as the Big Bang. I'm not saying I think that is what happened, but if it did there would be no reason that could be known and understood by humans at some time in the future.

[guillaumeb]

9. It makes a difference for many of us who are believers.

And for those who believe in an afterlife, we will see what happens after we die.

[Irish_Dem]

13. Do you believe in an afterlife Guillaume?

What form does it take, what does it look like?

I hope this is not off topic....

[guillaumeb]

23. I do.

As to the form, I have no idea. Some believe in rebirth, some believe in a place that is not earth.

And you, do you have an idea?

[Irish_Dem]

24. I am not letting you off the hook so easily Monsieur. :)

If you believe in heaven, or an after life, certainly you have some notion of what it might be like.

Western religions insist we are souls with eternal life. But do little to tell us what happens to the soul when its body dies. The best they can do is tell us there is a heaven with angels playing harps, and a hell that is most uncomfortable. The eastern religions have done a much better job in explaining the spiritual cosmology. So I am always interested in what Christians have come up with to explain the after life.

But I can understand if you are gun shy to explain your belief system.
Sometimes it is not safe to say too much.

[guillaumeb]

25. I truly have no idea.

I am not a Biblical literalist, even if I am accused of being one by those who clearly misunderstand the term.

I do believe that we have an essence that will continue. Call it a soul. But any thought on how that soul will interact with other souls is speculation. If I were to speculate, I might say that if the Creator is an essence, and we are made in the image and likeness of the Creator, perhaps those essences will join together, making us all one.

Further speculating, if one sees existence as having happened after the Big Bang, when what was one became fragmented into all of current existence, perhaps ultimately all sentience will be concentrated into one essence again.

What I find interesting is how different religions have different conceptions of hell. The Norse religions see hell as a frozen wasteland while the Abrahamic religions see hell as a very hot place.

Jean Paul Sartre described his existential hell as other people.

Now that I have speculated, have you any thoughts?

[Irish_Dem]

33. Your ideas are quite Eastern.

A belief that we were all once part of God, and at some point fragmented
into groups or individual essences (souls). And at some point the soul returns to God
to become one with Him again.

I believe this as well.

But the interesting part is what happens to the soul or essence
between the time it breaks off from God and then returns? What is the purpose of breaking
away and then returning, and what occurs during the break away period?

Can you continue with your thoughts?

[MineralMan]

19. Belief does not ensure reality.

Perhaps you should have written, "We might see what happens after we die, if our beliefs are true. If they aren't, we won't see anything at all."

[guillaumeb]

26. Belief is simply belief.

And speculation about what happens after death is simply speculation on both of our parts.

[MineralMan]

34. No, not really.

What happens after death is very well understood. A series of events ensues, leading inevitably into the complete dissolution of the former living creature. Human beings sometimes try to extend the time before that disintegration is completed, through embalming, mummifying, enclosure in sealed containers, etc. But, that doesn't change the eventual outcome. Occasionally, skeletal remains are mineralized and can exist for millions of years. Even then, though, there are no signs of continuing ife in a fossil.

Of that process, we have ample evidence, and anyone who is familiar with the decomposition of bodies understands it.

There is no speculation involved in that process. On the other hand, you suppose something for which there is no evidence whatsoever. You suppose that the person somehow lives on after death, in some form or another. You cannot identify that form, nor can you show that it exists at all. You choose to believe that it exists, and persist in that belief. That's fine, and I don't really care what you believe, but if you expect others to believe the same thing, without a particle of evidence, you expect too much.

I believe that dead bodies decompose into various chemical components over a period of time after death. I have seen the process. I have seen studies of the process. I believe that evidence makes that process perfectly clear. I have seen no sign of any continuation of any consciousness, "soul" or anything else identified with the former living creature. As far as I know, nobody has seen any such evidence. You believe something for which there is no evidence. OK. Be my guest, but you have no good argument for your belief, nor does any rational argument for it exist.

[wasupaloopa]

4. Nor can religion answer what science can't. It is all human constructs. Humans created religion

and attributed to a god what they don't understand.

[guillaumeb]

7. Religion and science concern themselves with different areas of thinking. eom

[Mariana]

10. They really don't, not entirely.

That's why there is a Creation story (well, a couple of Creation stories) in the Bible, and the Flood story, and the Tower of Babel story, and other stories about walls tumbling and cities being destroyed by God. These are attempts by religion to explain real events in the physical world. You may consider them to be metaphors now, but not so long ago they were taken very literally indeed.

[guillaumeb]

11. The creation story is metaphorical.

If you look at the meaning of the names Adam and Eve it becomes clear. But yes, some did take it literally.
Babel is also metaphor, an attempt to explain the multiplicity of languages and cultures.

[Mariana]

14. Why is religion attempting to explain these things at all?

Science is for explaining real events in the physical world. And it is not really true that "some did take it literally". Just about every believer in the god described in that book took it literally until very recently in history, and many believers still take it literally.

[guillaumeb]

21. Many do, that is correct.

And before scientists was religion. Priests were the ones who explained all of the questions.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

22. uuugh

Do you mean priests in the general sense? Because before Christianity, there was plenty of science. Perhaps you've heard of the ancient Greeks and Romans. They had plenty of scientists that weren't religious leaders.

But, hey, it's your narrative that somehow there was science before religion, so, whatever, man.

[guillaumeb]

27. Your response shows that you misunderstood my answer.

But if that is your preferred framing, I understand.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

31. Well, let's break it down and you can explain where I went wrong.

And before scientists was religion.

