Folks , any thoughts about the chronological evolution of religions…
In my opinion it probably started about 6to 12 thousand years back , initially in the middle east , as that is considered to be the first pocket of human society…initially as a polytheistic philosophy , with different symbols attributed as Gods, later with further development of literary thinking, developing into monotheistic themes. initially represented by SUN , Fire etc in different religions , which later developed into the modern concept of God, followed by Judaism, christianity and Islam…
Interesting phenomenon is the development of religions along similar evolutionary lines in various isolated pockets of civilizations…suggesting the similarity of human need that resulted in the creation of this phenomenon , as well as its popularity.( to the point where even now it is extremely difficult for us to objectively look at it)
Any thoughts folks… ( please understand that I dont want any information given by the religions itself, I am trying to Think about Religion as a social/psychological phenomenon)
Excellent topic Nova!
I think religious thought (in its simplest form) started with Neanderthals, the homo sapiens before our kind (homo sapiens sapiens) in Europe as there have been traces that they had started burial of their dead with food offerings, hence indicating their belief in afterlife. But our kind, between 35,000-10,000 B.C. in late Paleolithic era more certainly had developed concept of religion.
Concept and adoption of religion probably started due to the basic questions like where did the world come from? Why do we die and what happens to us after death? And then developed into more deeper questions like what is the meaning of human life and how should humans behave and hence the birth of concepts like good and evil. It’s interesting to see that those basic questions asked by such an early breed of humans still stand unaswerable by us modern humans, even though our kind has a lot more biologically advanced brains and well developed intellect, and even more interestingly, we still answer those questions fundamentally the same way those early humans did.
One of the evolutionary aspects of religion, like you said, is the transformation from polytheistic philosophy to monotheistic one predominant in majority of the major religions today. Along the same lines, modern religions or their beliefs are more logical than the ancient mythologies, which was purely a work of fantasy and imagination. Even though the fundamental questions remained unanswered (in terms of any objective proof), their basis are more logical and aligned with our intellect.
Another evolutionary aspect would be the concept of spiritualism as a byproduct of religious thought in its struggle to answer those basic questions. With all the increasing curiosity and knowledge about our surrounding, we were still unable to get anywhere with those questions and this vented out in spirtualism as the medium of relaxing that curiosity by the means of inner peace and search for the self, hence diverging the enigma into something that seemed more achievable but yet connected (connected by the very definition of relationship we perceived exists among our existence and the force that created everything) to the original question and quest.
The major evolution of religious thought was the development of more definitive conceit of what is evil and what is good. And how humans are connected to eachother and consequently morals in terms of mutual betterness and peace. This even allowed us to look at religion more objectively and reject many of the practices and beliefs that did not aligned with our senses of morality.
As our world paces forward in time, we are developing the tendency to step away from those questions and more towards what we have noticed is more important at present and brings results. And the start of this new approach occured in the West at the end of middle ages. People rejected what church would tell them and focused more on the spirit of Enlightment and scientific discovery.
How come nobody has nothing to say to this...................
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Originally posted by Nova:
** How come nobody has nothing to say to this...................**
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because neandrathals were not homo sapiens.
Sorry Fraudia, could’t figure out if you were just joking or meant the comment so thought putting in the reference
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/4/0,5716,56504+1,00.html
Yaar you ppl are Going to give me an inferiority complex.....How long can I take being ignored like this.....
Nova, if you really look around and see which posts get more responses and what kind of responses, you should feel superior:)
your post is too deep for me.....
CM
We cant get the hang of our own religion and we go sniff in other wow thats pretty smart way to go. So whats is it gona get you when you find out that it was started 6000 years ago? Ahhaaa you will say it will make you understand your religion better? naa i dont think so! well people who had thire religion back 6000 years ago vanished maybe because they did not hung on to thire own religion and if we go sniffing in to them we might as well be vanishing too...if you believe in quran and hadith than you can find out what first religion was...people who worshiped SUNs and other stuff vanished look at aztecs...the incas...in south america and many other places. Science follows quran, quran does not follow science.Remember that...NO think about it before you make a pathetic comment on that yeah THINK!!!
Jaawan
Till next time**Keep_It_Simple_Stupid**©
I think religion has been invented to fulfill a genetic need to believe in something bigger than life which can take care of you when things seem to be out of your control.
Religion is based on faith and can nerver be explained by logic or science.
Rani,
Religion to fulfill a genetic need? And believing in something bigger than life as that genetice need??
Please elaborate.
Jawaan,
If religion is going to be such a powerful force for us , we atleast owe it to ourselves to know about it as much as we can....
Know about what they are from a historical and cultural perspective , know about the different religions etc other wise we will be hanging on to the one that we are born in and disregarding all others for no reason...
what are the chnaces of you being a muslim if you were not born in a muslim family...almost as much as there are for you to convert...please dont say its because you miraculously were born in the one right religion ,,,,,you havnt given anything else equal chance..
WHo in the world am i to give any one a chance to pick a religion????? Novaa ? Sure we should learn about other religions why not. I dont know what religion you belong to so tell me that than i shall go deeper in this topic if i can.
Jaawan
Till next time**Keep_It_Simple_Stupid**©