Discussion: Early human society in the pre-neolithic

[sgreger1]

Agriculture and the domestication of animals were the most significant events to our development. Without them people simply would not have had time to build monuments or ponder the hereafter. With these advancements it is possible to store and preserve foodstuffs for later consumption, allowing for a class system of farmers, workers (builders), merchants, priests, and kings, giving rise to your pyramids and such.

That's like 20 steps later though, remember how religion came several thousands of years prior to aggriculture? (not religion, but the belief in god). We had a belief in god before we knew how to use tools, the first things we did with technology were religious in nature, the first buildings were monuments to animal gods, the first cities sprung up around temples, and even at the temple I cite above it is seen that they domesticated wheat for the purpose of religious ceremonies a thousand years before the aggricultural revolution.


I know agriculture and domestication led to us being able to have the luxury of sitting around and thinking, but even before that mankind seems to be driven by these spiritual beliefs and dogma. We learned to honor our ancestors and bury their bodies/cover them with religious items nearly 70,000 years before we even invented agriculture or domestication.

Mankind has that ego in him, that feeling like he is important and that others should know it. This causes him to build monuments and empires. A side effect of this ego is that when he believes in a god or a higher power, he will build monemuents and empires around that god or higher power. It's all an ego thing, but mankinds belief in sky ferries has driven a lot of our development throughout the centuries in many different ways.



EDIT: Citing agriculture and stuff is correct, but that would be like me citing electricity or the internet for our success. It's true in one way, but untrue in another because there were things that contributed to our development prior to that.

Remember, we did a LOT of shit before inventing agriculture and domestication, those things didn't come until waaaaaaaaaaaaaay later, but when they came things sped up real quick. But man got up in the morning and built temples to the gods nearly a hundred thousand years before we ever planted a seed or farmed a hog.

[tom502]

I think it interesting the term for God in the Bible is Elohim, which is plural for "those who come from above".
Also "we" made man in "our" image, shows an extraterrestrial plurality of the "Gods".

[sgreger1]

I think it interesting the term for God in the Bible is Elohim, which is plural for "those who come from above".
Also "we" made man in "our" image, shows an extraterrestrial plurality of the "Gods".

Yes but that doesn't mean aliens. Remember, the people writing these words did not even know what space travel was or that the possibility of aliens even existed, we had no idea that those shining things are all other star systems complete with planets and all. They had no concept of space travel or even space itself for that matter. So anythign from an alien mothership to a comet would be seen as something coming from above, and in literary terms angels are always said to come from above since at the time they believed the "heavens" is where god lived. So everything would be said to have "come from above", it isn't necessarily literal.


I have a question though, if aliens really did come down to earth, than why did stupid humans not learn anything from them. What, they tought them how to weave baskets and that's it? If an advanced race were here, they would have left a big footprint, there would be carvings of space ships in every written record from every empire, there would be talks about it and attempts to copy the technology of said aliens etc. None of those things seem present in the historical record. There is a few sightings that could be interpreted as UFO's, and there are some pictures/hyrogliphs that again COULD be interpreted as UFO's, but I find it impossible to believe that an alien race could come here and leave no traces of their existance. I mean they didn't even drop a coca cola bottle or anything, there are 0 artifacts from that time period that would allude to a technologically superior beign present at the time.


If aliens were there, the locals would have been thrown a thousand years ahead in terms of technology just by observing these aliens. Why do we not see some sudden technological boom during that time? Why do we just see them building houses out of mud and growing bread to survive. I mean jesus, even giving them a proper explanation of how space and the universe worked would be great, but instead they left nothing and no one from that time period mentions anything about aliens. None of the kings, none of the scribes, nobody.



It just seems that laiens is somethign people would talk about. All I can think of is that they literally believed that these aliens were gods and therefore they just refered to them as "the god's" from that point forward. Maybe everyone's religious beliefs are all because someone that resembled a god did come down and the people at the time erroneously concluded that these people were gods, and we still worship that belief today. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding, always wondered why no "miracles" happen anymore, and why god doesn't seem to have the command presence down here that he used to have.

