When did man first decide that there were gods.

Originally posted by Sailor Sam
OK, so what happened then to make primitive man start to believe in gods?
Nobody has been able to answer that simple question as yet -not one religious believer, not one creationist, not one evolutionist.
The creationist is disregarding Genesis, the evolutionist dare not mention it and the religious believer knows that the "one god" concept was alien to primitive man, that came in much later.

So the challenge is still there.

Not really, you simply haven't studied the Sociologists, numerous theorietical perspectives there. Some of the philosophers approach it too.

Durkheim is a good place to start, I should add. I wouldn't bother too much with Engels and Weber, or Marx for that matter. But Durkheim is great.

Linkies...

www.cf.ac.uk...

durkheim.uchicago.edu...

orgtheory.wordpress.com...

Enjoy!

Originally posted by Sailor Sam

Originally posted by artistpoet
reply to post by Sailor Sam

 

Fear is what created Religous Gods.If you do not follow my way you will go to Hell etc
It was introduced by decietful ones to control people.
Deceitful one's took truth and twisted it .

How do you know?
Where is that recorded, when did hell get into the picture?
primitive man at some stage started to believe in multiple gods who controlled weather, sun, moon etc.
Don't know if hell was part of that.

Hell is just an example and could be replaced with crop failure or the Sun darkening etc.
I actually believe in a Creator or Creative source.
This belief is as old as time itself and through time became more sophisticated as in Philosophy ie people discussing their observations and thoughts.
As I explained earlier god or godess is mis interpreted by the modern world - God or godess refered to natural laws ie the laws of nature as observed and thought on by ancient thinkers.

reply to post by Sailor Sam

OK, so what happened then to make primitive man start to believe in gods?

I already offered you one explanation, which you dismissed as 'philosophical'.

Primitive religion almost certainly didn't start as belief in sky gods and gods representing natural forces. The most primitive tribes that have been studied tend not to bother about those things so much; their religious life is shamanistic, and deals mainly with spirits representing various mental and physical states – spirits that bring disease and healing, spirits that take possession of the body, spirits that bring success in the hunt, visions of prophecy, etc.

The challenge is still there.

And it will always be. There is no certain way, short of time travel, for us to know the answer.

reply to post by Astyanax


So I have asked the unanswerable question.
Is this a first for ATS?
So lets leave this thread and reflect on what and who the gods are and where they came from, to make primitive man start to believe in them.

reply to post by Sailor Sam


man first decided that there were gods the very instant that someone found out they could profit from the idea.

As soon as they saw the space ships land. The word god can have more than one meaning and the roots of it pretty much translate to those who came from the heavens

Originally posted by Sailor Sam
So I have asked the unanswerable question.
Is this a first for ATS?
So lets leave this thread and reflect on what and who the gods are and where they came from, to make primitive man start to believe in them.

Men started to believe surely, but some knew. There is a difference. And it shouldn't forgotten.

reply to post by Biliverdin


Show me the proof please.
I have my own theories, but I will not divulg ethem because I am asking the unanswerable question.
Primitive man cannot have been Muslim, Jewish or Christian, as these religions did not exist then.
I venture to suggest that all our modern thinking is based on those 3 religions.

Originally posted by Sailor Sam
reply to post by Biliverdin

 

Show me the proof please.
I have my own theories, but I will not divulg ethem because I am asking the unanswerable question.
Primitive man cannot have been Muslim, Jewish or Christian, as these religions did not exist then.
I venture to suggest that all our modern thinking is based on those 3 religions.

Yes I agree. Erroneously though. Those three religions are all based upon the same premise. Patriarchy. Christianity originally was a move back to source, in the first three centuries of Christianity women were as prevalent in the teaching as men were, up until the standardisation by Rome, but prior to that, prior to Abraham, religions, all religions were based on the divine feminine, as embodied within early Christianity as the Alma Sophia, or the Divine Wisdom. If you study classical Greece, prior to the Republic, you will find that it was necessary for all male 'heros' to cross over into the realm of the feminine in order to achieve divinity. Hercules provides a good example, as does Tiresia.

reply to post by Sailor Sam


Well, since God created Adam, I guess from that point he knew God existed.

But for superficial differences we are no different from our ancestors
There has to be a creative source to all we perceive
They thought the same and some called it God

Originally posted by aardvark888
reply to post by Sailor Sam

 

Well, since God created Adam, I guess from that point he knew God existed.

That is Chrsitian thinking and belief.
Primitive man did not know about Adam, because he (primitive man) was around long before Christianity was even thought of.

Originally posted by Sailor Sam

Originally posted by aardvark888
reply to post by Sailor Sam

 

Well, since God created Adam, I guess from that point he knew God existed.

