Is it important to know, when humans started believing in God?

[Sargonski]

"They" did not all write it down...I doubt that a farmer in 1500 BC would have written or read anything at all...let alone bothered his tired head with stories about ditch-digging deities...etc.

To suggest that everyone believed this story is as preposterous as suggesting that everyone in 18th century France was a deist because a copy of Voltaire's Candide has been found.

Most people in 18th century France would never have read - let alone understood - Voltaire's philosophy and, I'm guessing the average French farmer couldn't have cared less about the philosophical or religious ideas of some fancy-pants fop in a wig even if he knew of it...

I see no reason to assume that the fanciful musings of a bronze age Mesopotamian priest would have featured prominently on the reading lists of the Babylonian hoi polloi...we have absolutely no idea what the average Joe in the middle east 3500 years ago believed because "they" didn’t write anything down at all.

No one said "They all wrote it down" .. most people could not write in 1500 BC .. but we have various cultures that did write it down .. and we can read their stories .. Canaanites and surrounding peoples (moabites, elamites, amalekites, Hittites and so on ) , Assyrians, Babylonians all had the same creation story .... there slight variations in the stories .. but it is the same story that each culture has .. same basic plot ... the names of some of the Gods change over time .. this was the same story believed for thousands of years .. longer than the period folks have believed in the story of Jesus.

Your claim that we have no writings from 1500 BC is simply false .. we have plenty of cunaiform tablets from that period .. the gilgamesh epic for example is much earlier .. all kinds of myths and stories .. as well as historical and other writing.

In the Sumerian tale of Inanna and the Huluppu Tree (c. 2900 BCE), for example, Gilgamesh appears as her loyal brother who comes to her aid. Inanna (the Sumerian goddess of love and war) plants a tree in her garden with the hope of one day making a chair and bed from it. The tree becomes infested, however, by a snake at its roots, a female demon (lilitu) in its center, and an Anzu bird in its branches. No matter what, Inanna cannot rid herself of the pests and so appeals to her brother, Utu-Shamash, god of the sun, for help.

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh is the semi-mythic King of Uruk best known as the hero of The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2150-1400 BCE) the great Babylonian poem that predates Homer's Iliad and Odyssey by 1500 years and, therefore...

www.worldhistory.org

 

[IndigoChild5559]

I did not say humans had always believed in God

You certainly did. Your post, #101, and I quote "Humans have always believed in God " I have especially good reading comprehension but honestly I think anyone who is not a moron can understand that sentence.

1) makes absolutely no sense -- how do you know about the myths 3500 years ago without reading the religious texts

By studying archeological finds. idols. temples. etc. It's not that I don't read religious texts, its that many of these texts were written in later ages, and you cannot rely on them to give you an accurate picture of what came before. For example, the Bible is a product of the Iron age, but many of its stories concern the bronze age. When the bible writes about contemporary people in the iron age, it actually does a very good job of recording actual history. But its bronze age legends cannot be verified.

So tell me the History --- tell me what our friend in 1500 BC thought .. what was their creation story

Like I said, it depends on where they live, and what culture they were a part of. For example, if you were an Olmec in Mesoamerica, you believed in many gods, from the bird-monster to the were-jaguar. If you lived in China, your creation myth lacked any deity, and your religion was a form of animism (Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism did not yet exist).

Basically your idea that there was only one religion/mythology that spanned the civilizations of the world in 1500 BCE is simply ridiculous. You need to ditch it.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

No one said "They all wrote it down" .. most people could not write in 1500 BC .. but we have various cultures that did write it down .. and we can read their stories .. Canaanites and surrounding peoples (moabites, elamites, amalekites, Hittites and so on ) , Assyrians, Babylonians all had the same creation story ....

Slight variations? Hardly.
For example, the myth of Marduk slaying Tiamat and cutting up the body to form the world is utterly unlike the Genesis 1 account.

 

[Ajax]

"They" did not all write it down...I doubt that a farmer in 1500 BC would have written or read anything at all...let alone bothered his tired head with stories about ditch-digging deities...etc.

