Death.......... ?

[Dark Jedi]

Is death responsible for religion as we know it? Mankind has feared death for as long as man has been able to concieve of it. This is commonly thought to be the driving force of religions.

Perhaps it is. But is the concept of death what caused religion? I'm a little curious about this. I have a hypothesis that death itself is a root cause (perhaps the root cause?) of religion.

Death,the dying of the brain, has been documented as being quite a cataclysmic process. Cells dying, little lighning storms of crazed nerve cells, memories and sensations run amok. This is the cause (hypothesized, so far) of "near death" or afterlife and return experiences. People who's brains have started the process of dying expereince these little tantrums of dying brain tissue. They see a bright light, they remember their loved ones, they feel fearful and euphoric. All in a huge jumble of chaos for the poor person to try and make sense of when the very rare occasion of someone being brought back from the brink of brain death.

It's easy to see a notion of an afterlife forming from this. Especially when it happens often enough to be documented, and only to people that everyone around will swear had died.....

It's a possibility. Anyone working on a doctoral need a thesis topic? :D

[Ms. Siv]

I'm afraid that your concept isn't a new one at all.

Carl Sagan explored it in his Dragons of Eden. So have many scientists studying NDEs (Near Death Experiences).

[Dark Jedi]

Hmm.. I have read many works on NDE, but hadn't run across one that touched on NDE as the origin of religion, rather than it's interpretation influenced by religion.

[Amos]

Originally posted by Dark Jedi
Perhaps it is. But is the concept of death what caused religion? I'm a little curious about this. I have a hypothesis that death itself is a root cause (perhaps the root cause?) of religion.



I would say that death is the cessation of life which must be an illusion to make dying an apparent reality and if life is an illusion it must be a reflection of something that is real and that reality is what religion is based on. They call it eternal life and the difference between the illusion that allows death and the real thing is our perception of it. Either way we will die but if all we can see is the illusion we will die without ever having known who we really and die as a stranger to our own self.

[atheist_in_foxhole]

Originally posted by Ms. Siv
I'm afraid that your concept isn't a new one at all.

Carl Sagan explored it in his Dragons of Eden.

Sagan's book "Broca's Brain" also has a terrific chapter on NDE's.

[Barefoot Bree]

I haven't read any of the referenced books (my local library is tiny), but I have a quibble with the OP.

For NDE's to be a root cause of religion, way back "when" in the dawn of religious history, there would have had to be lots of NDE's to go around. Seems to me that NDE's are pretty much a recent phenomenon - only became "common" enough to talk about when medicine became advanced enough to actually bring people back from near death. How many cases of NDE's were documented before, say, 1900?

Regards, Barefoot Bree

[Amos]

From somewhere it can be argued that NDE's have nothing to do with medicine because the medici itself is puzzled by them and it is only through the frequency of their occurances that they have become accepted as commom occurances.

NDE's are just extraordinary dreams for which we must be divided in our own mind so one mind can communicate with the other. They were predicted a long time ago when what's-his-name said that "an evil age will come when old men shall have dreams," which obviously was not the norm in those days or it would not have been predicted to become an evil age.

NDE's are evidence of our dual nature wherein our rational identity dies or is temporary blacked out while our animal man identity just keeps on living and upon awakening the rational identity wonders what the heck that was all about. If, according to this analogy, we are divided in our own mind it is easy to see how one identity can be blacked out (because it was an illusion to begin with) which now means that NDE's are just evidence of our prior delusion.

[McNamara]

Originally posted by Amos
From somewhere it can be argued that NDE's have nothing to do with medicine because the medici itself is puzzled by them and it is only through the frequency of their occurances that they have become accepted as commom occurances.
No, NDEs are most certainly a medical phenomena. Just because it's "puzzling" to doctors does not remove it from the realm of science and medicine.

[Amos]

Originally posted by McNamara
No, NDEs are most certainly a medical phenomena. Just because it's "puzzling" to doctors does not remove it from the realm of science and medicine.

That's looking at things a little backwards, I would say. NDE's are a human phenomena and doctors are puzzled by it because they see a bussiness opportunity it.

