"Why Do Men Reject God?"

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
"But monotheism with it's singular ultimate being is relatively new." -googlefudge

Any sense of the time frames pertaining to "relatively new"?

How long do you think monotheism has been around? (Call it Y)

How long do you think Man has been around? (Call it X)

What is Y/X ?

I guess it would differ from GF's calculation. (?)

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
However, isn't disbelief tantamount to rejection?

It depends what you mean by 'rejection'. Are you talking about rejecting something you believe exists, or rejecting the possibility that it exists. They are very different meanings.
For example, if I say that GB rejects fairies, how would you interpret that? Do you see yourself as rejecting fairies?
What if I said GB rejects the Queen Fairies' love? Would you accept that statement as true?

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby

This behavioral nexus is real and operative subliminally in all of us in varying degrees. Emotions are powerful and often intimidate/hen peck the designed authority of our rational minds. Worst decisions we've all ever made were emotional.

I ran this through Google Translate but no luck ... still makes no sense.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
"Even if you restrict yourself to only the last 10,000 years by starting counting from the
early birth of civilisation then you are still talking about monotheism being dominant for
less than the last 20% of our history."

Haven't looked it up recently but seem to remember reading the worldwide Christian population was in the vicinity of 40%.

84 percent of the world population has faith; a third are Christian

By Jennifer Harper - The Washington Times December 23, 2012, 11:05AM

“Worldwide, more than eight-in-ten people identify with a religious group,” says a new comprehensive demographic study of more than 230 countries and territories conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life.

“There are 5.8 billion religiously affiliated adults and children around the globe, representing 84 percent of the 2010 world population of 6.9 billion,” the analysis states.

Here’s the breakdown of “The Global Religious Landscape,” based on an analysis of more than 2,500 censuses, surveys and population registers:

• 2.2 billion Christians (32 percent of the world’s population).
• 1.6 billion Muslims (23 percent).
• 1 billion Hindus (15 percent.
• 500 million Buddhists (7 percent).
• 400 million people (6 percent) practicing various folk or traditional religions, including African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, American Indian religions and Australian aboriginal religions.

There are 14 million Jews, and an estimated 58 million people — slightly less than 1 percent of the global population – belong to other religions, including the Baha’i faith, Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Tenrikyo, Wicca and Zoroastrianism, “to mention just a few,” the study says.

About half of all Christians in the world are Catholic, 37 percent are part of the Protestant tradition, 12 percent are Orthodox Greek or Russian.

The largest population of Christians (243 million) is found, incidentally, in the United States, followed by Brazil, Mexico, Russia, the Philippines, Nigeria and China. Find the entire massive study here: http://www.pewforum.org/.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/dec/23/84-percent-world-population-has-faith-third-are-ch/
_________________________________________________________

"The CIA's World Factbook gives the world population as 7,021,836,029 (July 2012 est.) and the distribution of religions as Christian 31.59% (of which Roman Catholic 18.85%, Protestant 8.15%, Orthodox 4.96%, Anglican 1.26%...), Muslim 23.2%, Hindu 15.0%, Buddhist 7.1%, Sikh 0.35%, Jewish 0.2%, Baha'i 0.11%, other religions 10.95%, non-religious 9.66%, atheists 2.01%. (2010 est.).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations

Note: Recall was off by 8 Percentages Points (32% not 40% or 20%...).

Originally posted by wolfgang59
You (GB) give a quote making an audacious claim (which presumably
you agree with) and then, when challenged on the veracity of that
claim, you ask for instances when it wasn't true.

You are supporting the claim - you produce evidence!

Originally posted by twhitehead
Can anyone substantiate that claim? I am fairly sure that it is untrue.
"Most people in the world, throughout the ages of history, have believed in some concept
of a Supreme Being." -Wayne Jackson

"Can anyone substantiate that claim? I am fairly sure that it is untrue." -twhitehead

"Doubtful that Jackson's presumptive claim/premise can be substantiated from hard data.
Do you recall any chapters of human history in which the concept wasn't true?" -gb

Originally posted by wolfgang59
How long do you think monotheism has been around? (Call it Y)

How long do you think Man has been around? (Call it X)

What is Y/X ?

