Faith is a Fool’s Errand

by | Sep 25, 2018 | Blog

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Faith is a Fool’s Errand

A neuroscientist explains how religious fundamentalism hijacks the brain

Faith is in favor with low truth-hobbyists or occasional truth-vacationers, who “feel” this wishful-thinking of faith without evidence or justification is then seen to them as “true” presumably because they wish to have faith in it. As in, if it feels “true-ish” to their wishes then they seem to say, hey, even if it’s a claim with a ridiculous magic assertion as long as they wish it true it is accepted as such because they want to believe, then they simply do so on faith (strong belief without evidence). They do so even when or if there is no proof at all. In this state of being so faith drunk, even the absurd to such a faith-affected generally see the truth in a wished belief if it involves holding a high amount of faith even over reason see “the quality of faith” as a possible pseudo-fact, which they will, of course, wish to call a fact, even though it is no such thing. And, upon the quicksand of the mind called FAITH, they seem to blindly believe that faith itself is some sort of magic producing evidence simply do to the faith involved in the belief as well as see this folly of faith’s “will-to-believe” as if it is some kind of actual evidence, not ever seeming to see a need to question, is really true.

Faith: “a primitive form of irrational pseudo-knowledge.”

Humans have assumed for thousands of years that they have a spirit or soul (animism) that will survive the body after death. These beliefs gave rise to countless religions that developed in different directions in understanding religion evolution. Starting in Pre-Animism (at least 300,000 years ago), Animism (Africa: 100,000 years ago), Totemism (Europe: 50,000 years ago), Shamanism (Siberia: 30,000 years ago), Paganism (Turkey: 12,000 years ago), Progressed organized religion (like in Egypt: 5,000 years ago), and CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS (after 4,000 years ago). All this led eventually to around 3,000-years-old Judaism, which branched off to both Christianity around 2,000 years ago and Islam around 1,500, and many minor religions. All religions are based on faith, so not surprisingly they evolve in different directions and originate countless branches and subdivisions. It should be noted that these contradict not only each other but also scientific knowledge. Faith is a primitive form of irrational knowledge in which the truth or falsity of the beliefs cannot be tested but is still fully believed with a high confidence. But faith is an essential component of all religions. So, if you are a religious believer, may I remind you that faith in the acquisition of knowledge is not a valid method worth believing in. Because, what proof is “faith”, of anything religion claims by faith, as many people have different faith even in the same religion?

Faith is not ever needed.

There is no requirement to use faith we can use conjecture or inference faith is not needed. Conjecture involves forming an opinion or supposition about (something) on the basis of incomplete information. Inference involves forming a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning. Religious beliefs often don’t stay in the “belief” category, as if it is something chosen temporarily if needed or changeable if required. No, what is most common is that religious beliefs are completely infused to the person’s identity, thus it’s not what they believe it is more a factor of who they are. What this means is if they are later challenged and given reason to let the belief go this is largely disrupted because they and the belief are mixed with the person’s identity making its loss, not just a possible belief loss but a perceived personal identity loss. Religions continuing in our modern world, full of science and facts, should be seen as little more than a set of irrational conspiracy theories of reality. Nothing more than a confused reality made up of unscientific echoes from man’s ancient past. Rational thinkers must ask themselves, why continue to believe in religions’ stories? Religion myths which are nothing more than childlike stories and obsolete tales once used to explain how the world works, acting like magic was needed when it was always only nature. These childlike religious stories should not even be taken seriously, but sadly too often they are. Often without realizing it, we accumulate beliefs that we allow to negatively influence our lives. In order to bring about awareness, we need to be willing to alter skewed beliefs. Rational thinkers must examine the facts instead of blindly following beliefs or faith.

“Understanding Religion Evolution: Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, Paganism & Progressed organized religion”

Understanding Religion Evolution:

 “Religion is an Evolved Product”

What we don’t understand we can come to fear. That which we fear we often learn to hate. Things we hate we usually seek to destroy. It is thus upon us to try and understand the unknown or unfamiliar not letting fear drive us into the unreasonable arms of hate and harm.

I am an Out Atheist, Antitheist, and Antireligionist as a Valuized Ethical Duty.

How can we silently watch as yet another generation is indoctrinated with religious faith, fear, and foolishness? Religion and it’s god myths are like a spiritually transmitted disease of the mind. This infection even once cured holds mental disruption which can linger on for a lifetime. What proof is “faith,” of anything religion claims by faith, as many people have different faith even in the same religion? When you start thinking your “out, atheism, antitheism or antireligionism is not vitally needed just remember all the millions of children being indoctrinated and need our help badly. Ones who desperately need our help with the truth. Three things are common in all religions: “pseudo-science,” “pseudo-history,” and “pseudo-morality.” And my biggest thing of all is the widespread forced indoctrination of children, violating their free choice of what to not believe or believe, I hate forced hereditary religion.

To me, there simply is and rightly must be an intellectual “ethical-belief-responsibility” (burden of proof) to justify the believed truth that is claimed to others is actually demonstrably as being true with valid and reliable reason and/or evidence when it is stated as such. Yes, intellectually one should provide (justificationism) for their assertions that map the sort of governing good habits of belief-formation, belief-maintenance, and belief-relinquishment.

Delusional beliefs and Shared Psychotic Disorder
 
I wonder to what extent delusional religious believers are expressing a Shared Psychotic Disorder also known as “Folie à Deux.” This seldom diagnosed disorder is not rare to the contrary it is an all-too-commonly observed type of psychosis occurs when an otherwise healthy person develops delusions after associating with one or more independently psychotic delusional people. In other words, this diagnosis applies to people who have been isolated and “brainwashed” by people or groups with delusional and dogmatic agendas. The cure for this condition is social; patients need to be separated from their delusional associate(s), and shown the inconsistency and irrationality of their delusional beliefs. This task becomes more complicated when patients’ delusions involve religious themes because religious convictions cannot be argued in rational, logical terms;
they are instead articles of faith. Religious delusions? Professor H.G. Koenig, in his review of the literature on the subject, wrote in his findings, “About one-third of psychoses have religious delusions, but not all religious experiences are psychotic.”
Seeing the face of Jesus in a slice of toast?
 
Professor Kang Lee, at the University of Toronto, awarded the second most sought-after honor in science: an Ig Nobel Prize.showed that seeing the face of Our Lord in toast, clouds or other objects was a straightforward case of “face pareidolia” — the tendency to see non-existent faces. The scientist said that people thought the phenomenon was funny “because they think only those religious nuts would see something like that”. “Unbeknownst to them, as revealed by our study, we can easily induce people to see faces in places where they do not exist,” he said. “The only difference is that they may not see Jesus or Mary but someone else. It is really a universal and normal phenomenon.” – Devlin, H. (2014, Sep 19). Toast and bananas win awards on the wackier side of science. The Times Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1563009252?accountid=35183
Religious Delusions, Harm, and Fanaticism
 
In a study on religious delusions, it was shown that with the oppressive increase of one’s cultures (likely increase in religious fanaticism) there will possibly be a negative impact as well on mental health expression. Psychologists compared the hallucinations of patients at a psychiatric hospital with those of patients at the same hospital 60 years earlier. In the earlier, patients focused on religious delusions often came from a force they attributed to God, that said, “Live right” or “Lean on the Lord.” While the 60 years later, patients focused on religious delusions had become less common and the hallucinations had turned more harmful. Now people heard “Kill yourself” or “Kill your mother.” – Cahalan, S. (2014, Aug 31). IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD how the country and culture you live in shapes how people go crazy. New York Post Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1558547655?accountid=35183