The oldest known copy of the epic tradition concerning Atrahasis can be dated by colophon (scribal identification) to the reign of Hammurabi’s great-grandson, Ammi-Saduqa (1646–1626 BC). However, various Old Babylonian dialect fragments exist, and the epic continued to be copied into the first millennium BC.
In 1965, Wilfred G. Lambert and Alan Millard published many additional texts belonging to the epic, including an Old Babylonian copy (written c. 1650 BC) which is the most complete recension of the tale to have survived. These new texts greatly increased knowledge of the epic and were the basis for Lambert and Millard’s first English translation of the Atrahasis epic in something approaching entirety. A further fragment was recovered in Ugarit.
Atra-Hasis - Wikipedia

 

[siti]

No one said "They all wrote it down" .. most people could not write in 1500 BC .. but we have various cultures that did write it down .. and we can read their stories .. Canaanites and surrounding peoples (moabites, elamites, amalekites, Hittites and so on ) , Assyrians, Babylonians all had the same creation story .... there slight variations in the stories .. but it is the same story that each culture has .. same basic plot ... the names of some of the Gods change over time .. this was the same story believed for thousands of years .. longer than the period folks have believed in the story of Jesus.

Your claim that we have no writings from 1500 BC is simply false .. we have plenty of cunaiform tablets from that period .. the gilgamesh epic for example is much earlier .. all kinds of myths and stories .. as well as historical and other writing.

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh is the semi-mythic King of Uruk best known as the hero of The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2150-1400 BCE) the great Babylonian poem that predates Homer's Iliad and Odyssey by 1500 years and, therefore...

www.worldhistory.org

I didn't say we have no writings from 1500bc I said ordinary folk like farmers didn't write any of it. We know what the priestly classes wrote...we have no idea what the ordinary folk believed...

...and the story evolved over time...there are common threads and some of these have even made it into the mythologies of 21st century societies...but so what? That just means that people copied each others ideas...no great mystery in that...

...the fact that many generations of parents have told their kids about Goldilocks and the three bears in different languages and different cultures doesn't mean the story must be true...does it?

 

[Sargonski]

I didn't say we have no writings from 1500bc I said ordinary folk like farmers didn't write any of it. We know what the priestly classes wrote...we have no idea what the ordinary folk believed...

...and the story evolved over time...there are common threads and some of these have even made it into the mythologies of 21st century societies...but so what? That just means that people copied each others ideas...no great mystery in that...

...the fact that many generations of parents have told their kids about Goldilocks and the three bears in different languages and different cultures doesn't mean the story must be true...does it?

Are you on some kind of strawman fallacy steroids friend .. who told you ordinary farmers wrote it --- let me know when you find the fellow so I can laugh at him too .. but it wasn't me.

Yes Siti .... contrary to your claim we do know what the ordinary folks believed .. and you were told one of the stories that ordinary folks believed and yes the story evolved over time .. and we have many different variations of the same story that we can read which proves this .. and that the story was wide-spread .. contrary to your spagetti at the wall prognostication.

and no Siti - finishing with a Goldilocks fallacy is not what constitutes a valid argument - ?! Did someone tell you they believed the Greek Myths was true friend .. .. you must have me confused with this person .. cause it wasn't me .. Mr. Strawman fallacy

 

[Sargonski]

You certainly did. Your post, #101, and I quote "Humans have always believed in God " I have especially good reading comprehension but honestly I think anyone who is not a moron can understand that sentence.

By studying archeological finds. idols. temples. etc. It's not that I don't read religious texts, its that many of these texts were written in later ages, and you cannot rely on them to give you an accurate picture of what came before. For example, the Bible is a product of the Iron age, but many of its stories concern the bronze age. When the bible writes about contemporary people in the iron age, it actually does a very good job of recording actual history. But its bronze age legends cannot be verified.

Like I said, it depends on where they live, and what culture they were a part of. For example, if you were an Olmec in Mesoamerica, you believed in many gods, from the bird-monster to the were-jaguar. If you lived in China, your creation myth lacked any deity, and your religion was a form of animism (Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism did not yet exist).

Basically your idea that there was only one religion/mythology that spanned the civilizations of the world in 1500 BCE is simply ridiculous. You need to ditch it.

Cherry picked joke .. you forgot the part "especially since the time of the Hybrids" -- which is the topic of discussion. Not the Olmec beliefs ..which was stated previously so why are you still on that wrong page.

Your mission is to tell is what the archaeology / History - tells us about the beliefs of a Canaanite Farmer in 1500 BC .. compare that story to everyone else in the region .. the creation story friend .. and not of the Almecs .. we are talking biblical peoples here ..

 

[Sargonski]

Slight variations? Hardly.
For example, the myth of Marduk slaying Tiamat and cutting up the body to form the world is utterly unlike the Genesis 1 account.

Who told you Genesis was the benchmark for comparison .. How does Genesis factor into what some Farmer in Canaan believed in 1500 BC ?

