One of the biggest problems facing religion's credibility is the complete lack of evidence supporting the existence of a deity or deities. For the past ten millenia or so religion has been the central focus of most cultures, and yet we haven't a shred of evidence supporting anything supernatural (though evidence does support certain mundane things such as Jesus having existed). Interestingly, roughly ten millenia ago also marks the beginning of widespread agriculture; a far different way of life for us than our hunter-gatherer ancestors had lived previously.
The obvious question is why people would believe in the existence of their god(s) of choice, given the complete lack of supporting evidence. If we hypothesize that it's been passed down, why do those passing it down believe in it?
Like all living organisms, we compete for limited resources. Cooperating for mutual benefit requires a leap of faith; there's no guarantee that giving up something currently will lead to greater future rewards. This is the basis of society though; modern humans give up free time and direct control over many aspects of their lives in order to reap the greater benefits of living in a society. Look back to agriculture and you see a similarity; a farmer sacrifices hunting/gathering for the growing season to instead maintain his crop & help it to grow, reaping greater overall benefit, not to mention the next ~6 months off, or at least with less hunting & gathering to do, more time to ponder & place more importance on his existence, perhaps make up stories about it?
This is the tip of the iceberg, of course, I'd write more but I'd rather discuss it if it comes up and tbh I'd probably have closed the window without having posted anything within 30 seconds if I didn't somehow manage to click post :|
Thoughts? Flames from the hypocrites who hate this but are fine with christian dogma being spewed in OT? 😀
The obvious question is why people would believe in the existence of their god(s) of choice, given the complete lack of supporting evidence. If we hypothesize that it's been passed down, why do those passing it down believe in it?
Like all living organisms, we compete for limited resources. Cooperating for mutual benefit requires a leap of faith; there's no guarantee that giving up something currently will lead to greater future rewards. This is the basis of society though; modern humans give up free time and direct control over many aspects of their lives in order to reap the greater benefits of living in a society. Look back to agriculture and you see a similarity; a farmer sacrifices hunting/gathering for the growing season to instead maintain his crop & help it to grow, reaping greater overall benefit, not to mention the next ~6 months off, or at least with less hunting & gathering to do, more time to ponder & place more importance on his existence, perhaps make up stories about it?
This is the tip of the iceberg, of course, I'd write more but I'd rather discuss it if it comes up and tbh I'd probably have closed the window without having posted anything within 30 seconds if I didn't somehow manage to click post :|
Thoughts? Flames from the hypocrites who hate this but are fine with christian dogma being spewed in OT? 😀