Faith Drunk thinking:

Divine fallacy, Argument from Incredulity, and Argument from ignorance

“Damien, perhaps it isn’t as clear-cut as we think. The universe being a physical entity stretching into infinity is very difficult to wrap our minds around, but stretching into infinity is not as difficult in our imagination. What if reality is more perception than physical? Isn’t imagination more in tune with infinity than something physical? Could it be collective consciousness that created the universe and everything in it? I agree a glorified version of man is not the creator of the universe, especially one that suffers the same childishly immature emotions that plague mankind such as jealousy and vengeance.” – Challenger

My response, (Isn’t imagination more in tune with infinity) a logical fallacy as it is irrelevant to the accuracy of reality. To the question (What if reality is more perception than physical?) No, as there is no universal state of all human perception equally, perception is fluid reality is not. So no reality is not simply perception. And, to the question (Could it be collective consciousness that created the universe) Again, no there is reality consistent outside human perceptions including collective, “whatever that means” or otherwise and if reality was due only to perceptions collective, whatever it would be fluid and as it is not that can’t remove them as invalid.

Divine fallacy

The divine fallacy is an informal fallacy that often happens when people say something must be the result of superior, divine, alien or supernatural cause because it is unimaginable for it not to be so.[1] A similar fallacy, known as an argument from incredulity, appeal to common sense, or personal incredulity,[2] asserts that because something is so incredible or difficult to imagine, it is wrong. Arguments from incredulity are called non sequiturs.[3] Arguments from incredulity can take the form:
  1. I cannot imagine how P could be true; therefore P must be false.
  2. I cannot imagine how P could be false; therefore P must be true.[4]

Arguments from incredulity happen when people make their inability to comprehend or make sense of a concept in their argument.[5]

References

  1. Sen, Madhucchanda (2011). An Introduction to Critical Thinking. Pearson Education India. Retrieved 2016-11-26.
  2.  Carroll, Robert T.“divine fallacy (argument from incredulity)”. The Skeptic’s Dictionary. Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  3. Divine fallacy – European Society for General Semantics
  4. Personal incredulity – yourlogicalfallacyis.com
  5. “Toolkit for Thinking”. ref
Argument from incredulity

The argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone decides that something did not happen, because they cannot personally understand how it could happen. The fallacy is an argument from ignorance and an informal fallacy.

The fallacy lies in the unstated premise. If a state of affairs is impossible to imagine, it doesn’t follow that it is false; it may only mean that imagination is limited. Moreover, if no one has yet managed to imagine how a state of affairs is possible, it doesn’t follow that no one will ever be able to. If there is positive evidence for the conclusion, then, of course, we have other reasons for accepting it, but a lack of proof it is true is not proof it is false. (Where ‘proof’ means the cogency of evidence that compels acceptance of a truth, or the process of establishing the validity of a statement by derivation from other statements in accordance with principles of reasoning.) Forbidding this type of reasoning is not the same as a reasonable “presumption” (such as the presumption of ‘No guilt’ in court) like this: Any proposition like “There is X” is reasonably presumed false (not argued false, just presumed false, taken for granted) unless proven true. This is a basic principle of logic since the burden of proof can never be shifted to the negation in any case. ref

Example: The Big Bang Theory doesn’t make any sense to me, therefore it could not have happened.

Personal incredulity: Another form, the argument from personal incredulity, takes the form “I can’t believe P, therefore not-P.” Merely because one cannot believe that, for example, homeopathy is no more than a placebo does not magically make such treatment effective. Clinical trials are deliberately designed in such a way that an individual personal experience is not important compared to data in aggregate. Human beings have extremely advanced pattern recognition skills, to the extent that they are objectively poor judges of probability. ref

  • “This is unexplainable” (meaning, of course, “I can’t explain this”). This is the argument from personal incredulity, and it contains the (usually unwritten) assumption that the speaker is a superhuman genius who should be able to understand everything -unless they are missing an assumption. So the superhuman genius concludes that some assumption (‘God did it’, ‘aliens did it’, ‘psi was involved’ or whichever) is true, because it makes things easier to understand.
  • For example: “There is no way I can explain how the human mind really works using conventional physics. (Unwritten assumption: If the brain really was governed by simple physics, I should be able to understand it). Therefore, it must be tapping into the computational power of the quantum universe.” ref

General incredulity: Sometimes argument from incredulity is applied to epistemological statements, taking the form “One can’t imagine how one could know whether P or not-P, therefore it is unknowable whether P or not-P.” This is employed by some (though not all) strong agnostics who say it is unknowable whether gods exist. The argument, in this case, is, “No one has thought of a way to determine whether there are gods, so there is no way.” The implied major premise, “If there were such a way, someone would have thought of it,” is disputable. ref

An argument from ignorance (Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), or appeal to ignorance (‘ignorance’ stands for “lack of evidence to the contrary“), is a fallacy in informal logic. It says something is true because it has not yet been proved false. Or, that something is false if it has not yet been proved true. This is also called a negative proof fallacy. This also includes the (false) assumption there are only two options (true or false). There may be as many as four choices: 1. true, 2. false, 3. unknown, or 4. unknowable.[1] Appeals to ignorance are often used to suggest the other side needs to do the proving. Rules of logic place the burden (responsibility) of proving something on the person making the claim.[2][3] A logical fallacy is simply a bad argument.[4] Using bad logic does not necessarily mean the argument is false (or true). It is basically a hasty conclusion, one that is arrived at incorrectly.[5] But it still may be convincing to some audiences.[5] This is why it is used in politics and advertising. ref

The God Fallacy

To me, the God Fallacy is that there is no epistemically warranted or justifiably reliable evidence for god(s) existence; most ideas offered are stretches of unreason promoting seemingly implausible knowledge or reality claims. Moreover, beyond this is the self-evident realization that there is no reliable and /or verifiable evidence that could be used to define what god term actually is or could be assured to involve. Because it is never good to just randomly conceptualize or fabricate from bias trying to force connections into existence. epistemically warranted or justifiably reliable evidence or even a preset of proofs that do not hold gaps a believer want to fill with an arbitrary beliefs things need a god explanation and yet again what does god even mean. One his furthered nothing with god talk until they offer clear links to understand what could rightly make up the empty term g. o. d. (Group Originated Delusion).

Any reasonable thinker should conclude that clear links to any knowledge are required to comprehend what to ask, where to look, or what to state is involved. This would seem especially important since what is on the line is the actual truth or falsehood of the great believed “IT” of somethingism. Do you wish to just assemble or make up your god thinking as you go, greedily forcing anything that seems slow enough to not get away or is the actual truth in reality you seek even if godless as finding the true is the main pursuit, as your aim is what true right, taken with the deepest integrity? One should desire such intellectual rigor in order to even distinguish if we need to inquire or have a way to question a possibility of existence, as this empty termed “it” god of nothingism is unknown in every way even in its “it” status outside of faith superstitions, Dogmatic–Propaganda, delusion, myths and lies.

Religion is just Dogmatic–Propaganda, such as how it is wrong to start with full belief built only upon faith: then search and anything unknown, claiming it somehow justifies or is evidence for their specific God Fallacy.

