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by Stormarm on January 7th, 2012
by Magenta
on January 6th, 2012
voted:
True
by Anonymous
on January 23rd, 2012
voted:
True
by Friartuck
on January 11th, 2012
voted:
True
by skep
on January 7th, 2012
voted:
True
by Gingerminx on January 6th, 2012
by JakobA I^_^I the alooney
on January 11th, 2012
voted:
True
by drequeen on January 6th, 2012
by The Reverend Soleil
on January 6th, 2012
voted:
True
by Shunyata on January 6th, 2012
What fruit tree is blessed as a European tradition?
by Answerbag Staff on June 25th, 2010
| 1 person likes this
God save the queen. Have you taken this oath? If she has god's help, why does she need yours?
by Banana Breath plays the piano on April 29th, 2012
| 1 person likes this
What do you like about being an Atheist (if you are one)?
by A on April 29th, 2012
| 3 people like this
In which countries is atheism illegal?
by anil m on May 5th, 2012
| 1 person likes this
What does not-tennisism rely on in order to survive and expand?
by Ombliss22 on April 23rd, 2012
| 3 people like this
You're reading Endorsement of atheism is often presented as a courageous act of facing up to a harsh reality.
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Comments
Natural phenomena exits where it can appear to seem like a supernatural experience. Over the ages and ancient times belief in gods developed thereby and evolved eventually into belief in an all powerful and perfect creator God thing -which is what atheists seek to eliminate.
by aldonoir on January 8th, 2012
Which has what to do with the question or my answer, aldonoir?
And FYI - the anthropological evidence is that the belief in an all powerful and perfect creator God came first, seemingly the primordial belief of mankind. What evolved was the belief in lesser spirits who could bring good luck and/or bad luck, and who could be bribed, flattered, or fooled into changing their action, location, or disposition.
by Stormarm on January 8th, 2012
Yeah right..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTRDRP2n4Sk
BTW - where is this anthropological evidence - beyond people believing the Sun was god...?
by Friartuck on January 11th, 2012
Study of neolithic cultures around the globe, and studies of the surviving ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern sources (see http://www.custance.org/old/evol/2ch1/2ch1.html for example) indicate an original belief in a great and supreme Creator God who is over all other spirits. Surviving neolithic cultures also had a rather Genesis-like view that this Creator once lived here on earth with men, and then something happened that caused Him to go increasingly remove Himself from this world -- though in some cultures such as several remote tribes of Venezuela -- the Creator and Cosmic emperor is seen as an evil and terrible tyrant who their local spirits protect them from. And, for the record, in none of these was the Creator a sun god - his qualities are more abstract, and if he is associated with any natural phenomenon apart from creation (and destruction), it's the entire vault of heaven and everything in it, more often the night sky in its starry vastness than the day.
by Stormarm on January 11th, 2012
Hmmmm... Interesting reading but that link has a very obvious bias and quotes extensively Schmidt - who also had a very obvious bias, being a catholic priest. I'm not entirely convinced it sits with other discoveries like this one - covered in depictions of animals and over 10,000 years old:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html?c=y&page=1
by Friartuck on January 11th, 2012
An interesting article to be sure, but I don't see how it says anything that argues one way or the other for the for our current point of contention. As with most a-textual archaeological discoveries, the inferences drawn from it are pure guess-work, and the physical evidence there can argue for either of our positions.
As for Schmidt, of course he had his biases as did everyone who came before him or after. That his precursors were unwitting worshippers of the 19th century cult of progress, and saw their whole world and all evidence in that paradigm, and simply ASSUMED the superiority and thus the later date of Monotheism over Polytheism, is so well known and substantiated as to be cliché' even to mention it. But unlike his precursors, Schmidt's basic description of the beliefs of surviving isolated Neolithic cultures has been substantiated by subsequent research including among other societies first studied in the 50 years following his work. Also the surviving documentary evidence of ancient cultures still bears out the seeming natural trajectory is a gradual trend of monotheism-to-polytheism, and not the other way around: monotheism, far from being gradual, has historically been re-asserted in violent and comparatively rapid reform movements after generations to centuries of multiplication and diversification of gods and rituals.
by Stormarm on January 12th, 2012