You seem to be not understanding what is being discussed -- making up some side discussion and responding to that . Genesis was written sometime in the second temple Period during Persian period ~5th century

and further .. we are not talking about that part of the creation account .. but that is what the Canaanite farmer believed if it makes you feel better .. as well as the Israelites who come onto the scene a few hundred years later .. being Canaanites and all themselves. .. having generally the same belief as our Canaanite farmer ..

and Last - even though irrelevant because we are talking about sky people ../ hybrid beliefs -- are you sure that Marduk Slaying Tiamat and separating Order out of the Chaos .. separating the Salt water from the Fresh water .. the Sea from the Land.

You were told specifically what beliefs we are talking about .. sky people came down - needed worker drones - took a primative human ..mixed with Sky-people genes - who these people believed were Gods - and that is how humans were created. .. the humans we are talking about .. and not those one's 2 million years back.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Who told you Genesis was the benchmark for comparison .. How does Genesis factor into what some Farmer in Canaan believed in 1500 BC ?

Were we not discussing creation myths from 3500 years ago? Although Genesis was edited and compiled during the Babylonian captivity, The many documents which got spliced together were written much earlier. Honestly, you are getting increasingly ridiculous, and have used up my patience. If you want to have the last word, go for it. But I won't be replying to you further.

 

[siti]

Are you on some kind of strawman fallacy steroids friend .. who told you ordinary farmers wrote it --- let me know when you find the fellow so I can laugh at him too .. but it wasn't me.

Yes Siti .... contrary to your claim we do know what the ordinary folks believed .. and you were told one of the stories that ordinary folks believed and yes the story evolved over time .. and we have many different variations of the same story that we can read which proves this .. and that the story was wide-spread .. contrary to your spagetti at the wall prognostication.

and no Siti - finishing with a Goldilocks fallacy is not what constitutes a valid argument - ?! Did someone tell you they believed the Greek Myths was true friend .. .. you must have me confused with this person .. cause it wasn't me .. Mr. Strawman fallacy

For the record, a strawman fallacy is not even possible in this case because the "strawman" would have to be a weaker argument that the one it was meant to discredit...I can't think of any possible way to weaken your argument that...

EVERYONE in the entire civilized known world

including

some farmer tilling his field in 1500 BC in Tyre

believed that their existence arose because

sky people came down (Gods) -- needed Gold for their planet -- created worker drone and so on...

and that this is

...what everybody else believed . and that they had had this believe for 3000 years..

and that you have not presumed any of this because

they wrote it down

Its already got sweeping generalizations, patent falsehoods and baseless claims (and not very much more)...no need for me to water that down to make a weaker "strawman argument" to attack.

Also for the record...I think you'll find that ancient civilizations in what we now call India, China, America and Australia (for example) had very, very different ideas...at the same time.

And its is patently untrue to state that "everyone" before 500BC believed anything...by then, the Greeks (e.g. Xenophanes) were already writing atheistic treatises and not long after even famous people (like Socrates) were being executed for disbelief and Plato was musing that they "were not the first to have had this view about the gods." I should coco...I'm guessing even an illiterate bronze age farmer would have known enough about bull s*** to have seen right through yours.

Not going to waste any more time on this.

 

[Sargonski]

For the record, a strawman fallacy is not even possible in this case because the "strawman" would have to be a weaker argument that the one it was meant to discredit...I can't think of any possible way to weaken your argument that...

including

believed that their existence arose because

and that this is

and that you have not presumed any of this because

Its already got sweeping generalizations, patent falsehoods and baseless claims (and not very much more)...no need for me to water that down to make a weaker "strawman argument" to attack.

Also for the record...I think you'll find that ancient civilizations in what we now call India, China, America and Australia (for example) had very, very different ideas...at the same time.

And its is patently untrue to state that "everyone" before 500BC believed anything...by then, the Greeks (e.g. Xenophanes) were already writing atheistic treatises and not long after even famous people (like Socrates) were being executed for disbelief and Plato was musing that they "were not the first to have had this view about the gods." I should coco...I'm guessing even an illiterate bronze age farmer would have known enough about bull s*** to have seen right through yours.

Not going to waste any more time on this.

America is not part of the known World in a Farmer in Canaan 1500 BC.. We are talking the Biblical world at that time .. not the entire world, and this was clarified previously .. so why you are pretending to not realize what the conversation is about ?

Nor are we talking about the Greeks in 500 BC -- once again pretending to not understand or what is the issue ?