Another attribute of the God Fallacy is that believers seem to insinuate, if they can in anyway demonstrate (even the possibility of a thing that could seem to be a something attributed to a god) then they have proved that the god they believe in is true. And yet is it not true that man will always fail to prove a specific god? Religion is big on claims but small on reasoning. Take the Abrahamic faiths; they propose a very specific, well-defined god, but in reality, they advocate a very unspecified god; a naturalistic, inferred-theistic-creationism or the god of intelligent design. In other words, when pressed to demonstrate god in the world, or as the reason for the big bang, they can at best only try to surmise a magical power or unknown and unknowable possible something as the “creator.” But the question needs to asked, how does that prove any specific god? So even if we were to concede, for the sake of argument, that some god, phantom-menace started things, they still have to show that this god is the very same as the god in which they believe.

The truth is, for all the appeals they make to nature in order to justify their god, not one appeal is valid in any way to confirm that their god (and only their god) is true, they must always leave the facts and return to faith. Thus, these haughty theists always fail to show any naturalistic reasons for believing in their special-needs god. What they show instead is a belief, not in the god of some myth or scriptures, but belief in a projected somethingism-god attributed to nature, which is indistinguishable from a nothingism, godless reality attributed by nature. However, the issues don’t stop there, as they also would have to prove, or give warrant, as well as justification for every attribute and claimed character trait attached to their specific god using only natural arguments, not some Holy Book or otherworldly revelation. Facts are labels, just like truth, that we put on claims we think are proven somehow, in that assertions are believed to match the state of affairs (if you are making realistic assumptions from science then likely supported by the beliefs in science realism), that generally promote the Correspondence theory of truth “similar to both Rationalism and Empiricism” or coherence theory of truth “similar to just Rationalism” its all still epistemic property of beliefs, whether one’s claim is of knowledge or certainty.

People all the time talk about, “I believe” in regards to religion and gods. No, likely you never had a chance to first investigate all the facts then choose what to believe or not believe. You like everyone else raised in a religious house where indoctrinated to the same religion your family held before your birth. So you did not so much “believe” as “give in and slavishly agreed” to what you were told. Thus, you are more rightly called an agreer then a believer, especially when you don’t read the holy book you say you totally believe in. It seems to me, religious believers are usually ignorant of the truth or willfully uninformed, foolish or indoctrinated to keep believing these conspiracy theories of reality that religions are with their magic claims, when presented with the facts and stupid or brainwashed to keep believing when they realize that the beliefs they have contained falsehoods, inaccurate information, or lies.

As an atheist, I feel more wonder than I did as a theist because I thought, “big deal” to any wonder I experienced, thinking god could do anything. So with such an unrealistic mindset, everything lost its wonder but it’s the opposite as an atheist. As a theist, the world was full of superstitions and supernatural magic possibilities and thus utilized thinking that was not in the real world. As an atheist all I have now is the real world, not that all atheists seem to get this, we all are in a real world devoid of magic anything, therefore, everything adds to my feeling of awe. There should be little debate with atheist acknowledging discernable reality compared to theists with non-reality claims. Yes, I have way more awe and wonder as an atheist than I ever had as a theist because as a theist anything was possible with god. Therefore, as a theist things where not that amazing. However, as an atheist grasping what an absolute accidental or how random things are, with a 95 to 99 % of all life ever existing on this planet went extinct. I am thoroughly amazed we are even here the evolved children of ancient exploded stars, likely born in galaxies born in supermassive black holes, it’s all amazing. I am all for free thinking, if the evidence is there. Great, go down the rabbit hole but do not eat the rabbit shit offered as real; when its proof disappears like a mental mirage, gone in a poof magic as simple as the magical thinking that inspires all manner of flawed beliefs.

If the only rights you fight for are your own,

then you have a lot to learn about the value of rights.

Religion has been a reason for violence and harm and at times a promoter of peace. Science does not need to fill the gap of religion. We need to remove it as it was always an abstraction not a realistic thing to being with. Not one thing religion offers that is thought of as good that cannot be done by persons not following any religion. Atheist generally is simply life with religion removed, all its pseudo meaning as well as pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and pseudo-morality. We have real science, realistic history and can access real morality with a blend of philosophy, anthropology, psychology, sociology and cognitive science. World, do you hear me now, because you were nothing but silent as I suffered extreme religious oppression and to this news, you simply spit in my face telling my religious freedom and all I can think is, no, you mean my parent’s religious freedom, which may I remind you is a violation of my religious freedom and was instead my religious oppression. Where are you now, while millions await this same fate if you keep doing nothing? I fell as you tripped me again and from your hate, I remove myself from such mind and being corruption freely walking into the gates of love so longed for. You have not beaten me, you cannot stop me, you don’t want me to live, to thrive, to be all the best I can be but you hate and yet I am still here, a survivor, a full life liver, a thriver, as well as a warrior for kindness and compassion, reaching the care I was rarely offered, as a gift to the ones so desperately oppressed under your harsh gaze. May we all be free and the positive best we can be, I know I am as best I can. I am here growing stronger every day. Who am I, you ask, I respond loud and proud, I am a survivor and even in these chains from my past, you will not stop me. Sometimes, we need to see the truth, that many people are liars and deniers while claiming they are believers. Once we stop seeing the dignity of others we feel free to violate them with impunity. But when dignity is a friend respect has become once path. May I not be a silent watcher as millions of children are subjugated almost before their birth let alone when they can understand the thought and are forcibly coerced, compelled, constrained, and indoctrinated in the mental pollution that religion can be. Religion is an “Evolved Product” and yes, religion is like fear given wings. And, it seems ancient peoples had to survived amazing threats in a “dangerous universe (by superstition perceived as good and evil),” and human “immorality or imperfection of the soul” which was thought to affect the still living, leading to ancestor worship. This ancestor worship presumably led to the belief in supernatural beings, and then some of these were turned into the belief in gods. This feeble myth called gods were just a human conceived “made from nothing into something over and over, changing, again and again, taking on more as they evolve, all the while they are thought to be special,” but it is just supernatural animistic spirit-belief perceived as sacred. Quick Evolution of Religion? So, it all starts in a general way with Animism (theoretical belief in supernatural powers/spirits), then this is physically expressed in or with Totemism (theoretical belief in mythical relationship with powers/spirits through a totem item), which then enlists a full-time specific person to do this worship and believed interacting Shamanism (theoretical belief in access and influence with spirits through ritual), and then there is the further employment of myths and gods added to all the above giving you Paganism (often a lot more nature-based than most current top world religions, thus hinting to their close link to more ancient religious thinking it stems from). My hypothesis is expressed with an explanation of the building of a theatrical house (modern religions development).

Let’s make it simple:

Atheism is the reality position.

Theism is the anti-reality position!

I don’t need religion or its fake gods.

“Reason is my only master.”

I am will to power!

 My main goal against religion is to fully stop as much as possible forced indoctrination, one could ask but then why do I challenge all adults faith? well, who do you think is doing the lying to children in the first place. End Hereditary religion, if its a belief let them the equal right to choose to believe.

If the only rights you fight for are your own, then you have a lot to learn about the value of rights.

Childhood Indoctrination is often the gateway drug,

to a life of irrational magical thinking superstitions, like ghosts, gods, or guardian spirits.

