http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWjGwBpLZdY

Religions are a human social phenomenon, man-made doesn't seem like the right term. Most of them aren't really 'made' they just sort of evolve continuously over time.

Would like to hear Christfag's justification on this one.

>>203
I'm failing to see how one instance proves that
>All religions are man-made.
It's like after having only seen one sheep you argue that all sheep must be of the same colour as the one you saw.

>>218
Because given the evidence is the most reasonable explaination. Believing otherwise *without no evidence and reasonable arguments* makes you a schizophrenic (believing in talking snakes, resurrecting flying zombies, books that are the word of God etc).

>>220
reason=/= truth
>flawlessly explains
Implies complete truth

So if all religions are man-made a la Cargo Cults, what was the "cargo" that started our modern religions? Aliens?

I think the Cargo Cult incident shows how primitive people think; that is, they personify poorly understood phenomena in order to explain them. Since even our contemporary peers explain things they don't understand in terms of ghosts and aliens, it's reasonable to conclude (along with other evidence) that human beings instinctively try to explain everything in terms of intelligent agents. As we are by nature social and predatory, this isn't unexpected. We've evolved to be capable of getting inside the heads of other people and animals; that we'd approach unexplained events or processes in the same way is understandable.

To say that religion evolved directly from the attribution of natural elements to the work of divine intelligent agents is to grossly oversimplify what a religion is, but it does not appear to be, in essence, wrong. Religions tend to entail explanation for things that ancient peasants did not understand in terms of divine beings; the more people come to understand how things really work, the less religious they tend to be. That's an observed fact.

In the case of the cargo cult, it's not a natural process that the cult attempts to explain in mystical terms; it's the arrival of planes and their cargo. However, ancient peoples would explain other 'man-made' events as being attributed to the caprices of divine beings, also; for example, humans are solely responsible for war, but whether or not war would affect someone might have been considered the result of the whim of Mars, for example.

>>222
Datura flowers, etc.

>>233
http://www.haaretz.com/news/hebrew-university-researcher-moses-was-tripping-at-mount-sinai-1.240589

Religion, to me, is something akin to kids playing make believe, except in this case it's grownups. People must have been really bored back in the day. Movies are still fun to watch, even though we know they aren't real. And while believing that they're actually true would probably make them even more fun, it's better that we don't.

Meteorites.

>>203
Sure, if you believe that gods and their presence would have no influence on our minds/conscience if they existed.

Arguing about whether god/s exist or not is beating a dead horse, really dumb since proclaiming that there is one truth in the matter is just as ignorant as claiming that there is/isn't one god. It's also a jerk-off handle for schmuck 16 year olds.

Religion was the earliest form of education. Religion told you what foods to eat, how to live your lives in society, when to wipe (and how many stones); basically your idiot's guide to life.

The only reason we don't enjoy religion as much as we used to is because we are no longer idiots.

I think the development of religion is akin to that of a language. It evolves slowly within a culture and receives contributions from many different people over many generations. Languages aren't created, they just sort of evolve out of us naturally (Latin is a notable exception, being an artificial language).

Regardless of what you believe, dismissing religion outright is petty and stupid. It's had an immense historical significance and is indicative of the human condition. It would be like turning your nose up at the great ancient myths just because they are fiction. Fiction or not they are very important and relevant.

Does it matter? If something is man made, does that make it incapable of conveying truth?

>>676

That is a good point. Saying that religion is artificial and unable to approach the mystery of God due to its synthetic nature could lead along the same line of thought to saying that mathematics or physics isn't capable of describing the universe because it is formulated in human terms.

Basically, mass religion is man-made, but they (religions) are all fundamentally oriented in the same direction towards an ineffable root that has clearly been felt in every culture. The God of religion is like a painting of a field rather than the field itself, but this connection gives it legitimacy and serves to highlight the possible reality of the field, among other properties.

>>677

>mathematics or physics isn't capable of describing the universe because it is formulated in human terms.

Mathematics and physics don't say anything. They simply prove the laws of nature. The object of science is to say as little as possible, to simply state the undeniable, that water is a fluid at room temperature, that one plus one equals two, etc.

It is as if a man peered under a rock, to find what creatures lie under it. The man proves that there is life under the rock. But the man is simply an observer. That rock and it's inhabitants would be there regardless of human presence.

Take mankind away and there would be no notion of religion. Mankind is the sole vector of information regarding any or all gods. Go to a desert planet and there will be no gods. There will however, be rocks.

