Guest Post by The Zman
The general consensus among physical anthropologists is that religion co-evolved with language. By religion, they mean belief, not the highly complex and abstract stuff we now think of as religion. Early humans probably started with supernatural ideas about the forces controlling the parts of the natural world they could see. Then maybe more abstract ideas about what happens to people when they die and the need to properly handle the dead. This is all speculation, but that’s where the evidence seems to point.
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Whether or not belief is baked into our genes is debatable, mostly because we don’t know enough about the human genome. The news makes it sound like science has unraveled the mysteries of human DNA and we’re on the verge of creating super babies, but nothing could be further from the truth. There’s also the fact that people continue to insist that believing in Progressive mythology is rational while being a committed Christian is delusional. Once again, Progressive orthodoxy hinders science.
When religion is treated as a subset of mass movements, then the genetic argument for belief becomes more promising. The person who is always caught up in one cause or another is well known. It is not unusual for someone to start out in one thing and end up in its opposite. The Christian, who gets into radical politics and ends up as a spiritual gluten free vegan into hot yoga. Some people are highly prone to getting caught up into mass movements, while others are disinclined to join anything, even when they agree with it.
The true believer latches onto a cause, in part, because of a deep belief in magic or the super natural. The crazy cat lady into aroma therapy will have a long list of wacky reasons why certain smells have magical powers, but it’s still just magic. She does not know. She believes and she gets satisfaction, a psychic reward, by exercising that belief. Half of Iceland believes there are invisible elves on the island, even thought no one has seen an elf. They are invisible, after all. It just feels right to believe they exist.
The ruling class of America seems to be particularly prone to belief in the supernatural, despite their alleged love of science and reason. You see this in their obsession with racism. Our betters talk about racism as if it is a demon spirit. The anointed, invested with the spirit of good-think, are tasked with exhorting the rest of us to resist the Dark Lord of Racism. You see it in this post the other day by VD, regarding the hysteria at Duke Divinity School. Anathea Portier-Young sounds like she is organizing an exorcism.
“Racism is a fierce, ever-present, challenging force, one which has structured the thinking, behavior, and actions of individuals and institutions since the beginning of U.S. history. To understand racism and effectively begin dismantling it requires an equally fierce, consistent, and committed effort” (REI). Phase I provides foundational training in understanding historical and institutional racism. It helps individuals and organizations begin to “proactively understand and address racism, both in their organization and in the community where the organization is working.” It is the first step in a longer process.
Puritan ministers use to talk like that about Satan. Racism is no longer just normal clannishness based on race. Now it is a magical, almost indescribable, force that creeps up on little cat feet to possess the soul of those who are not vigilant. These seminars all have a revival quality to them. The participants are inducted into secret rights that allow them to resist the Dark Lord of Racism and all his works. The exhortation to go forth and preach against the temptations of racism is right out of 17th century Salem.
The late great Eric Hoffer observed that mass movements can get along without a god, but they must always have a devil. Modern Progressives have only a muddled sense of a deity, but they have a devil, as well as a list of lesser demons that do his bidding. Racism is the arch demon in the cosmology of the Left. It is why everything they don’t like is associated with racism. Trump, for example, is one of the least racist guys in public life, but they swear he is the soldier of the Dark Lord of Racism.
The ruins at Göbekli Tepe are interesting for a number of reasons, but one of them is what they suggest about the nature of man. It was assumed that human organization was either out of self-interest or out of a sense of cooperation. It was homo economicus or homo reciprocans. The fact that pre-settlement people came together to build what looks like a religious site, suggests that neither is true. A desire for purpose, beyond the material, may be the force that drives human cooperation beyond the bounds of kinship.
Our ruling class has the same desire for a purpose beyond their extravagant lifestyles as Cloud People. These are people who fully committed to the meritocratic, managerial system. They are true believers. Having abandoned Christianity long ago, the ruling class lurches from cause to cause, looking for a reason to cast themselves as on the side of angels, in the great moral struggle that is the human condition. Lacking a deity, a light to give them purpose, they settle for demons they can slay.
I’m seriously wondering if religion has simply evolved or was invented to control people.
It depends on the religion. Of the major ones, only one is based on complete free will, does not promise salvation if you believe or threaten punishment if you do not. By tradition, you are not even allowed to convert to it. It’s name is Zoroastrianism and it is probably the most ancient of them all, except for Hinduism.
Look into Zen Buddhism. It’s object is to attain enlightenment and escape the afterlife, as a positive goal.
Hi James, I have studied Zen and found it quite remarkable. The power is within us if we can find it with the help of others better versed in the powers of the universe.
TV preachers get my goat. I like the line in “Hell or High Water” where a character says of a TV preacher, “God don’t talk through that man any more than he does through my dog. That man wouldn’t know God if he climbed up his leg and bit him on the pecker.”
Somebody told me, that when you talk to God, you’re praying. When God talks to you, you’re hallucinating.