The Mental Parasite Called God?
God is not simply a myth, it a mental parasite feeding off your life, is like a mental prison concept, disemboweling you, and any religion that supports the concept of god(s), becomes like a controlling jailer to the mind of the god believer. What is love, if it is so cheap, that it is for wholesale to myths? To me, it is truly a sad thing, when you have people offer more love to an unknown and at best unproven thing they call god; not even evident in this world, over real people, even loved ones, which are known in this world. Sadly, all too often a mind full of god(s) myths have no appetite for reason.
I am an anti-religionist, not just an atheist, and here is why summed up in three ideas I am against. And, in which these three things are common in all religions: “pseudo-science”, “pseudo-history”, and “pseudo-morality”. And my biggest thing of all is the widespread forced indoctrination of children, violating their free choice of what to not believe or believe, I hate forced hereditary religion. And my biggest thing of all is the widespread forced indoctrination of children, violating their free choice of what to not believe or believe, I hate forced hereditary religion. As well as wish to offer strong critiques regarding the pseudo-meaning of the “three letter noise” people call “G.o.d” (group originated delusion)!

It seems, in general, the less education and higher poverty have a higher correlation to being religious.

I am an Axiological Atheist, with a Rationalist Persuasion, who Supports Anarcho-Humanism

“I often find that the quality of a person is written in their thinking and behavior.”

The Faith Fallacy vs. Critical Thinking

The faith fallacy is an impairment in critical thinking starting and ending with circular reasoning assuming they are right, such as the act of faith validating faith (begging the question fallacy); makes jumps in logic that don’t follow logic (non-sequitur fallacy); questionable cause like proposing false cause and effect (post hoc fallacy); incomplete evidence, suppressing evidence, or selectively uses facts a propaganda technique (cherry picking fallacy); makes false or misleading comparisons (false equivalence or analogy fallacy); overgeneralizes (hasty or faulty generalization fallacy) asserts that lots of peoples agree (bandwagon fallacy) asks for special treatment or a double standard, attempting an exception for faith (Special pleading fallacy). Contrary to the faith fallacy tactics of using fallacious reasoning to try to persuade blind faith, critical thinkers would try to persuade by offering relevant evidence and valid reasoning, that a conclusion is true or likely to be true.

Dogmatic-Propaganda Fallacies and the fallacy of Fideism “faith-ism”

Here are three favorite logical fallacies of religionists and fideists and their Dogmatic-Propaganda:

  • Complex Question Fallacy and Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy, which is often used in tandem kind of like this, the universe had a beginning, and if god was not the power before the beginning of the universe you must explain what was. So if you cannot prove that god was not the power before the beginning or that god is not needed or does not exist, that means god was the needed power to create the universe and god must exist.
  • The Complex Question Fallacy is roughly when someone asks a question that presupposes something (often with loaded language or questions) that is not proven. wiki/Complex_question
  • The Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy is roughly acting that something must be true because it has not been, or cannot be, proven false even if it has not in any way ben demonstrated as true. wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

Dogmatic-Propaganda Must not go Unchallenged

Religionists like to act as if it is they who are being persecuted when it is them forcing what and how they believe on others and asking stupid questions to atheists, such as, I do not understand why you cannot just let religion believers live and let live. I could say, I don’t understand why religious never has, nor ever will just live and let live. However, I already know why, they are Dogmatic-Propaganda that wishes self-replication and oppression of those who don’t fall in line and thus every ethical rational thinker must see this as the enemy to a civil humanity that it is, has been and will continue to be if left unchallenged.

Hate the Dogmatic-Propaganda Not the People

Religion is a joke to rationality, that sadly, too many believe. I hate the Dogmatic-Propaganda that is religion, not the indoctrinated victims who believe it. Of course, that concession is only for the flawed belief. As I do hold people accountable for harmful behaviors and religion as it is today is not a reason for harm, it is a commonly used excuse employed by those who wish to harm.

Dogmatic–Propaganda vs. Disciplined-Rationality

Religionists and fideists promote Dogmatic-Propaganda,

whereas atheists and anti-religionists mostly promote Disciplined-Rationality.

Dogmatic–Propaganda commonly is a standard motivator of flawed or irrational thinking but with over seventy belief biases identified in people, this is hardly limited to just the religious or faith inclined. Let me illustrate what I am saying, to me all theists are believing lies or irrationally in that aspect of their lives relating to god belief. So the fact of any other common intellectual indexers where there may be right reason in beliefs cannot remove the flawed god belief corruption being committed. What I am saying is like this if you kill one person you are a killer. If you believe in one god you are a follower of Dogmatic-Propaganda and can not completely be a follower of Disciplined-Rationality. However, I am not proclaiming all atheists are always rational as irrationally is revolving door many people believe or otherwise seem to stumble through. It’s just that god belief does this with intentionally.

Disciplined-Rationality is motivated to principles of correct reasoning with emphasis on valid and reliable methods or theories leading to a range of rational standpoints or conclusions understanding that concepts and beliefs often have consequences thus hold an imperative for truth or at least as close to truth as can be acquired rejecting untruth. Disciplined-Rationality can be seen as an aid in understanding the fundamentals for knowledge, sound evidence, justified true belief and involves things like decision theory and the concern with identifying the value(s), reasonableness, verification, certainties, uncertainties and other relevant issues resulting in the most clear optimal decision/conclusion and/or belief/disbelief. Disciplined-Rationality attempts to understand the justification or lack thereof in propositions and beliefs concerning its self with various epistemic features of belief, truth, and/or knowledge, which include the ideas of justification, warrant, rationality, reliability, validity, and probability. ref, ref

ps. “Dogmatic–Propaganda” & “Disciplined-Rationality” are concepts/terms I created*

A General Thinking in all My Epistemology Theorizing is Justificationism

Trying to Help Promote Knowledge: Philosophy and Science.

Belief-Etiquette

I value good Belief-Etiquette: reasoned belief-acquisitions, good belief-maintenance, and honest belief relinquishment. I am first always a rationalist, as reason is my only master. May I always be a truth seeker and not a blind faith believer. Thinking is good and one claiming otherwise is indeed a person erroring in reason. Which may I remind you is terrible since the most Base Presupposition in our understanding of everything begins in reason.

What we generally call “truth” is a “value judgment” of what we believe is the reality of the case. So, a claim of truth then like all claims needs some type supporting justification. The claim of truth’s integrity requires testing of what the theme of the offered truth involves if validly justified it should not be distrusted. However, if the claim of truth’s integrity is not justified then the term “Truth” has not been itself attacked rather it’s the using the word “Truth” that cannot substantiate the term that it should be distrusted because it is seemingly in error or a lie-pseudo truth. Therefore, the user/claimer of the improper use of the word “Truth” but believe in and promote pseudo-truth because it does not have a sound basis in logic or fact demonstrate the validity and reliability of their truth assertion. So, I love truth, its claims of the term “Truth” with no justification that I can’t stand because such claims are pseudo-truth. It’s like how science as a term is quite corrupted by pseudoscience right? Yes and No. Yes, because fake science is believed as real science where the user/claimer of the improper use of the word “Science” believe in and promote pseudo-science but because it does not have a sound basis in logic or fact demonstrate the validity and reliability of their truth assertion. However, we can know science from pseudoscience as the term is given other methodological structure to which to evaluate then prove true science or prove a claim as not science and in fact pseudoscience so to do we sadly have to a methodological structure to prove a claim as not truth and in fact pseudo-truth.
The Way of a Sound Thinker?

“Sound thinking to me, in a general way, is thinking, reasoning, or belief that tends to make foresight a desire to be as accurate as one can with valid and reliable reason and evidence.”

A shallow thinker quickly talks, often with boastful postulations, likely just as often pushed strongly and loudly as if this adds substance, and they do this before fully understanding what’s is really involved. Whereas, a Sound Thinker first poses Questions to understand slowing down and assessing all the facts or factors involved and then builds their argument or ideas.