I guess it would differ from GF's calculation. (?)

Do you have the values?

Originally posted by wolfgang59
I ran this through Google Translate but no luck ... still makes no sense.

Yeah, you're right; apologies to your linguistic sensibilities for the lead balloon.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
[b]"Why Do Men Reject God?"

"Most people in the world, throughout the ages of history, have believed in some concept of a Supreme Being. They may have had a perverted sense of Who that Being is, but they were convinced that there is a Personal Power greater than man. Given the evidence available, faith is reasonable. That is why the psalmist decl ...[text shortened]... e other reasons for rejecting the possibility of a Supreme Being and accepting the consequences?[/b]

King James Bible
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
John 3:19

I think we should give some thought to what Jesus said here. I have always thought it was an accountability issue. It was with me.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Can anyone substantiate that claim? I am fairly sure that it is untrue.

I know you're not seriously contending or even innocently questioning that claim.
You simply couldn't be, not after all this time.
It is a fact that the overwhelming majority of recorded history reveals man to be highly religious with a predominant view of an upper echelon of authority: god(s).
It is disingenuous for you to question what has been firmly established repeatedly herein.

Originally posted by rwingett
I would dispute your claim when you say, "I think we can agree that as far as we can tell, people have pretty much always had supernatural beliefs about the world including the existence of powerful anthropomorphic
beings including beings we would currently class as gods."

Homo sapiens sapiens have been around for about 200,000 years. The first ...[text shortened]... that they spent, if not most of their existence that way, then certainly a large portion of it.

Even if we allow for a somewhat earlier origin, it is apparent that the first men necessarily lacked any religious beliefs.
There is nothing in what you reported that remotely supports it as you summarized.
Intentional burialReveal Hidden Contentis evident in literally every civilization found on the planet. ThisReveal Hidden Contentis common among all religious acts, but it is not the only act.
Too, to limit proof of religious activity to artifact essentially denies the most basic form of religion: thought.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
I know you're not seriously contending or even innocently questioning that claim.
You simply couldn't be, not after all this time.
It is a fact that the overwhelming majority of recorded history reveals man to be highly religious with a predominant view of an upper echelon of authority: god(s).
It is disingenuous for you to question what has been firmly established repeatedly herein.

Actually he could very well be seriously contending that claim.

The claim as stated in the op is this...

"Most people in the world, throughout the ages of history, have believed in some
concept of a Supreme Being"

Note "A supreme being" ... singular.

It's thus not unreasonable to see this as a claim that most people have believed in
a monotheistic god.

And that claim is, as has been shown a number of times in this thread, one that
doesn't actually look justifiable.


Now if you assume the author is claiming that most people throughout the ages have
believed in supernatural beings then it might be correct.


But it's not a cinch that that is what the author meant.


And of course as the author is not the person who wrote the op we don't get to ask
them for clarification.

However as the author mentions the Christian god many times throughout the quote it's a fair
assumption that the author is making the typically Pascalian mistake of dividing the world into
believers in a singular monotheistic god and atheists with little or nothing in-between.
Missing out the many other theistic and non-theists religious beliefs that have and are held by
many people around the world.


Assuming the figures earlier are correct it looks like approximately 55% of the present day
world population is counted as being monotheistic (mainly Christian/Muslim) and that is very
likely an over estimate for people who actually believe in god as opposed to those who are
simply 'cultural Christians/Muslims'.

And given that the main monotheistic religions didn't start gaining widespread adoption till
the Romans started propagating Christianity significantly less than 2000 years ago you can't
even claim that monotheism has been a majority religion for most of recorded history, let alone
all human history.




So no, I don't think that twhitehead is being disingenuous at all.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
[b]Even if we allow for a somewhat earlier origin, it is apparent that the first men necessarily lacked any religious beliefs.
There is nothing in what you reported that remotely supports it as you summarized.
Intentional burial[hidden]grave rituals, totems, paintings, carvings and other evidence of a belief in the supernatural[/hidden]is evident in ...[text shortened]... f of religious activity to artifact essentially denies the most basic form of religion: thought.[/b]

Assuming for the moment that intentional burial is actually evident in every civilisation
found on the planet...