[Dark Jedi]

I would think that modern medicine makes for more NDE, but would not rule out a common enough occourance in even prehistoric times. It could be brought on by anything that can begin braincell death and be overcome.
Fever
head injury
choking
to name some examples off the top of my head. So long as man was tribal/communal enough to allow food and shelter while the body recuperates, it is a distinct liklihood that such recoveries were made. Rare indeed, but there nonetheless.

[Secular Elation]

I always thought the "cause" of religion was the need for man to fabricate explanations for the world around him. In primitive times in human history, man did not possess the scientific abilities that we have in the modern day. Back then, the best they could come up with is that the lightning from the sky, the sun moving through the sky, and all other natural phenomena were caused by supernatural beings--in essence, they created fairy tales to explain these mysteries. Of course, death certainly does have an influence.

[Amos]

Originally posted by Secular Elation
I always thought the "cause" of religion was the need for man to fabricate explanations for the world around him. In primitive times in human history, man did not possess the scientific abilities that we have in the modern day.

Aristophanes wrote a book in which he predicted that science would be the cause for the fall of their empire. I think it was called "The Frogs" or "The Clouds" and I maybe mistaken here, but I did read it.

If I could write a book I would argue the same thing and point out on the first page that within 20 years after abortion clinics became legal in N. America they were outnumbered by fertility clinics. This, of course, does not mean that these clinics are the problem but that the need for them is evidence that there is a problem.

[Dalharuk]

IF you try some astronaut gravity machine thing, (youre in a seat and the thing spin super fast you know) and you faint, you might experience a NDE.

It is a very well known phenomena. Such a thing happen when the brain is in a need for oxygen (just like when you die, if you "die" it is just because your brain as no more blood to work...) and when you are under the effect of many Gs, your blood have problems going to your brain...

Peoples are reported to have experienced the tunnel (the whole optic system panic in need of oxygen and send pulse to the brain traduced as rings, creating a tunnel. If youre tall and you stand up quickly, your brain will miss blood for a second creating some patterns in your sight, so what Im telling you about the tunnel is no fantasy) a LOT of times, and sometimes even hell and some lake of fire.

But it is unlikely religion comes from that.

[McNamara]

I don't think the OP intended to say that NDEs were the root cause of religion, but that gods and afterlives were invented to help people psychologically deal with death.

One of my Marine friends used to play a game when he was enlisted. It was called "dream world." Since Marines on a ship have little else to do except eat, sleep, lift weights, and clean guns, it can get boring. When it got boring enough, some of them would consent to being choked to the point on unconsciousness by their friends. After a few seconds or a minute, the person would wake up and tell about all the weird lights, dreams, visions, etc. they had while they were out. Hence "dream world." One time a guy didn't wake up for a very long while, and they were nearly charged with attempted murder - but I digress.

So-called near death experiences have chemical causes, not supernatural. I think that should be pretty clear from the variety of circumstances that cause them, and the fact that the foremost symptom is lack of oxygen in brain cells. When people nearly die and are revived, they merely come closer to total brain death than those who merely pass out, so the experience is more intense.

On another tack - Amos, I find your dislike of science to be disturbing. It's fine if you didn't like physics class in high school, but remember that we wouldn't have such comfortable lives and we wouldn't know so much about the universe were it not for science. The application of science is what you should be worried about, e.g. chemical/biological/nuclear weapons and other abuses of scientific knowledge. Don't hate the messenger.

And the problem you imply with your abortion clinic analogy is a societal one, namely people are too dumb to use birth control, and not a problem arising from science.

[Mageth]

An alternative explanation I've heard for the origin of belief in a soul or spirit is the simple observation of someone else dying. An animated body, upon death, ceases to be animate. All the things besides the physical that we formerly associated with that person are now gone. So what happened? Obviously, something left the body, something that previously animated it, and that something included everything non-physical that we identified with that person. What is that something? We don't see it, so it must be some invisible essence. Let's call it a spirit.