What part of --- we are talking about the creation story of a Farmer in 1500 BC - is not sinking in ? What on Earth Does Plato have to do with that ?

Just because our Farmer is Illiterate does not mean he does not have religious beliefs .. you are a poor guesser- Our Farmer knows all about the Gods that came from the sky - how they created a hybrid -- the proto human and the Aliens .. and you are wrong that there was no writing in 1500 BC .. we have stories and other writing that was written down by many different peoples over the centuries .. some dating as far back as the pyrdamids as shown you previously.

Why do you find it so disturbing that the people of Mesopotamia believed in Aliens .. Sky people who they thought were Gods. It is not like you have to believe in Aliens .. this is not about what you believe -- but what our illiterate Canaanite farmer believed.

 

[Sargonski]

Were we not discussing creation myths from 3500 years ago? Although Genesis was edited and compiled during the Babylonian captivity, The many documents which got spliced together were written much earlier. Honestly, you are getting increasingly ridiculous, and have used up my patience. If you want to have the last word, go for it. But I won't be replying to you further.

Yes .. Indigo - Creation myths from 3500 years ago is exactly what was being discussed when you jumped into the conversation thinking you had some clever snark to contribute.

I did not say Genesis was not compiled from older Documents - of course these folk working in 400 BC had source material - and there was a huge amount of it they had to choose from. What does that have to do with the fact that the version of Genesis you read in a modern Bible is not what our illiterate Farmer in 1500 BC was reading? That is not the version of Genesis that formed our Farmers beliefs ..

So no wonder you cry out "Ridiculous" engaging in the illogical silliness. .. but its not my silliness. What do you think formed the creation beliefs of a Canaanite Farmer in 1500 BC . .. if not Creation Myths from 1500 BC ?

Reply not required so no wories .. not much on can say

 

[The Hammer]

Not going to waste any more time on this.

As an Archaeologist I heavily recommend ignoring @Sargonski . They don't know what they are talking about about.

 

[siti]

this is not about what you believe -- but what our illiterate Canaanite farmer believed.

About neither of which you have any clue at all!

Why do you find it so disturbing that the people of Mesopotamia believed in Aliens

I don't...what I find disturbing is that some people in the 21st century, with all the evidence gleaned from three and a half millennia of human learning, seem not to know any better...

...anyway, I really am going to leave it there.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

These times might be up for debate but you get the drift.

Isn't it a coincidence that humans only started to believe in 'God' when we our brains reached a certain size for intelligence and consciousness, something like 50,000 years a go.

Humans had been around for a long, long time before that.

So why didn't we believe in God then?

Did humans make God up themselves?

What are you talking about? The origins of organized religious practice aren't the same as belief or experience of deities and spirits. The latter can't be shown to have a clear beginning, and non-human animals are also capable of such experiences (mystical, transcendental and numinous experiences).

 

[Sargonski]

About neither of which you have any clue at all!


I don't...what I find disturbing is that some people in the 21st century, with all the evidence gleaned from three and a half millennia of human learning, seem not to know any better...

...anyway, I really am going to leave it there.

Know better than what ? you claimed there was no writing from 1500 BC --- sorry you were wrong ... and hopefully now you know better about what our farmer in Canaan in 1500 Believed .. but, what am I and our archaeologist friend supposed to know better ? .. can't mke any sense out of what you are saying ?

As an Archaeologist I heavily recommend ignoring @Sargonski . They don't know what they are talking about about.

Who is "They" hammer .. voices in head .. no worries .. glad to have a self proclaimed expert in the room who is going to tell us all about the creation story of a Canaanite Farmer in 1500 BC

We wait and anticipate your teachings

 

[The Hammer]

We wait and anticipate your teachings

My university degree, and field experience, doesn't make me "self proclaimed", but I care not to convince you otherwise, as you won't believe anything that doesn't conform with your opinions.

Hold your breath while we wait, you'll have more fun.

 

[The Hammer]

Who is "They" hammer

You... Ya dip.

 

[siti]

you claimed there was no writing from 1500 BC

No I didn't.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

America is not part of the known World in a Farmer in Canaan 1500 BC.. We are talking the Biblical world at that time .. not the entire world,

We are? You didn't clarify this before now. In post 116 you state, "EVERYONE in the entire civilized known world " Well, teh civilized world included Indus Valley, China, MesoAmerica, and many other places. In post 101 you said "Humans have always believed in God." You did not specify you were only referring to humans in the Middle East. If you are misunderstood, it is because you have been sloppy in your sentences.