Posts by peacefulpete

56

Can God Change his Mind?

by peacefulpete in

is 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?

peacefulpete

This also points, then, to the conclusion having been instinctive. A conclusion that originates at the very beginning of mankind and manages to stand the test of time till today despite all the advances in comprehension.

What conclusion? Surely you are not suggesting that Animism? Many gods, Two gods, three gods, one god (but with an archnemesis), belief in ghosts, slender man, the Jersey Devil, Chupacabra, etc. are "instinctive". All these examples demonstrate a tendency for the human mind to draw conclusions on inference, with incomplete evidence, reinforced through culture. None of these "conclusions" are "instinctive", they are demonstrations of all-to-common flawed decision making.

Many ideas and memes have survived for millennia. Tribalism, racism, sexism, war to name a few. Surely these ideas are not the result of a creator's programming? If so, then hopefully he's changed his mind.

56

Can God Change his Mind?

by peacefulpete in

is 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?

peacefulpete

There have always been two sides to the religion coin. One side is how to manipulate, flatter the spirits to ensure prosperity, like abundant animals to hunt or wheat in the field, the other how to avoid angering them to prevent having lions eat your child or rain not fall. Survival until recently was a crap shoot. Our species barely survived until our technology gave us some edge on nature. Any way to improve the odds would be embraced, logical or not. As was also said, there is a community element to cult. Your gods protect you, my gods protect me. Like was said, tribalism. This would have had some survival advantage at a time when subsistence farming or nomadic lifestyle were the norm. It also has an element of group kinship bonds. There is no need to imagine someone planned this all out and decided to invent spirits and religion. As was also said, useful ideas stick around if they offer some survival advantage. Memetic evolution.

56

Can God Change his Mind?

by peacefulpete in

is 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?

peacefulpete

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.

56

Can God Change his Mind?

by peacefulpete in

is 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?

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.

56

Can God Change his Mind?

by peacefulpete in

is 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?

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.

56

Can God Change his Mind?

by peacefulpete in

is 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?

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.

56

Can God Change his Mind?

by peacefulpete in

is 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?

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.

56

Can God Change his Mind?

by peacefulpete in

is 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?

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.

56

Can God Change his Mind?

by peacefulpete in

is 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?

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.

56

Can God Change his Mind?

by peacefulpete in

is 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?

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.