A Sound Thinker: uses disciplined rationality

A Shallow Thinker: undisciplined, situational, sporadic, or limited thinking.

Truth Navigation: Techniques for Discussions or Debates

I do truth navigation, both inquiry questions as well as

strategic facts in a tag team of debate and motivational teaching.

What we generally call “truth” is a “value judgment” of what we believe is the reality of the case. So, a claim of truth then like all claims needs some type supporting justification. The claim of truth’s integrity requires testing of what the theme of the offered truth involves if validly justified it should not be distrusted. However, if the claim of truth’s integrity is not justified then the term “Truth” has not been itself attacked rather it’s the using the word “Truth” that cannot substantiate the term that it should be distrusted because it is seemingly in error or a lie-pseudo truth. Therefore, the user/claimer of the improper use of the word “Truth” but believe in and promote pseudo-truth because it does not have a sound basis in logic or fact demonstrate the validity and reliability of their truth assertion. So, I love truth, its claims of the term “Truth” with no justification that I can’t stand because such claims are pseudo-truth. It’s like how science as a term is quite corrupted by pseudoscience right? Yes and No. Yes, because fake science is believed as real science where the user/claimer of the improper use of the word “Science” believe in and promote pseudo-science but because it does not have a sound basis in logic or fact demonstrate the validity and reliability of their truth assertion. However, we can know science from pseudoscience as the term is given other methodological structure to which to evaluate then prove true science or prove a claim as not science and in fact pseudoscience so to do we sadly have to a methodological structure to prove a claim as not truth and in fact pseudo-truth.

Hammer of Truth: Yes, you too, have lots of beliefs…

I don’t believe in religion, I believe in people. I don’t respect religion, I respect people. I attack bad thinking and bad behaviors, not people. I do not hate religious people, I hate the religion they are indoctrinated in and I speak out to stop the indifference to the harm religions can cause as well as the ignorance they support. Hell yes, I am against the fraud that is the world religions.

Why not be against the promotion of woo-woo pseudo-truth, when I am very against all pseudo-science, pseudo-history, and pseudo-morality and the harm they can produce. Along with the hate, such as sexism and homophobia are too often seen or the forced indoctrination of children. And this coercive indoctrination of the world religions, with their pseudo-science, pseudo-history, and pseudo-morality mainly furthered by forced Hereditary Religion (family or cultural, religious beliefs forced on children because the parent or caregiver believes that way). This is sadly done, even before a child can be expected to successfully navigate reason; it’s almost as if religious parents believe their “woo-woo pseudo-truth” lies will not be so easily accepted if they wait on a mind that can make its own choice. Because we do see how hard it is for the ones forced into Hereditary Religion.

It seems difficult for them to successfully navigate reason in relation to their woo-woo pseudo-truth, found in a religion they were indoctrinationally taught to prefer, because after being instructed on how to discern pseudo-truth as truth than just wishing that their blind servitude belief in a brand of religious pseudo-truth devoid of justified, valid or reliable reason and evidence. I care because I am a rationalist, as well as an atheist. Thus, this religious set of “woo-woo pseudo-truth” pushed on the simple-minded as truth bothers me greatly. So, here it is as simple as I can make it you first need a good thinking standard to address beliefs one may approach as a possible belief warranted to be believed. I wish to smash that lying pig of religion with the Hammer of Truth: Ontology, Epistemology, and Axiology Questions (a methodological use of philosophy).

Overall, I wish to promote in my self and for others; to value a worthy belief etiquette, one that desires a sound accuracy and correspondence to the truth: Reasoned belief acquisitions, good belief maintenance, and honest belief relinquishment. May we all be authenticly truthful rationalists that put facts over faith. Calling out a liar is not the same as lying.

I am a BIG fan of the truth.
“Where did you find it?! Mankind has been diligently seeking truth since time memorial!” – Challenger
My response, Your statement is a “truth claim” right after asking about truth: “Where did you find it?! Mankind has been diligently seeking truth since time memorial! (a “truth claim” emphasized with two exclamation marks seeming to demonstrate that you believed you had said a confirmed truth. So you do believe you have found a truth while acting as if you don’t know, and seemingly by your strength of assertion, believe I guess, that no one can but here I am teaching you truth!!!
I have been asked before, how can I stand to deal with illogical, ones lacking critical thinking, the unreasonable, misinformed but fully believe, deliberately uninformed or deluded people, often so kindly? Well, I believe in others, or at least their ability to reason even if you don’t know how or are not paying attention currently. I can do deal with most people as I am often fighting for them even if they only feel I am against them and it usually is not that hard to do with a heart of compassion, as I care for the future of humanity and people have value. And, if people don’t listen or grasp logic, I try something else like reasoning. If they will not listen or grasp reasoning, I will try just getting them to think, maybe on something they can agree or they do understand trying to work them back to the rationalism they are not getting or are avoiding. Then, if I can get them to reason, I build that up to logic. If they don’t seem to get them to thinking or are trying to avoid I can draw them back to feelings, maybe on something they can agree or they do understand trying to work them back to thinking, then reasoning, and then finally back to logic with which they are not getting or are avoiding. In a general way, all reality, in a philosophic sense, is an emergent property of reason, and knowing how reason accrues does not remove its warrant. Feelings are experienced then perceived, leading to thinking, right thinking is reason, right reason is logic, right logic is mathematics, right mathematics is physics and from there all science.
Here is why “Reason is my only master”

The most Base Presupposition begins in reason. Reason is needed for logic (logic is realized by the aid of reason enriching its axioms). Logic is needed for axiology/value theory (axiology is realized by the aid of logic). Axiology is needed for epistemology (epistemology is realized by aid of axiology value judge and enrich its value assumptions as valid or not). Epistemology is needed for a good ontology (ontology is realized by the aid of epistemology justified assumptions/realizations/conclusions). Then when one possesses a good ontology (fortified with valid and reliable reason and evidence) they can then say they know the ontology of that thing. So, I think, right thinking is reason. Right reason is logic. Right logic, can be used for mathematics and from there we can get to science. And, by this methodological approach, we get one of the best ways of knowing the scientific method. Activating experience/event occurs, eliciting our feelings/scenes. Then naive thoughts occur, eliciting emotions as a response. Then it is our emotional intelligence over emotional hijacking, which entrance us but are unavoidable and that it is the navigating this successfully in a methodological way we call critical thinking or as In just call right thinking. So, to me, could be termed “Right” thinking, that is referring to a kind of methodological thinking. Reason is at the base of everything and it builds up from pragmatic approaches. And, to me, there are three main approaches to truth (ontology of truth) from the very subjective (Pragmatic theory of truth), to subjective (Coherence theory of truth), then onto objective (Correspondence theory of truth) but remember that this process as limited as it can be, is the best we have and we build one truth ontop another like blocks to a wall of truth.

Some think they don’t have beliefs and in fact, the belief you don’t have beliefs, is, itself a belief. Thus, I wish to help people increase their philosophic accuracy by understanding beliefs and how the terms facts, truth, knowledge, certainty, as well as objective and how every one of them are labels that we believe in as “markers of accuracy” in one’s belief and the actual state of afters. In addition, how they are all still connected in that they are all epistemic properties of beliefs. Yes, facts are labels, just like truth, that we put on claims we think are proven somehow, in that assertions are believed to match the state of affairs (if you are making realistic assumptions from science then likely supported by the beliefs in science realism), that generally promote the Correspondence theory of truth “similar to both Rationalism and Empiricism” or coherence theory of truth “similar to just Rationalism” its all still epistemic property of beliefs, whether one’s claim is of knowledge or certainty.

