God's will

What about dance, drama and art were they all non existent before religion

I had considered adding dance, and yes, the suggestion that morality and religion arrived to the sound of music wasn’t a totally serious point. Although there was a half-serious point about the role of spiritualism in human evolution.

On the question of drama that’s definitely not unique to humans, chimps and other primates can be incredibly dramatic purely for effect, and try giving medicine or examining a crow if you want to see a proper drama queen in action.

And I’m not convinced that art is unique to humans either. Certainly there are birds that can create beautiful works of art out of colouful objects and shapes, even a crow or magpie can appreciate the aesthetic value of a shiny sliver coin.

Morality on the other hand is unique to humans imo.

ernie_lynch – Member

Well I think it plays a minor part – the Orthodox East and the Catholic West. I believe that Ukraine means “borderland”, it’s historically been where West meets East, where different cultures converge.

I only made the point to emphasise that the situation in Ukraine is rather more complex than Russian aggression, as our media and government would like us to think. You have on the one hand eastern Ukraine which feels a close affinity with the East and Russia, and on the other hand western Ukraine which feels a closer affinity with Europe.

Ironically iirc Ukraine was historically once the centre of Russia and home to Russia’s capital city, it was in fact more ‘Russian’ than Moscow.

I don’t want to de-rail the thread, but I have quite a bit invested in the whole Ukraine issue, and religion only plays an incidental part. It is NOT essentially about the Orthodox East and the Catholic West, although Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk would have you think it is. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine declared itself independent of the Patriarch of Moscow. As a result, when Russia seeks to diminish Ukraine’s standing in the eyes of the world, it targets its Church as much as its territory and its culture.

Finally, you are right in thinking that Kyiv was once the capital of the Rus’. Moscow is an upstart compared to Kyiv.[/url]

religion only plays an incidental part. It is NOT essentially about the Orthodox East and the Catholic West, although Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk would have you think it is

Which I guess is probably why I said “I think it plays a minor part” 🙂

Which I guess is why I was unaware that it played any part 🙂

What about dance, drama and art were they all non existent before religion

True fact, drama didn’t exist before the Internet.

somafunk – Member
…i consider that anyone that has a genuine belief in an all seeing/all encompassing God or deity must be mentally unhinged

Thank god (sorry) this is another religion thread. You would be in trouble on any other thread with comments like that. But religion, another matter altogether….as per….

Someone better tell the Catholics that an omnipotent God is inconsistent with free will…..quick….

“His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to his power. If you choose to say ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,’ you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words ‘God can.’… It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of his creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because his power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”

I googled omnipotence and this C S Lewis quote came up.

religious, territorial, class, gender, sexual orientation and race divisions cause so much grief don’t they? We’re all one species of mammal, we all live on the same planet, we all die and guess what? Nothing happens to us after that. Let’s just get back to basic, common sense living.

I am off toa rugby thread to say if you like rugby you are mentally unhinged
Then I will try anyone who likes 29 ers is mentally unhinged and if you SS on a fat bike you are mentally unhinged
Nothing will happen to me if i do this

Your religion does not get special protection and we can be as rude about it as you are about the SNP and AS.
Dont get so sweaty 😀

“mentally unhinged ” is a bit strong. I prefer deluded, foolish, bereft of common sense. For many it’s simply a way of handing-off responsibility to “someone ” else rather than accept it themselves.

Omnipotence (from Latin: Omni Potens: “all power”) is the ability to be almighty in every sense and aspect. The user can achieve absolutely anything without any limit or condition, including the conceptually impossible, like “bigger than infinity.”

CS Lewis did do some interesting writing on the subject of religion but it is just the difficulty all believers have in explaining how their all powerful, all knowing, and all loving god watches children die of cancer or go blind from worms eating their eyes. Its hard to understand why a parent who could stop this would let this happen to their children.

FWIW i dont know of a good answer to it and theologians have mused on it for centuries.

scotroutes- “handing off responsibility” for what? I don’t get what you mean?

“mentally unhinged ” is a bit strong. I prefer deluded, foolish, bereft of common sense.

The problem with that is that the terms deluded, foolish, and bereft of commonsense, are all relative, and since most human beings believe in the existence of a god it makes those terms completely inappropriate. It makes the reference to commonsense particularly ridiculous.

most human beings believe in the existence of a god

thank you for making my point for me. Perhaps if everyone believed in the same God they might have a point.

But they do have commonsense on their side.

The most commonly held belief is that there is a god. That’s what commonsense says.