What do you mean by "scientists"? I'm guessing that is where the problem is. Do you mean people with a science degree? Then, sure. But I would argue that the person that "invented" the wheel was someone that understood the physics of a lever. And that person came pretty early in this discussion. There are other examples.

Priests were the ones who explained all of the questions.

I asked what you meant by "priests" and rather than clarify for me, you just gave a vague "you didn't understand." So, what do you mean? Do you mean in the Christian sense or general? If general, how so? If in the Christian sense, then you are wrong. There were plenty of scientist B.C.E. And if you mean in the general sense, I would also argue you are wrong as discussed above.

So, please clarify so that the discussion can continue.

[guillaumeb]

32. Scientists are concerned with discovering how things work,

and other related topics. Science was not a discipline, it was a part of life.

But Bronze Age, and presumably earlier, humans wanted to know how things came to be, and they asked those who held the tribal knowledge, and that was priests. Or wise men and women. Or shamans, or whatever term you like. The point is that they were the teachers before there were schools.

And I am speaking from 300,000 years ago and well into the Bronze Age. Priests were the teachers. The word Rabbi means teacher.

PS.

If I was unclear, I apologize.

[Voltaire2]

35. And there it is again.

And I am speaking from 300,000 years ago and well into the Bronze Age. Priests were the teachers.

There is no evidence for "priests" dating back 300,000 years. The closest you can get to that is 30,000 years, which is the oldest known discovery of a burial site of a shaman.

I have to wonder what has you so invested in propagating this distortion of yours over and over and over again.

[MineralMan]

18. They still are taken literally by millions of people.

Shocking, but true.

[wasupaloopa]

45. Not always. For instance the creation story

and the Big Bang theory

[guillaumeb]

46. The creation story in the Bible has a metaphoric aspect.

Adam and Eve are seen as 2 individuals in the story.

The Hebrew word for earth is adama.


The Hebrew word for breath is chawah


eve is a variant of the word chawah.

Thus, earth gives life, or life comes from the earth.

Ironically enough, as to the Big Bang theory:

Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian priest, was the author of that theory. He was well able to reconcile his faith and science.
https://biologos.org/blogs/guest/georges-lemaitre-the-scientist-and-priest-who-could-conceive-the-beginning-of-the-universe

[Irish_Dem]

12. Or did religion create humans. Or at least give them a boost towards survival.

Some research is pointing towards religion being wired in humans, and loading on survival. Religion allowed for formation of tribal groups with benefits in terms of protection, food, etc.

So religion may have a Darwinian purpose.

[trotsky]

15. "No matter how much we advance, there are things that science cannot answer, and can never answer."

Can religion answer those questions?

[MineralMan]

17. Not in any way more satisfying than "God did it."

That explanation has always been the limit of detail that religion can muster, really.

"God did it. I believe it. So there!"

[MineralMan]

16. That "religious impulse" is also called "curiosity."

It is not evidence of the existence of anything supernatural, however. Most early cultures' religions were animistic, with deities associated with things in the natural environment. Such animism still survives in some cultures, such as the Hmong culture.

Polytheism is a frequent result of this curiosity-based "religious impulse." Monotheism didn't really begin until civilization was pretty well established and the more natural animism got replaced with a simpler set of deities.

That humans are curious about their environment, causes and effects, and other daily issues is not surprising at all. Our intelligence makes such curiosity and wonder inevitable.

However, the "impulse" is evidence of nothing except sentience.

[yallerdawg]

20. The detractors have a hangup they just can't break from.

“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”

― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

[guillaumeb]

28. An excellent quotation.

And one to make both sides angry.

Well done.

I would like to make this quote the framework for a future post.

[Voltaire2]

36. Well Campbell got a lot of things wrong, but he is a fun read and it was a great show.

His description of atheists cited above, for example, is just precious nonsense.

[Binkie The Clown]

29. Fear of the unknown has existed for 300,000 years.

The "religious impulse" is a reaction to fear of the unknown, not some innate drive toward "god".

[guillaumeb]

30. Fear of what is outside in the darkness?

While humans sit in the cave?

An interesting view.

[Binkie The Clown]

39. Fear of everything they don't understand.

Fear of death.
Fear of illness.
Fear of thunder storms.
Fear of volcanoes.
Fear of wolves.
Fear of bears.
Fear of monsters in the dark.
Fear of people who are different.
and the list goes on and on.

If we can't protect ourselves from it we pray to some higher power to protect us.
If we can't understand why it happens, we assume some higher power, good or evil, must have caused it.

[Voltaire2]

37. I'm pretty sure that existed a lot longer than 300,000 years and is widespread across many sorts of

animals.

[Lordquinton]

38. 300,000 years

[Citation needed]

[guillaumeb]

40. It was previously given in another post.

A search will reveal it.

[Lordquinton]

41. The one I found was hotly contested

By, oh wait... Me!

Got another source? Or just ignoring facts that counter yours?

[guillaumeb]

42. They are sources, not eyewitnesses.

So if I understand this, you reject my source in favor of one that..........by sheer coincidence of course,
affirms what you wish to believe.

Congratulations on finding what you apparently needed to find.

[Lordquinton]

43. Ah, philosophy 101 arguments

When you've moved on from those let me know, k?

[guillaumeb]

44. Valid nonetheless

Confirmation bias is ever present, in you as well as in me. And we all search for things to confirm our positions.

Unless you feel that you have evolved beyond that type of thing.