Hakluyt's Voyages.......

[Hakluyt]

........just in case anyone fancies continuing them.

We were, I think, discussing the issue around dating dinosaur bones........among other things.

Oh and I suppose it's fair to point out that Christians were all taught what they believe in. Usually in special training centres called churches and typically schools too. :)

Put a young enough child on a desert island and if they survive they might believe that there's a god making it rain, but never that his name is Jesus and his rules and requirements are such and such.

espanol.apologeticspress.org/articles/2286

It is interesting how many people of the world are monotheistic. If you take Christians,Jews and Muslims you are well over 50% and many Hindus argue that they believe in an all powerful creator god which would bring us to nearly 70% of the worlds population believing in an all powerful creator God. Whilst you can argue that the people who believe in this God have different ideas of who He is ,it is still very interesting that so many people seem to have that innate need to believe. And there is evidence to suggest that Monotheism predated polytheism.

www.himalayanacademy.com/readlearn/basics/fourteen-questions/fourteenq_1

Bamboo, just realised I missed that you'd already answered about sexual selection and peacocks - sorry about that!

And most of those believers in monotheism had a dad. A powerful giant who was a bit scary and stern at times, but who looked after them and protected them.

okay,so this is the weird thing,a peacock gets more and more beautiful feathers over millions of years until what,he reaches perfection?Is he still evolving? Why does the creature that became a giraffe keep getting a longer and longer neck but hundreds of other animals that rely on vegetation do not have necks like a giraffe...why did they not mutate into longer necked animals to give them the same benefits. From an evolutionary point of view,every single miniscule change has to be beneficial over the standard genetic form otherwise the evolution would not occur. How do honey bees go from not having a complex pollen finding dance to having a complex dance,just how do these things evolve. Then you get pigeon breeders who breed racing pigeons but say that if you do not manage the breeding closely they will revert to normal pigeons again.Why do they not keep the advantages of being racing pigeons. It really does confuse me because so many people believe it all but I just see so many difficulties with it.
I can see why you might say that man now has many advantages over his chimp like ancestor but when that first chimp lost his ability to swing through trees, how was that advantageous at the time?Would that not have made him more likely to be eaten by a lion or similar?

Backonlybriefly...I do not get that bit about a dad sorry!

vdbfamily, the most likely reason humans imagine a god is the built in need for a father to look after them. To a young child their dad is bigger than them, stronger than them, wiser than them. He does things they don't understand, but they are supposed to obey him anyway and trust that it's in their best interests. He is supposed to punish them for being bad, but continue to love them anyway.

Sound familiar

Note that most Christians even refer to god as their father.

Oh and about Evolution. It's important to remember that evolution doesn't have a plan. It's not trying to make them fitter to survive.

Offspring vary slightly.

The offspring better suited to the current environment tend to live long enough to breed.

VDB, you mentioned chimps. From the fossil record, we and chimps are descended from a common ancestor different from what we know of both species.

The fossils are interesting - bipedalism appearing while toes well-adapted to climbing were still present, such as in Orrorin, until you get to Homo habilis, the first species for whom there is evidence of them using tools. Its brain was still only the same size as a chimpanzee's. The brain size doubled over a million years until Homo erectus, which gives a fairly clear link between the use and development of tools and brain capacity - and that the ability to use tools and out-think others gave a competitive edge that was then favoured in future generations. The cleverer and more dexterous Homo habilis did ok against the competition and those traits continued to be positive in survival terms over the generations until you get to Homo erectus who had much more sophisticated tools and fire.

The classification of early hominids isn't without controversy, particularly around whether habilis can be counted as a single species. But the timeline and the skills that gave them an edge are pretty clearly seen in the record.

Sorry - you mentioned racing pigeons as well. The distinction here is that they're bred artificially in a way that the breeder sees as advantageous to them, and they revert to 'type' in an observable time frame. Evolution is a lot slower and is about what confers survival advantage over a huge number of generations, meaning the change is incremental as the characteristics best adapted to the previling environment confer advantage.

okay,so this is the weird thing,a peacock gets more and more beautiful feathers over millions of years until what,he reaches perfection?Is he still evolving?

There is no point of absolute perfection, only 'better than the competition'. Assuming the environment stays relatively constant, there will come a point where the economic pressure of growing larger and more ornate feathers will start to push the other way (since they are costly with regard to mobility, nutrition etc) so they don't grow ad infinitum.

Re the 'need to find a paternalistic god', as others have said, this fits very well with the human need to belong to a tribe, since humans have evolved to live in social groups. Since you can't always rely on your own direct family being around to protect and nurture you as you grow, it makes sense to have an instinct to seek out and try and gain favour with other social groups who might welcome you to the fold.

There is always an economic reason for the welcome - you might bring new and favourable genes to the gene pool, or be able offer your labour to help the fold's gene pool survive, in exchange for food and shelter. No such thing as a free lunch.

Gerund - no problem!

On a FB group that I belong to we are currently discussing whether God is more male than female. Genesis states that God made man in his image male and female he created them. I do not see God as just my father. He describes having longed to gather his people under his wings as a mother hen. He is everything that a perfect mother and father could be.
It is somewhat ironic that in the west in our highly evolved state we are becoming so 'nuclear' in our family set-ups that many people seeking help from MN literally have no-one else they can turn to. What has happened to our social groups?

He is everything that a perfect mother and father could be

Well he's usually described as a He with a capital H! But you'd expect a mythic tribal leader to encompass the perfect qualities of both a mother and a father, ie an all-round protector and nurturer.

It is somewhat ironic that in the west in our highly evolved state we are becoming so 'nuclear' in our family set-ups that many people seeking help from MN literally have no-one else they can turn to. What has happened to our social groups?

Are we highly evolved? I'm not sure we're in a position to judge.

I do think we're at an interesting point in redefining community - and that redefinition becoming mainstream rather than the very small niche it was when I first starting interacting with others online nearly 18 years ago.

I'm not sure it's bad - people have a greater ability than ever before to find people who share their views or interests. People meet online and then meet up in real life and form friendships and new physical social groups. There have always been people with no one to turn to, for whatever reason - and the web gives them somewhere to turn.

My concern is when self-selectivity and filtering becomes so complete that people rarely gear a different viewpoint or are challenged on their assumptions - but that was often the case pre-Internet anyway, where people didn't have access to such a wealth of different ideas and information and viewpoints.

Part of the reason for monotheism is that it doesn't tolerate rivals - your God is a jealous God. Polytheists - such as the Romans - were happy to coexist with other polytheistic religions, the more the merrier. But the Jews and then the Christians couldn't fit into this tolerant system - with disasterous effects for the former, with the Romans essentially destroying their nation, while the Christians gained the ascendancy. Similarly, various Eastern religions seem to have coexisted and cross-pollinated but in quite large areas were displaced by Islam.

he is everything that a perfect mother and father could be

People who drown their kids aren't usually held up as glittering role models in the parenting community.

so may people seem to have that innate need to believe

This is where science comes in. A long time ago people attributed floods and droughts and hurricanes to an angry unseen force, or a particularly bountiful harvest to a pleased deity. Nowadays with science we understand the mechanisms behind an increasing amount of natural phenomenon. None of them invoke the need for an unseen/unoredictable force (Although some, without any reason, do still attribute as such to their god).

The point I'm making is that a 2000 years ago most people would have suggested a volcano was a sign from god, but the numbers thinking that mean nothing for the truth behind the belief. People naturally assumed the sun went around the earth, It would have been odd to think anything else, it was only after someone noticed that certain stars appear to double back on themselves that we were opened to the mind blowing notion that we are not the centre of the universe.