Science is not common sense?

Science is quite the opposite of just common sense. To me, common sense in a relative way as it generally relates to the reality of things in the world, will involve “naive realism.” Whereas, most of those who are scientific thinkers, generally hold more to scientific realism or other stances far removed from the limited common sense naive realism. Science is a multidisciplinary methodological quest for truth. Science is understanding what is, while religion is wishing on what is not.

A basic outline of scientific epistemology:
Science: Hypotheses (Rationalism/Deductive, Inductive, or Abductive Reasoning etc.) + Testing (Empiricism/Systematic Observation) – Checking for errors (Skepticism/Fallibilism) + Interpret/Draw a Conclusion (Rationalism/Deductive, Inductive, or Abductive Reasoning etc.) *if valid* = Scientific Laws (describes observed phenomena) or Scientific Theory (substantiated and repeatedly tested explanation of phenomena) = Justified True Belief = Scientific Knowledge = Epistemic Certainty supportive of correctability
*being epistemically certain, is believing a truth has the highest epistemic status, often with warranted psychological certainty but it may not, neither is it a requirement*

“Damien, I have a question: Who/what gives humans value?” – Challenger 

My response, We give value, as value is an awareness and judgment, it is an emergent property of validation; the ability to use critical thinking and logic in a useful way, to conclude worth, benefit, or good. 

 

Psychological certainty and Epistemic certainty:Link
What is belief? (philosophy):Link
What is belief? (neuroscience):Link
What is belief? (Psychology):Link
Yes, We All Have Beliefs; But What Does That Mean?: Link

To Dispel Myths, Redirect the Belief

Beliefs can be hard to change, even if they are scientifically wrong. But those on the fence about an idea can be swayed after hearing facts related to the misinformation, according to a study led by Princeton University. ref

Faith seems to be found among the foolish but is an imprisoned tormented fool among the wise. Faith is like the Gloryhole of bad thinking and the Champion of unsupported beliefs. I reject the notion that humans are born with the inclination for Religion. Rather, we are born with a superstitious Animism thinking mind until the age of about 7 years old and it is out of this child like daydreaming that Religion emerges with the help of people desiring to control.

Religionphobia and nonreligiousphobia of all types are not what I support; we need rationalism and humanism. I don’t wish to reveal in nor downed my self in unreason. I think what we need to be careful with is attaching a detail as if it is a universal. Such as, one can exhibit nonreligiousphobia or religiousphobia in a thing and not be who they are as a person, to error is human. I don’t claim anything close to protection but in myself I demand progress. Therefore, I think it’s prudent to address it first as a singular not then say well if one or even a thousand do or think something troubling, you know unreasonable or unjust attacks on people and less than on the side of rationalism and humanism is proof of to condemn millions? No, the problem is all kinds of hate of people are polarizing thus phobia like xenophobia about the religious or nonreligious are all real to me and can be seen when we switch our strong reasoned attack from attacking the bad thinking, lies or harm available in most religion to one extreme or another or in some religious beliefs as well but to instead wrongly level personal prejudice bigotry positions against other people who subscribed to religious beliefs of a religion or those who are of nonreligion. (informed thinkers acknowledge severe indoctrination is more force than choice). What can we ever hope to overcome if we end up acting like that we so despise?

Am I alone?

I am an Axiological (value theory) Atheist, thus I feel compelled to try to care for everyone as much as I can because other people matter and my humanity has a high value to me. But I wonder am I alone as I see and hear lots of people who seem not to feel the same. I wish others self-mastery thus do not feel a need to try and change people who may think differently, rather I wish to create a caring space if I can, so they can see things differently if they wish. I care more about human flourishing then just my disbelief, am I alone?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey 

“How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements in their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In this new study, Graham Harvey explores current and past animistic beliefs and practices of Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans. He considers the varieties of animism found in these cultures as well as their shared desire to live respectfully within larger natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey also considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of these different animisms.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

My thoughts on Religion Evolution with external links for more info:

“Religion is an Evolved Product” and Yes, Religion is Like Fear Given Wings…

Atheists talk about gods and religions for the same reason doctors talk about cancer, they are looking for a cure, or a firefighter talks about fires because they burn people and they care to stop them. We atheists too often feel a need to help the victims of mental slavery, held in the bondage that is the false beliefs of gods and the conspiracy theories of reality found in religions.

“Understanding Religion Evolution: Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, Paganism & Progressed organized religion”

Understanding Religion Evolution:

“An Archaeological/Anthropological Understanding of Religion Evolution”

It seems ancient peoples had to survived amazing threats in a “dangerous universe (by superstition perceived as good and evil),” and human “immorality or imperfection of the soul” which was thought to affect the still living, leading to ancestor worship. This ancestor worship presumably led to the belief in supernatural beings, and then some of these were turned into the belief in gods. This feeble myth called gods were just a human conceived “made from nothing into something over and over, changing, again and again, taking on more as they evolve, all the while they are thought to be special,” but it is just supernatural animistic spirit-belief perceived as sacred.

 

Quick Evolution of Religion?

Pre-Animism (at least 300,000 years ago) pre-religion is a beginning that evolves into later Animism. So, Religion as we think of it, to me, all starts in a general way with Animism (Africa: 100,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in supernatural powers/spirits), then this is physically expressed in or with Totemism (Europe: 50,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in mythical relationship with powers/spirits through a totem item), which then enlists a full-time specific person to do this worship and believed interacting Shamanism (Siberia/Russia: 30,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in access and influence with spirits through ritual), and then there is the further employment of myths and gods added to all the above giving you Paganism (Turkey: 12,000 years ago) (often a lot more nature-based than most current top world religions, thus hinting to their close link to more ancient religious thinking it stems from). My hypothesis is expressed with an explanation of the building of a theatrical house (modern religions development). Progressed organized religion (Egypt: 5,000 years ago)  with CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS (after 4,000 years ago).

Historically, in large city-state societies (such as Egypt or Iraq) starting around 5,000 years ago culminated to make religion something kind of new, a sociocultural-governmental-religious monarchy, where all or at least many of the people of such large city-state societies seem familiar with and committed to the existence of “religion” as the integrated life identity package of control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine, but this juggernaut integrated religion identity package of Dogmatic-Propaganda certainly did not exist or if developed to an extent it was highly limited in most smaller prehistoric societies as they seem to lack most of the strong control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine (magical beliefs could be at times be added or removed). Many people just want to see developed religious dynamics everywhere even if it is not. Instead, all that is found is largely fragments until the domestication of religion.

Religions, as we think of them today, are a new fad, even if they go back to around 6,000 years in the timeline of human existence, this amounts to almost nothing when seen in the long slow evolution of religion at least around 70,000 years ago with one of the oldest ritual worship. Stone Snake of South Africa: “first human worship” 70,000 years ago. This message of how religion and gods among them are clearly a man-made thing that was developed slowly as it was invented and then implemented peace by peace discrediting them all. Which seems to be a simple point some are just not grasping how devastating to any claims of truth when we can see the lie clearly in the archeological sites.

I wish people fought as hard for the actual values as they fight for the group/clan names political or otherwise they think support values. Every amount spent on war is theft to children in need of food or the homeless kept from shelter.

