The God Delusion.

Laughing said:
It kinda is. There is a single chapter devoted entirely to religion, but it also has a chapter called the junkyard jumbo jet, or something like that. He argues that people believe in intelligent design because if a whirlwind blows through a junk yard, it aint going to build a jumbo jet out of the parts. Therefore there has to be a creator.

It's an argument against there being a god, as the entire book is, or at least the idea that if there is a god, he isn't required.

Did he also write the blind watchmaker, it's much more complex than the god delusion, but not aure if dawkins wrote it
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Indeed he did. He also married Dr Who's companion, Romana (Lalla Ward)
 
Roman emporer Constantine made Christianity the official religion about 360 ad at the Council of Nicea.
He commissioned the gospels as eye witness accounts over 300 years after Christ supposedly existed.
Reason being he did a deal as 30 % of his army in Gaul, part of France were Christians.
Old Asterix was giving them the run around and some were refusing to fight.
Constantine did a deal whereby the Romans painted their sheilds with a red cross. When the war was won he became a Christian as part of the bargain.
 
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Borothruandthru said:
Oh yes people had Gods before the Romans arrived, lots of them.
They sacrificed animals and sometimes humans in order to keep them happy. So the crops would be good.
Think we need to draw a distinction from this superstitious behaviour and Organised religion which came with the roman empire.
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You are correct there is a difference between organized religion and those that arose due to mans drive to understand. However, 2 points. The first organized religion was hinduism some 2 thousand years before christ and predates the roman empire. The second point is the god delusion isn't referring to organized religion, but why did humans evolve to need religion. What was the survival drive for religion.
 
Millbrook said:
I prefer the bicameral mind theory of Julian Jaynes;

The theory posits that the human mind once operated in a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys—a bicameral mind, and that the breakdown of this division gave rise to consciousness in humans. He argued human ancestors as late as the Ancient Greeks did not consider emotions and desires as stemming from their own minds but as the consequences of actions of gods external to themselves.
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I may look for that book, sounds interesting. Not sure about its veracity, but its not an area I know a huge amount about.

The idea does mesh with how we can "hear" thoughts in our heads. Of course we can't but thats how it feels.
 
Borothruandthru said:
Well the roman empire definitely controlled people using religion. Previously the Egyptians had successfuly built the pyramids using the horus deity, fathered by god, mother the virgin Isis.
In fact the bible stories are mostly copied from the Egyptian book of the dead from 10000 years earlier.
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A bit simplistic that, Borot&t, as there are many strands that are common across ancient and modern religions.
If anyone is interested in this topic, I’d recommend ‘A History of Religion East and West’, by Trevor Ling.
 
Laughing said:
It's a book that tries to explain through the laws of nature that there is no need for religion nor a moral argument for it.

Dawkins does struggle to explain why the human race evolved to create a god. Our evolutionary drive is to survive and he struggles to explain why we as a species created religion.
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we created many gods & religions I thought he did a good job in the book though I'm from a non-religious standpoint so maybe I was already receptive - anyone who thinks the universe is only a few thousand years old may take a little more convincing..
 
As Yuval Noah Harari explains in Homo Deus, human communities need a certain level of concord to sustain themselves and this is enabled by the shared stories - or myths - they invent. We all believe the Bank of England owes us a fiver if we have a piece of paper in our hand, and this shared belief arose when mankind, via agriculture, developed the ability to create and store surpluses. Religion - or other ideologies - was undoubtedly an efficient shared story for explaining why some people in the human community should have the right to more/exploit others. And it was (and is) also useful at explaining away/helping us cope with our consternation at the fact of our own mortality.
We can't say for sure about the 'religions' of the hunter-gatherers that roamed the earth prior to agriculture - because writing was also a function of the aforementioned agricultural surpluses (and the need to 'tally' them) - but it is likely they served different functions. Beseeching the sun or the rain to come and provide an end to winter/more fruit makes perfect sense as a shared story/request. So does the need to 'sacrifice' a baby to the Gods as a way of dealing with the surplus offspring the roaming tribe didn't feel its hunting and gathering could sustain.
As Harari rightly argues, the modern religion is 'humanism' in the sense that all the dominant ideologies today share the assumption that human needs and desires - whether individual or collective - are of paramount importance.
 
