Where did it all start?

[cee-dee]

Religion that is?

I was prompted to think of this by a post on the "artifacts" thread with a word that jumped out..... Satan.

Religions often seem connected with the sky, sensational natural events or "something up there" so did it all begin with Man thinking that things "up in the sky" or catastrophic events were controlled by some celestial beings?

Religions that have survived for some thousands of years seem to be somehow connected with vaguely similar beliefs. And then it starts to get complicated..............

Most know how The Serpent (Satan in disguise) tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the Forbidden Fruit but how about The Peacock Angel otherwise known as as Shaitan, or Satan?

God is supposed to have forbidden Adam to eat the Wheat but when The Peacock Angel visited Adam and asked him if he'd eaten the grain, Adam is supposed to have replied "No, God forbade me." The Peacock Angel is then supposed to have persuaded Adam to eat the grain which angered God.

Now The Peacock Angel was supposed to be the first of seven Archangels created by God but fell from favour because after telling the Archangels never to bow to any being, when God created Adam from dust (!!) and was told to bow to Adam, The Peacock Angel refused saying that God had already told him (he's male then?) not to bow to any being. God threw The Peacock Angel in to Hell where he remained for (this is where it gets a bit vague) variously 7,000 or 40,000 years after which time he either quenched the fires of Hell with his tears or filled seven jars with his tears with which he quenched the fires of Hell after which God forgave him and reinstated him.

Now what's all this got to do with Satan or the artifacts thread? Only that I mentioned Göbekli Tepe and that people who revere The Peacock Angel recognise some of the symbols found on some of the stones at Göbekli Tepe so have a think about that convoluted story eh?

[**bustysinclaire**]

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@astrologica wrote:
'Peace and love among all'.......unless you happen to be homosexual...then you are cast out on your ear and shunned.

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Sorry astro, but you are wrong there.

[cee-dee]

I forgot to reply to you on this, sorry.

OK, so what you really need is an "expert" of some sort to explain how the scientific community can say with accuracy how the age of stars can be determined? I'm not going to try to give an explanation as I don't know enough about it.

What I do know is how they "measure" the distance from the Earth to a star. What they do is to look at a star (with a telescope) and determine the angle between Earth and the star. They wait 6 months and determine the angle again. They then use triangulation (with trigonometry) to determine the distance between Earth and the star. They wait 6 months because the Earth revolves round the Sun in 12 months soooooo in 6 months they will know the length of the base of the triangle = (roughly) 186 million miles.

I suppose you'll question how that distance was "measured"? It's all to do with our distance from the Sun and how that was determined with reasonable accuracy 250 years ago and better these days.

For stars a long way away (over 400 light years) they use the brightness of a star relative to it's colour but that's another thing best explained by an "expert".

For dating things we can actually get our hands on, they use radio carbon dating which measures the radioactive decay of Carbon 14.

I think they can check the accuracy of RC dating by using tree rings = Denrochronology. Wood shows definite rings as the tree grew and the ring patterns depend on how the tree grew each year during the growth period (usually Spring/Summer). A tree ring "library" exists showing the ring patterns going back about 11,000 years and using that, they can determine which year a tree was cut down (or died) if they have a bark edge.

It's not a case of "we say this so believe it because we say so", if you need convincing, you can actually be shown how it is so proven.

Now..... if it can be proven that a continuous link of tree rings goes back 11,000 years, the Earth must therefore be older than the 6,000 years claimed by creationalists?

[**bustysinclaire**]

Your Bible began in Hebrew and many of the Bible "stories" were poached from there, miss-translations and miss-understandings and all.

The thing is, the Hebrew bible was put together from a mixture of ancient writings and things Moses said plus later additions.

Ancient writings of course they were, But Gods words all the same.

Since then there have not only been many additions, there have been (deliberate?) omissions too. Are you trying to say that all the people who had a hand in writing all these things were given that (mis)information direct from god? If so, how was it communicated?

Opposers of God were and are the ones doing the deliberate omissions and alterations, the originals are Gods. God communicated in several ways, and one was actually speaking to them. You are free to disbelieve this if you so wish, but you cannot disprove it. You may go on to say I cannot prove it, but it has been proven to me and that is what matters to me.

The Five Books of Moses (the Torah) are pretty well known but how about Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Ruth, Kings, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastics amongst the twenty-odd books of the Tanakh, do many people know about those?

If you are a reader of the Bible then those should be know to you, if not then we can help you get to know them if you so wish.

