4 ms·

Arbitrary danger in nature is where religion came from.

taeric 2y ago
This largely runs to my point. It wasn't the arbitrary danger that led to religion. It was people teaching that the danger was from a directed source that did. Put differently, without priests, would there be religion?
- em-bee 2y ago
  It was people teaching that the danger was from a directed source that did i'd rather think it was the demand for an explanation for those events. and just like any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, so is any unexplainable event indistinguishable from an act of god.
  - taeric 2y ago
    For this to work, though, you would have seen a convergence of all humanity onto the same explanations? While I think you can almost make the case that there are some commonalities between origin stories, I think you would be stretching credibility a fair bit there. This also hits a pretty tough point with regards to other animals. Do they have religions?
    - em-bee 2y ago
      For this to work, though, you would have seen a convergence of all humanity onto the same explanations given the dominance of monotheistic religions this is actually happening. there is no need for origin stories to have commonalities because the convergence can also happen through replacement. if every group comes up with their own explanation for the different experiences they have, their stories are naturally going to differ, and that is what we see in history. but also, commonalities are there. pretty much all stories have some kind of creator of the universe and many refer to someone who will come and bring salvation.
      - taeric 2y ago
        This is still to my point. If you require indoctrination to get "convergence" through replacement, then you would, by definition, not have the same stories without priests. Yes, you can stretch some stories to say there are commonalities. But you are doing some heavy stretching. And you still don't address other social animals. Do they have religions? Why not?
        em-bee 2y ago
        indoctrination is not required. nor are priests. the story just needs to make sense, and if it does people will accept it. how are the commonalities a stretch? they are self evident: somehow some entity created the universe. somehow this creator is communicating with us, not just once, but multiple times, and they will communicate again in the future. everything else is the content of that communication, and for that there is no need of any further commonality even though there still are many. i am not addressing animals because that is completely out of scope. our understanding of the consciousness of animals is still very limited, and even if it is shown that animal are potentially capable of such higher order thinking, as long as we can't actually able to communicate with them, we won't know what they are thinking. the question if animals have a religion is therefore unanswerable for the time being.
        taeric 2y ago
        The commonalities are a stretch because they largely amount to "a creator exists." Animals have absolutely been shown to be able to communicate. They are unable to persist this teaching in the wild. Which, again, is to my point.
        em-bee 2y ago
        well, i think there are more commonalities than that but since my argument was that commonalities aren't really needed, to me this point is not really important. speaking of commonalities, this subthread has diverged from the original topic quite a lot and in an odd way is actually converging with the discussion on "Life is not a story" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41876979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41876979 regarding animals, i don't get which point you are making there.

This largely runs to my point. It wasn't the arbitrary danger that led to religion. It was people teaching that the danger was from a directed source that did. Put differently, without priests, would there be religion?

em-bee 2y ago
It was people teaching that the danger was from a directed source that did i'd rather think it was the demand for an explanation for those events. and just like any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, so is any unexplainable event indistinguishable from an act of god.
- taeric 2y ago
  For this to work, though, you would have seen a convergence of all humanity onto the same explanations? While I think you can almost make the case that there are some commonalities between origin stories, I think you would be stretching credibility a fair bit there. This also hits a pretty tough point with regards to other animals. Do they have religions?
  - em-bee 2y ago
    For this to work, though, you would have seen a convergence of all humanity onto the same explanations given the dominance of monotheistic religions this is actually happening. there is no need for origin stories to have commonalities because the convergence can also happen through replacement. if every group comes up with their own explanation for the different experiences they have, their stories are naturally going to differ, and that is what we see in history. but also, commonalities are there. pretty much all stories have some kind of creator of the universe and many refer to someone who will come and bring salvation.
    - taeric 2y ago
      This is still to my point. If you require indoctrination to get "convergence" through replacement, then you would, by definition, not have the same stories without priests. Yes, you can stretch some stories to say there are commonalities. But you are doing some heavy stretching. And you still don't address other social animals. Do they have religions? Why not?
      - em-bee 2y ago
        indoctrination is not required. nor are priests. the story just needs to make sense, and if it does people will accept it. how are the commonalities a stretch? they are self evident: somehow some entity created the universe. somehow this creator is communicating with us, not just once, but multiple times, and they will communicate again in the future. everything else is the content of that communication, and for that there is no need of any further commonality even though there still are many. i am not addressing animals because that is completely out of scope. our understanding of the consciousness of animals is still very limited, and even if it is shown that animal are potentially capable of such higher order thinking, as long as we can't actually able to communicate with them, we won't know what they are thinking. the question if animals have a religion is therefore unanswerable for the time being.
        taeric 2y ago
        The commonalities are a stretch because they largely amount to "a creator exists." Animals have absolutely been shown to be able to communicate. They are unable to persist this teaching in the wild. Which, again, is to my point.
        em-bee 2y ago
        well, i think there are more commonalities than that but since my argument was that commonalities aren't really needed, to me this point is not really important. speaking of commonalities, this subthread has diverged from the original topic quite a lot and in an odd way is actually converging with the discussion on "Life is not a story" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41876979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41876979 regarding animals, i don't get which point you are making there.