That is Chrsitian thinking and belief.
Primitive man did not know about Adam, because he (primitive man) was around long before Christianity was even thought of.

Or indeed before Judaism was thought of. All three are based upon this same incorrect principle, when all evidence clearly indicates that if anyone was created first, it was Eve. The forces that dictate life on Earth created the male, or rather sexual reproduction, in order to promote diversity. Diversity being the Earth's great strength. Before that, and still on a cellular level, one mother cell, divides to form two daughters. Adam was and is, an afterthought.

Originally posted by Sailor Sam
I have often wondered at what stage of evolution or creation did mankind first find the need to have superior beings whom he called "Gods".
What happened to make early man think that there were "gods" and that they lived in the heavens?

Did this thinking happen at about the time that mankind became more that a wild animal, hunting for food and shelter.
Was he influenced by extraterrestials, appearing out of the sky, who gave him added knowledge, which he eventually used to become better equiped to survive the harsh environment he inhabited?
Did he realise that there were more intelligent beings than him around and his primitive mind started to believe that these extraterrestials were all powerful and should be worshipped as being special?
This seems plausible to me, as there is enough reference to this happening in early texts and other information surviving to this day.



So when or why did prehistoric man start to believe in "gods".
Was Eric von Dannekin right - Was god an astronaut?

edit on 27-2-2012 by Sailor Sam because: spelling

When? The very first day humans were created. The Gods or creators were living on earth, and trained humans to serve their local deity.

Originally posted by Sailor Sam

Originally posted by aardvark888
reply to post by Sailor Sam

 

Well, since God created Adam, I guess from that point he knew God existed.

That is Chrsitian thinking and belief.
Primitive man did not know about Adam, because he (primitive man) was around long before Christianity was even thought of.

edit on 8-3-2012 by Sailor Sam because: spelling

Primitive men are early versions of human creations. The Adam was the latest upgraded human. Primitive men did not know about the Adam, simply because the Adam didn't exist yet, and had no access to the restricted area in which further experiments were developed.

Christianity was invented by Constantine in the 4th-5th century AD, based on the true original knowledge of the gnostics.

I believe there was religion long before man.

In a way, nearly all life worships the sun. Even plantlife recognizes the sun as the bringer of energy, as a creator. This knowledge is expressed in the way a sunflower will turn its head to follow the sun during a days transit for example. In animals, this intuitive knowledge is used in picking times to hunt and times to sleep and so on.

At some point humans learned to use throat-sounds to communicate, these sounds could describe an object even after that object had disappeared from view. And thus abstract thinking was born. Man began wondering about hypotheticals. Where animals accept a dark cloudy day as fact, humans could now wonder about how nice and warm they would be IF the sun HAD BEEN there, visible in the sky. Our brains have always been wired to seek patterns in the world around us, so we sought patterns and connections here too. "The day before this one was sunny, was there something different that day that caused to sun appear? Did we do something different?"

Of course, connections were found, perhaps only to give ourselves an illusion of control and mastery over the world around us, including the sun. Thus the sun became an entity capable of responding to human deeds.

As our cultures and the ways in which we could express ideas grew, belief systems grew in complexity and scope as well. And it was only recently in our history that our belief systems became detached from the sun and this sun-entity became the god we worship now. These previous two sentences describe a 100,000 year process so they are overly simplifying of course as religion encompasses so much more than just the sun.

In short: I'm thinking our religion is a byproduct of using language to express ancient knowledge about our surrounding world hidden in the DNA of every living thing on the surface of our planet.

Some people are of the belief that man used to hear voices, and that schizophrenia and other "hearing voices" phenomena is a relic of that. If there's any truth in it then that would be THE explanation, I suppose .

Bicameralism. Freaky stuff but interesting.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

"When Julian Jaynes...speculates that until late in the second millennium B.C. men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis through all the corroborative evidence..."

- John Updike, in The New Yorker

reply to post by Symer


I agree, but don't forget the influence of the Moon, she was and is most certainly as important to our welfare and behaviour. We as humans are approximately 70% water, some organisms even more so. Just as the Moon controls the tides of the seas and oceans, it must have an influence over the fluctuations of our internal waters.

reply to post by wigit


That is an interesting thesis, but it should also be taken alongside the development of our desire to communicate complexity. When did simple guttural sounds begin to prove inadequate to explain all that was needed to be explained?

reply to post by Biliverdin


Maybe their communications were more empathic before they had enough words to explain things. A simple grunt and a wee nod of the head might have told a much larger tale than we might imagine.
Sometimes just a glance or an expression can tell a story.

Or maybe there were other vibes we don't even know about today? Like, positive waves, Man.