>>683

Prove the laws of nature? No. Physics doesn't prove anything, it is merely a model based on rules we bullshit, and anything proved in math is specious and artificial, not what's really "out there". If something is undeniable it is not science, and one plus one is not always two in mathematics.

To follow your rock analogy, how can the person know what was happening under the rock before it was disturbed by him turning it over? Observation necessarily affects the observed object, and the abstraction found in science changes the real world we perceive into something substantially less that we can cogently think about.

Take mankind away, and there will be no more rocks, much less gods. Without an observing being to generalize by creating archetypes like "rock" the abstracted world we think about with language does not exist at all. There would only be existence in itself.

>>685

>1. Repetition.
>2. Redundancy.
>3. Red Herring.

Seriously though? A linguistic argument? That's a low blow.

Suppose a space marine sees a scary alien. He reports this to his platoon sergeant.

The platoon sergeant says "Aha! But before it met you it did not know it was an alien."

Having thus inspired himself, he is caught unawares. The aliens eat his brain.

Moral of the story? There are laws of nature, and they will happen to you if you choose to ignore them.

>The object of science is to say as little as possible, to simply state the undeniable, that water is a fluid at room temperature, that one plus one equals two, etc.

>Physics doesn't prove anything, it is merely a model based on rules we bullshit, and anything proved in math is specious and artificial, not what's really "out there". If something is undeniable it is not science, and one plus one is not always two in mathematics.

So much ignorance of physics and maths. But then again this is /phi/, where people come to make questions that have already been answered by science or aren't answerable because they're empty statements.

>>689
Cmon man. They may have only a tenuous grasp of stem stuff but you clearly only have a tenuous grasp of philosophy (and the English language) and no one is hassling you about it. Well... I mean I am now.

>make questions that have already been answered by science
If you're talking about ancient philosophy regarding science you should remember that it was a precursor to science, and that science would not exist without it. If instead you are talking about ontology I would argue that the questions it poses are not, in fact, answered by science. The underlying assumption of science is that our observations are accurate, which is not necessarily true, so when a philosopher asks about the universe it is far different from a scientist asking the same thing. The scientist is interested in the practical, observable universe. The philosopher is asking about what it might be, knowing that evidence is most likely unavailable to them. You could argue that based on that definition, there is 'no point' to philosophic investigation of the nature of the universe (as we can't do anything with their answers), but that doesn't change that their questions are not 'answered by science'.
>or aren't answerable because they're empty statements
This is where you really show your ignorance. Are you really saying that deciding upon one's life's goal is inherently meaningless? That is the question that underlies all of ethics, and it is quite important to answer as without answering this, we are no different from animals. You could say it is 'unanswerable' in an objective sense, and you would be right, but that doesn't mean that the answer that we arrive at isn't important. Science is about estimation and refinement, and Philosophy is no different. At the end of the day, the only objective metric we have for philosophic ideas, however, is their logical consistency. We, as humans, are just balls of cognitive dissonance and just having an answer to the question of what it is we strive to do helps to make us more rational. You could say that the answer is meaningless in the grand scheme, but really everything we do is. The point is that on the granularity of everyday life philosophy is both answerable (on a personal level) and useful (in that it makes us more rational), so I have a hard time seeing what is so 'empty' about it. Sure there are questions that may seem meaningless, but philosophy is occasionally done for philosophy's sake just as science can be done for science's sake. Often discoveries of this type turn out to be meaningful later.

If it will make you feel more comfortable with the idea that philosophy is an ok field, you can think of the fact that philosophy eventually boils down to logic (predicate logic in fact) and that logic is math (which you seem to think is good).

A corollary theme in science is to make statements without bias. Observations made by an observer must be neutral.

Philosophy is most often a fanciful defense of idiosyncrasy; anyone with intellect can justify bias. Philosophy is bias incarnate. Sure it has spawned many related disciplines. But compared to it's descendants, philosophy is a veritable dinosaur. Astronomers would hardly consult astrology, at least during office hours.

Sure, it may be interesting to read up on logical statements derived from linguistical jokes that no longer fit any form of usage, but it could hardly be considered useful.

Ex: The character for woman combined with the character for beard, means ploy, or trick. Thus the it's a trap meme predates the common era. Because the written language is the highest form of art, the implied negative connotation is certainly true!

Of course that is a very literal interpretation. Philosophy is very language dependent, however, and truths that do not exist cross cultures can hardly be considered universal.

Philosophy works quite well as a process, but is indefensible as a viable discipline.

There is something going on behind your senses that is called reality. Religion is a tool to discover that reality. What is actually man made is all of our projections based on faulty perception onto that reality.

>>693

Eastern Dialects do the same, but cheaper.