Humans evolved tens if not hundreds of thousands of years before civilisation existed.

And intentional burial does not guarantee religion.

Religion doesn't guarantee theism.

Neither does belief in the supernatural.

And even if you do have religion and theism that doesn't by any means you have a belief
in the existence of "A Supreme Being".

Heck the Norse gods die in the end...

The concept of a singular all powerful ultimate supreme immortal being is historically recent
and by no means universal at any time in history or the present.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Actually he could very well be seriously contending that claim.

The claim as stated in the op is this...

"Most people in the world, throughout the ages of history, have believed in some
concept of a Supreme Being"

Note "[b]A supreme being" ... singular.

It's thus not unreasonable to see this as a claim that most people have believed in ...[text shortened]...
all human history.




So no, I don't think that twhitehead is being disingenuous at all.[/b]

Note "A supreme being" ... singular.
That's funny how you both would key on the indefinite article a while at the same time, commit yourselves to filtering out the salient issue, namely concept of a Supreme Being.

Even more curious is how the next sentence in the OP qualifies the intention, yet you two still ignored the haystack to obsess over an innocuous needle.

While there is evidence to support the emergence of monotheism within the Israelite group, the lack of evidenceReveal Hidden Content among groups previously doesn't exclude the possibility or plausibility of non-affiliated individuals who held the belief otherwise.

Archaeological evidence notwithstanding, we do have evidence which pre-dates written history which emphatically reveals that man from the beginning experienced nothing but a monotheistic view of life, and further supports the idea that out of monotheism sprang polytheism.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
[b]Note "[b]A supreme being" ... singular.[/b]
That's funny how you both would key on the indefinite article a while at the same time, commit yourselves to filtering out the salient issue, namely concept of a Supreme Being.

Even more curious is how the next sentence in the OP qualifies the intention, yet you two still ignored t ...[text shortened]... notheistic view of life, and further supports the idea that out of monotheism sprang polytheism.[/b]

Bull. Show me this evidence please, because I currently not only think it doesn't
exist but that it cannot exist.

pre-written accounts must be and are open to huge interpretation and cannot be
as definitive as you are making out.

And everything I have seen to-date indicates that all known primitive peoples have
believed in multiple spirits and/or gods and that monotheism is exceedingly likely to
have come after polytheism.


Also I didn't 'filter out' the part that said 'concept'. ALL gods are concepts and nothing
else.

What you missed was the bit that said 'believed in' which means that they had not just
had the thought that there could be some singular supreme being but that they actually
believed that that being existed, and presumably worshipped it.




However, I think you (if you are being at all reasonable) must concede that actually the
statement in the op is open to debate, at least partly dependent on how the passage is
interpreted and that Twhiteheads question was not actually unreasonable or disingenuous.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Bull. Show me this evidence please, because I currently not only think it doesn't
exist but that it cannot exist.

pre-written accounts must be and are open to huge interpretation and cannot be
as definitive as you are making out.

And everything I have seen to-date indicates that all known primitive peoples have
believed in multiple spirits a ...[text shortened]... ge is
interpreted and that Twhiteheads question was not actually unreasonable or disingenuous.

Bull. Show me this evidence please, because I currently not only think it doesn't
exist but that it cannot exist.
Genesis ring a bell?

How do you think Moses knew what happened in the Garden, if not for the testimony of God Himself?

pre-written accounts must be and are open to huge interpretation and cannot be
as definitive as you are making out.
Oh, so now you're the expert on the very thing you insist doesn't--- cannot--- exist?
You seriously don't take yourself, um, seriously?
Do you?

Also I didn't 'filter out' the part that said 'concept'. ALL gods are concepts and nothing
else.
Then the concept of a Supreme Being shouldn't be too hard to grasp: one god, multiple gods, any supernatural entity, whether in the singular or the plural, are all pretty much the same to you, so the distinction shouldn't be made otherwise.

What you missed was the bit that said 'believed in' which means that they had not just
had the thought that there could be some singular supreme being but that they actually
believed that that being existed, and presumably worshipped it.
Wut?
Where did I reveal a missing of such aspects?
And what is the relevance, exactly?