According to Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, about 70,000 years ago, we had the Cognitive Revolution. This marked the beginning of history. The emergence of fictive language. Homo sapiens started to form cultures.

It wasn't until much, much later - about 5,000 years ago - that polytheistic religions emerged.

Why didn't humans stop at atheism? What went wrong? — VoidDetector

We naturally want answers. Religion provided answers. We later found out that science provides better answers.

The Scientific Revolution was about 500 years ago. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Long live science. :party:

So an anti-belief (i.e. "there is no god") cannot exist without there being something to reference back to it, to contradict it (in positive conjecture i.e. "there is a god")? Please do go on.

"The absence of thought" isn't exactly ignorance, but I think it could be termed unknowing. All unknowing has an unknown. Quantum mechanics was not ignored, but rather unknown to 17th century physicists. They could deny it because they had no knowledge of it. They had an unknowing. From this conclusion, I still arrive at the same argument, just in similar terms, "unknowing is atheism." I am sure you have heard the argument that we are "born atheist". This runs perpendicular to my conclusion, supporting it again.

firstly I do not mean anything negative about ignorance, I just mean unaware by it. By my argument 17th century physicists were ignorant of quantum mechanics, they were neither for, against or undecided - they were unaware.

Where we come apart I believe is I believe that atheism is an active objection to a proposed belief. One can not be a - anything, without there being an anything.

I have for some time thought that Athiesm is not just the denial of god, like the denial of the property red, but rather the absence of thinking of the color red, not thinking of a god. Maybe there is another term for this, with a definition more fitting than Atheism. — Josh Alfred

A classics professor said "Magic is religion one doesn't believe in; religion is magic one does believe."

I do not know (no evidence either way) that ancient people (I'd put the marker for "ancient" at a minimum of 10,000 years ago) did or did not believe in gods. If they did not believe in gods, "atheism" doesn't seem like the appropriate term because "the gods -- present or absent" would be pre-cognitive.

"magic" seems like preliminary to religious ideas. My guess is that magic came before religion and was a belief in the remarkable characteristics of things and substances, rather than a belief in a god. How ancient people perceived electric storms, earthquakes, the tides, phases of the moon, sunrise and sunset, seasons, sickness, death... I don't know, and nobody else does either, because they were way-pre-literate. One could look at the records collected about extant hunter-gatherer people for some clues (but only clues, not extensive proof).

I do not know (no evidence either way) that ancient people (I'd put the marker for "ancient" at a minimum of 10,000 years ago) did or did not believe in gods. — Bitter Crank

It would be pretty interesting if they did, given that, according to that book that I referred to, polytheistic religions didn't emerge for at least another 5,000 years.

I don't understand why people would believe in things that there was no evidence for.

If you went on the evidence alone then it would be hard to justify beliefs beyond claims about immediate perception. So where did all these fantastic tales found in religion and tradition come from?

I don't understand why people would believe in things that there was no evidence for. — Andrew4Handel

I don't understand why people would ignore that humans have always done this, as far as we know. It's all very well to say "why do we do this?", and perhaps this is a worthwhile question, but the starting point is: we humans have always done this. :chin:

Whitmarsh makes the following point in the opening sentence of his article Battling the gods:

Conflicts between atheism and religion are often assumed to be a feature of the post-Enlightenment West alone. — Whitmarsh

There is the oft told tale that the ancients believed in gods and in time God, until the Enlightenment thinkers came along and challenged this belief, pitting reason and science against religion.

Toward the end of the article he says:

When Imperial Rome embraced Christianity, that marked an end to serious thought about atheism in the West for over a millennium. It is this historical fact that we tend to misread, when we think of atheism as an exclusively modern, western phenomenon. If we compare the post-enlightenment West to what preceded it, we can very quickly come to the false assumption that societies fall neatly into two groups: the secular-atheist-modernist on the one side and the entirely religious on the other. What pre-Christian antiquity shows, however, is that it is perfectly possible to have a largely religious society that also incorporates and acknowledges numerous atheists with minimal conflict. — Whitmarsh

I am sure that most of us here are familiar with just such dichotomous thinking, and, indeed, some are guilty of it.

