Why we accepted god

[cyborg]

One day a strange man arrives at the place where the people of Tribe 1 live.

They ask him: “Who you?”
He: “I King.”
They: “Your name King?”
He: “No; my name John.”
They: “Why call self King if name John?”
He: “I special person, agent of God.”
They: “You look different but not special; who God?”
He: “God creator of world.”
They: “Where God?; How create world?”
He: “God everywhere; God all-powerful.”
They: “How we see God?”
He: “Can’t see God.”
They: “You speak crazy.”
He: “No; I special; I show you.”

Whereupon the stranger performs various tricks like apparently making objects appear and disappear.

They: “You clever man-who-tricks.”
He: “I special; I King.”
They: “You speak funny; you clever John-who-tricks.”
He: “I King; my word law.”
They: “What law? -- special word?”
He: “Yes; my word law-you must obey.”
They: “Ah! You mean order-word!”
He: “Yes; I King; I make law.”
They: “No; you speak order-word?”
He: “Yes; I special.”
They: “What special? -- Anybody speak order-word?”
He: “You not understand.”
They: “No.”

Eventually John-the-stranger gives up trying to convince the people of Tribe 1 that he has a “special status” and that his words are different from the words of anyone else-so he leaves, to search for more gullible and impressionable victims elsewhere...
For many days and nights he trudges through the jungle before discovering the people of Tribe 2.

They: “Who you?”
He: “I King.”
They: “Your name King?”
He: “No, my name John.”
They: “Why call self King if name John?”
He: “I special person, agent of God.”
They: “You look different; what God?”
He: “God creator of world.”
They: Where God?; How create world?”
He “God everywhere; God all-powerful.”
They: “Show special?”

Whereupon the stranger performs various tricks like apparently making objects appear and disappear.

They: “You King, agent of God.”
He: “Yes, my word law.”
They: “What law?”
He: “Law special word of God through me; you must obey.”

Whereupon the people of Tribe 2 bow down and kiss the feet of John-they do not habitually test abstractions against reality, so they readily accept John-the-stranger as their “King” and his word as “law.”

Thereafter all he has to do to subjugate, control, and dominate them, is open his mouth...

- Introduction to The Tree of Lies (by Christopher S. Hyatt. Ph.D.)

[jcs]

This is retarded.

[Hakluyt]

Reminds me of the opening scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. :p

And about as insightful.

[cyborg]

Are people who follow the apocalyptic Evangelicals thinking clearly? The followers have made these salesmen (Kings of Tribe #2) multi-millionaires. This despite that parable about a camel passing through the eye of a needle.

[Gorilla]

I wonder if this is allegory.

[anti-climacus]

Are people who follow the apocalyptic Evangelicals thinking clearly? The followers have made these salesmen (Kings of Tribe #2) multi-millionaires. This despite that parable about a camel passing through the eye of a needle.

The problem is you cannot discern Christians from Dispensationalists.

[Roland]

What a crass, flippantly reductive introduction. This sort of simplistic allegory characterizes most, if not all of Anglo philosophy, poliSci and sociology. Certainly the problem of the origins of morality is relevant, but there is a whole hagiography of thinkers who have presented more believable stories....Including the Bible.

[Sinclair]

Dammit, I'm pretty much an atheist, and this is overly simplistic and pretty insulting to those who have faith, who I hardly disrespect.

[cyborg]

This is Wilson on language, illusion and control. Language is the ultimate weapon against truth. Words reduce reality into disassociated bite-size components disconnected from a larger whole. The hypothesis is supported by the fact that some people who replied felt the urge to come defend the virtues faiths and religions against another atheist.

That is, language allows us to say things like "The rose is red," and in the mild hypnosis of this Virtual Reality we then promptly forget that the rose is more and other than red- that it is fragrant, for example, and that it is temporary and will wither soon, and that it is made of electrons, which are made of quarks, and that it "is" only red to creatures with eyes like ours, etc.

Every over-simplification becomes a lie quickly (if we are not very cynical about language); ergo, language always lies, just because it over-simplifies. From "The rose is red" to "The National Debt forces us to raise taxes again" to "ARKANSAS MOM RAPED BY MIDGETS FROM MARS" to "Pornography is murder" (A. Dworkin) we proceed from one fiction to another, every time we open our mouths to speak.

http://www.buildfreedom.com/treelies.htm

[Roland]

The force of the original story resides in the theatricals performed by "He." In any case, I disagree with the notion that language is a weapon against truth. Language is a tool used to achieve a variety of ends. To say it is an enemy of truth is to say that it is possible to acquire truth through language, which is a false notion.

Saying the rose is red fulfills a purpose, and is as true as the fuller explanation of the Rose advanced by Wilson. The explanation is still locked within the confines of language and the human mind. This reminds me of the early attempts at logical atomism.

