I know this has been discussed in one of the religion theards but I can't find it. I am looking for something talking about what the first known religions were and how christianity came about. Websites to personal thoughts are all welcomed. Thanks in advanced

-mike

No one can say for sure...

The speculations that have the most merit are:

Totemism

Shamanism

Pagainism (not in the modern sense--modern paganism is related to ancient paganism by only a few common threads--it would be like comparing MODERN christianity with ancient judaism)
---
However, we realistically have to look at humans and "cognative thought"

That i'll save for when i get home


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Can't help you with the ancient religions..but Christianity came about after the death/resurrection of Jesus. Christianity didn't exist before then, it gets it's roots from Judaism. Because ultimately there weren't any followers of Christ obviously before Christ walked the Earth.

Thanks for the insight, keep it coming if you find anything else...

oh, don't worry, i'll have something big on this--but right now, i don't have the time and may not until Monday and after i sleep off my b-day hangover.


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Alright, the article you've been waiting for:

The problem with your question is that you have to specify a frame of reference because us, as humans, have a rather limited one. I will boil these down one by one:

First off, what consitutes a "religion?" Is it simply a system of beliefs that attempt to explain the (as yet) unexplainable? Is it in a purely "organized" sense? Is it an institution that takes it upon itself to police the moral, and sometimes ethical codes of the people around it? That question has to be answered. To keep things in the broadest perspective, i will go with the definition that it is a system of belief meant to explain the unexplianable. As such, this will encompass the most dogmatic belief systems.

Then we must look back throuhg history. As long as humans, specifically Homo Sapiens have been self-aware, they have most likely had a religion in the above sense. They tried to come put with what they felt was a rational explainiation of things at the time that their knowledge couldn't create as fact. As such, the first religion from that frame of reference was started by the Cro-magnon man, and based upon the relics from that era, we can guess it was similar to the shamanistic, totemistic, and paganistic religions.

However, it would be erroneus to stop there--and bee forewarned, the rest of here goes of theory and philosophy, not hard fact, but has to be said for continuity purposes.

Homo Sapiens, and Homo sapiens neanderthalansis (Neaderthal man) have been proven to have existed at the same time, and have been theorized to have interbreeded later--along with some other "ancient skulls" from around the globe. in essence, it ould be like a wolf mating with a coyote, or a dog, or the like. As such, all those "cave men" have been shown to have similar behaviours as we do--especially funerary rites and the like. As such, most likely they were self-aware, and thus pushing back the religious barrier even further.

But then there are animals. Animals: pets and the like, have proven themselves to be self-aware--in that they go beyond "programming" and instict and act out of intellegence and figure stuff out (ever have a pet figure out how to open a door, and then get into something they shouldn't have?) As such, they are self-aware, and thus, have some form of belief, and thus religion. After all, couldn't it be said that to your pet, you're "God?"

If that is the case, the barriers get pushed back even further, and the belief system gets less precice. if, say, a pack of wolves has what could be considwered a belief system, and wolves are far older than humans, then the laws of our religions don't apply to them. We still have to go far back, and figure out what was the terminus of self-awareness...

But what defines what can be self-aware? Life? What can we define as life? What we currently define as life may not be just all there is alive. Fire, for example, shares many traits with living beings. Can we preclude "inanimate" objects simply because we may not be able to see them as self-aware? After all, it's possible that the earth around us is all alive...that puts religion back to about 4.6 billion years old, and what would the earth believe in?

to make this shorter to the end of things, the very universe may be self-aware, and i'm sure those that believe in God must believe he's self aware, and thus, God must have a religion. Thus, religion is as old as God or as the universe, and what to they, or any other "deity" believe?

This is of course, assuming a linear form of time. if we think circular (rather hyperspherical), that means that religion in the basal, belief-like sense, is something always there, but in different forms, and there can be no first because something always predated it.


