Astronomical origins and parallelisms between religions

[WanderingKnight]

First and foremost, this is not intended to challenge religious belief. This is a thread for the discussion of a particular, rational point of view over the issue of religion and its evolution throughout the ages. If you feel that your beliefs are somehow threatened by what I'm posting, I'm going to ask you to refrain from reading. On the other hand, there's no reason why only non-religious people may participate in this debate... on the contrary, I'd prefer to have that side of the deal as well.

This is a friendly debate. Any trolling post will get reported.

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Okay, now to the real content of this thread. Today my dad showed me a bit of this pseudo-documentary, conspiracy-theorist movie, hailing it as some sort of universal truth. Of course, my dad being the gullible person he is, I watched it with an enormous mountain of salt. And, to my surprise, though it was filled with factoids, anectdotal references, one-sided interpretations, generalizing assumptions and sometimes outright lies, the first part actually managed to present an overly simplified version of some of these hypotheses. Now, I'm sure the rest of the movie is the usual paranoia-generating bullshit on how "everything they tell you is a lie!" and how the presenter of this new theory has the universal truth in his hands, but that's not what I want to discuss here.

What I want to discuss here is your opinion on the astronomical origins and continuity of many of the religious myths and beliefs throughout the centuries, more particularly, of the various ways of drawing a parallel line between the yearly cycle of the sun and the (mythologic?) life of many worshipped deities in different religions. I'd post a little more detailedly on the matter but I'm pressed by time.

Opinions?

[Vexx]

Religion, astronomy, and agriculture/hunting have been rolled up into one katamari ball since man first had a thought outside of "Oh Shit, Teeth!!!!"

The first episode of Wolf and Spice (ookami to koushinryou) actually is a nice little tiny view of the evolution of religion, the seasons, and "technology" together.

Knowing what the stars mean in relation to the seasons is like getting info from the gods. Being able to use nature to predict the weather is also like getting info from the gods. Yeah, there are whole books on this subject and I'm being horribly compact.

Yeeeesh... I saw that documentary. The opener is not entirely offbase when you look at the Pauline interpretation, the Dead Sea Scroll research, and the decisions made by the Council of Nicea in determining which gospels to add to the collection coupled with the Roman Empire incorporation of christianity into their proto-fascist empire. Couple that with the aggressive cultural decimation of the surrounding 'pagan' societies in the swath of Rome and its "baby bell" descendants (France, Britain, Portugal, Spain)... and you have to start wondering how to tease out the important stuff.

The rest of it had me just rolling my eyes.... I play the Steve Jackson Illuminati and Paranoia games and though I love that sort of conspiracy crap, truly my experience in Big Defense and Big Govt just confirms the much more likely notion that "Stupidity" rules most of humankind, especially the ones in charge. I won't say there aren't people who would LIKE to rule the world with many many connections ... but most of them lack the real skill to pull it off so basically they end up making some money and wrecking crap for everyone else. Noam Chomsky has some delicious writings and lectues on those subjects.

Let me stew on your last paragraph because most religions are deeply tied to the cyclic nature of life on earth.

[Aoie_Emesai]

Religion is what it is. It can come from simple natural occurrences in the natural world and space like you said. Simply observing the world itself brings natural phenomenon that humans question. This with the belief that there must be a greater being that ourself brings out religion.

[Jinto]

Astronomical events were a good thing to base religion on (in the past). Noone could reach the stars, nobody explain how it works... and its been spectecular or frightening at times. The perfect source for wonders, that was waiting to be corrupted by human interpretation (religion). Even today the universe is basically still a mystery to humans, it makes sense that religion is influenced by it, in the end religion is there to explain the unknown and unproven. Even sience today still has these limits... that point, where science becomes religion (based on believe). And in part those limits are astronomy related.

[innominate]

Err, astrology =/= astronomy. Astrology is the pseudoscience which includes things like constellations determining futures or how the right ascension of saturn on your birthdate can predict that you would be outspoken and extroverted etc.

Err astronomy is the science/study of outer space etc.

I think.

[Vexx]

Astronomy and Astrology grew out of the same sandbox: analyzing the lights in the sky and discovering they could predict the seasons and stuff... but then someone made a guess that the stars actually directed happenings on the earth and ergo, happenings to individuals. The rest was centuries of added tall tales and hyperbole.

Astronomy picked up the scientific method later (throw out anything that turns out to be disprovable or unprovable) which saved it.

Astrology just keeps bounding along using inaccurate charts and methodologies because, in essence, its no different than any form of sympathetic magic --- "you see what you want to see, you hear what you waht to hear" There's something quaint about a good tarot card reader because they have the people skills to be an excellent therapist or counselor: the cards are just a diversion.

[Jinto]

Originally Posted by Vexx

...
Astronomy picked up the scientific method later (throw out anything that turns out to be disprovable or unprovable) which saved it.
...

I have to disagree on the part of throwing out anything unprovable. Because that would assume one could decide what is unprovable. But that is undecidable...

[Kensuke]

Originally Posted by Jinto Lin

I have to disagree on the part of throwing out anything unprovable. Because that would assume one could decide what is unprovable. But that is undecidable...

Hmm, I think correct term is falsifiability, anything that can't be proven false is not scientific.

Back to topic, my simple view is that the myths came from that men explained natural phenomenons with gods, like lightning is sparks from Thor's hammer or something like that, they didn't have the knowledge or the tools we have today. It took a telescope to finally show that Earth isn't center of the universe.

[Vidofnir]

I'm not really sure if this is the type of answer you were looking for, but this is what I would call my rational view on religion:

All animals are created with the ability to learn and adapt. Organisms that do this better then others have an advantage and are more succesfull in finding food, avoid danger and mate. For us humans the learning aspect is especially well developped with the big differences that we can "create" impressions and associations purely as mental constructs in our brain and contemplate about them before transmitting the learned knowledge to other members of the species.

This drive to explain everything around us also has some disadvantages:
- Making wrong assumptions during times of fear and danger.
- Making wrong assumptions when only partial information is present or comprehended.
- Creating fear when things can not be comprehended at all.

Out of this, taboos were created. Objects you're not supposed to touch or activities that are not to be practiced for fear of reprecursions. Often, but not always, based on those wrong assumptions. To clean or protect oneself from such taboos, rituals and "magical thinking" were created.

Myths and legends followed, often with connections to the cosmos and gods. Their purpose is putting the world in a context that the human mind can understand and create a vision of. They provide answers to questions like "Why do we have to die?" and "Why does lightning exist?".

When society advanced further, more questions were needed to be answered and problems were created for this society that needed to be solved.
That's where the large religions (christianity, islam, ...) come in the picture. The most important question they try to solve (and a problem for society to work correctly) is "Why do bad things happen to good people, and why have bad people all the benefit?". Zoroastrianism gave a satisfactory answer to this (that was later adopted by Chistianity, Mazdeism and Islam) by saying that there was a fight going on between good and evil, and everyone on earth would also pick a side by their actions in life. Eventually good will win and all sinners shall be punished.
The Eastern world took a different road for answering the same questions by using reincarnation. Actions in the current world will lead to a better or worse life in the next.

I see taboos, myths/legends and religions in their respective order as a necessary stage in the development of our society. And as society continues to evolve, religion will take less and less center stage and perhaps even disappear entirely at some point.