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?

[merehazle]

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@cee-dee wrote:

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?

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       Well why not keep it on that thread eh?

[suzieseaside]

Inevitable I would think, once our brains had evolved sufficiently for a realisation of self and a capability of complex thought around our emotions, such as being able to reflect on our own mortality. Plus wondering about the world (nature) around us – religion would provide an answer I suppose, and a god to pray to bring a good harvest once we were settled in one place and relying on agriculture.

A pity really, given the amount of trouble that religion has caused throughout Man’s time on earth.

[cee-dee]

Because I don't want to disrupt a thread by someone else on a different topic, THAT'S why!

[merehazle]

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@cee-dee wrote:

Because I don't want to disrupt a thread by someone else on a different topic, THAT'S why!

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 No need to SHOUT!  Well I thought it would have fitted in nicely, as you were the last post at #16.  Satan, God, and all that. Im sure she wouldn't have minded

No, let it go. Points have been made.

[cee-dee]

It seems to me that down the ages, when faced with what, at the time was inexplicable, it had to be explained away by attributing it (whatever "it" was) to the "the gods" or god.

If lightning struck something and set it on fire, there was a rumble of thunder, a landslide or avalanche even a flood (!!!) it was the work of "the gods" because the gods were angry for some reason so had to be placated and the local population had to atone.

These days, we can usually explain why something happened but for some things, a few inexlicables have to be explained away with a new reason by claiming it was......... "aliens"......

Not long ago, a chap found a fossil which is around 60 million years old but because he's a creationist who believes the Earth is only about six thousand years old and that everything that's here was "created" as-is, he won't have it, claiming "there's no dates stamped on these things".

Some societies were convinced their gods were "up there" so in some cases had to get as close to them as they could by building upwards, some trekked up mountains to sacrifice something (even children).

Ziggurats were built in many parts of the Middle East and there's an area of Peru (Túcume) where there are the remains of around 250 "pyramids" made of mud bricks. Some are quite big but don't expect to see them of similar shape to those in Egypt.

The Incan Ice mummies are quite well known and were trekked thousands of feet up mountains to be sacrificed all for some god or other.

Religion in all it's forms has a lot to answer for and it's still going on, each believing they're "right"....

[Anonymous]

Religion in all it's forms has a lot to answer for and it's still going on, each believing they're "right"

[upthecreekyetagain]

That's true Harry and as an atheist I think they are all wrong

. . . . . but the real answer of course is . . . . . . . .

[cee-dee]

Pyramids? Why build that shape? They're built in several locations in the World ranging from South America to the Middle east. Were the builders "connected" or did they arrive at that shape independently?

If you think about trying to construct a high building, it's either got to be built of something really solid = hard(?) = heavy(?) which means a lot of small stones or a smaller number of big ones. How to lock it all together?

The ancients concluded that they could use gravity to hold it all together if they built a wide base and made the successive layers smaller = tapering sides. It's probable that the pyramid builders came to that conclusion independently as humans have independently discovered many other things independent of each other or independent of each culture. With mud-bricks, the sides are often rounded so that was another reason to "step" the sides.

There's several sites in Peru and the Lambayeque Valley is an area with around 250 "pyramids" of various sizes. Túcume is part of that area but is later than other Peruvian sites like Caral in the Supe Valley.

In contrast to the Egyptian Pyramids, the Peruvian "pyramids" were built with flat tops and people (at least some people) lived at the top and also part way up. The earlier Sumerian "pyramids" (also of mud brick) had a temple at the top and although their "pyramids" are known, the Ziggerat is better known but they're in several distinct steps.

Some evidence for human sacrifices has been found near the Preuvian pyramids and all the constructions of pyramids seem to revolve around "the gods" of some sort or other. Although there's been no evidence (so far) of sacrifices at Göbekli Tepe some human bones have been found amongst the animal bones and other debris used to back-fill the site.

The thing is, when and why did belief in these "gods" eventually evolve in to the religions we recognise today? Doesn't it seem odd (strange?) that some of them are almost a re-hash of something that went before and the successive ones then claimed they were "right". Also, most of them expect blind faith, there's to be no discussion, no questions, no reasoning, what's supposed to be "right" is a fixation, accept it or be "cast out" at best or killed at worst. A risky business this religion lark?

[astrologica]

Also....religion was used for centuries as a tool to keep the people in order, scaring them to death with ideas of Hell, Purgatory, Eternal damnation etc. It's not working so well these days.😀

[joamur_gosof]

In the evolution of things first up would be food experimenting ,animal and plant ,of which some consist of  sever hallucinations and even death. second as you say mud banks naturally made great podiums...third as the monkey hybrids started to group together for ''safety in numbers'' then ''working as a team'' evolved.

The world would have similar behaviour and food stuffs so experiences would be similar to evolving folk.