Back to why would a loving god allow good people to suffer…… I don’t have any great answers, and I’ve given this a lot of thought.
Accepting that people die for numerous reasons, sometimes unfortunate genetics, sometimes infection, sometimes from floods or earthquakes, wars, pollution, accident, etc. If God’s Will were to intervene to prevent all those deaths, then how would the earth actually function? Would He suddenly put a stop to the way biology works? Should he prevent people from killing others? Should he stop people from doing all those 21st century things that cause premature death? Should he kill bacteria and viruses that kill innocent people but are also vital to the way the earth works?

If God’s Will were to intervene to prevent all those deaths, then how would the earth actually function? Would He suddenly put a stop to the way biology works? Should he prevent people from killing others? Should he stop people from doing all those 21st century things that cause premature death? Should he kill bacteria and viruses that kill innocent people but are also vital to the way the earth works?

So what the hell happens in heaven ?

I was hoping that heaven might be somewhere to look forward to.

what I mean is, as tragic and horrible as things are in this world, I don’t think they are caused by God’s Will.
I’m feeling pretty gloomy at the moment myself. 🙁

I’m feeling pretty gloomy at the moment myself.

Cheer up ! 🙂

If you’ve got a cat or dog, or even a young child, just go and look at them……they don’t ponder about life and its meaning, they just get on with enjoying life.

There’s a lesson for us all there.

If He created a world in which human suffering is required in order for it to “work” then he’s not very clever, is he?

Omnipotence and stupidity in the same deity,what hope is there?

Ernie lynch- the cat is my best bet for something that enjoys life without pondering the meaning 🙂

I’m not sure that you can compare early human belief systems (animism, totemism) with organised religion. Plus all of the madonnas scattered about would suggest that people worshipped the matriarch as in canario culture up to arrival of the Spanish in the C16th. Religions picked up earlier belief systems and integrated them into a new world view which is why christianity, islam and judaism all have a similar take on the creation of the universe.
If we are to compare humans with apes then we should confine ourselves to the bonobo ape which is closest to us genetically, and lives a highly social, highly sexual and peaceful existence (without a religion).

I am bemused by how religious ideas can lead to a rise in the sale of over-priced dried milk. Marvelous much!

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/26/blood-moon-mormon-church-apocalypse-warning

http://beprepared.com/

They don’t seem to do dried beer. I’m out.

Out of my small staff, i have a couple of Christians – one a church goer, who isnt quite sure he understands what he believes in, but it helps him, the other two fundamentalist Christians, with two kids in school who are batshit mental.

After the Nepalese earthquake, fundamentalist Christian told other Christian that it was god’s will all the people had died. Other Christian went ballistic at him and how he could be so insensitive and clueless.

edit – he isn;t batshit due to being a Christian, just due to being clueless, God must have blinked when he sprinkled savvy and common sense onb the family

Thankfully this happened no where near me, and I didn’t have to reprimand either of them for it.

I’m not sure that you can compare early human belief systems (animism, totemism) with organised religion.

Which presumably is precisely why that comparison hasn’t been made.

The connection between primate human society and religious doctrine was made.

.

If we are to compare humans with apes then we should confine ourselves to the bonobo ape which is closest to us genetically, and lives a highly social, highly sexual and peaceful existence (without a religion).

A species which lives in peaceful matriarchal societies is hardly a good comparison to humans. A much better comparison would be chimpanzees which are violent towards members of their own species and live in patriarchal societies, and with which we are as closely related to as bonobos.

And how do you know bonobos are “without a religion”? How do you know they don’t have a spiritual belief system? I can only assume that you don’t know and are working on the assumption that they are incapable of having religious beliefs.

Which makes your point rather silly – it’s hardly surprising that they don’t do something which they are incapable of doing.

which is why christianity, islam and judaism all have a similar take on the creation of the universe.