From the idea of an invisible spirit that leaves us at death would grow belief in some sort of afterlife, and thus different religions. God(s) could be added to the afterlife/religion at some later point.

As far as religion goes, I think one plausible explanation is that its roots lie in magical beliefs and practices, which probably predated religious beliefs and practices. Magic as in some shaman that has the ability to control weather, crops, healing, etc., and including homeopathic (imitative) magic and Contagious magic (see Frazer's The Golden Bough (http://www.bartleby.com/196/5.html) for a classical discussion on the categories of Magic).

Now, at some point, some smart shaman would get tired of being blamed for his or her magic failing (which it would do as often as not), or not want to risk being killed when his or her magic failed as was the previous shaman. So this shaman invents the idea of a god or gods to pass the blame off to. These gods may be the spirits of passed ancestors, or some thunder-god or such. Instead of directly trying to influence an event he or she is supposed to have the ability to control (such as the spring rains) using some magical method, this shaman says that there is some malevoltent spirit that actually controls the weather, and we (the tribe) need to appease this spirit if we want the rains to come (but not too much - we don't want a flood). If the rains don't come as planned, or we get a devastating flood, then, well, it's not the shaman's fault, someone in the tribe did something to piss this spirit off, or the 'ole guy is throwing another temper tantrum this year.

[Amos]

Originally posted by McNamara
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On another tack - Amos, I find your dislike of science to be disturbing.

But I like science and I am also not against abortion per se because it fills a need that has been created by our scientific revolution. I am just pointing at signs that may be seen as evidence of problems that are now in its infancy but that may become to big for us to handle later on.

[McNamara]

How has the scientific revolution created a need for abortion? From the beginning of society there's always been the old crone with a twig to take care of unwanted potential mouths to feed. Modern medicine just makes abortion safer for the woman.

I'm curious as to what problems you see indicated by things like abortion.

Mageth, that was an excellent explanation for the evolution of religion.

[Amos]

Originally posted by McNamara
I'm curious as to what problems you see indicated by things like abortion.

.

Understand here that I have nothing against abortion per se except that it is a reflection of our collective degree of motherhood and fatherhood whom are God-given qualities that cannot be learned from books. Indeed, they are incarnate upon us much like homosexuality but to a lesser degree, perhaps, and so our inability or unwillingness to procreate and/or nurture our own children will become an increasing problem in our society. It is probably caused by our hormonal make-up that became distorted with the introduction of the modern gender society. Our fertility problem is part of this, so is pedophelia, child abuse, distorted boy/girl birth ratio and just the higher level of stress in young families which is even worse in modern nuclear families and divorce situations.

This is not to say that divorce is wrong or anything like that. It is however true that if homosexuality is incarnate upon us and therefore legal (without my objection) and argument can be made that pedophelia should be made legal if only on the grounds that it is incarnate upon the person who also did not create himself and therefore is not in charge of his own sexual preference. If someday all these inequities are proven to be our predestined orientations the slippery slope will demand that all be made legal which now makes the offender a victim of society and should therefore be protected by society.

Just my opinion, but since you asked . . .

[Amos]

Originally posted by McNamara
From the beginning of society there's always been the old crone with a twig to take care of unwanted potential mouths to feed.

That can't be true of fidelity would not be a virtue and the phrase "mouths to feed" is just another modern day expression.

[Dark Jedi]

Originally posted by Amos
That can't be true of fidelity would not be a virtue and the phrase "mouths to feed" is just another modern day expression.

Umm.. What?

I think you are trying to say that abortions of the past can't be true because then there would be no such thing as fidelity.
Is that what you mean?
If so, the conclusion does not follow the assumption. In some cases, an abortion could mean infidelity, but not all. And in no way does one infidelity abortion invalidate the other 9 billion people on the planet's option to practice fidelity or not.

[Amos]

Oh I agree that abortion always has been a possible solution or maybe a sought after solution to prove fidelity and this here includes fidelity to the husband, to the clan and to the tribe. This is where the idea of 'stoning' comes in and maybe also the release or sacrifice of a daughter towards the supply of harlots within certain civilizations.