My angel has come foreword and validated he is an angel many times over.We all have angels helping and guiding us from the time of conception,until the time we pass.I hope every one that reads this says thank you to your angel for helping and guiding you through this life.They can not stop free will.My angel recently let me know my mother was getting ready to pass,and I needed to contact my grown children to say good by to grandma.Yes I got the rolling eyes from them .She died a week 1/2 later in her sleep.I was very grateful to have said goodbye as well.Thank you my angel!
You are truly blessed to have the awareness of this in your Human lifetime. My Angel has pulled me away from injury or death many times.
I read an article in a magazine many years ago that talked about the author’s ‘parking angel’. Every time she wished to park her car she would call on her angel and sure enough a place was found for her. I started practicing this 30 years ago and without fail it works, but you must say: “Thank you angel” afterwards. On one occasion I was nearing a full car park in a busy city and called on my angel. I drove around for some minutes, up and down the lines, when suddenly I came upon, not one, but two empty spaces right next to the pay machine! After parking and thanking angel, I went to pay, but found a live ticket stuck in the machine which I easily extracted – so was able to park for nothing too! My friend who was with me still uses parking angel with great effect. Who is it for me to question the universal forces that I know not of?
Austrian Peter what a glorious testimony to the power of God!Amen!
The true believer latch is more apt to be deep insecurity, unbearable existential angst, which they delegate to “representatives.” Supernatural or secular – same thing. Defense mechs make mechanisms\tools – latches – out of people. “Singularity” if\when, will be fait accompli, since man has been busy cogging, rhymes flogging, himself since the mortality recognition switch got thrown.
Desire for purpose? Please. Göbekli Tepe is a shrine that got powered up & made manifest by the recognition of mortality fuel. What is more, that shift is also what did away with the easy (supposedly) nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle – for those majorities that were inclined to erect huge edifices that they wanted to be close by for pilgrimages & congregationalizing. That need for proximity to defense narratives made of substantial stone fueled the agricultural revo. People went from making comfortable livings out of 3-4 hours of labor per day to backbreaking sunup to sundown toil – because they had become freaked out by contemplating their impending demises.
Competition is what drives emergent property – side effect – cooperation. But competing fairy stories just drives Old Dixie down. Always.
Religion, either side of the aisle, is religion – immortality projects is what Ernest Becker called them – defense mechanism narratives all of which are allied in their dread of dying…but many of which are antagonists toward each other. “There can be only one.”
Seen•thesized thusly, the fulcrum of the great moral struggle that is the human condition is simple cowardice. 1st step is always admission of the problem. Until then, no possibility of progress, let alone solution.
Or, you’re going to die & cease; get over it – cease & desist the deists, of whatever stripe. Easier said than done…it’s same as telling any addict to “just say no.” 12 steps raised to the 12 disciples raised to the 12 months raised to the 12 injurious jury peers gets ya’…OJ Simpson. The juice, indeed…is koolaid.
Many vague words will accomplish little so I give you some real supernatural experiences I have had and there are thousands of other American who could do the same. I was solo in a jet in 1970 and lost both engines at about 300 feet over a swamp and was to low and slow to eject. I did the emergency procedures and prepared to crash when I clearly heard a voice behind my left shoulder say “Check your Boost Pump Switches.” I looked and the Fuselage Pump was off so I switched it on and immediately the red “no fuel pressure” light went out and then the yellow “low fuel pressure” light went out. I slowly pushed the throttles forward and both engines began wrapping up; I’m here to tell the story. About 1978, I fell off a roof and was flying through the air preparing to hit when a gentle breeze “caught me” and put me on my feet in the middle of the roof. In 1990 I was dying of a broken heart (because my wife divorced me) and I cried out to Jesus for help; I immediately felt oil pour onto my head and drip off; I fell deeply asleep and woke up a new man. A little later, a preacher that didn’t knew me or anything about me said he had a message from Jesus for me: “You have a heavy load and it was I who came and put my arm around you”. One night, I suggested to a group of Republican candidates that they dance around Choice because polls show a majority favor it; a night later, a nine foot plus Being woke me up: “I am Michael the Archangel and have come from The Throne of God to tell you that you pride yourself on never having killed anyone but you killed your own daughter!” (my wife had a IUD); that left a lasting changing impression on me. One day I was walking by our barn and a voice above me clearly said: “If you can’t get her on the right path, I’ll find someone who can.” Watch Youtube NDE Jesus vids and I bet 99.9% are telling the Truth (although even one should be enough).
I had an NDE and can attest to their authenticity. Being consciously out of body and on the way to the afterlife has changed me in oh so many ways.
You might want to check out Julian Jaynes’ 1978 book “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.” Briefly, modern consciousness began about 1,500 BCE when social complexity and the breakdown caused by the volcanic eruption of the Island of Thera overwhelmed our simple Bicameral minds which previously “heard” and were guided by the voice of god, but was actually one hemisphere of the brain talking to the other.