Here are several of my blog posts on history:

I am not an academic. I am a revolutionary that teaches in public, in places like social media, and in the streets. I am not a leader by some title given but from my commanding leadership style of simply to start teaching everywhere to everyone, all manner of positive education. 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Low Gods “Earth” or Tutelary deity and High Gods “Sky” or Supreme deity

“An Earth goddess is a deification of the Earth. Earth goddesses are often associated with the “chthonic” deities of the underworld. Ki and Ninhursag are Mesopotamian earth goddesses. In Greek mythology, the Earth is personified as Gaia, corresponding to Roman Terra, Indic Prithvi/Bhūmi, etc. traced to an “Earth Mother” complementary to the “Sky Father” in Proto-Indo-European religion. Egyptian mythology exceptionally has a sky goddess and an Earth god.” ref

“A mother goddess is a goddess who represents or is a personification of nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction or who embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother. In some religious traditions or movements, Heavenly Mother (also referred to as Mother in Heaven or Sky Mother) is the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky father or God the Father.” ref

“Any masculine sky god is often also king of the gods, taking the position of patriarch within a pantheon. Such king gods are collectively categorized as “sky father” deities, with a polarity between sky and earth often being expressed by pairing a “sky father” god with an “earth mother” goddess (pairings of a sky mother with an earth father are less frequent). A main sky goddess is often the queen of the gods and may be an air/sky goddess in her own right, though she usually has other functions as well with “sky” not being her main. In antiquity, several sky goddesses in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Near East were called Queen of Heaven. Neopagans often apply it with impunity to sky goddesses from other regions who were never associated with the term historically. The sky often has important religious significance. Many religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, have deities associated with the sky.” ref

“In comparative mythology, sky father is a term for a recurring concept in polytheistic religions of a sky god who is addressed as a “father”, often the father of a pantheon and is often either a reigning or former King of the Gods. The concept of “sky father” may also be taken to include Sun gods with similar characteristics, such as Ra. The concept is complementary to an “earth mother“. “Sky Father” is a direct translation of the Vedic Dyaus Pita, etymologically descended from the same Proto-Indo-European deity name as the Greek Zeûs Pater and Roman Jupiter and Germanic Týr, Tir or Tiwaz, all of which are reflexes of the same Proto-Indo-European deity’s name, *Dyēus Ph₂tḗr. While there are numerous parallels adduced from outside of Indo-European mythology, there are exceptions (e.g. In Egyptian mythology, Nut is the sky mother and Geb is the earth father).” ref

Tutelary deity

“A tutelary (also tutelar) is a deity or spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of “tutelary” expresses the concept of safety and thus of guardianship. In late Greek and Roman religion, one type of tutelary deity, the genius, functions as the personal deity or daimon of an individual from birth to death. Another form of personal tutelary spirit is the familiar spirit of European folklore.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Korean shamanism, jangseung and sotdae were placed at the edge of villages to frighten off demons. They were also worshiped as deities. Seonangshin is the patron deity of the village in Korean tradition and was believed to embody the Seonangdang. In Philippine animism, Diwata or Lambana are deities or spirits that inhabit sacred places like mountains and mounds and serve as guardians. Such as: Maria Makiling is the deity who guards Mt. Makiling and Maria Cacao and Maria Sinukuan. In Shinto, the spirits, or kami, which give life to human bodies come from nature and return to it after death. Ancestors are therefore themselves tutelaries to be worshiped. And similarly, Native American beliefs such as Tonás, tutelary animal spirit among the Zapotec and Totems, familial or clan spirits among the Ojibwe, can be animals.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Austronesian beliefs such as: Atua (gods and spirits of the Polynesian peoples such as the Māori or the Hawaiians), Hanitu (Bunun of Taiwan‘s term for spirit), Hyang (Kawi, Sundanese, Javanese, and Balinese Supreme Being, in ancient Java and Bali mythology and this spiritual entity, can be either divine or ancestral), Kaitiaki (New Zealand Māori term used for the concept of guardianship, for the sky, the sea, and the land), Kawas (mythology) (divided into 6 groups: gods, ancestors, souls of the living, spirits of living things, spirits of lifeless objects, and ghosts), Tiki (Māori mythology, Tiki is the first man created by either Tūmatauenga or Tāne and represents deified ancestors found in most Polynesian cultures). ” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Mesopotamian Tutelary Deities can be seen as ones related to City-States 

“Historical city-states included Sumerian cities such as Uruk and Ur; Ancient Egyptian city-states, such as Thebes and Memphis; the Phoenician cities (such as Tyre and Sidon); the five Philistine city-states; the Berber city-states of the Garamantes; the city-states of ancient Greece (the poleis such as Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth); the Roman Republic (which grew from a city-state into a vast empire); the Italian city-states from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, such as Florence, Siena, Ferrara, Milan (which as they grew in power began to dominate neighboring cities) and Genoa and Venice, which became powerful thalassocracies; the Mayan and other cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (including cities such as Chichen Itza, Tikal, Copán and Monte Albán); the central Asian cities along the Silk Road; the city-states of the Swahili coast; Ragusa; states of the medieval Russian lands such as Novgorod and Pskov; and many others.” ref

“The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BCE; also known as Protoliterate period) of Mesopotamia, named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia and the Sumerian civilization. City-States like Uruk and others had a patron tutelary City Deity along with a Priest-King.” ref

“Chinese folk religion, both past, and present, includes myriad tutelary deities. Exceptional individuals, highly cultivated sages, and prominent ancestors can be deified and honored after death. Lord Guan is the patron of military personnel and police, while Mazu is the patron of fishermen and sailors. Such as Tu Di Gong (Earth Deity) is the tutelary deity of a locality, and each individual locality has its own Earth Deity and Cheng Huang Gong (City God) is the guardian deity of an individual city, worshipped by local officials and locals since imperial times.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Hinduism, personal tutelary deities are known as ishta-devata, while family tutelary deities are known as Kuladevata. Gramadevata are guardian deities of villages. Devas can also be seen as tutelary. Shiva is the patron of yogis and renunciants. City goddesses include: Mumbadevi (Mumbai), Sachchika (Osian); Kuladevis include: Ambika (Porwad), and Mahalakshmi. In NorthEast India Meitei mythology and religion (Sanamahism) of Manipur, there are various types of tutelary deities, among which Lam Lais are the most predominant ones. Tibetan Buddhism has Yidam as a tutelary deity. Dakini is the patron of those who seek knowledge.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) The Greeks also thought deities guarded specific places: for instance, Athena was the patron goddess of the city of Athens. Socrates spoke of hearing the voice of his personal spirit or daimonion:

You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me … . This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician.” ref

“Tutelary deities who guard and preserve a place or a person are fundamental to ancient Roman religion. The tutelary deity of a man was his Genius, that of a woman her Juno. In the Imperial era, the Genius of the Emperor was a focus of Imperial cult. An emperor might also adopt a major deity as his personal patron or tutelary, as Augustus did Apollo. Precedents for claiming the personal protection of a deity were established in the Republican era, when for instance the Roman dictator Sulla advertised the goddess Victory as his tutelary by holding public games (ludi) in her honor.” ref

“Each town or city had one or more tutelary deities, whose protection was considered particularly vital in time of war and siege. Rome itself was protected by a goddess whose name was to be kept ritually secret on pain of death (for a supposed case, see Quintus Valerius Soranus). The Capitoline Triad of Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva were also tutelaries of Rome. The Italic towns had their own tutelary deities. Juno often had this function, as at the Latin town of Lanuvium and the Etruscan city of Veii, and was often housed in an especially grand temple on the arx (citadel) or other prominent or central location. The tutelary deity of Praeneste was Fortuna, whose oracle was renowned.” ref