Now the motivator and reason behind the group together theory needed constantly explaining as folks general nature is to see it want it  think (golem/smeagle) . Others of course call for calm.

Starvation ,plague ,war and death often changes groups of docile happy hippy monkey;s into little depressed murderous monkeys...education via writings (sumarian is an excellent example) helped stem the transition between happy /deadly and so a combination of seeing things nobody else does ,organising existence and educating for peace against fighting created a how to / how not to blueprint.

The thing that created the myths around super beings is the same conditions create the same conditions virtually all the time..so more than one monkey spinning at 10000000 miles an hour in nothing at all can hear voices as well ..and if you are lucky ...see big people with beards 🙂

Today we are roughly 10,000 monkey hybrid years into education and more or less 2,500000 years from existence...quick sums work out that it took a long time to reach  a way to educate and only a universal  blip away from the start as we know it.

Taking pleasure in the knowledge that only the greatest tradgadies actually educate (the world's people) ,we seem to be near as damn it on course to learn from  the first story of tradgedy  ''GET in a ship and save yourselves' by the next ice age ...so 2,5 million years to go before nothing on earth gives a monkies about nature kings.

[ravendays]

The earliest example was when a pioneer realised profit and control could be equally accumulated via various pieces of fiction 

[malacandran]

Cee-dee's posts are always so comprehensive, and full of information, that I shy away from replying.

I feel like a mere student confronted by a superior mind.

[cee-dee]

Although there are not so many symbols indicating a religion as such at Göbekli Tepe (as found so far) there's another place in Turkey where a lot more articles indicative of some sort of worship have been found and that's at Çatalhöyük where the people there built some mounds, the biggest raised over 60 feet above the surrounding land. Why build and live on such things 9,000 years ago? Seems a lot of work?

It seems that there are far more female figurines (ascribed as deities?) than there are male ones. It seems the "experts" are still arguing over this point and current thinking is that the figurines (over 2,000 found) are more indicative of a "religion" of hunter gatherers as it seems there were animal heads and figurines everywhere and some figurines were found in what were storage areas leading to thinking that they were either "thanks" for a good harvest or good luck symbols for the future. Still guesswork.

It seems the mound was raised over time as the mud-bricks deteriorated by demolishing earlier structures and re-building on top. That's different to Göbekli Tepe where the people built circles of standing stones then after a time back-filled and constructed another circle within the "original" and kept doing that until the circle was completely back-filled when they constructed another one a short distance away only to repeat that over and over again.

In Peru, it seems they built their pyramids, lived there and after a while set fire to them, abandoned them and constructed another a short distance away. Did they set fire to them or were they struck by lightning?

None of those places left any writing so can we call them "civilisations"? It's usually said that the cradle of civilisation was in Sumer as they had what we usually refer to as "civilisation" = housing/cities, a structured society with a ruling elite, domestication of animals/birds, intensive agriculture and writing.

However, we don't know what beliefs the older communites really had because, unlike Sumer, there's no written "record" so where did the jump from those old beliefs to (for instance) Abraham, Moses and God begin? Did it all stem from the early versions of The Epic of Gilgamesh? Did it all get corrupted/converted somehow during oral recounting of the tale? All conjecture?

[Anonymous]

Creeky, I was only quoting CeeDee, not voicing an opinion.

[**bustysinclaire**]

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@cee-dee wrote:

Religion in all it's forms has a lot to answer for and it's still going on, each believing they're "right"....

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I find this video very helpful.

How Can We Be Sure the Bible Is True?

http://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/

[cee-dee]

THE Bible? Which one? The Old Testament or the New? Which version? Which version written when?

How can it be claimed to be "true" when it's been edited several times? Things have been added, others deleted. Where did God write it? Which version did he write? When? What for? Most people couldn't read.

I found that video as much "help" as a chocolate fireguard. A person viewing that from the point of view of a forensic examiner would dismiss it as little more than smoke and mirrors.

"Belief", or "faith" is what I said earlier about religions, "most of them expect blind faith, there's to be no discussion, no questions, no reasoning, what's supposed to be "right" is a fixation, accept it or be "cast out" at best or killed at worst." I'd add to that by saying that the heirachy of such religions would answer some of the more inexplicable questions as above with "Because we say so"......

[suzieseaside]

Going back to the OP title 'where it all started' .... as I said in Post #3, I think the 'evolution' of spiritual beliefs was inevitable and probably all started tens of thousands of years ago with the development of intelligence, self-awareness, and with that, language, cultural, social and 'religious' practices.

Neanderthals - i.e. pre- Homo sapiens may have had some spiritual beliefs.  

Stan Gooch, in his book The Neanderthal Question, hypothesizes about Neanderthal social ritual and religion. He makes claims such as that they worshipped the cave bear, the spider, and the serpent. animals that were found commonly in the caves in which many of them lived. He also theorizes that Neanderthals were the first to develop fully religious cults and that cave-bear worship was the most common one.

