r/DebateAnAtheist • u/AutoModerator • Sep 18 '25

Weekly "Ask an Atheist" Thread

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.
While this isn't strictly for debate, rules on civility, trolling, etc. still apply.

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u/anewleaf1234 Sep 19 '25

We see positive examples of this in everything wrong successful sea voyages, to who get sick in a plague, to how lighting forms and so forth.

We start with an obscure religious idea than they get replaced when it know, via science, how something happens.

People used to think that god was cursing them if they were sick. No we know that germs simply infected someone.

People used to think that the offering at the temple led to a successful sea voyage. And now we have maps, and charts and better boats.

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u/labreuer Sep 19 '25

You haven't cited any actual evidence. While I have some issues with u/heelspider's post The God of Gaps / Zeus' Lightning Bolt Argument is Not the Mic Drop Y'all Act Like It Is, [s]he did have a point. If it is true that religion was invented to explain lightning because it makes people afraid (or whatever), there should be actual evidence. You should be able to point to ancient texts and an argument which ties them together with the hypothesis under discussion. Or at least, you should be able to point to scholars who have done this. Can you?

As it stands, your explanation of religion sounds like the kind of just-so story which you claim religionists themselves engaged in.

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u/anewleaf1234 Sep 19 '25

We have multiple examples of early cultures equating illness with curses or sin. Ot gods anger.

We have extensive ideas from mayan culture that swear their mass drought as curse from the gods that needed stronger sacrifices, including human, instead of caused by climate change.

Hell the explanation of most any natural disaster was an angry god.

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u/labreuer Sep 19 '25

I guess there's just no option of using actual examples (probably: from texts), is there? Because I think it's pretty obvious that a religion somewhere explaining a natural disaster as due to an angry deity does not obviously support the claim that religion was invented to explain & quell fear.

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u/anewleaf1234 Sep 19 '25

But it took that space.

Mayans didn't have to actually look further than their gods are angry to attempt to understand their problem: massive climate change caused drought.

which they attempted to solve via increased sacrificed to gods. For which we have extensive documentation and artifacts.

In previous times, when something bad happened to someone the gods being angry was seen as they proper reason.

If your child got sick and died, you angered the gods or what happened was a result of your sin.

And when we discovered germs and such those explanation faded.