The Concept Of Being "God Fearing"

[buttslinger]

Was that the day he cursed a tree for not bearing him a fig?

Yes. There IS a time issue here, we can't wait around forever to be served by a retarded fruit tree.
Is this a tree-hugger thing?

[fred41]

It would suit me more to say "The universe IS God"
...than to say "The universe has one God".

[buttslinger]

It would suit me more to say "The universe IS God"
...than to say "The universe has one God".

I see God as the speeding bullet on yon horizon.
And Jesus says God appears different as your moments of clarity improve.
And yeah, Fred, I scored my latest batch of herb at the foot of the Exorcist Steps in Georgetown. It's legal there now.

[fred41]

I see God as the speeding bullet on yon horizon.
And Jesus says God appears different as your moments of clarity improve.
And yeah, Fred, I scored my latest batch of herb at the foot of the Exorcist Steps in Georgetown. It's legal there now.

I'm not sure if he was quoted as saying that...lol...but -
it really doesn't matter, does it?
I take it you're a believer no?
What actual difference would it seriously make if you weren't?
Anyways...thumbs up for scoring and in a cool spot...I'm nursing what I got left because I lost a connection.

[buttslinger]

I'm not sure if he was quoted as saying that...lol...but -
it really doesn't matter, does it?
I take it you're a believer no?
What actual difference would it seriously make if you weren't?
Anyways...thumbs up for scoring and in a cool spot...I'm nursing what I got left because I lost a connection.

There are seven and a half billion different religions, yes. And I am one of them.
.......maybe not the best.............butt....
I want Hillary to make those sour-grape republicans give me my weed in accordance with the laws of these united states!!!!!

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=martin48;1684333]
A few thoughts

Many other animals exhibit altruistic behaviour, social hierarchies, seemingly meaningless rituals and other aspects, which we would normally associate with religion. So what makes us different? May be the knowledge of our own mortality. This knowledge produces an unbearable emotional drain.
-While appearing to behave in ways similar to humans, I think animals are aware of their own mortality, which is why they take risk-avoidance strategies to avoid deathly situations, but I am not sure that the rituals animals use in mating, in hunting in risk-avoidance and so on, we would 'normally associate with religion' because among other things, we associate religion with the soul, and we cannot know if animals know or believe they have souls, this is a weak comparison and a weak argument.

Was religion (which grew out of the proto-humans in Africa –
sorry, but we are all descended from Africans [this is debatable as the evidence is still so limited])
was a response to fear. We, as a unique species, were self-conscious, had long-term memories, and above all had language that could express abstract thoughts and allow oral traditions to develop. These developing abilities of proto-humans were a double-edge sword. On the one hand, they aided their chances of surviving in a cruel and unpredictable world. They helped each successive generation to build upon the knowledge base of their ancestors.
-Fear must be an element, but so too is joy and something called glory. Among the rituals of sacrifice which exist in many pagan and monotheist religions, are festivals of joy which celebrate life- the bacchanal, the carnival, and these, moreover, were often -in some senses, such as Carnival in Catholic countries still are- brief moments when all the rules that bind society together can be transgressed, but without threatening the integrity of the bonds -thus men become women, women become possessed, humans take on animal form, strange brews are imbibed. Religions that bind social groups for security can also enjoy themselves.

A set of moral truths to govern human behavior.
These formed an oral tradition which was disseminated among the members of the tribe and was taught to each new generation. Much later, after writing developed, the beliefs were generally recorded in written form. A major loss of flexibility resulted. Oral traditions can evolve over time; written documents tend to be more permanent.
-If the development of writing enabled existing narratives via oral poems and recitations to become sacred texts, the one thing this did not lead to was 'a major loss of flexibility', if anything, writing merely establishes the extent to which existing oral traditions are contested, both at the time, and in succeeding centuries. Textual analysis of scripture has been one of the most enduring headaches for believers and scholars and explains centuries of exegesis by Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars out of which no consensus has been met on fundamental issues and also explains the schisms within those religions. Scholars with Hebrew or Arabic texts without diacritical marks are still arguing over the precise definition of words which might be past, present or future tense. Jacques Derrida built an entire philosophy on the argument that texts are unstable and you only need to consider the fate of Islam since 9/11 to know how fluid and controversial the Quran is. But what is just as important is that the ability of religions based on sacred texts to survive for so long may be based precisely on the flexible use of those texts in different times, and that the pursuit of the original meaning by fundamentalists is doomed because the precise contexts of a Quranic revelation or the words of Jesus have been lost and cannot be retrieved.