The article ends:

When we consider the long duration of history, the oddity is not the public visibility of atheism in the last two hundred years of the West, but the Christian-imperialist society that legislated against certain kinds of metaphysical belief. — Whitmarsh

Where we come apart I believe is I believe that atheism is an active objection to a proposed belief. One can not be a - anything, without there being an anything. — Rank Amateur

The way that negative/weak/implicit/soft atheism works is via atheism being defined as a lack of belief in deities. If you've never thought about it, then you lack a belief in any deities. And if you've actively rejected the notion, you also lack a belief in any deities.

Understand - just disagree with the concept of negative/weak/implicit/soft and how it is defined - I believe it is more about tactic than identifying any kind of real position.

Can you give me a label for any other non belief of something one is un-aware of ?

But no real philosophy here - one can identify themselves as they wish - my only caveat would be if you do identify yourself as such it seems that is no basis to argue against theism from. They should maintain spectator status in the discussion.

Yeah, I'm not endorsing the distinction, but it's common and I think it makes some sense. I'd also prefer to use the term for positive/active denials.

thanks

We later found out that science provides better answers. — S

If that were the case, then religion would no longer exist, yet it persists. Science provides all sorts of information about how the world works but provides us little guidance on how we ought to live in the world. Even if all religious thought is factually incorrect, it might still have utility.

If that were the case, then religion would no longer exist, yet it persists. — Hanover

No, not necessarily. If everyone realised that the answers that science provides are better, then that possible consequence would make sense. But sadly countless people do not realise this.

Science provides all sorts of information about how the world works but provides us little guidance on how we ought to live in the world. — Hanover

It isn't supposed to, is it? I was making a like for like comparison. That's like saying that a hand saw isn't very good at drilling holes into wood.

Even if all religious thought is factually incorrect, it might still have utility. — Hanover

Yeah, but when I was talking about answers, that's not what I meant. It might have "utility" for some people to believe that 1 + 1 = 3, but we don't consider 3 to be the right answer.

No, not necessarily. If everyone realised that the answers that science provides are better, then that possible consequence would make sense. But sadly countless people do not realise this. — S

Answers to what is the question though. Religion doesn't provide better answers to the question of what the earth was like a million years ago, but it does provide better answers to the question of how one should live one's life.

It isn't supposed to, is it? I was making a like for like comparison. That's like saying that a hand saw isn't very good at drilling holes into wood. — S

But you did say:

The Scientific Revolution was about 500 years ago. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Long live science. — S

So it would seem you weren't offering any role for religion and were celebrating its death.

Yeah, but when I was talking about answers, that's not what I meant. It might have "utility" for some people to believe that 1 + 1 = 3, but we don't consider 3 to be the right answer. — S

We must now define "right," which is a terribly nebulous concept, asking what is truth and what is not. I think of utility as the better way to assess that. For example, is the smell of decaying flesh really foul, or do we just perceive it that way out of utility to save us from eating rotten poisonous food?

I agree that science has much more utility in explaining how the physical world works than does religion, and I find those who rely on the Bible or other ancient texts to explain our physical origins to be pretty ridiculous. It's be equally ridiculous to use science to try to figure out how to live a virtuous life, and we'd all agree there is no reasonable empirical study you'd conduct to determine that. Since the question of virtue is one of significance, and science offers us no solutions in that regard, there then is a logical basis for keeping God on life support.

If we accept that homo sapiens are about 200,000 thousand years old and religions about 4000 years, then we have been atheists for 98 percent of our past before religions. How did religions come?

“There have been countless religions most of which are now extinct. Imagine a village in earlier times with no religion. How could a religion start? A particular idea, like “there is a spirit of crops” thought up in the mind of one person would have a good chance of success. This idea might be built upon with “a prayer is needed to appease this spirit and ensure that our crops are successful”. As this prayer would only take a little time to perform, the village might pray rather than risk losing their crops. In this case the prayer idea has addressed the genetic fear of hunger. The person who thinks up this idea might gain status in the eyes of the other villagers and so there is a reason to spreading it. New ideas do not have to be true, they only have to be believed. The ritual for the protection of the crops must only be seen, from the villagers’ eye-views, to protect the crops. If the crops are generally successful, then praying will “save” the crops in the majority of cases. On the occasion that it does not, there is always the opportunity to say that the prayers were not sufficient or correctly done. Sometime later another person may say that a place for the spirit is needed and so a house is set aside for worship. People may begin to meet there. Maybe the crop spirit is thought to reside in the house, and so on. As the religion evolves, morals and rules of behaviour are included. The new religion now provides a frame of reference through which the world can be viewed. Over time, a priest class will evolve to ensure the correct following of the religious ideas. By a process of addition and modification, the religion will evolve and mature.” (evolution-path.org 2014).