This developed into the myth of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden wherein Adam and Eve had previously “walked and talked with god.” God had now disappeared into the sky so we developed mnemonic (memory) devices like idols.
Prophets who previously heard the voice of god were now considered insane by those with modern consciousness.
Another example is the difference between the Biblical book of Amos (“Hark, the voice of god…”) written hundreds of years before Ecclesiastes (“…nothing new under the sun.”) Amos was still bicameral whereas the writer of Ecclesiastes had a modern, reflective consciousness. The same difference is seen in Homer’s Iliad vs the Odyssey.
The Bicameral theory sounds bizarre because it goes against everything we’ve been taught, yet it explains so much of human behavior as we try to substitute the missing god like some primitive cargo cult.
Sorry Buddy, you need to read better books; evidently neither side of your brain is at par because to many supernatural things keep happening that are clearly outside of one brains purview (ref miracle healings galore, escapes from disasters where two or more people see an Angel, muslim encounters with Jesus who they despise yet they then convert and tell everyone, etc).
Why couldn’t God have used the bicameral brain to talk to his children? And then remove the connection when Adam & Eve sinned?
The only problem with that is the Biblical narrative shows that God kept talking with Adam even after they sinned. It shows that He even talked with Adam’s children. The naturally audible connection was interrupted some time later.
Blessings:-}
Why? God can speak like us using air waves, or directly into any brain, either side anytime; or anyone or anything else He wants. However, I have my doubts He actually used a donkey once.
muslim encounters with Jesus who they despise yet they then convert and tell everyone, etc).
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If a muslim despises Jesus then he/she isn’t a very good muslim. All of the prophets who preceded Muhammad are revered in real Islam. Muhammad never said he was the only prophet, just the last one. Having said this, people see what they want to see. I see a hippie, you see Jesus.
I just go with my gut, and my gut says that any God who demands worship and praise from pathetic, in comparison, humans is clearly not God…well that is unless God has a massive inferiority complex.
I say that because I served in the Middle East for 1.5 years, read the Koran and knew muslims who hated “that bastard by a Roman Soldier who we falsely claim rose from the dead” etc. I don’t know Jesus as a Hippie (or any of the Disciples, Judas excluded); He (and they) are very serious people. I don’t know why God is like He is but your speculation doesn’t preclude Him from being God and He doesn’t have an inferiority complex. Please watch some of the Jesus NDE videos and you’ll get a better idea of what God really is like.
Don’t preach at me, asshole. Fuck your idiotic conception of god and fuck you too.
Kinda thought you were a little short of having God’s Spirit.
The spirit of Ahura Mazda is with me. Pardon my rudeness, it is customary here, but not otherwise…
Had to look up that Mazda spirit; sounds good but of course you know I’m going to say Jesus has updated us but Mohammad missed the memo.
One quotation from the prophet Zarathustra will prove that he understood creation while whomever wrote Genesis did not. “God, Ahura Mazda, created them not with dust and water. Look upon the fire and behold therein how they were created”.
We know that all of the elements with an atomic weight greater than iron are created in the furnaces of dying stars and cast into the universe through a supernova. We are all made, as Carl Sagan used to say, of “star stuff.” Put differently, we are the creatures of fire. Zarathustra knew this several millenia before it was proven to be fact. Knowing the unknowable is what being a prophet is all about.
Ahura Mazda = the real god. Yours is just a figment of someone’s imagination.
“We know that all of the elements with an atomic weight greater than iron are created in the furnaces of dying stars and cast into the universe through a supernova.”
How do “we” know that? Because those who tell us that Magilla Gorilla is our great great ….. grandpappy?
Genesis tells us that when God made life on earth it would reproduce after it’s kind. Genesis is the true record of creation. The rest are imposters.
Actually, the book was very thought provoking. He was supposed to come out with a 2nd volume but I could never find it. Too many loose ends in just the one volume, no explanation for how/why people still have ‘supernatural’ experiences, hear voices, and experience death visions. (That are always helpful, never harmful, unlike in schizophrenia.)
The explanation is it could be supernatural (admittedly hard to fully believe until it happens to you; like seeing a UFO or ghost) and very close to what the Gospels say (sorry to admit it but there are “Superman” myths in the N.T. and there is nothing we can do about that but suffer as a Christian “Heretic”).
Ecclesiastes was written late in the reign of Solomon, during 10th century B.C. Amos prophesied about two hundred years later, following the split between Judah and Israel.
“we’re on the verge of creating super babies, but nothing could be further from the truth.”
TRUE
Think of all the Musloids with their 75 IQ’s entering EU and US. Instead of a super baby, expect to hear screams of ‘It’s Alive’, ‘It’s Alive’.
Too much stupid in this post.
We are trying but it’s a Diverse subject.
Robbie, you didn’t add a mina’s worth of smart.
Please go to 4:50 and start watching; I don’t believe Dr Ritchie is a dope or fraud: