They depended upon them but they were mysterious. They could not understand how or why these things acted the way they do. The unknown inspires imagination.
peacefulpete
JoinedPosts by peacefulpete
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43
Can God Change his Mind?
by peacefulpete inis 31:yet he also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract his words.. 1 sam 15: furthermore, the eternal one of israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not man who changes his mind.. numbers 23: god is not a man who lies, or a son of man who changes his mind.
does he speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?.
when the god you worship pronounces judgement, is he, really just issuing a warning or has the matter been determined through all the godly powers of insight, foresight and perfect judgement?
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43
Can God Change his Mind?
by peacefulpete inis 31:yet he also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract his words.. 1 sam 15: furthermore, the eternal one of israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not man who changes his mind.. numbers 23: god is not a man who lies, or a son of man who changes his mind.
does he speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?.
when the god you worship pronounces judgement, is he, really just issuing a warning or has the matter been determined through all the godly powers of insight, foresight and perfect judgement?
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peacefulpete
This is precisely an instinctive (inferential) thing to have done. Why did man have to see a spirit in the fire or the water? Why not leave it at "it's hot" or "it's wet"?
Why does my dog bark at the wind? Why when the floor creaks does my wife immediately suspect someone is in the house? It's a product of mind and experience.
When she wakens alarmed, her rational mind usually takes over...."I should have heard the door open, we live in a safe rural community, the floor sometimes creaks when the cat walks on it"...etc. IOW she applies critical thinking and suppresses her primitive inference.
As to why fire and water and planets/sun etc. were endowed with spirits, things that move and exert force are easily thought of as animate or animated by someone animate. Combine that with the importance things like water, fire, wind, sun have to human survival, they were concerns playing on the mind all the time.
Animate vs. inanimate are innate concepts in all but the simplest of organisms. Yet the mind of my cat seems to enjoy imagining/pretending her stuffed ball of feathers on a string as a bird.
Believing and make believing are sisters. Religion makes no effort to separate them.
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43
Can God Change his Mind?
by peacefulpete inis 31:yet he also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract his words.. 1 sam 15: furthermore, the eternal one of israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not man who changes his mind.. numbers 23: god is not a man who lies, or a son of man who changes his mind.
does he speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?.
when the god you worship pronounces judgement, is he, really just issuing a warning or has the matter been determined through all the godly powers of insight, foresight and perfect judgement?
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peacefulpete
In fact it was such a stroke of genius from that primitive that this notion of God still exists today, eons removed from all the ignorance that once existed.
Rather than a stroke of genius worthy of retaining, the concept only still lingers and functions for those who persist in primitive thinking. No offense intended.
You also keep ignoring the fact that billions today are polytheists and billions are apatheists.
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43
Can God Change his Mind?
by peacefulpete inis 31:yet he also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract his words.. 1 sam 15: furthermore, the eternal one of israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not man who changes his mind.. numbers 23: god is not a man who lies, or a son of man who changes his mind.
does he speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?.
when the god you worship pronounces judgement, is he, really just issuing a warning or has the matter been determined through all the godly powers of insight, foresight and perfect judgement?
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peacefulpete
I am understanding that you believe that when the first human did what you explained above, he bypassed the possibility of there being just ONE god and immediately inferred that it was multiple gods ...all at once. You believe that there was no gradual rationalization from one god to many.
Who knows, that precise moment was not recorded. What is evident is that the earliest record does show animism/multiple spirits. I'm guessing that the spirit in the fire was distinguished from the spirit in the water for obvious reasons. Multiple spirits is far more intuitive than a single one, as I said, perhaps an even superior idea theologically.
Further, that this happened in a 'vacuum' where the idea or most minimal concept of a god was inexistent.