Findings from a burial site in Spain:

A recently-uncovered Neanderthal burial site in Spain has provided intriguing evidence that these ancient hominids believed in an afterlife and were capable of complex symbolic thought, all possibly before early Homo sapiens demonstrated these abilities.
The 50,000-year-old site appears to be a burial ground for three Neanderthals. There's good evidence that their peers buried them intentionally, as all their hands were placed close to their heads. Other Neanderthals have been found buried in that particular position, perhaps indicating a broader cultural meaning for this practice. 

Very difficult to prove of course,but apparently there is unarguable evidence for religious practice that goes back about 30,000 years, if not the 50,000 years back to Neanderthals, but it seems there is a possibility that it does go back to Homo neanderthalensis.

Ritual burial is our best insight into the belief systems of ancient hominids, but it also can be fiendishly difficult to interpret the evidence. First, there's the question of just what constitutes an intentional burial. Mass graves are good evidence of that, but do they reveal anything about that culture's thought processes or spiritual dimensions beyond simply wanting to place the dead out of the way?

Although the earliest undisputed human burial dates back 130,000 years, it's not clear if it shows evidence of a larger, symbolic belief in some sort of afterlife or larger spiritual existence. For that, the earliest unarguable evidence in humans only goes back roughly 30,000 years, although there are possible indications of it going back at least 50,000 years.

That means there's a real chance that, if the positioning of these Neanderthal remains really do indicate some larger spiritual significance, it wasn't humans that first believed in an afterlife, but rather our extinct cousins.

-----------------------------------------

Since then figures of worship have changed between animate and inanimate (like the sun) objects, a whole variety of Gods, one supposed God around which beliefs are bitterly divided according to who believes what was written by humans about their chosen God to worship. Just look what an unholy horrendous mess relatively 'modern' religion has got us all into.

[cee-dee]

It seems to me that over the ages, inexplicable happenings were put down to "The Gods" because surely (by their thinking) no one thing could be "controlled by a single entity so there had to be a "god" for each thing? Like A god for thunder, a god for rain and so on.

When a catastrophe struck, that god was "angry" and had to be placated somehow and over time, that god had to be respected to prevent it getting angry again? So it was that all the gods had to be respected to save the populace retribution?

Things swanned along like that until along comes this bloke called Moses about 3,300 years ago. By that time, writing had been "invented"  so at times, Moses wrote things down, then made "speeches" about it, at other times, he came out with new things during an oratory then wrote it down (well, as he remembered it) afterwards. He re-hashed some of the old sayings and brought out his version of what came to be known as Genesis. Sooooo, there's been a bit of editing and some additions made?

Moses fancied a bit of time on his own so trekked off up a mountain to talk to himself and while there, forty nine gates of wisdom are opened for him so after being there for forty days learning all this new stuff he writes it all down and comes back to tell everyone how to go on in the future?

However, because Moses had been gone so long, the people had resorted to the "old" ways and made themselves a Golden Calf to worship? Ah-ha, so animals (or representations of them) were just some of the things that were revered even at that time (3,300 years ago).

On and off during the next 39 years, Moses is up and down the mountain and writes down what he's been told by God..... Again, sometimes he preached what he'd written down, sometimes he preached and then wrote it down.....

Note carefully, God didn't write anything down. Why not? If he had created the Universe along with the World where we now live, surely he could have written it down himself instead of passing it on to a mere mortal to forget bits, add bits and edit at will?

Now these prophecies... none of them predict such things as transistors, integrated circuits, those strange things where people appear in a little picture frame and talk to you (!!the haunted fish tank! mobile phones!!) or that you could take a bit of stuff out of the ground and hurl it together in such a way as to create a chain-reaction which flattens a huge area and kills thousand of people in one blinding flash?

Those prophets only "predicted" (???) things they could get their heads round of at the time?

We'll leave it there for now eh? Leave room for comments?

[**bustysinclaire**]

I attended a very interesting watchtower study today, and It is quite self explanitory.  concerning where we are in the great scheme of things. CD

There are 2 groups that I can see, the first is those who listen  to and try to do the will of God and the second is those who are blinded by the roaring Lion. 

I hope very much that I am in the first group. I do feel as you have not interest or belief in Jehovah as God or his word the bible then I conclude you belong to the latter.

http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/402015362

It is not my intention  to be offensive by this post. I accept that you don't believe in Jehovah as God therefore his word is of no importance.  I am just commenting as has been invited.

I do however CD, find many of your post very interesting, some comical, some serious and some very informative, you do seem to be very knowledgeable in very many subjects.

I hope I have never offended in you personally in any way, if I have I do apologise, I have only ever just added my opinion to a thread and not wished to be rude to anyone.