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Are Religions and Gods manmade?
- Thread starter PAUL MARKHAM
- Start date
God was always there. How men express themselves to God can change. You could say, after writing was invented, God spoke to Moses to write it down. IMO.
PAUL MARKHAM
Well-Known Member
It seems a lot of work for a house when the rest were living in houses made of mud, branches, etc.
Consideration of the evidence suggests the alternative hypothesis that the buildings at Göbekli Tepe may actually be houses, albeit ones that are rich in symbolic content.
MNoBody
Well-Known Member
man makes stories to depict what is observed....over time they evolve.
IMO they are made up, but depict something that is real, yet difficult to explain, thus all the parables and metaphors, figures of speech, turns of phrase, tropes, etc to provide the pigments of imagination that make up our colorful story-life we all cultivate in our tiny little heads, struggling to make sense of it all in its marvelous and awesome vastness.
Yes and?
Several of those links you listed are quite recent in archeological terms. Only one shows items from 30k years ago with some believed to be religious,belief is not evidence.
The oldest evidenced religion is Hinduism at around 15000 years
PAUL MARKHAM
Well-Known Member
Where's your evidence?
So god tells us different stories long before he told Abraham anything. He tells us 100,000 different stories.
Salty Booger
Royal Crown Cola (RC)
Did man need to evolve before the gods could speak to him?
PAUL MARKHAM
Well-Known Member
Man is the result of evolution, it took many different hominids to reach Home Sapiens. Homo Sapiens shared the Earth and even mated with other Hominid species.
Just How Many Extinct Types of Human Did Our Ancestors Meet?
It’s well-established that modern humans mingled with Neanderthals and Denisovans. DNA convincingly shows the three lineages interbred in every combo: modern human/Neanderthal, modern human/Denisovan and Neanderthal/Denisovan. And if anthropologists’ interpretations are correct, we also shared the planet with Homo floresiensis, H. naledi and H. luzonensis as well as perhaps some late-surviving H. erectus. Fossils of Homo sapiens and these species overlap in time, but were geographically separated by vast distances. It’s unclear if our ancestors actually set eyes on them. Lastly, genetic patterns suggest a few more lineages in the mix (here, here), which have not yet been linked to physical fossils. For now, they’re known as ghost populations.
So why did god have to create so many types on hominids to get to the right one?
Dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago (at the end of the Cretaceous Period), after living on Earth for about 165 million years.
Why wait billions of years to create Man, Dinosaurs were created long before Man and lasted a lot longer than Man.
Evolution means change in a population. That includes both easy-to-spot changes to adapt to an environment as well as more subtle, genetic changes. Humans are still evolving, and that is unlikely to change in the future.
So which religion gets it right?
Just How Many Extinct Types of Human Did Our Ancestors Meet?
It’s well-established that modern humans mingled with Neanderthals and Denisovans. DNA convincingly shows the three lineages interbred in every combo: modern human/Neanderthal, modern human/Denisovan and Neanderthal/Denisovan. And if anthropologists’ interpretations are correct, we also shared the planet with Homo floresiensis, H. naledi and H. luzonensis as well as perhaps some late-surviving H. erectus. Fossils of Homo sapiens and these species overlap in time, but were geographically separated by vast distances. It’s unclear if our ancestors actually set eyes on them. Lastly, genetic patterns suggest a few more lineages in the mix (here, here), which have not yet been linked to physical fossils. For now, they’re known as ghost populations.
So why did god have to create so many types on hominids to get to the right one?
Dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago (at the end of the Cretaceous Period), after living on Earth for about 165 million years.
Why wait billions of years to create Man, Dinosaurs were created long before Man and lasted a lot longer than Man.
Evolution means change in a population. That includes both easy-to-spot changes to adapt to an environment as well as more subtle, genetic changes. Humans are still evolving, and that is unlikely to change in the future.
So which religion gets it right?
PAUL MARKHAM
Well-Known Member
Absolutely. Religions need a grain of truth to evolve. Was there an Egypt, Caanan, Babylon, Jericho, David, Soloman, etc? Absolutely. But does that make gods true?
What is made up are things I mentioned in my previous post. Creation was a completely fictional event but read how many believe it. Making Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel fictional characters along with Noah as there was no flood. Did Moses call on god to send the plagues or did the eruption on Santorini cause the plagues? santorini eruption moses - Google Search
PAUL MARKHAM
Well-Known Member
So Man invented Hinduism long before he invented Judaism.
? I dont see what that has to do with the oldest known religion.
Some have estimated there are maybe 20 septillion stars in the universe ─ 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. imp;lying more than that number of planets. And H sap sap is nowhere to be seen in the first 13 billion years of existence. This suggests that if the created universe is all about H sap sap, God is a breathtaking marvel of inefficiency, no?
We find supernatural beliefs in all the world's cultures. They don't agree, whether on the number, nature, purpose, shape or powers of the supernatural beings they propose ─ whereas if there were a single supernatural realm, they should all be reporting much the same sort of thing, no?
So it appears that we humans have evolved to devise supernatural beings, perhaps because we intuitively crave explanations and all those cultures tell just-so stories about natural phenomena and their supernatural creators and masters.
One theory is that religion is part of tribal identity, along with language, customs, stories, heroes, and understandings. And clearly religion gets used for such purposes all day and every day, most noticeably to divide THEM from US.
