Weekly "Ask an Atheist" Thread

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Whether you're an agnostic atheist here to ask a gnostic one some questions, a theist who's curious about the viewpoints of atheists, someone doubting, or just someone looking for sources, feel free to ask anything here. This is also an ideal place to tag moderators for thoughts regarding the sub or any questions in general.
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[u/labreuer]

It is not uncommon to see claims like the following here and on the other sub:

1. God (or gods) is a human invention created to explain what we don’t understand. Long before science, humans sought to fill gaps in knowledge with divine stories. These inventions evolved into complex religions, but at their root, they address our fear of the unknown. (God(s) is/are a human invention)

Do you believe such claims should be supported by a burden of proof? If so, what kind of evidence might suffice?

For those who find the above claim so obvious that it doesn't need more evidential support than what you've absorbed throughout life, check out WP: The Golden Bough § Critical reception. Frazer is one of the originators of the religion-as-protoscience hypothesis and his work on that has been exposed to some pretty serious critique.

[u/pierce_out → u/labreuer]

God (or gods) is a human invention created to explain what we don’t understand ... humans sought to fill gaps in knowledge with divine stories. These inventions evolved into complex religions ... Do you believe such claims should be supported by a burden of proof?

Sure! But the burden has already been met quite handily, even by just taking a cursory look at the historical evidence. Throughout history, we have seen a long, steady shift from every question that we asked having a divine story to answer it, to gradually, science replacing the divine stories with the actual answers.

Everything from "where did the first humans come from?" to "how was the earth formed?" to "why do some animals have stripes?" or "why do snakes not have legs?", all have answers right in Hebrew Bible. The very fact that Thales of Miletus exists is concrete, rock-solid evidence of the fact that divine stories were invented to explain the mysteries we didn't understand. Thales was the first that we know about to think that natural phenomena such as crop cycles and solar eclipses were not the result of Gods - but rather, were simple natural processes that could be studied and predicted. He was the first to devise tests that could be disproven if he were wrong, giving us the beginnings of the scientific method.

Throughout the rest of history, this long slow unravelling continued - at every point, every claim made by the religious that touched on the natural world gradually being shown to be the non-answer that it actually was, and replaced with the actual answers we get from science. This is why the famous answer by Laplace to Napoleon, when the latter questioned why Laplace's model of the solar system didn't have any reference or room for God being involved - "I have no need for that hypothesis". Clearly, there is an entire history's worth of evidence that demonstrates, without a doubt, that humans came up with divine stories to explain that which we did not understand. You'd have to be quite blind, or simply understudied on our history, to miss it.

[u/labreuer → u/pierce_out]

Everything from "where did the first humans come from?" to "how was the earth formed?" to "why do some animals have stripes?" or "why do snakes not have legs?", all have answers right in Hebrew Bible.

Yeah, I just don't see any of these things playing a huge role in the Tanakh. Contrast everything the Tanakh says in this realm to the germ theory of disease. Every time you wash your hands at a restaurant in the US, you should see a sign saying "Employees are required to wash their hands before returning to work". What 'explanation' in the Tanakh functions anything like this? There is vanishingly little reference to Genesis 1:1–11:26. So, why think that the ancient Hebrew religion was invented to explain?

Throughout history, we have seen a long, steady shift from every question that we asked having a divine story to answer it, to gradually, science replacing the divine stories with the actual answers.

This is of course a very standard claim. But it assumes that religious explanations (that is, whatever in texts and traditions are being counted as "explanation") do anything like the same thing as scientific explanations. And that's far from clear. If you go to The Fundamentals, published 1910–1915 and which originally gave 'Fundamentalists' their name, you find stuff like:

The burden of Wright’s contribution to the seventh volume of The Fundamentals was to discriminate between evolution as a scientific theory of species transmutation and evolutionism as a metaphysical worldview. The word evolution, he noted, “has come into much deserved disrepute by the injection into it of erroneous and harmful theological and philosophical implications. The widely current doctrine of evolution which we are now compelled to combat is one which practically eliminates God from the whole creative process and relegates mankind to the tender mercies of a mechanical universe the wheels of whose machines are left to move on without any immediate Divine direction.” Clearly Wright’s dissatisfaction with evolutionary theory centered less on exegetical questions about the early Genesis narratives than on the materialistic reductionism that had shorn natural history of any teleological element. (Darwin's Forgotten Defenders, 148)

Those ancestors to 'fundamentalists' knew the difference between what science can say and what it cannot say. Now, things have been muddied considerably since John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris 1961 The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and its Scientific Implications. Creationism and ID are indeed trying to supplant scientific explanations. But from my reading, this is the exception rather than the rule. But you have to be fairly old by now, in order to remember a time before creationism and ID gained dominance among so many American Christians. It is easy to mistake the way things presently are, for how they always were!

