Do you have to believe in "god/s"?

[Bruce]

Call me a scientific snob if you like, but those old philosophers actually didn't know much, so a lot of what they wrote came down to playing with words.

 

They had no idea of the size of the universe or what it was made of or how the brain worked. They knew nothing of physics or chemistry or aerodynamics or cosmology or geology or biology or evolution or electrical engineering.

 

Yes they probably did influence the thinking of their times so they are important in history, but I don't see that studying them can be of help to us now.

 

I suggest physics and astronomy are better subjects.

 

 

[Marty_d]

You are posing a theosophical question to an audience that does not even recognize theism as being a prerequisite knowledge to the atheism they attempt to behold.

Yes, you really shouldn't waste your time trying to educate such ignorant swill as us.

 

By the way, there is no "knowledge" in theism. Only belief. You can't have knowledge without first data and then information. As there is no data that supports the existence of any deity, then you can't claim to have knowledge.

 

 

[facthunter]

Yes . I can understand that. So much I don't know, and you realise there's much more to learn, but people long ago were just as intelligent and human and saw things through the idea's of the time, and that's how you should interpret them, not apply them literally to another situation without due acknowledgement and adjustment for that aspect of it.. Early artists often did not use perspective, as an example and it looks strange to observe today. Our knowledge (collectively) increases when things like books (and literacy) became available. Get rid of storage and availability of information and you regress into ignorance. I can't see how a belief in God forms a part of that. In fact it can be an obstacle to knowledge, and there's much evidence for that, but in the middle ages much of the books were associated with the Churches as the masses were not educated in general probably deliberately as it would empower them and make it harder to rule over them. That's still happening today, where women are not educated for that reason. Nev

 

 

[pmccarthy]

A woman who lives nearby to us has done years of research to produce this book:

 

The Memory Code

 

The traditional Aboriginal memory technique that unlocks the secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and ancient monuments the world over

 

Lynne Kelly

 

AUD $32.99

 

In summary she is saying that people were just as smart tens of thousands of years ago but without writing they had to use symbols and landscape objects as triggers for memory, which could have been encoded in song, poetry and dance. She thinks most "temples" and standing stones etc were engraved or naturally had marks which could be used to trigger memories. A lot of what archaeologists call ritual sites and ritual objects are just memory joggers.

 

Just think about how many old song lyrics are stored in your brain. A bit of music can bring the whole thing back. That is how ancient people recalled paths, seasonal food supplies, and just about anything.

 

 

[facthunter]

Smells too. Your mind will associate these things with some of your memory. If a word, symbol, gesture for something doesn't exist in a language , perhaps that thing doesn't exist for that community/tribe either? Nev

 

 

[pmccarthy]

Lynne says that when people settled, and stopped being nomadic, they no longer had landscape locations to link to stories and they had to build monuments which served the same purpose.

 

 

[nomadpete]

Stopped being nomadic?

 

I wouldn't know about that.

 

 

[Bruce]

I reckon women are indeed better at remembering how to re-find sites and men are better at headings. I explain this by thinking about how tribal women would remember how to find a particular fruiting tree from a recipe but men had to chase the animals which went thataway.

 

You should have heard the wife and me argue when trying to find our way around Canberra where my sense of direction was confounded by those darn curving roads. She was more right.

 

 

[nomadpete]

Yeah. Canberra is a challenge. Do you think that there's a connection between the roads that go in circles and the politicians that go in circles?

 

 

[old man emu]

No. You can't back track on the roads.