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Wow KOTL, that's definitely not what I was exspecting, but then again I probably should have expected something like that from you lol (I mean that in a good way). My question stems from a question that was posed to me personally. I was asked simply why do I choose christianity over other religions, and I wanted to use the first known religions with my argument. Like I know that Jewish people used the Torah before the old testatment was written and I know that christianity spawned from another religion so-to-speak. So I was wondering what that religion was. I'm going to do some research on this, but I just thought I'd asked here as well.

The thing is, in some ays, all religions hold common threads with each other--for example the holidays amongst them. There's always a spring festival, a harvest festival, and a winter festival. The new ones always sem to borrow from the old ones regardless of whether they are atheistic, antitheistic, monotheistic, or polytheistic.

Now, if you take things like I do, in that time ios hyperspherical, and thus "circular" rather than "linear", one always spawns another, and what precedes it was precessed by another, and what procedes it will be proceded by another, it's pretty much pick your reference point in time and go from there because somehow, we'll eventually get back there.

Changes in religion are always spawned off by dissatisfaction by the current belief system when dealing with it from an organized sense. Martin Luther didn't like the way the pope did things. Jesus didn't like how the jews did things, and so on, and so on. as i said, the only way you can say that a given religion was "first" is in the sense that from a fully omniscent point of view, you see what was the first entity to have self-awareness, and figure out what that entity believes.

And the delicious irony in that goes back to the same issues we have now--what religion does God most favor.


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dammm keeper when you give an answer you really give an answer! are you a collage professor by any chance? now don't get me wrong i am not saying that a long answer is a bad thing. anyway nicely said keeper


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if it still don't fit smack it with a bigger hammer"

Nope, i just have a rather nice IQ, and a good sense of the parapsycological, psycological, philisophical, metaphysical, and theoretical.

In other words, i don't limit myself based upon my--or humanity's faults. Nor do i believe (like some people) that humanity is the end-all-beat-all form of life. As such, like i pointed out with Jive--unless you define the frame of reference of "religion" and "first", that question can't be answered.

Hell, if you wanted to look at it this way, from my frame of reference, my first religion was parentaltheistic, then as i grew older and more cognative, it turned into catholicism. Then, because of dissatisfaction and the inability to use it to seek the answers i wanted, it went breifly to many forms of christianity, then into other monotheism, to atheism, scientology, agnosticism, wicca, paganism, and finally to the pagan-derived antitheism. (what i call my belief structure if i had to name it).

As such, it ould be said that from the human perspective based on you, most people's first religion was parentaltheistic--in that your parents were the deities and you relied on them for everything--since there is no real way you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that time existed before you were born



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The only thing every single person from every single walk of life on earth can truly say
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truckerdraven wrote:dammm keeper when you give an answer you really give an answer! are you a collage professor by any chance? now don't get me wrong i am not saying that a long answer is a bad thing. anyway nicely said keeper

Keeper is perhaps the sole reason I still hang here
sry if this offends anyone ... lol
not trying to boost his already self admitted 90psi ego
or anything, but , I do find his thoughts very intresting to say the least.

Okay I'm done sucking his cack now ....


<IMG SRC=http://www.j-body.org/registry/eztrip/personal_pic.jpg>

But, does the state of self-awareness necessitate religion??? If there is a being that transcends time and space, (KOTL calls it hyperspherical time, I call it Nintendo time) and in that sense most things do, but if that being were to remain in a singular self-conscious state throughout the realm of time, and was aware of the fact that it was a supreme creator, god, diety, or spiritual entity, would it be capable of religion??? In the sense that a set of beliefs that explain the unexplainable is defined as religion, wouldn't the thought of the unexplainable be irrelevent to the creator??? Not necessarily unfathomable, but irrelevent??? If there is something that is unfathomable to this creator, than can this creator be a true "god"??? Isn't god (in the Christian/Judeo sense) defined as an all-knowing, all-seeing being??? If this god knows of everything, and looks to it'sself as the creator, and for all the answers, then this creator believes in it'sself. It then seems to be defined as introverted and self-reliant, looking inward for enlightenment. Therefore, this god is Buddhist.