As I've said before, people have picked and chosen what to incorporate in their religion, all claiming it to be the word of god but ask yourself, if someone, a decent soul, stood up today and came out with all sorts of things saying it was the word of god, would you believe him? Why not? You believe all sorts of things which were written long ago in a time when people were illiterate and ill-informed, liable to believe any explanation of the inexplicable. If a "bolt from the Blue" just happened to strike someone dead, the explanation given way back when wouldn't be the same as for someone so struck today (well, there were actually two today).

I would have to research and convince myself first whether it was from God, but it it came from a place other than the organisation I turn to for guidence then It is highly unlikely I would believe him, simply because I have learnt enough about Jehovah and his principles , requirments and instruction to make a good judgement and sound judgement.

Now it was realised a while back that a form of explosion could be created from Uranium but it was more or less dismissed for a while as not producing anything really worthwhile. But then, one day, a bloke had a flash of inspiration and concluded that what was required was a chain reaction in order to create an explosion of (then) unimaginable force. After realising that an enemy was stockpiling Uranium, it was concluded that they were on the same track of trying to create an Atom Bomb so the work done so far towards finding out how to create a chain reaction was given to the Americans to try to "get there first". Now, did that bloke who had the flash of inspiration hear the word of god? Although on the one hand the results of his flash of inspiration killed a lot of people, it also saved an awful lot more. God works in mysterious ways?

Well, What are you trying to tell me there CD? All I can say to that is, he had an impulse to copy a reaction that Jehovah had already created. I wouldn't know any more about it, All I know is God is a God of love but also of Justice. Anything he does even though I may not entirely understand the reasons for it, those reasons will always be good ones. I trust Jehovah.

I also need to apologise for the different text formats in this post, I am still trying to fathom the best way to quote and answer in the same box. lol xx

[cee-dee]

"If detected, gays and lesbians who refuse to remain celibate are expected to repent of their actions and to refrain from same-sex behavior in the future. Those who refuse are almost inevitably disfellowshipped."

While disfellowshipped, fellow members are required to shun him/her completely, avoiding all contact. If the disfellowshipped person is a family member, then they are treated normally within the family, except that they are made to understand that their actions are disapproved of. There is no discussion about church matters in their presence. 

[**bustysinclaire**]

CD, do you really know and understand  what disfellowshipping really is and how and why it is followed through. If you get the right information and understanding of it then write that down here too. It puts a whole new take on it.

You only chose to write just those few words to get the result you want and that is to discredit.

I actually understand and accept why and how a disfellowshipping is done. No I would not want to be disfellowshipped myself because that would mean I had displeased my God, shown I have no respect and appreciation for my creator and have an independant houghty spirit. If however I did get disfellowshipped I would still be loved and welcomed back with open arms if I really showed I loved my God and wanted to be obedient. Because there is so much at stake i.e. someones everlasting life the Jehovah has to be consistent and Just in his dealings with us. 

He is Just because he educates us very well on how we can attain that everlasting life and helps us and forgives us many times to get there.

This is only in answer to your post and my opinion on what I have learnt personally.

[cee-dee]

It was you who simply said that astro was wrong.

If you needed to explain fully, you should have said more than you did.

My post was from a JW page which clearly says such people should be shunned if they refused to remain celibate.

[upthecreekyetagain]

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@cee-dee wrote:

I forgot to reply to you on this, sorry.

OK, so what you really need is an "expert" of some sort to explain how the scientific community can say with accuracy how the age of stars can be determined? I'm not going to try to give an explanation as I don't know enough about it.

What I do know is how they "measure" the distance from the Earth to a star. What they do is to look at a star (with a telescope) and determine the angle between Earth and the star. They wait 6 months and determine the angle again. They then use triangulation (with trigonometry) to determine the distance between Earth and the star. They wait 6 months because the Earth revolves round the Sun in 12 months soooooo in 6 months they will know the length of the base of the triangle = (roughly) 186 million miles.

I suppose you'll question how that distance was "measured"? It's all to do with our distance from the Sun and how that was determined with reasonable accuracy 250 years ago and better these days.

For stars a long way away (over 400 light years) they use the brightness of a star relative to it's colour but that's another thing best explained by an "expert".

For dating things we can actually get our hands on, they use radio carbon dating which measures the radioactive decay of Carbon 14.

I think they can check the accuracy of RC dating by using tree rings = Denrochronology. Wood shows definite rings as the tree grew and the ring patterns depend on how the tree grew each year during the growth period (usually Spring/Summer). A tree ring "library" exists showing the ring patterns going back about 11,000 years and using that, they can determine which year a tree was cut down (or died) if they have a bark edge.

It's not a case of "we say this so believe it because we say so", if you need convincing, you can actually be shown how it is so proven.