[Ahknaton]

This is Wilson on language, illusion and control. Language is the ultimate weapon against truth. Words reduce reality into disassociated bite-size components disconnected from a larger whole.Words are not "disassociated bite-size components". Their meaning is dependent on context, on their relationship to each other and to the larger units (clauses, phrases, sentences, paragraphs) of which they are a part. Therefore they mirror the "truths" that they describe.

In order to demonstrate Wilson's assertion to be true, you would first need to establish that "truth" itself is not capable of being broken up into smaller units, in other words that "large complicated concepts" cannot be decomposed into "small simple concepts, in relation to each other" without losing meaning.

The problem isn't language or words, it's liars.

[Geist]

we didnt accept god anyway, he is either an expression of our believe in some creator or a concept that explains what could never be explained.

[Vindex]

Most people have a natural born capacity to reflect divinity. Most will never realize it in this Age.

[Roland]

Words are not "disassociated bite-size components". Their meaning is dependent on context, on their relationship to each other and to the larger units (clauses, phrases, sentences, paragraphs) of which they are a part. Therefore they mirror the "truths" that they describe.

In order to demonstrate Wilson's assertion to be true, you would first need to establish that "truth" itself is not capable of being broken up into smaller units, in other words that "large complication concepts" cannot be decomposed into "small simple concepts, in relation to each other" without losing meaning.

The problem isn't language or words, it's liars.

This an excellent explanation.

[Julian Curtis Lee]

The language used in the original presentation is crude and limited.

And so is the thinking behind it.

[Mike]

For reasons I cannot quite fathom, R. A. Wilson advocates a sort of hyper-empiricism/realism, a world view in which nothing is real that is not directly perceived by one of the five physical senses, a species of anti-Platonism if you will. In this hyper-realist world view of RAW, neither intuition nor abstraction is justified or even meaningful. The OP presents RAW's own parable of that world view. Very remarkably, it turns out that there exists an actual tribe very similar to the "down to earth" fictitious tribe that RAW sketches: They are called the Pirahã and they are described here (http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7077). Fascinatingly, it turns out that their world view is actually rooted in their native language; their language, apparently, is literally incapable of expressing abstract ideas.

Here's an account of a real conversation that reveals the striking ontological parallels between RAW's hyper-realism and the Pirahã:

When I first started working with the Pirahã, I realized that I needed more linguistics if I was going to understand their language. When I began to tell them the stories from the Bible, they didn't have much of an impact. I wondered, was I telling the story incorrectly? Finally one Pirahã asked me one day, well, what color is Jesus? How tall is he? When did he tell you these things? And I said, well, you know, I've never seen him, I don't know what color he was, I don't know how tall he was. Well, if you have never seen him, why are you telling us this?

...

The Pirahã, who in some ways are the ultimate empiricists—they need evidence for every claim you make—helped me realize that I hadn't been thinking very scientifically about my own beliefs.


Needless to say, I will not discard 10,000 years of White racial history on the upward path; I will not join ranks with the Pirahã.

[Thoth]

If I may say so, while preparing a response to this and several other pending metaphysical threads after having been helped across the Breakthrough, Lupus makes a damn fine point, and wedging it in between the Falwellian Evangelicals and those who renounce Bush on religious grounds pretty much ices the cake, imho.

I constructed an allegory some while back (not here) along the same lines. Let me see what comes up.



riing
.....Yallo ... ... Who? ... ("Who's that?")

Says he's ANU. ("ANU who?")
***
....ANU Who? ... Nibiru? 12th planet? ....uh.. ("What's he saying?")

Weird stuff, BigScripter... says he's come back to take charge because its out of control down here threatening spaceport return. ("Send him to Jones.")
***
uh...Can you make it down to S. Venice LA? A hyper cyber Jesus cult called The Jones will pick you up if you driv... ....uh...
***

I forgot how it went from there, except an old junk car pulls up behind a shanty with tie-died curtains. Nobody said the G word, but things started to "change".

[Angler]

I don't doubt that since prehistoric times there have always been men who pretended to speak for gods or a God in order to deceive other men. We continue to see this today (e.g., televangelists). But I'm not sure this sort of deception is necessarily the origin of god-belief.

Pre-scientific man invented gods and other supernatural beings as a way to explain what he simply didn't understand. Most likely, when he saw lightning crash from the sky or a volcano erupting, he honestly believed that there were powerful, sentient beings behind these events. We can still see such beliefs among certain isolated, primitive tribes even in modern times. And populations of relatively low intelligence (e.g., African Negroes) continue to belief in witches, magic spells, and other such nonsense. (Inexcusably, so do some who live in first-world countries.)

Today, most supernatural explanations of phenomena have been supplanted by naturalistic explanations. The reverse -- the replacement of a scientific explanation with a supernatural one -- has never happened. But there are still a few important questions that science has not answered, so religion now restricts its explanatory claims to these. There is still a "God of the gaps," and although the gaps are closing, they will probably never be completely eliminated. There will always be some "wriggle room" for those who cannot be happy without belief in the supernatural.