Why is religion correlated with birthplace and birth time?

[TagliatelliMonster]

The title is about religion in general but the OP about Christianity.

it seems to me to be about both.

In the sense of "how does it make sense for christianity to be the 'one true religion', while religion seems to be geographically and culturally determined?".

 

[Thief]

For instance, if a person was born in the Americas prior to the arrival of Columbus, we can guarantee that that person would have never heard of Jesus or any of the events recorded in the bible.

well....perhaps not the characters of scripture as the Europeans would have known

but did they not have belief in Greater Spirit?
and did pray
and perform ceremony
ritual
dogmatic gesture to invoke the Spirit

it was religion to them

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You're correct, the post is generally directed at people who believe in the Christian concept of god. If you believe that everyone worships the same god, then the problem doesn't apply as much to your beliefs (although we would still be left with the same question of why atheism exists if God exists).

I think the argument that all gods in all religions are in fact the same one god, is obviously false.

For the simple reason that all these different gods and religions, are fundamentally opposed and in contradiction to one another.

If it were the case that all religions are just "different manifestations" of the same god, then it doesn't make sense for the bible (for example) to be so exclusive. Believing in jesus as a saviour is requirement number 1 to get to heaven. No matter what else is at play, no matter how you treat people, no matter who or where you are or how you lived your life. If you are an unbeliever, your are excluded from paradise by default.

This would mean that god purposefull doomed every culture that isn't christian. He inspired / send hinduism and then dooms people for following the very religion he himself bestowed upon them.

It makes no sense and it's an argument that obviously doesn't hold up.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

BTW if nature is natural, then how come there are religious people?

Because humans have a tendency to be superstitious. Religion is a byproduct from what is essentially a primitive and fundamental survival mechanism: the assumption of agency with yourself as the target and the tendency to engage in type 1&2 cognition errors. In the wild, a combination of these two will increase your odds for survival.

Coupled with vivid imagination, ignorance of how the world works and additionally a tendency to engage in anthropomorfisms, makes for the perfect breeding ground for religions to be born.

Is religion natural?

Yes.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

...
But all science would eventually return, because we'ld discover the same facts again. We once more would learn about and discover gravity, electro-magnetism, germs, tectonic activity, the nature of celestial bodies like asteroids and moons and planets and suns/starts etc.

Well, here is a scientist:
Science, since people must do it, is a socially embedded activity. It progresses by hunch, vision, and intuition. Much of its change through time does not record a closer approach to absolute truth, but the alteration of cultural contexts that influence it so strongly. Facts are not pure and unsullied bits of information; culture also influences what we see and how we see it. Theories, moreover, are not inexorable inductions from facts. The most creative theories are often imaginative visions imposed upon facts; the source of imagination is also strongly cultural. [Stephen Jay Gould, introduction to "The Mismeasure of Man," 1981]

Well yes in once and no in another, what science is, would maybe not be same in its relation to the rest of human culture. How we understand science and what science is in relationship to the rest of the human world is culture.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Because humans have a tendency to be superstitious. Religion is a byproduct from what is essentially a primitive and fundamental survival mechanism: the assumption of agency with yourself as the target and the tendency to engage in type 1&2 cognition errors. In the wild, a combination of these two will increase your odds for survival.

Coupled with vivid imagination, ignorance of how the world works and additionally a tendency to engage in anthropomorfisms, makes for the perfect breeding ground for religions to be born.

Yes, and the idea that the world must make objectively and rationally sense is also a product of brains. From the fact, that we have evolve with higher cognition, doesn't follow that the world must make objectively and rationally sense.

 

[viole]

Again, why does God need missionaries? .

To communicate the Bad News to the whole world. For, if we think about it for a second, if Jesus really existed, then it would be much better to be ignorant of the Bible and what it entails.

Ciao

- viole

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Whaaat?? Nobody said they must be reconciled but for me, it certainly ends any confusion on the question of whether there is more than one God, or a different God for Christians, a different one for Muslims or Hindus, etc. What's your point?

I don't find it confusion, nore does it require a special explanation.

The reasonable answer is that cultures invent their own religions.
Which explains why no 2 distinct cultures came up with the same religion independently from one another.

When multiple cultures believe in multiple different religions originally unique to each of the cultures while all being incompatible when one another, I see no need to try and reconcile them - which can't be done without ignoring loads, if not all, of the specifics of all those religions - especially not when this is perfectly explained by the much more reasonable and simple explanation of "each culture invented their own religion".

That explanation fits the data and it also predicts that you won't find distinct cultures that stumbled upon the same religion independently from one another.