They are all Abrhamic faiths and share the same lineage, abrhaham, Moses, etc

They disagree on whether jesus was the son of god, a prophet or neither
IIRC Judaism is just the OT or a number from that

They diverge at certain points in their history but they have a similar take because they are the same god IMHO – not a point they accept obviously- who confusingly gave different messages to different parts of the followers creating a massive schism – god then did the same within the faith see sunni v shia or catholic v protestant

they are the same god IMHO – not a point they accept obviously

Are you sure ? I have never met a Muslim who didn’t accept that their God was the same God as the Jewish and Christian God. Or a Christian that didn’t accept that God is the same as the Jewish God, most I think realise that the Muslim God is the same God. Can’t comment on Jews as my experience with talking to them about their religion is extremely limited/practically nonexistent, but I would be surprised if they didn’t accept that they shared the same God with Christians and Muslims.

chimpanzees which are violent towards members of their own species and live in patriarchal societies, and with which we are as closely related to as bonobos

Chimps are used for comparison in the same way that Darwin’s ideas were distorted to ‘survival of the fittest’ as this fitted better with a capitalist outlook. Read primatologist Frans de Waal on genetics and you will find yourself completely wrong. Or, if you are genuinely interested in early human society, read (the Marxist!) V.Gordon-Childe and you will find we were much more bonobo than chimp in hunter-gatherer society, cooperation not conflict ensured survival (Kropotkin makes similar points).

who confusingly gave different messages to different parts of the followers creating a massive schism – god then did the same within the faith see sunni v shia or catholic v protestant

I reckon all of them – Jews, Muslims and Christians and the various sub groups within those – would dispute that God gave different messages, and instead say that the others have misheard/misunderstood/got it all wrong. Which as we know has resulted in untold conflict and other horrors. Which kind of fits with the overriding story, as I understand it, of God creating something good and humans making a complete arse of it.

Yes they will mishandle the data and reach the wrong conclusion 😉

In fairness the sunni v shia thing is because the prophet failed to name a heir – simplified massively. However clearly jews and all christians worship the same god.
However if I build[ create] a wheel and it fails I dont blame the wheel

Yes, I agree, and I think Ernie is right that most or at least some of them would recognise that too.

you will find we were much more bonobo than chimp in hunter-gatherer society, cooperation not conflict ensured survival

I’m sorry you didn’t make it clear that you were talking about in prehistory times when you said “if we are to compare humans with apes” I assumed that you were talking of the present.

I fully accept the theory of primitive communism when humans lived in classless societies in which each contributed according to their ability and received according to their needs.

Of course after hundreds of thousands of years of primitive communism it all went pear-shaped with the arrival of surplus, accumulative wealth/money, and class systems/class antagonism.

It’s interesting to note that this prehistory human story is remarkably like the religious equivalent.

Man once lived in Paradise where all his needs were satisfied and everything was peaceful happy and there was no sin. Then man fell to the temptation of greed, everything thereafter changed. He was banished from the Garden of Eden and was surround by misery violence and greed. His sins and greed were passed down to each new generation.

You could call both stories “The Fall of Man”.

Btw, bonobos are no more closer related to humans than chimpanzees. Perhaps there’s another story about the “The Fall of Chimpanzees”? Perhaps chimpanzees were once bonobos which fell to sin/greed?

bonobos are no more closer related to humans than chimpanzees

We obviously read different books on genetics. Engels, incidentally, in ‘The role played by labour in the ascent from ape to man’ dismisses the idea of animals making art. You should read it.

Engels, incidentally, in ‘The role played by labour in the ascent from ape to man’ dismisses the idea of animals making art. You should read it.

He might well have dismissed the idea of animals making art but as far as I am aware Engels was not a noted naturalist/zoologist, so I’m not sure either why I should read the opinions of a non-expert or why you attach so much importance to it.

This is artwork created by an animal :

That artwork is created for exactly the same reason as humans create artwork – because it is considered to be aesthetically pleasing. Note the creativity which goes beyond choosing brightly coloured objects but also considers form, shape, contrast, and arrangement.

Do they change with the times? Is there a futurist, surrealist or a cubist version? Nice pictures but this rather smacks of personification.

Obvious they change with the times. Plastic baubles, sweetie wrappers?

Anthropomorphise not personification surely?

and errr… No billmc, rather like the bower bird you are clutching at straws

Do they change with the times?

So you’ve changed from dismissing the idea of animals making art to now dismissing the idea that fashion exists in other species.

I don’t know whether fashion exists with regards to the above examples, quite possibly I imagine – why not ?

Btw it was once thought, certainly in Engels’s time, that one of the big distinguishing factors between humans and all other species was that only humans used tools. Then it was discovered that chimpanzees can learn how to use tools in a completely natural environment. Much more recently it has been discovered that crows can not only use tools but can actually make tools by shaping an object – up that point it was considered that only humans could do that sort of problem solving.

There is very little indeed that distinguishes humans from other species imo. The only real difference imo is morality/moral code. Or soul if you are religious.

That artwork is created for exactly the same reason as humans create artwork

How do you know?