Now..... if it can be proven that a continuous link of tree rings goes back 11,000 years, the Earth must therefore be older than the 6,000 years claimed by creationalists?

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My statement was that neither you or I know that many of the suppositions we take as 'fact' are true facts.  all we are demonstrating is trust in the sources we have heard or read that say they are facts.

You've essentially conceded the above when you state, "I'm not going to try to give an explanation as I don't know enough about it".

If scientists didn't trust results from previous generations and required proof of facts before exploring further then progress would be stunted.  Of course blind acceptance of what are considered as facts can also be a hindrance.  

To take your tree ring example - your simple explanation makes a number of assumptions based on what we consider to be facts.  You say for instance, "ring patterns depend on how the tree grew each year during the growth period".  Now I accept that as a fact but can you prove it and even if you could why would you.  You trust that the statement is true based on what you have been taught.  Of course if you have been taught that God created that tree and none are older than 6,000 years then you would believe that and say I was wrong when I claimed the tree was older.

[suzieseaside]

I suppose creationists would say that God deliberately tinkered with physics including exponential radioactive decay constants along with all the other sound scientific methods that put the age of the earth at around 4.54 billion years, just to fool us silly humans who are taken in by real evidence. 

My, what a mischevious sense of humour he must have doing all that, then putting all those fossils in the right order back to bacteria in pre-Cambrian rocks about 4000 milion years ago, drawing a load of 40,000 year old cave paintings, and faking goodness knows how many ancient things!

If I had to choose, I'd be more inclined to believe that Slartibartfast really did design the Norwegian fjords

[cee-dee]

I just wish you didn't use the quote feature, it's so unnecessary for a recent post and just clogs up the page.

As to my not explaining in my own words, I didn't say I didn't follow or understand it, it's just that the explanation would make for a very long post and some of my posts are long enough already.

[upthecreekyetagain]

OK - I've not quoted your full post this time but on a side issue your use of a large font doesn't help when reading a thread either - 🙂

You might not have said you didn't follow nor understand - you did however say, "I'm not going to try to give an explanation as I don't know enough about it".

In other words you can't prove anything but you do know a source you trust that can do so.  Exactly the point I am making. 

Not being able to prove a particular assumption but accepting that assumption as a fact with which to make further deductions is common in science.  Science is essentially a matter of obervation from which rules can be deduced and then checked by predicting results and then comparing those results against the prediction.  Those rules are then generally accepted as facts until such time a situation arises that doesn't comply with the predicted results.  Hence the saying, the exception that proves the rule" - proof in this context being defined as 'establish the truth or test'.

If scientific 'facts' weren't continuouly questioned then we wouldn't have progress such as that demonstrated by Galileo, Rutherford, Einstein and Higgs.  It is because individuals such as these questioned the accepted 'truth' that new 'discoveries' are made.  The vast majority of people, including myself, are not of that ilk and accept as truth pronouncements made by the scientific community that fit with our own perception and observations.

The problem that I see with religion is that whilst they may well have some core truths in their beliefs most seem stuck in time and refuse to question those truths and worse still refuse to accept new 'truths' as they are discovered.  If they had then I think there would probably be one common belief by now.

[cee-dee]

Large font? It's only size 3 on the GUI. For comparison I'll only use it on this sentence.

[astrologica]

I don't think so Busty....did you not post on here in the past that a member of your family is cast out because he is gay? That he is a 'sinner'? I don't want to discuss this in detail...this is CeeDee's thread, about where religion began, and I wouldn't want to hi-Jack it.
But you cannot be a JW and be gay.....is that not correct?

[joamur_gosof]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Interesting thought J.

What about this.....Maybe we are the creators of this world and we are God so to speak. Collectively we create the world we live in today. Some have great ideas and some don't. The result of creating something will be the creation of more other things, sometimes to counteract or sometimes to improve on what was created. The world would stand still if there would be no contrast, nothing to make us rise to the occasion.

Just a thought.

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Thats kind or my reasoning too Harry

I see it all as ''once upon a time something happened''  well lets stick to science a sec..what happen  maybe was a long road of evoloution but on a day someone just  drew a smiley face holding a piece of wheat....without a pause all today would know what that meant as iit looked like a smiley face and a stick of wheat

As every ying has a yang someone else or the same (fisrt evolved ) drew a sad face and a spear stuck out of their head say.......

What followed was a reinventing of how to draw a face a piece of wheat etc until today you would never guess what they were unless you were taught ....and thats what each conquering did to humanity ...they each created an education system to suit their own agenda and everyone willing or not could only understand where smiley face was by submitting to the knew rulers education plan...annnd here we are today ...its dictatorship control of the conquers not to let you see things your own way.