Most religions even, can be traced back as continuations of older religions followed by ancestral cultures that came before them. Like how the romans adopted greek mythology and tweaked it and added to it. There's an overlap there.

Or how it could be said that christianity is judaism 2.0 and islam judaism 3.0

These are all things I would expect if cultures (re)invent their own religions.
These are not things I would expect if there is a single true god who "teaches" people his religion instead. And certaintly not exclusive religions, like christianity saying that the only way through paradise is by first and foremost believing in jesus as a saviour. Which would essentially mean that atheists and all followers of all other religions are doomed by default.

 

[Koldo]

There's a point at which skepticism comes off merely as pedantism.

I have heard a lot of native americans saying their gods have nothing to do with the christian god. But I won't say who they are nor what exactly they have said, and you will have to accept this claim as true.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Well, here is a scientist:
Science, since people must do it, is a socially embedded activity. It progresses by hunch, vision, and intuition. Much of its change through time does not record a closer approach to absolute truth, but the alteration of cultural contexts that influence it so strongly. Facts are not pure and unsullied bits of information; culture also influences what we see and how we see it. Theories, moreover, are not inexorable inductions from facts. The most creative theories are often imaginative visions imposed upon facts; the source of imagination is also strongly cultural. [Stephen Jay Gould, introduction to "The Mismeasure of Man," 1981]

I have no problem with this nore does it change the point I made.

Hunches, intuition, imagination,... they certainly are factors in how people come up with ideas as potential solutions or answers to certain problems or questions.

But before you can imagine a solution to a problem, you need to have a problem. And the better you understand the problem, the more successfull you'll potentially be at coming up with a solution.

So while solutions (like relativity, evolution, germs, atoms, etc) are not simply inductions from the facts, they most certainly are inspired by it. Because you are trying to come up with a solution to a specific problem or question.

Evolution was imagined as an answer to why there was diversity of life and observations thereof.
Whereas continental drift, which eventually became plate tectonics, was a solution imagined as an explanation for the shape of continents and how they seemed to "fit together" like pieces of a puzzle.

Why this doesn't change the point I made, is simply because of the nature of scientific inquiry.
See, when scientists come up with these ideas, through whatever means, they don't just leave it at that and go with the first thing they imagine and assume it to be accurate. No... Instead, they test their idea to determine its accuracy.

While this doesn't happen with religions ideas. In fact, the supernatural core of most religions even make it impossible to test it.


So the point remains: through observations of nature and the formulation of potential explanations (through whatever means) and subsequent testing of those ideas, we'll eventually again develop understanding and knowledge that was lost before. We'ld rediscover the relation between gravity, speed and time. We'ld rediscover radiation, electro-magnetism, the laws of motion as it applies in classical, the weirdness of quantum physics, chemistry, germs, evolution, etc etc etc.

We'll have different words for it. We might even develop a different type of math to describe it. But the underlying processes, facts and phenomenon would remain the exact same.

Not so with religion. New creation myths will be invented. New cataclysms will be invented. Brand new lore of how it came to pass.

 

[Kenny]

You didn't even address my arguments. The onus isn't on me to "document" evidence for my unbelief. I just explained what I see as the strongest evidence against Christianity in my original post. No need for me to go through it again.

It's because you assume
1) That God has been silent
2) that God didn't and isn't trying to reach them
3) That people can actually tune out His voice and decide to worship something human hand made.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Yes, and the idea that the world must make objectively and rationally sense is also a product of brains. From the fact, that we have evolve with higher cognition, doesn't follow that the world must make objectively and rationally sense.

Indeed it doesn't.
Put the continued success of assuming that there is an objective reality (as in: independend from our perception of it), shows that it's a reasonable assumption.

Scientific theories make this basal assumption: that I am subject to objective reality in the same way that everything else is. And if you build a computer using those scientific theories as underpinning your technology, it will boot and work. If you ignore those theories as underpinnings of your technology - then it won't work.

In fact, not using those theories would effectively make sure that you wouldn't even know where to begin to manufacture a PC powered by electricity, running on micro-CPU's and capable of wireless communication.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

It's because you assume
1) That God has been silent
2) that God didn't and isn't trying to reach them
3) That people can actually tune out His voice and decide to worship something human hand made.

Funny then, how apparantly the only people who didn't "tune out his voice", all came from the same culture in the middle east and was spread from there by humans.

Funny how not a single human in the americas, viking countries, the far east, the aboriginals, ... didn't manage to "tune into" god's voice and how they had to be informed about this god by believers coming to their geographic location.

And vice versa btw.

Funny how not a single mayan "tuned into" the voices of the gods of hinduism, the norse gods, christianity, islam, etc.

