On popularity: a brief follow-up

When I wrote my last article God’s popularity it seems like a Christian who many of my readers will be familiar with took notice. If you haven’t read my previous blog please do so, to get the full context. The following is the dialogue we had in the comment section. I just thought it might be interesting for you, since a few more points were brought up.

Christian Apologist:

1. Hindus believe their supreme being is a passive part of nature.
2. You have no proof indicating people eons ago did not worship a Supreme Being. Cave art indicates otherwise.
3. We are hard wired to believe in God. Why would that be if God didn’t wire us?

My response:

Evolution would explain the hard wiring and the question “Why would that be if God didn’t wire us?” is an argument from ignorance. Cave art from what years exactly? To my knowledge the oldest ones are about 35.000 years old which fits in the upper time frame (50.000 years) which I provided. In my numbers I actually counted Hindus to your side of the argument, which I think was charitable.

Christian Apologist:

How does evolution explain hard wiring? Are you suggesting humans at one point did not believe in God without any evidence to support your assertion? is this an argument from ignorance from you Rene? in other words, you’re saying that because we have no cave art that is as old as the earliest humans, the answer is that they must not have believed in God.

Does that make sense?

My response:

What I am saying is that the oldest evidence we have found of deity worship up until now dates back to roughly the number I mentioned. This doesn’t mean that the earlier people didn’t have deities. It’s not just about cave arts it’s about a lack of evidence before 50.000 years ago. It may be the case that the earlier humans did believe in God but we simply have no artifacts to show for it. Currently the earliest evidence we have is from said time period but it can always be pushed back further. It is for instance also the estimate that the earliest humans existed 195.000 years ago. Future evidence may push this number further back. Likewise future evidence may push the number for religious belief further back. I accept this number only tenatively and I’m willing to revise my beliefs with future evidence.

Likewise you’ll notice that in the continuation of my case I dismissed all that completely, because ultimately this little prequel to the actual “meat” was just having a little fun on my part, providing some interesting stuff, that others may not be familiar with.

As far as hard wiring is concerned let me revisit Schermer: As he said, Australopithecus aforensis (Lucy) and as I think our ancestors in general have this tendency of attributing agency to observances in nature. I think this by far predates our Primate ancestors, since we can observe it within hunties deers or bunnies (I don’t do it personally) that they run when hearing a sound because it might be a predator. Lucy had the same ability to see agency in nature and so we do the same thing.

Now imagine yourself about 100.000 years ago, you’re living in a world and you can’t explain it. But you have this ability to see agency in nature and lacking further knowledge about evolution and all the sciences we know today, I’d think you’d have a tendency to fall for Paley’s argument, namely I do see these pattern and I do agency behind it, maybe there was an agent or agents behind it.

Likewise this would become a tradition within your tribe you would carry it on to your children and so on and so forth. Over time as the tribe divides into more tribes, the story gets changed and modified and we have numerous different deities. Likewise in the future seperated tribes may come together and they introduce the others to their deities, which get adopted and maybe modified etc. . I think you get the idea.

That is one way I think it could’ve started. Do I know this to be the case? No, it’s a scenario, that seems plausible to me.

Likewise it is the case that different people groups do introduce others to their religion, which then gets adopted. That’s what happened with Christianity, whether it is true or not.

To summarize: We as well as other animals do have a tendency to see agency in nature. With our brain capacity, it is not implausible that we saw agency in natural phenonema, such as “Creation” itself and attributed it to deities.

Last but not least, if this explanation doesn’t make sense to you or isn’t satisfactory (and I have a good feeling it won’t be : ) ), then the hard wiring is unexplained and while you believe it comes from God itself, I see no reason to accept that conclusion.

That’s it for today.

Goodbye from yours truly,

Rene von Boenninghausen @Renevelation