I mean he led the jews out of the desert supposedly because they were being oppressed, but I don't see no ****ing mana falling over Libya right now. Explain that.

[chadizzy1]

Also "we" made man in "our" image, shows an extraterrestrial plurality of the "Gods".

We refers to the Trinity, God in three persons.

[sgreger1]

We refers to the Trinity, God in three persons.

I never quite understood the concept of havin 1 god that's 3 different people, is it because then you can claim you are mono-thiests but still worship multiple God's or something? I don't know but maybe you can answer that, I have asked every church I ever attended and have got a variety of answers that are all different and seem to have been arrived to "on the spot" by the person i'm asking. Is there a concensus in the christian community as to where the 3 gods in 1 thing came from?

I remember getting in so much trouble at this one christian private school I went to when I would say "god" instead of "jesus" when it was my turn to pray. I was like "yah I understand jesus is his son, but he specifically says not to worship any other god than him, so praying to his son alone seems like kind of a grey area, I mean why not just pray directly to god?". That was the absolute wrong answer because apparently there is some rule that you can never pray to god and instead can only talk to him "through" jesus or something. My gues would be that the people at this school were just wierdos but I heard this same thing at every other church I attended over the years so am not sure, is this something modern christians buy into, the concept that god doesn't want to talk to you or can't and that's why you have to talk to his kid?

[texasmade]

Nicene Creed divided God into 3. At least from my brief research. I could be wrong. I haven't really been keeping up on my religious studies.

[tom502]

Many say the Tirune God is not a Biblical concept.

And what did the ETs teach the stupid humans? Well, many things. Electricity, flight, medicine, nuclear energy, moving megaton monolithic rocks, as well as cutting them using advanced mathmatics, and with tools we can't figure out...

The question is, what caused the gap between then and now, as we have lost a large chuck of our Earth history.

[Bigblue1]

I never quite understood the concept of havin 1 god that's 3 different people, is it because then you can claim you are mono-thiests but still worship multiple God's or something? I don't know but maybe you can answer that, I have asked every church I ever attended and have got a variety of answers that are all different and seem to have been arrived to "on the spot" by the person i'm asking. Is there a concensus in the christian community as to where the 3 gods in 1 thing came from?

I remember getting in so much trouble at this one christian private school I went to when I would say "god" instead of "jesus" when it was my turn to pray. I was like "yah I understand jesus is his son, but he specifically says not to worship any other god than him, so praying to his son alone seems like kind of a grey area, I mean why not just pray directly to god?". That was the absolute wrong answer because apparently there is some rule that you can never pray to god and instead can only talk to him "through" jesus or something. My gues would be that the people at this school were just wierdos but I heard this same thing at every other church I attended over the years so am not sure, is this something modern christians buy into, the concept that god doesn't want to talk to you or can't and that's why you have to talk to his kid?

Huge wiki page on the trinity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity

[sgreger1]

Huge wiki page on the trinity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity

Yah I guess my issue with the trinity thing is that it's impossible for it to be true, plain and simple. See, they have taken a jewish book, the torah (old testament including genesis) and said "look, it says 'we', that means there are multiple gods, but we're monothiests and not dirty pagans so we will call them all one god."

But in reality they just took the jews holy book and then claimed that it mentions a trinity when it does not, the jews wrote the thing they were explicity monothiests and did not believe in a trinity, yet the christians read this book written by the jews and say "hey jews, your book is talking about our trinity, we got three god's over here and your book proves it!", when in fact the remainder of the book goes on to explain how there is only 1 god and no trinity.



It would be like me starting a new religion, then pladgearizing the Koran and saying that my interpretation of the muslim holy texts is that I should eat pork. It just doesn't make sense because the guys who wrote the thing is claiming the exact opposite, so who's interpretation is more consistent, the guy who wrote it or the guy who found the book a thousand years later and gave his interpretation? The torah was written by the jews and explicity states that there is only 1 god and to worship no other. I don't see how it flies when christians adopt the holy book of another religion like they have done with genesis and then claim that genesis refers to their god (the trinity) when in fact the god talking to the jews asking him to write this never mentions ANYTHING about him being 3 different people.