Funny how not a single aboriginal "tuned into" any of the voices of gods outside of australia before missionaries of those other religions came to try and stuff their religion down their throats.

Funny how not a single human outside of the americas was aware of Quetzalcoatl before learning that people there worshipped such a figure.

It's almost as if every human culture invented their own religions and gods.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

...No... Instead, they test their idea to determine its accuracy.

While this doesn't happen with religions ideas. In fact, the supernatural core of most religions even make it impossible to test it.
...

Yeah, and we end here again. Religion is natural and so is science, so this will still be here:
Science has limits: A few things that science does not do

You don't have to tell me that religion and the rest of that can't be with done science, because those are subjective and science is objective. Now tell me which of the two, subjective and objective, are most useful? Right, you can't do that with science. That wouldn't change.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Indeed it doesn't.
Put the continued success of assuming that there is an objective reality (as in: independend from our perception of it), shows that it's a reasonable assumption.

Scientific theories make this basal assumption: that I am subject to objective reality in the same way that everything else is. And if you build a computer using those scientific theories as underpinning your technology, it will boot and work. If you ignore those theories as underpinnings of your technology - then it won't work.

In fact, not using those theories would effectively make sure that you wouldn't even know where to begin to manufacture a PC powered by electricity, running on micro-CPU's and capable of wireless communication.

Again, I will listen you to you, when you solve these:
Science has limits: A few things that science does not do

That science is useful, is subjective.

 

[Kenny]

Funny then, how apparantly the only people who didn't "tune out his voice", all came from the same culture in the middle east and was spread from there by humans.

Funny how not a single human in the americas, viking countries, the far east, the aboriginals, ... didn't manage to "tune into" god's voice and how they had to be informed about this god by believers coming to their geographic location.

And vice versa btw.

Funny how not a single mayan "tuned into" the voices of the gods of hinduism, the norse gods, christianity, islam, etc.

Funny how not a single aboriginal "tuned into" any of the voices of gods outside of australia before missionaries of those other religions came to try and stuff their religion down their throats.

Funny how not a single human outside of the americas was aware of Quetzalcoatl before learning that people there worshipped such a figure.

It's almost as if every human culture invented their own religions and gods.

yes...very funny

 

[Link]

The answer is this simple: We humans have not made God our goal nor truth that important for us to unite on, as a result, we choose the religion that is convenient for us.

 

[BilliardsBall]

1 Timothy 2:3-4 states "This is good and pleasing in the sight of God our savior, who desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth."

Now, why would an omnipotent god who wants everyone to know him struggle so greatly with bringing his knowledge to people, and use such inefficient methods? I've discussed this before, but I think it's worth focusing on a more specific aspect of the problem, namely, that one's religion is so strongly correlated with birth location and the period of history in which one was born. For instance, if a person was born in the Americas prior to the arrival of Columbus, we can guarantee that that person would have never heard of Jesus or any of the events recorded in the bible. Now, supposedly the biblical god is omnipotent and wants the entire world to know about him and have a relationship with him so that they can go to heaven. Yet no one in the North or South American continent had heard of this god before the arrival of Europeans. So my question for Christians is: Doesn't it strike you as odd that an omnipotent god who wants everyone to know about him and could use any method possible to convey this knowledge to people was completely silent toward people in non-Christian cultures prior to the arrival of Christians? What makes more sense to you: The existence of a god who wants everyone on the planet to know he exists and yet never reveals anything about himself to cultures that have not had contact with Christians OR The Christian god is simply another manmade god that was developed by men in the middle east and whose knowledge spread gradually across the world as the people from this region spread across the world? Which of these scenarios explains the utter silence of God in cultures that had not yet been introduced to Christianity by other people?

Luckily, as with all good questions, the Bible has an answer, in Acts 17:

Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: 24 God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. 26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ 29 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. 30 Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, 31 because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”

 

[Rational Agnostic]

Luckily, as with all good questions, the Bible has an answer, in Acts 17:

Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: 24 God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. 26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ 29 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. 30 Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, 31 because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”

A real god wouldn't need a bible written by humans to speak through. Funny how "God's word" is only heard through humans.

 

[Rational Agnostic]

yes...very funny

Yet again, you don't have an answer. Let me ask one more time and try to make it more concise:

God/Jesus is supposedly all powerful and wants a relationship with people. So why does he have to wait for missionaries to go to parts of the world that have never heard of him? Why does he have to wait for humans to deliver Bibles? Why not speak to the people directly, or deliver the bibles himself? Why wait over a thousand years for Columbus to arrive in the Americas when he could've introduced himself to the Native Americans himself? It's apparent you can't answer this question, because the only reasonable answer is that the Christian god doesn't exist.