Unfortunately, because these belief systems were based on hunches, the various religions that developed in different areas of the world were, and remain, different. Their teachings are in conflict with each other. Because the followers of most religions considered their beliefs to be derived directly from God, they cannot be easily changed. Thus, inter-religious compromise is difficult or impossible.
-I wonder how different religions are from each other, and they are not based on hunches but on the firm beliefs people had at the time. I am not suggesting as is implicit in some theories of languages or pragmatics, that there is a syncretic project to be realised here, and if there were it would be intellectual and synthetic, yet most religions share a common concern with the way the past, the present and the future are linked; they prescribe behaviour on the basis of moral judgement; they have central concerns such as fertility and reproduction, dietary regulations and notions of kinship and/or gender role; they attempt to explain natural phenomena as supernatural in force and origin. They appear to be hostile to science, largely because modern science undermines their claims about the supernatural origin of things and in doing so challenges structures of authority.

I think that at the point where humans gathered together in social formations which brought together people not linked by blood relations, we have the beginning of politics, the distribution of power as a relationship of authority, and the concept of leadership, but also as a result of that, stratified societies. Religion in this context enables articulate people, charismatic people, people known to be wise, powers which result in status be it priest, king, pharoah. It may not be that the disciples believed Jesus was literally the son of God but that he had such charisma and awe that it was 'as if' he was the son of God, and in the sense that Jesus himself used it, we are all sons/children of God anyway so that to separate out one man as divine was allegorical rather than factual, just as Muhammad always insisted he was merely human like the rest of us while later Muslims have attempted to prove he was made divine by his mission (Muhammad splitting the moon is an obvious example). I am not sure there is a lot to be said here other than to suggest that historians of politics -in Europe and the US- tend to place more emphasis on the Greek heritage through Plato and Aristotle, seeing the emergence of the Christian empires as something of a diversion, so that while Aquinas and Augustine will appear in histories of political thought, the tendency is to leap from Plato to Machiavelli as if nothing really interesting happened in between, or because the concepts of citizenship that do emerge in the Christian era look rather too much like servile obedience to the Pope 'or else', rather than as a positive contribution to the study of politics. A discussion for another thread.

[martin48]

"Many other animals exhibit altruistic behaviour, social hierarchies, seemingly meaningless rituals and other aspects, which we would normally associate with religion. So what makes us different? May be the knowledge of our own mortality. This knowledge produces an unbearable emotional drain.
-While appearing to behave in ways similar to humans, I think animals are aware of their own mortality, which is why they take risk-avoidance strategies to avoid deathly situations, but I am not sure that the rituals animals use in mating, in hunting in risk-avoidance and so on, we would 'normally associate with religion' because among other things, we associate religion with the soul, and we cannot know if animals know or believe they have souls, this is a weak comparison and a weak argument."

The anthropologist Ernest Becker wrote in his book Denial of Death that nonhuman animals know nothing about dying: “The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it.” There are scenes repeated endless on the internet of animals seemingly being emotional on a mate's death. We need to be careful in assigning anthropomorphic qualities.

[martin48]

Was religion (which grew out of the proto-humans in Africa –
sorry, but we are all descended from Africans [this is debatable as the evidence is still so limited])

The "Out of Africa" theory is the most widely accepted model of the geographic origin and early migration of anatomically modern humans. The theory argues for the African origins of modern humans, who left Africa in a single wave of migration, which populated the world, replacing older human species.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1559480


But this is science so it’s our current best guess given the available evidence.

[Stavros]

"Many other animals exhibit altruistic behaviour, social hierarchies, seemingly meaningless rituals and other aspects, which we would normally associate with religion. So what makes us different? May be the knowledge of our own mortality. This knowledge produces an unbearable emotional drain.
-While appearing to behave in ways similar to humans, I think animals are aware of their own mortality, which is why they take risk-avoidance strategies to avoid deathly situations, but I am not sure that the rituals animals use in mating, in hunting in risk-avoidance and so on, we would 'normally associate with religion' because among other things, we associate religion with the soul, and we cannot know if animals know or believe they have souls, this is a weak comparison and a weak argument."

The anthropologist Ernest Becker wrote in his book Denial of Death that nonhuman animals know nothing about dying: “The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it.” There are scenes repeated endless on the internet of animals seemingly being emotional on a mate's death. We need to be careful in assigning anthropomorphic qualities.

We need to be careful in assigning anthropomorphic qualities.
-Not to labour it, but this was what you did. As we cannot know, this is all speculation.

[martin48]

Sorry, you have lost me. I urged caution but you label me as being definitive.