I don't understand why you say this happened in a "vacuum". The mind is a dynamic thing, the world is dynamic and filled with inspiration. I would, and have said elsewhere, nothing creative takes place in a vacuum. Humans are very good at copying and combining concepts. The concept of animate invisible spirits/gods is a projection of our own sense of agency/self upon an unexplainable action. We then, as I said, imagine the spirit to be like what we are familiar with, a human form or animal. No, creative/imaginative ideas are not from a 'vacuum', they are drawn from our own psychology and environment.
There is no "instinct" to believe in a god. The mind makes inferences (door closed so must be a closer) but how these inferences are interpreted has varied through history. There is nothing anymore instinctive about monotheism than there is about superstitions about black cats. Either particular tradition is the result of millennia of refinement and cultural transmission.
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43
Can God Change his Mind?
by peacefulpete inis 31:yet he also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract his words.. 1 sam 15: furthermore, the eternal one of israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not man who changes his mind.. numbers 23: god is not a man who lies, or a son of man who changes his mind.
does he speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?.
when the god you worship pronounces judgement, is he, really just issuing a warning or has the matter been determined through all the godly powers of insight, foresight and perfect judgement?
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peacefulpete
Well, the Israelites wanted a king instead of a judge....that change was allowed
That is an interesting topic. Jews and careful readers for centuries have pondered the odd, conflicted position towards the appointment of Kings in the OT. It ought not surprise anyone that the reason is the exilic/postexilic redaction of the Deuteronomist history.
Compare the negative view 1 Sam 8 with the positive 9:1-10:16 then see the return to a negative version repeated starting at 10:17.
(Deut. 17:14a,b,15 has similarly been edited. The introjection in the center (b) changes the meaning negatively.
14“When you enter the land which the LORD your God is giving you, and you take possession of it and live in it,
and you say, ‘I will appoint a king over me like all the nations who are around me,’
15you shall in fact appoint a king over you whom the LORD your God chooses.
Think about the mind of a priestly/scribal caste of writers living in exile or just returned from there, the importance and value of a King no doubt was diminished if not distained. In the absence of a King the priestly leaders effectively govern the people, also during the early Persian period clambering for a King would have been (and was) disastrous. This is the same group that altered the texts regarding the covenant with David, making it conditional and a mere warning tale of history.
So rather than being God who changed his mind it was the writers. Of course that is always the case.
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43
Can God Change his Mind?
by peacefulpete inis 31:yet he also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract his words.. 1 sam 15: furthermore, the eternal one of israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not man who changes his mind.. numbers 23: god is not a man who lies, or a son of man who changes his mind.
does he speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?.
when the god you worship pronounces judgement, is he, really just issuing a warning or has the matter been determined through all the godly powers of insight, foresight and perfect judgement?
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peacefulpete
A huge portion of the world is apathetic to the concept of deities, they are called Buddhists. The Buddha, it's claimed, said little about gods but if they existed, they were irrelevant. Rather than imagine an entity to explain causes, he assumed an unwritten law of karma. Our actions have untold consequences that effect the physical world and our own well being. While he was a product of his age in many ways, he is said to have been a deep thinker that saw the waste of resources and emotion spent on appeasing deities. He also saw worship of them of no value in improving the mind and character.
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43
Can God Change his Mind?
by peacefulpete inis 31:yet he also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract his words.. 1 sam 15: furthermore, the eternal one of israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not man who changes his mind.. numbers 23: god is not a man who lies, or a son of man who changes his mind.
does he speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?.
when the god you worship pronounces judgement, is he, really just issuing a warning or has the matter been determined through all the godly powers of insight, foresight and perfect judgement?
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peacefulpete
I'm not sure I quite follow, but the "all at once" phrase may be a large part of your difficulty accepting the natural explanation for belief in gods.
I was trying to illustrate the fact that inferential reasoning is common, even among other animals. Primate studies have demonstrated they are very similar in their ability to impute motives and formulate opinions about personalities and anticipate behavior. This is sometimes part of what is called social cognition. In short the ability to conceive and retain an impression of another personality. For humans, having the added ability of complex language, we pass on detailed concepts, to get transmitted communally, eventually changing and growing in sophistication with the additional input of more imaginations. We can have real emotions about imaginary characters. Fear, affection etc.
