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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
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I believe this is a faulty perspective. It is hard to believe that ancient people cared much for pure knowledge, but instead religion was a source of wonderment to people and grew on its ability to amaze. By explaining things with the goal of wonderment religion started the roll of deep philosophical thought and stuff like that. Even science grows and is refined by wonderment at first and then practicality and pure knowledge. The people didn't pose philosophical questions this and then put religion to fill the whole, but instead religion put the wonderment in people to actually think about these things and then religion grows based on philosophical inquiry. Even this Temple in the National Geographic article was described as a "neolithic disneyland". If I may add, as Ravi Zacharias tells in his podcasts, it is only God that can ultimately fill the deep need for wonderment as human beings.Ivellious wrote: I base that on the idea that religion was a great way for early groups of hunters and gatherers to find common ground and develop a set of rules and expectations for living together. Let's face it, religion in and of itself was originally a way of doing two things: 1) Explain phenomena in nature that they couldn't explain themselves
This observation may show that religion preceded civilization, but dies it show that religion gave rise to civilization? [And how is civilization defined?] The wikipedia link doesn't go into details.wrain62 wrote:A recent National Geographic article now points to major evidence that religion gives rise to civilization and not the other way around.
sandy_mcd wrote:This observation may show that religion preceded civilization, but dies it show that religion gave rise to civilization? [And how is civilization defined?] The wikipedia link doesn't go into details.wrain62 wrote:A recent National Geographic article now points to major evidence that religion gives rise to civilization and not the other way around.
Off the top of my head, this site seems to show that the people who built it must have stayed in the area year round and not been nomads.
Well original curiosity does spark the religion I suppose. But i would argue that people were not really baffled by certain quirks of nature, but instead just accepted the phenomena of the universe as unknowable or irrleevent to their lives. The curiosity must have started with relevence like what happens after I die or my family dies. How can I get more food/water/shelter? How can I protect myself with more security? Then religion starts with rituals and answers to solve these problems. Lore over such answers in turn whets the appetite for more knowledge and philosophy and wonderment. This is my view.Ivellious wrote:It's not that I'm saying they just wanted knowledge, but humans are naturally curious in my opinion. When people today see something amazing that they cannot explain, be they laymen or scientists or philosophers or whatever, we have a natural inclination to try to figure out what it is. Heck, the first question usually posed is "What was that?" It's not necessarily being driven by a pure desire for knowledge, but just the explanation of the world around us. Early people, not knowing why the sun came up and down regularly, why seasons changed, why weather happened, etc, were almost certainly baffled by it at first. These things in particular might have interested them for a very practical reason, as agriculture and hunting and so on relied heavily on these forces of nature. By extension, it makes sense to me that these were the first types of things that early religions explained.
I guess my only question to your hypothesis is, why would this amazing concept of religion be started in the first place? Just as you point out that early civilization likely had little time to contemplate philosophy and and the accumulation of knowledge for the sake of knowledge, I find it hard to believe people would spend much time at all on developing religion without some purpose or reason for it to develop. Again, the earliest religions focused heavily on explaining events vitally important to the survival of early civilization, so I think it's perfectly reasonable to infer that religion was the tool (bad word choice, I know) that early people used to explain the world around them, and, by extension, gave groups of people a common ground outside of pure survival to gather together and form societies. From that possible scenario, it is easy to then infer that religion was the catalyst for later development of philosophy and science.
But of course we obviously can't really know for sure what happened, and either view (religion as a byproduct of curiosity, or curiosity as a byproduct of religion) can easily be followed to today's world very easily. I just personally see the curiosity and need to explain things coming first because otherwise I don't see much of a point to religion without the desire to explain first. For example: Why begin to explain the sun, the moon, the stars, and so on if you weren't curious about it first?
You can do (I believe) brief portions or an abstract for a review or discussion, but I would not post the entire article. It is presumably copyrighted. From their site:wrain62 wrote:Would it be illegal if I just posted the National Geographic article online? I just put the wikepedia for background information.
Yes... Interesting it was found just a few miles north of Israel...wrain62 wrote:A recent National Geographic article now points to major evidence that religion gives rise to civilization and not the other way around. Now history books have to change. The evidence comes from the oldest temple in the world in Turkey which was built by HUNTERS AND GATHERERS (no indication that domesticated plants or animals were used around the site) .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
Any reactions?
Few hundred though. But that is irrelevant because Abraham was a chaldean anyway.Gman wrote:Yes... Interesting it was found just a few miles north of Israel...wrain62 wrote:A recent National Geographic article now points to major evidence that religion gives rise to civilization and not the other way around. Now history books have to change. The evidence comes from the oldest temple in the world in Turkey which was built by HUNTERS AND GATHERERS (no indication that domesticated plants or animals were used around the site) .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
Any reactions?