Actually many religious people base their beliefs on experience and intuition: meditators, contemplators, shamans, mystics refer to experiences of deities and other kinds of beings, have conversations with them, find advice and other kinds of knowledge useful, compare information and knowledge gained with both internal and external experiences, debate/argue/question/implore/challenge God or gods or other (not usually accepted by scientists) entities, compare experiences with other practitioners, check results of following advice and so on. The very strange and distracting concept of faith is certainly the basis of some people's beliefs systems. But religious belief is, thank God, not limited to them. Just as there are very few people who actually understand Relativity, Evolution and certainly QM and most 'rationalists' take these ideas to some degree on intuitive trust in certain authorities, so most religious people just listen to authority. (And by the way, I do believe in Einstein's theories being accurate and applicable and so also Evolution - with provisos that it include punctuated equilibria and some of the more recent theories that stress symbiosis and cooperation far more than the older ones. QM I can understand portions of, but I would have a very hard time judging the proof of or really understanding all the steps in the proofs. My point with this digression is 1) I am not a denier of Science 2) I think much belief in scientific theories is not based on experience or rational understanding but either on trust in authority and/or intuitive grasp of the general thrust of certain ideas that 'feel' right. I do feel most skeptics should acknowledge that very few people actually understand the 'right' beliefs and that their beliefs should also be called in to questions for the same reasons rationalists and athiests call into question the beliefs of religious people.
John, are you aware of the Greek mythology surrounding Persephonie(?sp). The ancients knew the days grew shorter in the winter and they also knew the winter was colder and a crummy season to grow things in. It didn't take a genius among them to figure out more sun meant more food which meant more life. That was something definitely worth worshiping. They revered it in different ways as their cultures were all different.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_deity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios Common Native American morning prayer: roughed up and Englished: Go to a water source before sunrise. As it rises, thank it for rising, and the for the day ahead. Thank the great spirit for all of his gifts. Give offerings. the evidence seems to disagree with your belief, John99
I think much has been taken for granted and exaggerated. Since there are NO actual accounts this seems plausible. Even in your example: All I am saying is that the sun is a representation of a GOD and in some cases the creator. REP RE SEN TA TION. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huitzilopochtli And i did not start this thread Avatar started it.
In some cases that does seem to be true: that the sun was a representation of the god in question, and not the god himself. However, there are other cases, such as in the prayer I provided, and in the example of Egyptian worship of the Sun-disk Amun, where worship is specifically directed at the sun itself. In the Native American prayer, the person is speaking and thanking the sun directly every day for its light and warmth. They also thank the Great Mystery/Spirit/Creator/Breath-That-Moves-Through-All-Things, but the sun doesn't represent it. They are distinct entities. Or are you suggesting that as soon as the sun is given a human name, then worship to the name is no longer sun worship? Instead just worship to a god represented by the sun?
Sun was worshipped, and so was water. There was a sun god in Egypt and a water god in Greece. Like, seriously, did you hit your head recently? I doubt people of the old days knew about bacteria, at least not at the time when the Bible was written. It is not a question of what we know today, but what we knew a few centuries ago. Today's religions are not separate from religions of the old days, today's faith grew out of the old beliefs. Judaism and Christianity did not simply spring up in a vacuum, they built on top of surrounding beliefs.
The ancients worshipped complex things, like sky, love, and so on. It's not easy to explain or portray such concepts, so a familiar form was attached to them. Egyptian Sky goddess was drawn as a woman, but it's not the woman that was worshipped; the sky was worshipped. When Christians draw god the father, they do not worship the image of the god; they worship the concept of the god, which allows them to draw god the father differently in each picture. When Christians wear a cross, they're not exhibiting worship of the cross; they're wearing the cross as a symbol. All material representations are symbols, not the actual object of worship. So you've got it backwards. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! It's not the sun that represents the god; the sun is the god and is represented by a human-looking body so that it's easier for humans to relate to it.
As far as i know at the very core all religous belief is based on a creator. The sun being worthy of worship, water, wind, the Earth, the planets. The Sun is just so obvious and was more of an attribute of the creator/s or maybe even a metaphor. To say that these ancient religions were entirely based on the Sun is not realistic.
No, no, not entirely based; but that does not take away the fact that it was worshipped among other things. The Egyptian worship of the sun disk, that is mentioned by River-wind above, is one of the first religions centered on the sun. Whether the Judeo-Christian tradition is/was centered around the sun or not is the question that Medicine Woman was addressing.
The same way I could say that christians don't worship God, but the mistery beyond. I'd be correct from a specific point of view, but just from a specific point of view that most christians won't even agree to.
Now your getting itPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Christians believe in Jesus, the whole story and completely. What is the big deal:shrug:
Right. And this is not even remotely possible. Obviously i dont think any major\mainstream religion ever was.
People are free to choose in what they believe in. If I said I believed in Cthulhu and you through a crafty analysis would come to some point of view that instead I worship Snowhite, and I then disagreed with you, then that's the end of it. I choose in what I believe in, not you, nobody is an authority in that, because belief is subjective. If there are songs in which the Sun is worshipped, then the Sun is worshipped, and that's the end of it. You're an example of unhealthy reasoning from which many students of philosophy suffer, i.e., they become the giants of a sick mind.
Avatar, So believe whatever you want. Where have i ever once stated any person should do anything different? And what could possibly be the big deal if what i have stated throughout this thread has truth to it? That was a real nice post tooPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!----he he he.
It's possible because people may have believed that the sun is the physical manifestation of God - the visible and direct method of his/her/their/its effect on life every day. If it is possible for people to believe that, then it is possible for other myths to be built upon that foundation. It doesn't make it so, just makes it possible.
Admittedly my knowledge of the Jewish faith is merely cursory, from what i have read the SUN was NOT the focus point of their belief. Maybe i am wrong. That is the subject of this thread. Maintaining links to past civizations and customs even times of worship is possible and expected.
I think the problem here is your modern viewpoint. From your point of view the Sun is just a star, a physical phenomen explained by physics and other sciences. And so you think that worshipping the Sun is the same as worshipping a table, a rock or a mountain. For an ancient man with no access to modern scientific knowledge the Sun was a mistery, a mystical and a mythical appearence of something unexplained in heavens, something that indeed could be god in person itself. By the way, you could find this interesting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVEscMOalnc p.s. I'm sorry if I terribly misunderstand someone here and look stupid for those of you on the morning side of the planet, it's been a very, very tiring day and my cup of strong green tea is still getting ready.
No, that's not the same. They certainly worship the god, but not the particular representation of him on the icon; which is why their god can be imagined as a man, or as light. To say that they worship the man would be, eh, wrong. Let's not get into what most Christians would agree to. Most of them haven't even read the Bible. You can teach them a thing or two about their faith if you want. And the ones that have read the Bible agree on very few things among each other.
