evolution of religion...

Namaste Jesus said:
That's a good point. Long ago, prior to someone teaching them otherwise, people accepted what was right in front of them. What they could see, hear and feel. Nowadays people have a tendency to ignore the obvious and demand proof of everything. Does knowing that water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen make it any less wet?
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Well said mate and I completely agree. Thing is, you and I find evidence of God in everything. We feel it, we see it, we hear it, we taste it. As you imply in your post, proof of God's existence is obvious to people like us. Looking further would be like trying to prove water is wet.

Not everyone feels that way of course and as you can see, some will miss your point altogether. Some folks just don't see what we see as being obvious. Others see it, but feel the need to question it. Then there are those who are oblivious to what's right in front of them. I liken it to answering a knock at the door and shouting, "Who's there?" over the shoulder of the individual standing before you.
 
Whereas I look at NJ's post and shudder at the lack of insight therein. The way water feels and understanding what makes up water are two completely different things. Both are important things. But completely different. Yes we need to maintain a strong connection to how our senses perceive the world; it is the fundamental way for us to view it.

Knowing what water 'is' is just as important (I would say more important). Why? Because understanding the elements that make up water is a tiny piece in the grand picture of how we understand our reality. There is feeling and there is knowing. The former is a physical act, the latter an intellectual one.

This is all relevant, and important because of your comments about your Deity. It has been shown that by stimulating certain parts of the brain, we can artificially create all the awesome sensations that lead you to believe in a God. Does that in and of itself prove Gods do not exist? No, of course it doesn't. It does, or to my way of thinking at least should raise a question mark within ourselves.

Are these sensations that seem real (because they are real); does that prove they come from a God? Or is all of it chemical reactions in our brains. We cannot prove one way or the other. We can choose to believe one way of the other, and we do. It cannot be proven though.

Other interesting tidbits about the human brain. Certain oscillations of sound, which are beyond our ability to physically hear, can create realistic hallucinations of ghosts and hauntings. You want to make someone a believer in the supernatural, wire a house to broadcast this wavelength and have someone spend the night there. They will come out the next morning a believer! Unless they know of this type of ability to trick the mind into thinking something is, when it really isn't.

Knowledge, they say, is power. For me, knowledge is understanding. It is vital to me to understand that my perception of what I am sensing is not as cut and dried as we would like to believe.
 
How come there is always one person who shows up when you do NJ and then agree with everything you write? Last time it was Quirkybird and now the aussie! Fishy fishy, Jesus...
 
Devils' Advocate said:
It has been shown that by stimulating certain parts of the brain, we can artificially create all the awesome sensations that lead you to believe in a God..... -Other interesting tidbits about the human brain. Certain oscillations of sound, which are beyond our ability to physically hear, can create realistic hallucinations of ghosts and hauntings.
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I'll go along with that. The brain can be manipulated, tricked, even deceived. Christian, Hindu even Aboriginal 'Dream Time' stories say as much. How much education and training it must have taken for man to discover what was already written in religious scripture.

Namaste Jesus said:
Excellent analogy. May I borrow it?
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No charge mate!
 
some of the lines of evolution of religions are too simplistic. The Baha'i Faith is shown to evolve from Sufism by way of Islam. This is inaccurate. For practical purposes the Baha'i Faith evolved from Islam>Shi'ite>Shaykh Ahmad movement and prophesies>Babism> Baha'i Faith. Sufism is a different mystical movement evolving from Sunni Islam beginning about the 11th and 12th centuries.

The diagram also does not deal with the Sunni Shi'ite split in Islam to better understand the evolution of later faiths.
 
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