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Originally Posted by dipayankar  Religion started because in earlier days, humanity was divided into pockets of isolated civilizations (this is prior to even the Roman or Greek civilizations). They thought they were alone in the world and that frightened them. The leaders of that particular civilization then took advantage of the fear and propagated the thought that God created the world and they were the descendants of God. This is how Religion slowly took birth.. |
Dipayankar, the further back in history we look, the less information we have available to us to make strong statements. We do know, though, that before humans became settlers they already had religion. What I found fascinating from their perspective is that nomadic people had multiple gods and often a
female god taking in a central position. After nomads became settlers (and had to fight to defend their territories), their central god became
male. A very important shift in religious thinking took place when nomads became settlers. Ever since, and especially so with the single god, the religious delivery of the highest form has been male (or presented as male), showcasing the importance given to
force (as in the need to defend the settlement being paramount).
Not the gods changed, but the humans and their own behaviors changed. The change of organization from a more egalitarian-natural format to a more stationary-hierarchical format tells us that we tend to take the god(s) that fit our form or organization best, and religion tells us therefore a lot about who we are and what we think is correct.
I think it is fair to say that religion has always been with us, but evidence to support this or refute this is not readily available. If you claim to know how religion took birth, then you actually created a belief (a theory) about the beginning of beliefs. You cannot have the evidence to support your claim, because evidence from twenty thousand years ago is not available to support the idea that those humans did not have religion. Yet this is probably a good example that confirms what both you and I are saying: religion is a human creation to explain something that does not have full-footing (though beliefs always contain at least some important footing to survive over the years).
To claim that we can do away with religion and have science take in its place is a similar act of replacing one set of god(s) with something else that suits us better. Science does not have the full sets of evidence required to do away with god(s); science contains very important footings, but it does not contain all footing — cannot contain all footings. I have no problem with Lloyd stating on page 14 that "at present, science [is] the incompleted framework limited by its own incompleteness," but I must expose his words that this "may not be so in the near future" as a claim, a wish, a desire, an act of faith. If you don't like the lingo, I am happy to keep it at the first word: it's a claim, a not-substantiated, not-fully-founded statement.
Lloyd, I'd love to cut through the language and speak only straight-talk with you, but I accept that we are sitting behind computers and, annoying as it is, language is our tool. As I have said before, we are not far apart in our thinking, but our thoughts contain an essential difference. If I can distill it correctly, the beef I have with you is that you claim that science will come up with a unified theory, and I can only confirm having that claim myself under the condition that separation is the essential part of such theory of everything. If you agree that this is a correct description of both our positions, then I will say that you are ultimately empty-handed in your delivery (a claim but no full-footing), while I claim to have evidence (of full-footing) in my delivery. From my perspective, it is actually the same beef I have with Nobody (though his statement is not about science, but about non-existentialism); he too does not have evidence of full-footing, and circumvents that fact by saying that such full-footing does not exist.
Language is an annoying tool here, because I can accept a unified theory, but only if that exists in the abstract. You can as easily find me saying that a unified theory does not exist, because the word
unified is contradictory to the essence of everything being based on an initial separation. I claim separation started the material universe, and established separation is the ground-principle of our universe. Cooperation is not the first but the second principle.
In that manner, I see a pyramid of positions because the cooperation takes place as secondary result. Therefore there are two grounded oppositional positions, and two positions that are 'independent' as well, though they are not grounded. Like DNA, there are four basic parts, and their cooperation is conditional (in their case they are based on two sets of pairs).
I see the pyramid of positions in science, I see this in religion, in philosophy, and even in non-existentialism. I have no reason to make science less than what it is, but the evidence that I bring claims that science itself must accept the phenomenon of division at its basis.