The most important point here is “New ideas do not have to be true, they only have to be believed”. From what I have seen of human nature, people will believe almost anything and so we have today a set of religions full of stories and events many of which can not possible be true. This is a problem. The problem is compounded as humans are creatures of habit (a main theme in the stories of Somerset Maugham) and so they are reluctant to let go of these fantasies. For example, the idea that you don’t die when you really do die (heaven) is a comfortable one so why would a person give it up? But the retention of these fanciful ideas in religions retard the progress of science. What can be done about it?

0 is one common definition of atheism, though. It's variously called implicit, negative, weak or soft atheism. — Terrapin Station

I think it shouldn't be considered as atheism because, to be fair, the 0 state isn't a claim while atheism is one - that God doesn't exist.

Everyone's heard of the words ''heresy'' and ''conversion''.

Conversion: to adopt a religious belief
Heresy: To reject religious doctrine

Whn Europeans colonized the world they ''converted'' people to Christianity but didn't punish them for ''heresy''. This implies that in the eyes of religion there's a difference between atheism and not being aware of the concept at all. It's this difference that the faithful see but atheists, for vested interests, want to brush under the carpet.

If that were the case, then religion would no longer exist, yet it persists. Science provides all sorts of information about how the world works but provides us little guidance on how we ought to live in the world. Even if all religious thought is factually incorrect, it might still have utility. — Hanover

Right on. How the World actually is doesn't give an answer how it should be. Or how you should live your life and what is good and what is bad.

No, not necessarily. If everyone realised that the answers that science provides are better, then that possible consequence would make sense. But sadly countless people do not realise this. — S

Are you implying religious people can't accept science? Smells like an ad hominem.

There's no contradiction between science and the parts of religion that matter.

It isn't supposed to, is it? I was making a like for like comparison. That's like saying that a hand saw isn't very good at drilling holes into wood. — S

Which is why hand saws don't replace drills or vice versa, and why religion and science don't replace each other. Science doesn't provide better answers, just different ones.

I think it shouldn't be considered as atheism because, to be fair, the 0 state isn't a claim while atheism is one - that God doesn't exist. — TheMadFool

Again I'm not endorsing it, but the reason that people stress that definition is that they're stressing that atheism isn't a claim, it's simply a lack of belief--however the lack of belief is arrived at (which can be through a claim, but it doesn't necessarily have to be).

I think that stems from people looking at the etymology of the term "literally." They're reading it as literally "the negation or absence of theism."

The only reason NOT to define it that way is to try and shift the burden of proof. If you do not endorse that meaning, what meaning DO you endorse?

:ok:

I just think atheists are trying to gain the upperhand by unfair means.

Why?

Saying atheism is a lack of belief relieves them of the burden of proof. I think it doesn't work if you scrutinize this claim.

Theism clearly differentiates between the two positions. It attempts to convert one group (the unaware) into their fold and charges and punishes the other (atheists) for heresy/apostasy.

Atheists claim to be ''rational'' but if they pull the god-unaware into their ranks by simply equating lack of belief with denial of the God's existence then they too are guilty of subverting rationality.

Anyway, thanks.

Answers to what is the question though. Religion doesn't provide better answers to the question of what the earth was like a million years ago, but it does provide better answers to the question of how one should live one's life. — Hanover

You seem to have answered your own question.

So it would seem you weren't offering any role for religion and were celebrating its death. — Hanover

From what you've said, it doesn't have a unique role. And we have already past the turning point in history which marked a wave of independent thinking. The blinkers have been cast aside for many people. That's what I meant.

We must now define "right," which is a terribly nebulous concept, asking what is truth and what is not. I think of utility as the better way to assess that. For example, is the smell of decaying flesh really foul, or do we just perceive it that way out of utility to save us from eating rotten poisonous food?