This is my experience on religion.
Several years ago I did two alpha courses and became a member of a church, at the time I wasn't in a good place mentally and the church me the feeling of been part of something and some acceptance in a way. The people in the church where lovely and supportive and I can't say a bad word about them.
As time went on I just didn't have the same level of feeling for religion as these people did, to them God was the priority and came above everything else, for me my kids where and still are my priority. The other thing that made me question faith and religion is even within a small(ish) group of people in a church, which all follow the same religion and even follow the same brach on that religion so many had different views on it, some where traditionalists and some where more progressive which got me thinking how can they all be right even within this select group?
Which then got me thinking that there is nearly 4000 religions in the world(not including extinct religions) with different beliefs and ways for getting to heaven(or equivalent) and within them religion there is many different groups with different beliefs, so it is impossible for them all to be right? But it is definitely possible for them all to be wrong!
So I made the decision that I wouldn't follow any set religion and just try to be the best person I can be. I don't steal, I avoid violence if at all possible, I just try to be polite and a good person(I don't always succeed in being a good person but I don't do anything bad intentionally).
In my personal religious theory I could spend my full life trying to follow a certain set of rules and still be wrong at the end of it and possibly not happy throughout it living to a set of rules that doesn't fit with my way of thinking. If there is A god who is loving and caring then when I do die surly they would see that even though I was wrong at least I had done it for what I thought was the right reasons, and if they don't see that then it's not the type of being I want to spend eternity with anyway.

*Note: I would never mock somebody or say anything bad about somebody for following a religion, if it brings them peace and happiness and doesn't harm others then I am genuinely happy for them. What I have said is my personal view on religion from my personal experiences.
 
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BobUpnDown said:
we created many gods & religions I thought he did a good job in the book though I'm from a non-religious standpoint so maybe I was already receptive - anyone who thinks the universe is only a few thousand years old may take a little more convincing..
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It's a great book whether your religious or not. His explanation of natural selection is wonderful.

I would kinda take issue with the chapter that compared morality with the old and new testament. Other than that I enough it was great.
 
equaliser said:
As Yuval Noah Harari explains in Homo Deus, human communities need a certain level of concord to sustain themselves and this is enabled by the shared stories - or myths - they invent. We all believe the Bank of England owes us a fiver if we have a piece of paper in our hand, and this shared belief arose when mankind, via agriculture, developed the ability to create and store surpluses. Religion - or other ideologies - was undoubtedly an efficient shared story for explaining why some people in the human community should have the right to more/exploit others. And it was (and is) also useful at explaining away/helping us cope with our consternation at the fact of our own mortality.
We can't say for sure about the 'religions' of the hunter-gatherers that roamed the earth prior to agriculture - because writing was also a function of the aforementioned agricultural surpluses (and the need to 'tally' them) - but it is likely they served different functions. Beseeching the sun or the rain to come and provide an end to winter/more fruit makes perfect sense as a shared story/request. So does the need to 'sacrifice' a baby to the Gods as a way of dealing with the surplus offspring the roaming tribe didn't feel its hunting and gathering could sustain.
As Harari rightly argues, the modern religion is 'humanism' in the sense that all the dominant ideologies today share the assumption that human needs and desires - whether individual or collective - are of paramount importance.
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I like harari's argument but don't agree with it in terms of why early man required religion. I would be more inclined towards a theory around looking for patterns and cause and effect. They have a genuine survival advantage.
 
Borothruandthru said:
Stonehenge was tribal. People hoping that the sun would come up next day.
Hoping the dead ancestors would have a good journey to the afterlife.
Gods probably existed round every corner.
Nobody was selling life after death at that time tho.
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Isn't hoping dead ancestors have a good journey to the afterlife selling life after death?
 
Will_Graham said:
Isn't hoping dead ancestors have a good journey to the afterlife selling life after death?
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Organised religion is obsessed with good versus bad, and punishing sin.
That is the big mistake.
Most humans 2000 years ago were survivors. Putting food on the table.
Greedy people weren't sinners they just had strong survival genes !
 
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