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A comment on Wild Ideas. Parent comment

Re:Wild Ideas by snitko on Tuesday August 06, 2013 @02:00AM (#6165035)
Well, then maybe we could argue the same about religion: atheism and then pantheism didn't really work, so we invented organized religions with one major god. Relying on the wisdom of ancestors is a sure way to avoid growth and to not acquire knowledge, and it is precisely this trait in people through which they are usually manipulated.
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Re:Wild Ideas by snowwrestler on Tuesday August 06, 2013 @02:04AM (#6165045)
Your analogy is backward; early civilizations were far more dominated by religious beliefs than we are today.
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Re:Wild Ideas by wikiburner on Tuesday August 06, 2013 @02:11AM (#6165066)
Religion didn't always exist. In fact, I would guess that it didn't for the majority of human history, although it's ultimately speculation on both of our parts.
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Re:Wild Ideas by derleth on Tuesday August 06, 2013 @04:15AM (#6165408)
Religion (by way of magical thinking) is one of the things that defines humanity. We have evidence of it even in Neanderthal sites, given that we find them in caves, with their feet pointed east more often than not, with flower pollen on them in places in caves where we don't otherwise find flower pollen.

Only recently have we been able to overcome it.

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Re:Wild Ideas by wikiburner on Tuesday August 06, 2013 @04:38AM (#6165468)
Well, I guess it depends on how broadly you want to define religion. A handful of traditional and possibly superstitious behaviors and cave paintings of the big, scary blob of fire in the sky could qualify, but I think we were talking about a much more complex set of beliefs and value systems involving omnipotent, omniscient being(s).

Were the seeds of religion sown in primitive peoples observations of and attempts to reckon with all the scary shit they would witness in the natural world? Absolutely. But any "definitive" statements on pre-historical belief systems are probably anthropological hearsay, possibly weighted by our current knowledge of and feelings towards religion. What was going on back then could have been just slightly more complex than a dog hiding under the bed when there's thunder.

And keep in mind, we're talking about a 200,000 year run up to recorded history. However, I'm sure there was a more complex oral tradition of storytelling and mythmaking that was starting to develop before the Sumerians took off.

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Re:Wild Ideas by ankitml on Tuesday August 06, 2013 @02:51AM (#6165197)
You are making an assumtion that movement of society from atheism and pantheism towards religions was unworkable for the same reasons as polycentric law. It is equally possible that there were other reasons for religions to develop. Like power and all.

Weherein we have some evidence that such was not the case with moving towards public law.

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