Frankly I believe Tom's interpretation of the thing is more logical than the christian or jewish ones. The book clearly is written by a narrator who is speaking to an audience or at least one other party. The whole bible is that way, it doesn't sound like it is a god doing it. stuff like (paraphrasing) "Look, man has become intelligent, he is becoming like us,quick let us cast him from the garden!". The whole book is written like that, like maybe a group of two or 3 guys discussing what humans are doing, noting their advancement and showing concern over their quick progression, they even scheme to stunt his development multiple times through things like throwing him out of the garden of eden and flooding the earth and all kinds of other stuff. All unsuccessfull, and eventually the god's go away and is never seen from again in history. Tom sounds more right than the christians, that's all i'm saying.


The last account of a miracle was the jews leaving egypt as I recall, and it's funny that no one wrote that down at the time it happened, but instead wrote it down way after the fact (and cleverly borrowing stories from events like the 10 pleagues which occured long before the jews were there). This exodus thing occured around the time writing was invented and since then we have seen no action from god, not a cloud or mana or anything, no pillars of fire, no nothing. God has completely 100% abandoned earth it seems, as he (according to religious texts) used to have a command presence down here and took an active interest in humans, but now no longer comes around to mess with us. Either god never existed or someone was here who is now long gone.



And I don't buy that jesus wa s aprophet, he didn't do anything cool like the other religious stories, all he did was come here, heal a few blind people, walked on water, and then was dragged up onto the cross and executed like any other flesh-and-blood man. He sat on the cross for days screaming for god's help and no god ever saved him. The story has since been spun that he "totally died for a reason", but in reality it just seems to be the account of a regular man, I don't see anything that would make this guy a god at all, everything he did has been done by others throughout history, and others even claimed to have done cooler stuff. As far as tall tales go, the jesus story doens't even try to sound cool.

If we can snatch up god's son and nail his ass to a cross while god sits helpless (he never retaliate against us for doing that), than either the god is powerless or this person on the cross was not his son.

[sgreger1]

And what did the ETs teach the stupid humans? Well, many things. Electricity, flight, medicine, nuclear energy, moving megaton monolithic rocks, as well as cutting them using advanced mathmatics, and with tools we can't figure out...

The question is, what caused the gap between then and now, as we have lost a large chuck of our Earth history.

Um, if aliens taught us electricity, flight, medicine, nuclear energy etc, than why did none of those things exist on earth until recently? Why is there 0 evidence of flight, medicine, nuclear energy etc from that time period? And how could you teach even the smartest man all of these concepts in a single lifetime? Even einstein could not be drug out from the wood and explained particle physics in the span of a single human lifetime.

If these aliens existed, I sure wish they would have tuaght people how to write (a pre-requisite to every one of these technologies), because then maybe they would have written all of this down. Instead we see a historical record consistent with the more boring version of the tale which is that humans slowly figured these things out over the curse of millenia. We can even document the progress towards each of these goals at nearly every step of the process, from the guy who invented math to the guy who finally put it all together in the 40's to make nuclear energy. There is no evidence or reason to believe that we didn't invent these things.


I maintain that if UFO's were here for any period of time, they would have left traces of their presence and the locals would have at least remembered having been visited. But instead all we see is a written record with no mention of aliens and nothing to go by except obscure references to stuff in religious texts. I too agree that the term "god" and "aliens" could easily be switched out and it would probably make more sense if they were aliens instead of angels/gods, but at that point I am just choosing between the least rediculous of 2 entirely implausible scenarios.

[Darwin]

As screwy precepts of religion go the Trinity is not even close to the top. There are few religions that come anywhere near any sort of internal consistency at all and most all certainly do have that feel of plain old ad hoc making it up as you go along. Looking for any religion to "make sense" in any remotely consistent way at all is a mug's game. And as been noted around here before religion is one of those categories of human philosophy that is not disprovable and therefore is immune to reason. Most believers prefer it that way hence the emphasis on faith. If one's entire cultural world view is entirely conjoined with one religion, such as Islam, then heretical thoughts are far less likely to even enter one's head.