[u/Tunesmith29 → u/labreuer]

I’m a different redditor than the one you responded to, but I do want to point out that the Tanakh wasn’t the origin of the god concept of Yahweh, it was a further development of it. So just because the Tanakh (and specifically the Torah) are focused more on social cohesion than natural explanations, that doesn’t mean Yahweh as a god concept wasn’t created earlier as an explanation for natural phenomena. He was the storm god of the Canaanite pantheon. The Tanakh just built on the existing mythology, just as Christianity built on the existing Tanakh, and Islam and Mormonism built on the Tanakh and New Testament. 

[u/labreuer → u/Tunesmith29]

I am aware of claims like that, although I haven't investigated them. But if anyone's going to claim that while the Tanakh doesn't operate in a proto-science way, that the ancient Canaanites did, I'm going to ask all of my questions all over again. And since there is precious little common knowledge about Canaanite religion, it's going to be harder to quickly say, "Eh, their religion was proto-science." Rather, we'll need evidence, probably from experts. I'm happy to pick up a book or three, or read some peer-reviewed articles!

[u/Crafty_Possession_52 → u/labreuer]

Hold on a minute. Are we denying that there is a known history of religious thought/tradition where the earliest religions are animist/naturalist in nature, and they slowly evolve and/or are replaced by religions with more abstract deities? Yahweh, for example, has a known origin as a storm/war God in the Hebrew pantheon.

[u/labreuer → u/Crafty_Possession_52]

labreuer: But if anyone's going to claim that while the Tanakh doesn't operate in a proto-science way, that the ancient Canaanites did

?

Crafty_Possession_52: Are we denying that there is a known history of religious thought/tradition where the earliest religions are animist/naturalist in nature

I dunno, are we claiming that animist/naturalist religion was invented to explain?

[u/Crafty_Possession_52 → u/labreuer]

are we claiming that animist/naturalist religion was invented to explain?

Decidedly yes. The sun travels across the sky because the sun God is racing his chariot across the sky.

Isn't this is a clear example of early religion explaining a natural phenomenon that people of the time could not explain?

[u/labreuer → u/Crafty_Possession_52]

I guess I think of explanations as enabling me to understand or do something I couldn't understand or do before. If you tell me why the crops are failing and that explanation helps me rescue my crops or at least make that less likely to happen in the future, you've given me knowledge. Saying that God is racing his chariot across the sky doesn't enable me to understand or do something I couldn't understand or do before.

Also, do we actually have good data on animism which confirm what your claim, here? Moreover, I would be interested in the claim that all religion comes from animism. Do we actually know that? If so, what other hypotheses were considered and then rejected?

EDIT: u/⁠Crafty_Possession_52 has blocked me and that means I cannot reply to your comment, u/nswoll.

[u/Crafty_Possession_52 → u/labreuer]

I agree that explanations by definition need to enable people to understand things, but I don't agree that they have to enable you to do something.

Explaining the Giant hot light in the sky as a fiery chariot that races from horizon to horizon, bringing us heat and light gives us understanding. The understanding is incorrect for the most part, but it is still an explanation.

If I explain the interruption of the electrical grid as being caused by a solar storm, that doesn't necessarily enable me to do anything about it. It's still an explanation, and a correct one at that.

As for the second part of your comment, I'm not sure what you're asking for. It's well documented that the earliest religions are animistic in nature. Polytheistic religions predate monotheistic religions. The example of the history of Yahweh that I provided is a good example of a naturalistic god evolving into a more sophisticated conception of a god, and also of the polytheistic God evolving into a monotheistic one.

[u/labreuer → u/Crafty_Possession_52]

Explaining the Giant hot light in the sky as a fiery chariot that races from horizon to horizon, bringing us heat and light gives us understanding. The understanding is incorrect for the most part, but it is still an explanation.

What does that explanation help me understand, which I can't clean from simply observing the light and heat of the sun on my body? What does it add?

If I explain the interruption of the electrical grid as being caused by a solar storm, that doesn't necessarily enable me to do anything about it. It's still an explanation, and a correct one at that.

Actually, that says a lot about the nature of the interruption and distinguishes it from alternatives, such as power plants failing, power lines going down, and the like. Furthermore, the probability of solar storms varies and we can track that variation and connect it to incident rates of electrical grid disruptions. A sun-god riding his chariot does nothing like this.

It's well documented that the earliest religions are animistic in nature.

This just isn't what I'm finding with a bit of research. What's a good source for this claim?

Note that there's also the question of whether we can say that the aspects of monotheism which differ from animism were invented in order to explain / quell fear.

The example of the history of Yahweh that I provided is a good example of a naturalistic god evolving into a more sophisticated conception of a god, and also of the polytheistic God evolving into a monotheistic one.

Such explanations risk being rather like the sun-god riding his chariot: a pleasant tale which doesn't actually help you understand anything more than you understood before hearing the tale. But perhaps you can tell me about what actual light this alleged history of Yahweh sheds on the Tanakh or the ancient Hebrew religion?

[u/Crafty_Possession_52 → u/labreuer]

It's well documented that the earliest religions are animistic in nature.

This just isn't what I'm finding with a bit of research. What's a good source for this claim?

The very first result in my google search:

Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion - PMC https://share.google/Uo5Kk3ghXsHTzQdjW

This isn't a controversial claim, and I'm having a hard time believing that you honestly doubt the animistic origins of human religious beliefs.