I agree that science has much more utility in explaining how the physical world works than does religion, and I find those who rely on the Bible or other ancient texts to explain our physical origins to be pretty ridiculous. It's be equally ridiculous to use science to try to figure out how to live a virtuous life, and we'd all agree there is no reasonable empirical study you'd conduct to determine that. Since the question of virtue is one of significance, and science offers us no solutions in that regard, there then is a logical basis for keeping God on life support. — Hanover

No, there isn't, because that's what ethics is for. What is it with this apparent assumption that religion, or God, is required to figure out how one ought to live one's life? If we never had any conception of religion, or of God, we would still be asking these kind of questions and coming up with answers.

Why would there be a burden of proof issue with atheists anyway?

(I'm an atheist by the way, but obviously a "positive"/"strong"/etc. atheist)

Why would there be a burden of proof issue with atheists anyway? — Terrapin Station

No claim (the god naive) - no need for proof

Claim (theism/atheism) - need proof

That's what I think. I could be wrong

How strictly are you using "proof"? Because no empirical claim is provable if we're using that term fairly strictly. If you just means "reasons for belief," presumably most people will have that.

I think it shouldn't be considered as atheism because, to be fair, the 0 state isn't a claim while atheism is one - that God doesn't exist. — TheMadFool

Atheism is not a belief, it is precisely the lack of a belief. Calling it a belief is just a cute argument theists like to make, an attempt to dodge the burden of thier own claims but it has no substance. An atheist MIGHT make the claim there is no god, an individual might make a case that way, but thats thier own claim, perhaps an anti theist claim, but it is not atheism.
The word atheism is only necessary in the first place becuase of the early aggression of the theist claims when they had much more power and pervasiveness. We do not have a similar term for any other lack of belief, its just in the case of the god question. The term came from the turmoil of theistic debate and its struggle to maintain its theistic claims in the face of a rapidly crumbling basis. As knowledge grew and theism was forced to concede more and more ground to science and reason and education it grew more desperate, redefining and reinterpreting as best it could to maintain its claims. Pretending atheism is a belief, or a belief system is just one of the latest such attempts. Its a false equivalence, so that a theist can say “you operate on faith too”. Nonsense.

I'm an agnostic. I can't believe something I have no evidence for.

If I don't understand something then I do not make a claim about what is behind that thing. I wouldn't rule out God being behind an event so I am agnostic. But I have no evidence that gods or something mythological is beyond an event so I can't believe that. I can only speculate.

I suspect that fear and hierarchies/power structures and indoctrination are behind peoples religious/superstitious beliefs. I grew up in a strict Christian environment where you were not allowed to ask questions or express doubts.

I would not say atheism is the default because people might spontaneously form their own theories about reality.

Why didn't humans stop at atheism? What went wrong? — VoidDetector

What an odd question.

It sort of has a few odd generalizations.

I'm fairly certain that there were folks who rejected forms of theism that occurred prior to the advent of Christianity, so there were more than likely atheists prior to the advent of Christianity.

Why didn't humans stop at atheism (I'm assuming you mean why didn't [all] humans stop at being atheists)?

To my understanding there was never a recorded time where all humans were atheists, so this might indicate why they have never stopped at being atheists, as there was never a concensus upon which humans could stop. I would never assume that there was a possible point upon which humans could stop as I would not agree that there ever was a general consensus of denying/rejecting of theistic gods.
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Also, as time passed more and more theistic gods were claimed to exist by various people. With the advent of each theistic god the rejection of them as existing would not predicate the advent of the god, but would be a subsequent denial/rejection. It's a bit difficult to reject the existence of something prior to it being claimed to exist.

As to the "what went wrong" aspect...

Well, I suppose what went wrong is that there were simply new encarnations of theistic gods occuring. (now if that's a what went wrong is a matter of generealized perspective)

OK... as to why there has been new thestic god incarnations claimed to exist over time is a somewhat complex issue, but I feel it's a safe bet to say with each theistic god claimed to exist there has been someone out there rejecting the claim. Being an atheist requires a case by case analysis of each theistic god presented, so until the case is presented it's difficult to reject or accept it.

Meow!

G

How strictly are you using "proof"? Because no empirical claim is provable if we're using that term fairly strictly. If you just means "reasons for belief," presumably most people will have that. — Terrapin Station

We could dial it down to justification if proof is inappropriate.