I recently read The World Until Yesterday which compares the way of life between tribal cultures and western cultures. The section about religion has a clumsy preamble that was obviously trying to cushion the blow for religious people reading the book who thought their religion was any different to tribal religions.
The author then goes on to treat them all the same.
It was quite funny to read. I was imagining how it must feel to see your religion laid out side by side with a dozen other equally stupid myths and think “Yep this is the right one. I was super lucky to be born to parents who picked the correct religion!”
I think there is some missing context here that makes this an unfair comparison. In general, tribal cultures didn’t treat their creation myths as literal fact. It was more of a poetic way to explain to the children of the tribe where their people had come from and give the tribe a sense of identity. Since they didn’t have Science to actually explain how they got there, this seems as reasonable as anything honestly.
If someone from a different nation were to come visit and relate their account of creation, they wouldn’t argue with the person and insist that their creation myth was the ‘correct’ one and that the visitor was wrong. They were a different people so it makes sense they were ‘created’ in a different way. Since neither was attempting to explain things in a literal way, the two different stories weren’t incompatible with each other.
It’s likely that the creation myths of the ancient Hebrew people were looked at in a similar way at first, they were a tribal people after all. At some point (likely to do with the Agricultural Revolution, but that’s a whole different topic) they started conquering and subjugating the neighboring tribes and insisting those people adopt their spiritual practice, that’s when the whole deal of insisting it was the literal truth came about.
In the bible Yahweh and the Hebrews spend a lot of time worrying about what ‘gods’ the other tribes worshiped. Much more so than would be rational if you considered Yahweh to be the one, true, only and actual God. The reason that so much time was spent on it was because Yahweh was just a story, just like all the other Gods and you had to go out of your way to get people to follow along with the narrative that that one story was ‘true’, otherwise who would believe it?
So while it’s easy for us to look back on the beliefs of tribal cultures and dismiss them as stupid, we are misunderstanding the purpose and intent of these stories. It’s only ‘stupid’ if you take it literally. In context it was a lot less dumb and probably somewhat necessary to a harmonious life.
We have the benefit of pretty much knowing exactly how humans and the world got here, so we were never in a situation of having one of our children come up to us and ask how we got here and only being able to answer with “I have no idea.” That would have been the situation that tribal societies would have been in if you were expecting them to give a scientific answer to the question. So it’s really not the case that their creation myths were “Stupid”, but more it was the best system they could possibly have had at the time.
I see what you’re getting at, and I personally think that’s probably how a lot of the myths/religions start, but I don’t think you can outright say that tribes only thought of them as children’s stories.
In the book I was referencing, the author noted the “cost” of a religion, in that the tribes were usually required to spend a significant amount of their time worshiping, and/or discarded resources in the name of sacrifice. One of the tribes studied spent 1 out of every 3 days worshiping. A very large commitment for people who have a very real risk of starvation if their hunts go badly. He then goes on to argue that there must be an evolutionary benefit to religion or an atheist tribe would have out-competed all of these tribes (but that’s another tangent). I bring this up because it implies that they do actually believe their “stories”, otherwise why risk starvation?
That’s a good point, I worded it poorly. I didn’t mean to imply that the adults didn’t ‘believe’ it and just told that to their children. I think that is was more the case that they believed in the spiritual truths behind the stories and not necessarily that they were literal, although I can’t say for certain that was the case in all instances. Maybe some of them did believe it literally or didn’t really make a distinction between spiritually true and literally true. It’s not like they had the scientific knowledge to know what the alternative was.
I think it’s natural to try and explain the world around you, and if you don’t have the tools to know what is really going on- then yeah you will probably make some crazy guesses. And then if you tell it to your children as if it were fact, then they might not question it seeing as how you are a trusted elder.
I think my point though was that it really isn’t what I would call ‘stupid’ to do something like create a silly myth and pass it on. For me where it becomes stupid is when you insist it’s the literal truth and that other people believe it, or when you refuse to update your worldview in the case where better evidence comes along because you are a zealot about your mythology.
For me, a historical fiction that put norse and chriatianity on similar footing was the push that got me from “ugh this religious stuff is annoying” to “oh, it’s probably bullshit, too”. In hindsight, it’s pretty telling that christianity puts the most emphasis on having faith no matter what evidence or lack thereof is presented, to the point where that alone determines whether one is punished, ignored, or rewarded in a way that is completely unverifiable to anyone living.
I’ve been saying for years this is literal training for anti-intellectualism and ultimately fascism and hate. As soon as you can convince yourself to believe something just because someone said to without any evidence or even contrary evidence, you’re primed to start doing that in other areas of your life. Grifters and fascists will absolutely take advantage of people like that without a second thought, and they scream their propaganda all over Fox news. Religion is more than just some stupid bullshit people believe, it’s a threat to democracy and freedom.
I recently read The World Until Yesterday which compares the way of life between tribal cultures and western cultures. The section about religion has a clumsy preamble that was obviously trying to cushion the blow for religious people reading the book who thought their religion was any different to tribal religions.