In the linear time sense, a permanent god cannot exist, because in linear time, there is a beginning and end to everything. Taking by definition, that a god is an all-powerful, omnipotent being, the concept of linear time cannot exist. Therefore for a god to exist, it must exist in Nintendo time, where there is no real begining or end. But it is more common to express thought in linear time, since the average span of time is relatively short, such as a life, war, era, year, ect. This is all ironic, since one of the basic fundamentals of linear time is the year, which in it'sself is a revolving, resurfacing, continuing form of Nintendo time.

OK, now back to the question, LOL. I think that the first "religion" by what we deem as human beings would be a sort of polytheistic type, in that there were gods of different types for different actions, events and occourances. God of water, God of air, Zeus-god of gods, ect.




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Not necessarily, roofy, although your point was well taken and i did have to think about it a bit.

God would exist outside of time--as many religions point out.

However, if we are talking about the typical polytheistic deity, then it HAS to have a belief system because it's just as fallible as a human (read: Greek, Roman, and Nordic pantheons). Thus, they came from somewhere.

However, in your typical monotheistic religion, what happens in theory goesalong relativistic thought--in that religion is the definement of the senses you have. As such, if God didn't have a religion, he couldn't believe in his creations, and thus, if God didn't believe in his creations, how could we exist? Especially considering the fact that since God would be omnipotent and omniscent, it means that if god doesn't believe it--for good or for bad, it doesn't exist.

Make sense?


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Yes, it makes perfect sense KOTL, assuming the definition of religion you used to prove your point. That is, religion is the definement of the senses that you have.

But, going from the other definition, in that religion is a belief set used to explain the unexplainable, a supreme god cannot, by definition, be capaple of religion. Otherwise that creator isn't a true god, for it isn't omniscent and omnipresent.

Of course, I'm going from the monotheistic viewpoint, your polytheistic viewpoints are taken and agreed upon. The question is though, what is the religion of these polytheistic gods??? If these gods are capable of religion, are they true gods???

As far as a god being present outside the realm of time, that is entirely possible, and necessary if the being is a true "supreme creator." But, since this god transcends time, and is always present, always knowing, do we truly have free will??? It is said that god (again, in the Christian/Judeo sense) loved his creations (human beings) so much, that he gave us free will. If that were true, then at that moment the god would cease to exist, at least as an omnipresent being. Therefore, since the god was no longer omnipresent, it would no longer be able to transcend time. Hence, it could be considered no greater than a common being such as ourselves. And then, it would be capable of outward religion. But, if we don't have free will, and are merely created as beings in the image of god, an extension of this god, if you will, are we induviduals??? Do we even exist???




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A lot of it goes onto my theorem that nothing is created, per se--it's a changestate of whatever existed before it.

However, concerning the omnipresent God, it makes sence if you think about it--Can you explain anything's existence--the monitor in front of you--for example. Can you explain it's existance in the physical? For someone that, say, could not see--if they had no other way to sense it--they would have to believe in it's existance, which is based upon faith in something that you can't really explain the concept to them.

Hence, even belief in your senses is beleif in the unexplainable--after all, assuming you and I both have similar vision, there is no way i can say that the color blue exists because there is no frame of reference for you to believe in it--it's an unexplainable concept. Can you explain "blue" to someone that has been totally blind since birth?

As philisophical as this is getting, it shows why i see the "unexplained" and "beleif in your senses" as linked--rather, "the unexplainable". Monotheitically, in order for us to exist, God must believe in his senses that sense that we exist, and as such, being omnipotent and outside of time, that also means that lust, gluttony, avarice, pride, sloth, wrath, and envy exist because to god, they exist. Evil exists, because to God, evil exists. And to really throw a monkey-wrench into all religions that believe that they are the only religions that are the correct one--if God is omnipresent, omniscent, and omnipotent, it means that whatever is exists because God wills it. That means that EVERY religion is validated--in that Satanism, Agnosticism, Atheism, Scientology, Antitheism, all Derivatves of Paganism, Pantheism, Buddhism, Hunduism, Taoism, Shinto, Judaism, all derivatives of Christianity, All Islamic Derivatives--EVERY religion is there because God believe it should be there.