My house is full of Symbolism too. So is yours. It's still a moot argument, as it says:
evidence suggests the alternative hypothesis that the buildings at Göbekli Tepe may actually be houses .
Come on man, were discussing this site in my Archaeological Methods class. All this suggests is a more affluent housing structure, perhaps it was the first landowner in the area. Point is, there are still many possibilities, and unanswered questions.
There is no denying that humans are quite distinct from any other species when it comes to expressing spirituality. It is my belief that humans created religion in an attempt to make gods in their own image. To try to understand who they are and where they fit into the bigger picture. We are curious and eager to learn new things and we have a brain with a capacity that evolution alone cannot explain. So much of our human nature embraces things that have no survival advantage at all. And I find it highly unlikely that our perceptions could be so vastly superior to any other creature by accident. Like it or not, we are unique....in so many ways. Our spirituality is just one expression. Our capacity for creativity is another.
Many of these “gods” that are worshipped in the world couldn’t care less about us humans....they are sometimes immoral, violent and petty, and yet there are other gods that people worship and make images of that are somewhat benevolent and do care.
So “belief” is a powerful thing in us humans who uniquely possess a concept of past, present and future.....apparently, we alone have the faculty of imagination.....the ability to imagine an outcome to our planned actions. We do not employ instinct like the rest of the creatures we share this planet with. We are designed to learn...explore and accumulate knowledge. We then pass this knowledge onto others. There is so much more to us than eating, sleeping and reproduction.
We “assume” a lot of things when we accept the “evidence” that is presented by scientists. (archeologists, palaeontologists, geologists, biologists etc) They all have pre-conceived ideas about what “must have” happened in the dim dark past, before there was written communication. “Interpretation” governs what direction these findings will go. Imagination fills in the blanks.
“Belief” is a strange thing in us humans.....apparently we can “believe” things with no real evidence on the “say-so” of someone we trust. If we understand that evolution is a theory that has no real proof that it ever happened, but we “believe” that it “must have” because the scientists say so.....what actual evidence are we basing our “beliefs” on? It is a confronting thought that science can only “assume” what it cannot prove. It can “suggest” many things, but suggestions are not facts. Science “believes” that evolution is a fact....but is it?
The “mountains of evidence” for macro-evolution, amount to a “molehill” of assumptions when you examine the evidence carefully. We are easily convinced of something we want to believe.
Is evolution then just another “religion” that, rather can including a Creator God.....simply eliminates a need for him? Do not the noted men of science then take on a “god-like” status themselves in the minds of others? Do their writings not then become some kind of “scripture” for those eager to put God to death?
Is our human need to worship still in evidence even there?
What if God is teaching us to develop perceptive skills in our thirst for knowledge, but is standing back to see who can perceive his genius in creation itself and give credit where credit is due?
Why do some of us stand in awe of “nature”, but cannot acknowledge the clear evidence for design in its amazing mechanisms? Is design ever a by-product of blind chance?
Design denotes purpose, and purpose requires intelligence and forethought. Nature screams “design”.
Perhaps God is waiting to see who will qualify to live on his Earth with appreciation for his handiwork.....and who will receive an eviction notice for ignoring what is hidden in plain sight from those who don’t want God in their lives? If people do not want him, then why should he want them? It’s a fair question IMO.
ronki23
Well-Known Member
Yes they are man-made but that doesn't make them any less true:
Abraham founded Judaism which eventually led to Jesus and Christianity which later branched off to Muhammad and Islam
Hinduism was founded by Ved Vyasa which in turn led to Siddartha Gautama founding Buddhism and Guru Nanak / Ravidass founding Sikhism
I personally believe in Jesus despite being a Dharmic.
Abraham founded Judaism which eventually led to Jesus and Christianity which later branched off to Muhammad and Islam
Hinduism was founded by Ved Vyasa which in turn led to Siddartha Gautama founding Buddhism and Guru Nanak / Ravidass founding Sikhism
I personally believe in Jesus despite being a Dharmic.
Nobody knows why parts of Göbekli Tepe were deliberately filled in, but one possibility is rejection of the symbols and monuments of earlier occupants or users of the site by later ones. It's been suggested that the earlier were nomadic and the later more settled and agricultural as local and residential population expanded, but the evidence so far is inconclusive.
Interesting that when Göbekli Tepe was founded, Yahweh was eight thousand years or more in the future.
MNoBody
Well-Known Member
could be, it seems to have taken several thousand years to do, so that really boggles given how people are impossible to focus on anything that takes several generations.....
prospective earth changes geologically that were known before they occurred would be one possible motivation suggested by the academics already....but it is another interesting mystery for sure.
[/QUOTE]Interesting that when Göbekli Tepe was founded, Yahweh was eight thousand years or more in the future.[/QUOTE]
the dark time of the great mother whom all the patriarchal religions refuse to speak of
Have you studied Aboriginal Art in Australia? The oldest is around 28000 years old. Trying to determine whether it holds religious significance is hard, and might depend on what you consider religious, but worth reading up on if you're interested in the topic.
Originally it was thought the goddess of the bull-dancers at Çatalhöyük was a Hekate-style ruling deity, but I gather the present view is that she and her male consort were of more or less equal authority.