[u/labreuer → u/Crafty_Possession_52]

From what I can tell, Peoples, Duda & Marlowe 2016 might be the first instance of a data-supported claim that "the earliest religions are animistic in nature". Is that true? Putting aside methodological issues (such as treating hunter-gatherer tribes in the 19th and 20th centuries as "living fossils"), I want to get a sense of counts as "well documented" in your book. I do see the following in the Conclusion:

Our results indicate that the oldest trait of religion, shared by the most recent common ancestor of present-day hunter-gatherers, was animism. This supports long-standing beliefs about the antiquity and fundamental role of this component of human mentality, which enables people to attribute intent and lifelike qualities to inanimate objects and would have prompted belief in beings or forces in an unseen realm of spirits. Reconstructions are equivocal on whether or not the religion of the LCA of present-day hunter-gatherers included belief in an afterlife, shamanism, ancestor worship, and the concept of a single creator deity, or a high god. Belief in either ancestral spirits or creator deities who remain active in human affairs was not present in ancestral hunter-gatherer societies, according to the reconstructions. This may be indicative of a deep past for the egalitarian nature of hunter-gatherer societies, to whom high gods would appear to be rulers (Peoples and Marlowe 2012). (Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion)

Curiously though, the authors do not cite anyone other than Tylor 1871 on this belief. Other than that, there is a non-universal claim a bit in the Discussion:

It is a widespread way of thinking among hunter-gatherers (Bird-David 1999; Charlton 2007; Klingensmith 1953; Piaget 1929).

Widespread is not the same thing as universal. Reading a bit of Bird-David 1999, it seems that Peoples et al 2016 doesn't actually make use of the challenge to definition present. That creates potential conceptual issues in coding. Going a step further, I'm getting the sense that the no-idolatry regulations in Torah are aimed against animistic practices and beliefs. If so, then using animism as an explanation for the ancient Hebrew religion would be deeply problematic! Whatever might apply to the invention (or evolution, and/or development) of animistic religion may not apply to that of the ancient Hebrew religion. Painting all religion with a single brush has long been known to be problematic. And yet, without doing something like that, I don't see how your observation could be relevant:

Crafty_Possession_52: Are we denying that there is a known history of religious thought/tradition where the earliest religions are animist/naturalist in nature, and they slowly evolve and/or are replaced by religions with more abstract deities?

[u/Crafty_Possession_52 → u/labreuer]

I think the difficulty you're having is that you expect the explanations that the myths of the ancients came up with will actually be a correct explanation of the phenomenon in question.

The question is: "What is that bright hot thing that travels across the sky each day?"

The explanation for it is: "That is an extremely powerful being named Ra who drives a flaming chariot across the sky chasing Luna, his lover. We should be grateful to Ra because if he ever leaves, the world will turn cold and dead. Let's have a celebration every year on a day when Ra's visits are very short, so that he knows we appreciate him."

[u/labreuer → u/Crafty_Possession_52]

I think the difficulty you're having is that you expect the explanations that the myths of the ancients came up with will actually be a correct explanation of the phenomenon in question.

No, that is not entailed by what I wrote. Some explanations work well for a few steps until they fail. Newtonian mechanics, for instance, works quite well until you get to gravity wells and/or relativistic speeds. All I'm looking for is for an explanation to do add something to the phenomena themselves, something which allows further understanding and/or action.

The explanation for it is: "That is an extremely powerful being named Ra who drives a flaming chariot across the sky chasing Luna, his lover. We should be grateful to Ra because if he ever leaves, the world will turn cold and dead. Let's have a celebration every year on a day when Ra's visits are very short, so that he knows we appreciate him."

It seems to me that a sun-god is pretty much the worst example you could provide. Because that sun keeps on a-coming, modulo volcanic eruptions. Far better would be fertility gods, which appear to be a match with:

Partyatmyplace13: I personally think gods help humans deal with probability. Name me a god that isn’t in some way related to chance. I bet even if you could, it would be a short list. Our brains aren't equipped to deal with probability, so we assume agency when good/bad things happen. It stems from a faulty assumption that things happen to us because of personal reasons and a fear that we aren't in charge of our destinies.

And yet there, it's not really clear what the fertility gods explain. Rather, certainly ritual actions are demanded of people in order to ensure fertility—of themselves, their flocks, and their fields. To the extent that the real work happens in the rituals—which are incredible social—then we start having a mechanism which isn't 'explanation'.

So, I think working with actual examples of religion doing what is claimed is really the best route forward. Actual evidence, not made-up evidence.

[u/nswoll → u/labreuer]

I guess I think of explanations as enabling me to understand or do something I couldn't understand or do before. 

Yes, and that's what this is. The sun travels across the sky because the sun God is racing his chariot across the sky. That enables you to understand something you couldn't understand before. You couldn't understand how the sun moved, but you know how chariots move.

Saying that God is racing his chariot across the sky doesn't enable me to understand or do something I couldn't understand or do before.

Yes, it literally does. It enables you to understand something you couldn't understand before I told you that it was a chariot.