Thus, that means that God would not favor one religion over another, because if God was perfect, and another religion was evil, God would simply not believe in it and it wouldn't exist Thus, no one's belief is wrong

<takes a bow>

Onto polytheism. A polytheistic deity is not perfect, nor infinite--EVERY polytheistic religon proves it as such. Even in the Greek/Roman Pantheons where the Olympians were immortal, they came from the Titans, and as such, are not infinite. They also share very human and falliable characteristics, and bicker amongst themselves. As such, What would they have believed in? Simply put--what spawned them off--what was before them. They are not all-powerful. However, they exist on a plane that makes them much more powerful than humans.


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The only thing every single person from every single walk of life on earth can truly say
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But what about a person who has never had the experience of god in their lives??? Not religious, per say, but never even heard of god??? If the concept of god was as foreign to them as say, the concept of a $350K Sunfie is to most of us, then to that person, god doesn't exist. Does that mean that god doesn't actually exist to them??? In the bible, it was said that god was a jealous god (supposedly in his own words) and those who didn't worship him would have consequences. Since there are people in this world who have no concept of god, or choose not to believe in him, wouldn't that god become jealous and try to eliminate or convert non-believers??? If not now, then why so in ancient times??? Does god have a double standard???

To me, polytheism in the sense that there is a god for everything, is even less believable than the monotheistic gods, albeit, just as probable to exist. The poly-gods were created long before most mono-gods were, and probably by simpler beings. Which is why they tend to have more character and human traits than later monotheistic gods tend to have. This is probably because with those character traits, early humans were more able to identify with poly-gods. This enabled them to live life with the acceptance of these poly-gods without cowering in fear or hopelessness at a faceless god with so much perceived power. Believing that these gods were a step above humans, but with similar traits, probably eased more people into polytheism because of that fact.




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You're comparing apples and oranges there with the God issues. I'm explaining how God/Gods have a religion/belief structure--you're explaining human's beliefs in them.

Maybe i'm not seeing your point or tie-in...how does belief in monotheism or polytheism have anything to do with what religion was first.



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I'm mainly comparing the human/religious beliefs, as compared to the god/religious beliefs. Mainly due to the fact that there is really no historical account or current examples to show what, or even if ancient gods had religions. An omnipotent god wouldn't be capable of outward religion, I.E. belief in the unexplainable, but I agree that most poly-gods (Zeus, Hades, Narcissius, ect) would indeed be capable, since none were omnipotent, and had more human characteristics. But, then again, I think you and I have a different definition of what constitutes religion.

Anyways, my tie-in of mono and poly-religions. I for one believe that poly-religions first gained favor because having different gods, all with different facets and characteristics of humans, was easier to comprehend, as compared to one all-encompassing being. Later mono-religions were not as easy to compare with humans, so different important human-figures (Jesus, Abraham, Jehovah, disciples, ect) were added to the mix to make the religion more people-oriented, if that makes sense.

I feel that a strictly Mono-god religion would be more difficult and gain less favor if no human-like characteristics or traits were involved. If nothing more than an all-encompassing being were being worshipped and next to nothing was explained as to it's character traits, just mainly worshipping on blind faith in the unknown, that religion would have a difficult time ganing favor, especially with the ingrained "group mentality" of human beings.

As I said before (In a thread long, long ago, in a post far, far away.) The only "religions" that I would even consider practicing would be Buddhism, and the like, simply because of the fact that they rely more on inward feelings and belief in ones-self, and not on external sources, such as a god.

The way I feel, I simply cannot aknowledge a god that I don't have proof of it's existence. Perhaps that's why I have problems when people insist in seeing spirits, ghosts, and the like. I don't see them, or have a sense of them, therefore, to me, they don't exist.



Damn, you and I on different sides of a religious debate is tough!!! Where's Pretjah to stir up some controversy when you need him??? LOL




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Do you need an account to prove it's existance? After all, Uranus existed for YEARS before an account of it was published:

Ergo, documention only shows what we know to exist, not everything that exists.