The author then goes on to treat them all the same.
It was quite funny to read. I was imagining how it must feel to see your religion laid out side by side with a dozen other equally stupid myths and think “Yep this is the right one. I was super lucky to be born to parents who picked the correct religion!”
I think there is some missing context here that makes this an unfair comparison. In general, tribal cultures didn’t treat their creation myths as literal fact. It was more of a poetic way to explain to the children of the tribe where their people had come from and give the tribe a sense of identity. Since they didn’t have Science to actually explain how they got there, this seems as reasonable as anything honestly.
If someone from a different nation were to come visit and relate their account of creation, they wouldn’t argue with the person and insist that their creation myth was the ‘correct’ one and that the visitor was wrong. They were a different people so it makes sense they were ‘created’ in a different way. Since neither was attempting to explain things in a literal way, the two different stories weren’t incompatible with each other.
It’s likely that the creation myths of the ancient Hebrew people were looked at in a similar way at first, they were a tribal people after all. At some point (likely to do with the Agricultural Revolution, but that’s a whole different topic) they started conquering and subjugating the neighboring tribes and insisting those people adopt their spiritual practice, that’s when the whole deal of insisting it was the literal truth came about.
In the bible Yahweh and the Hebrews spend a lot of time worrying about what ‘gods’ the other tribes worshiped. Much more so than would be rational if you considered Yahweh to be the one, true, only and actual God. The reason that so much time was spent on it was because Yahweh was just a story, just like all the other Gods and you had to go out of your way to get people to follow along with the narrative that that one story was ‘true’, otherwise who would believe it?
So while it’s easy for us to look back on the beliefs of tribal cultures and dismiss them as stupid, we are misunderstanding the purpose and intent of these stories. It’s only ‘stupid’ if you take it literally. In context it was a lot less dumb and probably somewhat necessary to a harmonious life.
We have the benefit of pretty much knowing exactly how humans and the world got here, so we were never in a situation of having one of our children come up to us and ask how we got here and only being able to answer with “I have no idea.” That would have been the situation that tribal societies would have been in if you were expecting them to give a scientific answer to the question. So it’s really not the case that their creation myths were “Stupid”, but more it was the best system they could possibly have had at the time.
I see what you’re getting at, and I personally think that’s probably how a lot of the myths/religions start, but I don’t think you can outright say that tribes only thought of them as children’s stories.
In the book I was referencing, the author noted the “cost” of a religion, in that the tribes were usually required to spend a significant amount of their time worshiping, and/or discarded resources in the name of sacrifice. One of the tribes studied spent 1 out of every 3 days worshiping. A very large commitment for people who have a very real risk of starvation if their hunts go badly. He then goes on to argue that there must be an evolutionary benefit to religion or an atheist tribe would have out-competed all of these tribes (but that’s another tangent). I bring this up because it implies that they do actually believe their “stories”, otherwise why risk starvation?
That’s a good point, I worded it poorly. I didn’t mean to imply that the adults didn’t ‘believe’ it and just told that to their children. I think that is was more the case that they believed in the spiritual truths behind the stories and not necessarily that they were literal, although I can’t say for certain that was the case in all instances. Maybe some of them did believe it literally or didn’t really make a distinction between spiritually true and literally true. It’s not like they had the scientific knowledge to know what the alternative was.
I think it’s natural to try and explain the world around you, and if you don’t have the tools to know what is really going on- then yeah you will probably make some crazy guesses. And then if you tell it to your children as if it were fact, then they might not question it seeing as how you are a trusted elder.
I think my point though was that it really isn’t what I would call ‘stupid’ to do something like create a silly myth and pass it on. For me where it becomes stupid is when you insist it’s the literal truth and that other people believe it, or when you refuse to update your worldview in the case where better evidence comes along because you are a zealot about your mythology.
Yeah you’re right, I didn’t mean to imply that they’re stupid. It’s stupid to us, but that’s only because we’re standing on the shoulders of giants.
For me, a historical fiction that put norse and chriatianity on similar footing was the push that got me from “ugh this religious stuff is annoying” to “oh, it’s probably bullshit, too”. In hindsight, it’s pretty telling that christianity puts the most emphasis on having faith no matter what evidence or lack thereof is presented, to the point where that alone determines whether one is punished, ignored, or rewarded in a way that is completely unverifiable to anyone living.
I’ve been saying for years this is literal training for anti-intellectualism and ultimately fascism and hate. As soon as you can convince yourself to believe something just because someone said to without any evidence or even contrary evidence, you’re primed to start doing that in other areas of your life. Grifters and fascists will absolutely take advantage of people like that without a second thought, and they scream their propaganda all over Fox news. Religion is more than just some stupid bullshit people believe, it’s a threat to democracy and freedom.
Absolutely.
Blind faith is an incredibly dangerous habit.
It’s crazy that we accept it as a normal human variation.