Back to CD'S post ,..to find the day before we evolved into educators and then allow the world to return to the original first language (similar to children's drawings) innocence of thought may return and this is what religion started off preaching ...a school for the dumb but unconfused as everything was being juggled into jibberish.

On the other hand because the jibberish was forcing the brains into work mode it evolved into todays science.

I know I am of the dumb kind and it enlightens my soul as I want to find the day the first words asking us all to revert back to innocent thought. ...so I feel CD is right in digging into the past so we today can have a formal debate on which way is best...saving ourselves from the ice age through wars and re=educations or to hell with it all and lets die out.

excuse the pun 🙂

[cee-dee]

If you're a bent JW you're supposed to be celibate.

If a JW is disfellowshipped, others are not supposed to speak to them unless they live in the same household.

Someone disfellowshipped can still go to Kingdom Hall but others are not supposed to speak to them or acknowledge them ie they're shunned.

[suzieseaside]

As we are talking about religion in general, the problem I see with religion is the need to worship an entity/God which although might even essentially be the same one, the paths to be followed which are set out by human interpretation and writings are poles apart.  So far apart that some fanatics are prepared to kill those who don't believe exactly the same interpretations. 

Buddhism, which I suppose is more of a philosophy than a religion, makes far more sense to me, and has been nicely summarised by Ven. S. Dhammika when asked:

Do Buddhists believe in God? 

No, we do not. There are several reasons for this. The Buddha, like modern sociologists and psychologists, believed that religious ideas and especially the god idea have their origin in fear. The Buddha says:
"Gripped by fear men go to the sacred mountains, sacred groves, sacred trees and shrines".

1) Primitive man found himself in a dangerous and hostile world, the fear of wild animals, of not being able to find enough food, of injury or disease, and of natural phenomena like thunder, lightning and volcanoes was constantly with him. Finding no security, he created the idea of gods in order to give him comfort in good times, courage in times of danger and consolation when things went wrong. To this day, you will notice that people become more religious at times of crises, you will hear them say that the belief in a god or gods gives them the strength they need to deal with life. You will hear them explain that they believe in a particular god because they prayed in time of need and their prayer was answered. All this seems to support the Buddha’s teaching that the god-idea is a response to fear and frustration. The Buddha taught us to try to understand our fears, to lessen our desires and to calmly and courageously accept the things we cannot change. He replaced fear, not with irrational belief but with rational understanding.

2) The second reason the Buddha did not believe in a god is because there does not seem to be any evidence to support this idea. There are numerous religions, all claiming that they alone have god’s words preserved in their holy book, that they alone understand god’s nature, that their god exists and that the gods of other religions do not. Some claim that god is masculine, some that she is feminine and others that it is neuter. They are all satisfied that there is ample evidence to prove the existence of their god but they laugh in disbelief at the evidence other religions use to prove the existence of another god. It is not surprising that with so many different religions spending so many centuries trying to prove the existence of their gods that still no real, concrete, substantial or irrefutable evidence has been found. Buddhists suspend judgement until such evidence is forthcoming.

3) The third reason the Buddha did not believe in a god is that the belief is not necessary. Some claim that the belief in a god is necessary in order to explain the origin on the universe. But this is not so. Science has very convincingly explained how the universe came into being without having to introduce the god-idea. Some claim that belief in god is necessary to have a happy, meaningful life. Again we can see that this is not so. There are millions of atheists and free-thinkers, not to mention many Buddhists, who live useful, happy and meaningful lives without belief in a god. Some claim that belief in god’s power is necessary because humans, being weak, do not have the strength to help themselves. Once again, the evidence indicates the opposite. One often hears of people who have overcome great disabilities and handicaps, enormous odds and difficulties, through their own inner resources, through their own efforts and without belief in a god. Some claim that god is necessary in order to give man salvation. But this argument only holds good if you accept the theological concept of salvation and Buddhists do not accept such a concept. Based on his own experience, the Buddha saw that each human being had the capacity to purify the mind, develop infinite love and compassion and perfect understanding. He shifted attention from the heavens to the heart and encouraged us to find solutions to our problems through self-understanding.

[cee-dee]

That's a sensible way to look at things but you'll never get those following a religion to accept that.

[joamur_gosof]

Buddism is a religion ?

[upthecreekyetagain]

No.

[malacandran]

Buddhism is a load of pre-scientific ballcocks.  Like Marxism-Leninism.

They both deserve to be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Except in the BBC

[joamur_gosof]

think it is a religion creeky..they have an idle ...buddah