Even so, a monotheistic god would have to believe in something, or else, like i said, anything it didn't believe in would not exist--after all, an all-seeing and all-knowing god would have to know, see, and therefore, belive in everything that exists. The minute it stops believing in it is the minute that it no longer exists.

Consider it like this: Human folly is the only thing that tells us that the "imaginary" freinds children have are imaginary--the "imaginary" friends are like God--their existance cannot be proven, or disproven--however, they exist in relaity for the child as long as the child belives in their existance--and they stop existing the minute the child stops believing in their existance (which also means that remembering is validation of existance to the peron that believed). Thus, the minute an omnipotent being (God) would stop believing in something, the minute it doesn't exist--it's a transitive property--if something the knows and seels all doesn't acknowledge something, then itmust not exist because if it did, the all-knowing and all seeing being would HAVE to acknowledge, and thus believe it.

That's what i'm getting at--be it an extrinsic believe (most humans) or an intrinsic belief (deity), if you don't believe, it cannot exist.

However, your point about "gaining favor" and monotheism doesn't necessarily mean that polytheistic people were simpler--cause in your view, it's easier to swallow polytheism than monotheism. It could mean that they had more common sense back then, and we are more gullible now

And i agree...anyone else want to share their thoughts, or did Roofy and I go way over all of your heads?


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On the "simpler beings" part, maybe I chose the wrong words. I mean simpler, in the fact that early people simply didn't have the science or technology that proves how the rain system works, differing seasons, and reasons for varying crop yeilds, ect. If something happened out of the control of people in ancient times, most of the time it was acreddited (for good or bad) to any number of gods, or other powerful beings.

Quote:

Ergo, documention only shows what we know to exist, not everything that exists.

EXACTLY. As I said before, others, (including you, I think ) have belief in spirits, ghosts, and the like. I for one, have never had the experience of seeing or encountering such things, so, to me, they don't exist. There are very few things I put blind faith in. (My car, for one. ) I just need more proof than others to believe in something.

Quote:

That's what i'm getting at--be it an extrinsic believe (most humans) or an intrinsic belief (deity), if you don't believe, it cannot exist.

Heh, that's kind of my point too, LOL. All this banter for the same mutual belief. The way I see it, an all-knowing god cannot exist if we have free will, and if it does exist, we cannot have free will. And, if we were created in god's image, and don't have free-will, does that mean that god doesn't have free will either???If god doesn't have free will, then it cannot be all-knowing, therefore, it isn't the supreme creator. I just simply choose to believe it doesn't exist. Makes my life a WHOLE lot less complicated.




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You are forgetting that man created religion and that religion therfore is faulted like man. Your ideas are very deep but have either of you come to a conclusion. This is a debate that you will take to the grave. The Dan Brown books "the Da'vinci code and Demons and Angels" would be great for you two if you havent already read them.

Brandon: Prove it. Prove that no other specie in the entire known universe has religon.





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Shall I tell you what happens after we die also- I see your point but that wasnt the question.

You actually missed my point...

You cannot claim that religion is a human construct and a human construct alone. As faulty as human religion is--so is human perception (the two actually go hand-in-hand in this debate). As such, your point is taken and noted--it is faulty because of the intrinsic nature of perception...but because of the intrinsic nature of perception, again, you cannot say that religion is a construct of the human specie and the human specie alone--because there is no way to know if another specie has what counts as a religion.

My point was that there can be no conclusion: The two omega terminii of my arguments are as follows:

In the event that there is an all-powerful deity: Its structiure of belief will not only be the "first" religion, but it an all religions that encompass it will be valid, and in a weird way, they are all "first", just not discovered within an entity's frame of reference.

In the event of "curved time" (hyperspherical time), there is no "beginning" or "ending" to time, only the frame of reference in which you're looking at it. As such, the "first" religion for one entity is not necessarily the first religon for another.

As such, you cannot conclude beyond a shadow of a doubt what the first religon was without specifying a frame of reference.


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