So, what I'm getting at is there is nothing "all at once" about it. Human religious development grew from simple assumptions of agency involved in the otherwise unexplainable movement into complex rationalizations of how to appease these agents. The agents are mental constructs that offer comfort or fear.
Monotheism is a very late invention in our species. Some would say it is an unworkable one. Persians and Jews (and Egyptian Atenism) found it difficult to attribute all the good and bad to a single powerful praiseworthy entity. Hence the concept of an ultimately good and an ultimately bad god in eternal struggle. God/devil. True monotheism probably never existed.
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43
Can God Change his Mind?
by peacefulpete inis 31:yet he also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract his words.. 1 sam 15: furthermore, the eternal one of israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not man who changes his mind.. numbers 23: god is not a man who lies, or a son of man who changes his mind.
does he speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?.
when the god you worship pronounces judgement, is he, really just issuing a warning or has the matter been determined through all the godly powers of insight, foresight and perfect judgement?
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peacefulpete
Well, that really isn't the case. Many spirits were assumed minor powers, many were thought of as mischievous and with unique abilities other than ours to cause trouble but not all powerful. Polytheism/henotheism essentially means that there was no all-powerful. Power was distributed around as agents of countless phenomenon. Eventually the philosophically literate had a problem with their deity being less than everything and imagined a single all-in-one God. We happen to come from a culture with that theology, but even today the majority of the world has more than one deity/spirit.
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US SOLE DISSENTING "VETO" VOTE ON UN COUNCIL TO PREVENT PALESTINIAN UN MEMBERSHIP!!!
by Golden4Altar inus sole dissenting "veto" vote on un council to prevent palestinian un membership!!!.
the obvious wickedness of usa .
on world wide display!.
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peacefulpete
As passionately as we all wish for a resolution to the situation in Palestine, sometimes we just don't have enough of the facts to be able to understand a complex situation.
U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the Security Council that the veto “does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood but instead is an acknowledgment that it will only come from direct negotiations between the parties."
The United States has “been very clear consistently that premature actions in New York — even with the best intentions — will not achieve statehood for the Palestinian people,” deputy State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said.
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43
Can God Change his Mind?
by peacefulpete inis 31:yet he also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract his words.. 1 sam 15: furthermore, the eternal one of israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not man who changes his mind.. numbers 23: god is not a man who lies, or a son of man who changes his mind.
does he speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?.
when the god you worship pronounces judgement, is he, really just issuing a warning or has the matter been determined through all the godly powers of insight, foresight and perfect judgement?
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peacefulpete
Blondie...they simply ignore the fundamental issue, by directing attention away from the contradiction. If a god has the ability to see the future and know all, the pronouncement of judgement ought never need be reversed. Such a being would only need to change his judgement if he failed to give the matter his full attention.
An alternative available to believers is as Jeremiah suggested wherein pronouncements of judgement are actually just threats or possibilities that God can reverse at whim, like a potter doing what he wants to clay.
Halcon...Belief in spirits (in objects or in actions like wind) is the product of inferential logic. When nothing readily visible accounts for an action or growth, something invisible must. These invisible agents naturally took the form of the visible animals and people the mind is familiar with. The ability to reason inferentially is vital for survival, but often leads to incorrect conclusions when the causative factor is less than obvious. My clever dog has inferential reasoning. When the wind blows and slams a door he barks assuming someone came in. Who knows how his mind explains the fact that he sees no one. He might be clever enough to imagine invisible someones.
Religion, while involving spirits, at it's core is an attempt to control the uncontrollable. Rites and ritual combine with story as a way to tame the natural world and threats to safety. As was said it didn't take long for entrepreneuring/delusional individuals proclaimed themselves experts aka shamans. I'm also pretty sure my dog worships me as a means to end. Cuddling up and acting cute when he wants me to open the fridge door.