trevster2k said:
My point about science finding answers is that many many many things attributed to a deity have been proven not to be a divine act or great mystery.
Understood and agreed.
trevster2k said:
The gods have lost their reason for being as mankind moves away from superstition. The reason why the majority of the population believes in a deity is that it spent every year on the planet up until the recent past not having a clue how anything worked whether it be an eclipse or a sneeze.
MY point was that explaining natural causes is only one facet of the reasons people turn to religious belief. What you've described above is NOT the only reason, or perhaps even the major reason people are spiritually inclined.
Let's take the question of what happens when you die: The ancient Egyptian's entire theological world was built around death and the afterlife. I'd say that today we're no closer than they were to understanding anything about what happens after death beyond the obvious materialist answer (nothing), and that materialist answer was surely obvious even to the ancient Egyptians. No great scientific breakthroughs were needed to see the most basic facts of death. You're gone, you have no consciousness, your body decomposes (in fact the ancient Egyptians knew that last one better than most as they worked so hard to combat it).
And yet, still today, only a minority (of which you would be one I would suppose) have the "guts" to look right into the great void of death, find nothing, and be okay with that. I'd suggest that the majority of human beings still want to believe that there is something more than this life. I don't see science coming up with anything that will assuage that for most people. Science deals in cold hard facts not exsistential comfort, and dealing with death is very much an emotional, one might even dare to say, spiritual issue.
trevster2k said:
I imagine one would be hard pressed to find an non-theist 1000 years ago.
Now this is an interesting thought. I'm sure you're correct that there are many more non-theists now then there were 1000 years ago, since those that don't want to believe no longer "have to" today. But at the same time, I just have this feeling (which I know is not going to carry much weight. . .my "hunch") that there have always been many people who pretty much lived as if God or gods or goddesses didnt' exist. Perhaps they went through the religous motions--offer the sacrifices, do the rituals blah, blah, blah-- because it was culturally acceptable, but by and large did not give much thought one way or another to whether there was any supernatural reality.
The Bible suggests in both the Old and New Testament that there were people during that time that did not believe God existed.
And again, looking at the ancient Egyptians. The fact that most of the tombs of the pharoahs had been robbed soon after the burial of the kings, tells us that there were certainly people during that time who weren't taking the whole supernatural, life-after-death thing too seriously.
I'm a big believer in the idea that basic human nature and behavior hasn't changed too much over the past couple thousand years. Which would mean that there would always have been a minority of fervent believers and fervent unbelievers and a vast middle ground of people ranging from those who vaguely believe in some sort of something, give the gods their due just to be on the safe side to those who definitely believe but for whom religion does not consume their lives, and who are focused primarily on the concerns of this life
trevster2k said:
I agree with scientists about "why are we here". We are here to breed and mate like all other species on the planet. It sounds harsh but it's a fact.
I can appreciate that that is enough for you. It just doesn't seem to be a satisfactory answer to the "why" question for most people.
trevster2k said:
Does this mean life is just an existence, of course not. Questions about life and spirituality can be addressed through philosophy and not religion.
Indeed they can, but yet again many people still choose spirtuality/religion to tackle the questions of life.