“The Roman ritual of evocatio was premised on the belief that a town could be made vulnerable to military defeat if the power of its tutelary deity were diverted outside the city, perhaps by the offer of superior cult at Rome. The depiction of some goddesses such as the Magna Mater (Great Mother, or Cybele) as “tower-crowned” represents their capacity to preserve the city. A town in the provinces might adopt a deity from within the Roman religious sphere to serve as its guardian, or syncretize its own tutelary with such; for instance, a community within the civitas of the Remi in Gaul adopted Apollo as its tutelary, and at the capital of the Remi (present-day Rheims), the tutelary was Mars Camulus.” ref 

Household deity (a kind of or related to a Tutelary deity)

“A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in paganism as well as in folklore across many parts of the world. Household deities fit into two types; firstly, a specific deity – typically a goddess – often referred to as a hearth goddess or domestic goddess who is associated with the home and hearth, such as the ancient Greek Hestia.” ref

“The second type of household deities are those that are not one singular deity, but a type, or species of animistic deity, who usually have lesser powers than major deities. This type was common in the religions of antiquity, such as the Lares of ancient Roman religion, the Gashin of Korean shamanism, and Cofgodas of Anglo-Saxon paganism. These survived Christianisation as fairy-like creatures existing in folklore, such as the Anglo-Scottish Brownie and Slavic Domovoy.” ref

“Household deities were usually worshipped not in temples but in the home, where they would be represented by small idols (such as the teraphim of the Bible, often translated as “household gods” in Genesis 31:19 for example), amulets, paintings, or reliefs. They could also be found on domestic objects, such as cosmetic articles in the case of Tawaret. The more prosperous houses might have a small shrine to the household god(s); the lararium served this purpose in the case of the Romans. The gods would be treated as members of the family and invited to join in meals, or be given offerings of food and drink.” ref

“In many religions, both ancient and modern, a god would preside over the home. Certain species, or types, of household deities, existed. An example of this was the Roman Lares. Many European cultures retained house spirits into the modern period. Some examples of these include:

“Although the cosmic status of household deities was not as lofty as that of the Twelve Olympians or the Aesir, they were also jealous of their dignity and also had to be appeased with shrines and offerings, however humble. Because of their immediacy they had arguably more influence on the day-to-day affairs of men than the remote gods did. Vestiges of their worship persisted long after Christianity and other major religions extirpated nearly every trace of the major pagan pantheons. Elements of the practice can be seen even today, with Christian accretions, where statues to various saints (such as St. Francis) protect gardens and grottos. Even the gargoyles found on older churches, could be viewed as guardians partitioning a sacred space.” ref

“For centuries, Christianity fought a mop-up war against these lingering minor pagan deities, but they proved tenacious. For example, Martin Luther‘s Tischreden have numerous – quite serious – references to dealing with kobolds. Eventually, rationalism and the Industrial Revolution threatened to erase most of these minor deities, until the advent of romantic nationalism rehabilitated them and embellished them into objects of literary curiosity in the 19th century. Since the 20th century this literature has been mined for characters for role-playing games, video games, and other fantasy personae, not infrequently invested with invented traits and hierarchies somewhat different from their mythological and folkloric roots.” ref

“In contradistinction to both Herbert Spencer and Edward Burnett Tylor, who defended theories of animistic origins of ancestor worship, Émile Durkheim saw its origin in totemism. In reality, this distinction is somewhat academic, since totemism may be regarded as a particularized manifestation of animism, and something of a synthesis of the two positions was attempted by Sigmund Freud. In Freud’s Totem and Taboo, both totem and taboo are outward expressions or manifestations of the same psychological tendency, a concept which is complementary to, or which rather reconciles, the apparent conflict. Freud preferred to emphasize the psychoanalytic implications of the reification of metaphysical forces, but with particular emphasis on its familial nature. This emphasis underscores, rather than weakens, the ancestral component.” ref

“William Edward Hearn, a noted classicist, and jurist, traced the origin of domestic deities from the earliest stages as an expression of animism, a belief system thought to have existed also in the neolithic, and the forerunner of Indo-European religion. In his analysis of the Indo-European household, in Chapter II “The House Spirit”, Section 1, he states:

The belief which guided the conduct of our forefathers was … the spirit rule of dead ancestors.” ref

“In Section 2 he proceeds to elaborate:

It is thus certain that the worship of deceased ancestors is a vera causa, and not a mere hypothesis. …

In the other European nations, the Slavs, the Teutons, and the Kelts, the House Spirit appears with no less distinctness. … [T]he existence of that worship does not admit of doubt. … The House Spirits had a multitude of other names which it is needless here to enumerate, but all of which are more or less expressive of their friendly relations with man. … In [England] … [h]e is the Brownie. … In Scotland this same Brownie is well known. He is usually described as attached to particular families, with whom he has been known to reside for centuries, threshing the corn, cleaning the house, and performing similar household tasks. His favorite gratification was milk and honey.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“These ideas are my speculations from the evidence.”

I am still researching the “god‘s origins” all over the world. So you know, it is very complicated but I am smart and willing to look, DEEP, if necessary, which going very deep does seem to be needed here, when trying to actually understand the evolution of gods and goddesses. I am sure of a few things and less sure of others, but even in stuff I am not fully grasping I still am slowly figuring it out, to explain it to others. But as I research more I am understanding things a little better, though I am still working on understanding it all or something close and thus always figuring out more. 

Sky Father/Sky God?

“Egyptian: (Nut) Sky Mother and (Geb) Earth Father” (Egypt is different but similar)

Turkic/Mongolic: (Tengri/Tenger Etseg) Sky Father and (Eje/Gazar Eej) Earth Mother *Transeurasian*

Hawaiian: (Wākea) Sky Father and (Papahānaumoku) Earth Mother *Austronesian*

New Zealand/ Māori: (Ranginui) Sky Father and (Papatūānuku) Earth Mother *Austronesian*

Proto-Indo-European: (Dyḗus/Dyḗus ph₂tḗr) Sky Father and (Dʰéǵʰōm/Pleth₂wih₁) Earth Mother

Indo-Aryan: (Dyaus Pita) Sky Father and (Prithvi Mata) Earth Mother *Indo-European*

Italic: (Jupiter) Sky Father and (Juno) Sky Mother *Indo-European*

Etruscan: (Tinia) Sky Father and (Uni) Sky Mother *Tyrsenian/Italy Pre–Indo-European*

Hellenic/Greek: (Zeus) Sky Father and (Hera) Sky Mother who started as an “Earth Goddess” *Indo-European*

Nordic: (Dagr) Sky Father and (Nótt) Sky Mother *Indo-European*

Slavic: (Perun) Sky Father and (Mokosh) Earth Mother *Indo-European*

Illyrian: (Deipaturos) Sky Father and (Messapic Damatura’s “earth-mother” maybe) Earth Mother *Indo-European*

Albanian: (Zojz) Sky Father and (?) *Indo-European*

Baltic: (Perkūnas) Sky Father and (Saulė) Sky Mother *Indo-European*

Germanic: (Týr) Sky Father and (?) *Indo-European*

Colombian-Muisca: (Bochica) Sky Father and (Huythaca) Sky Mother *Chibchan*

Aztec: (Quetzalcoatl) Sky Father and (Xochiquetzal) Sky Mother *Uto-Aztecan*

Incan: (Viracocha) Sky Father and (Mama Runtucaya) Sky Mother *Quechuan*

China: (Tian/Shangdi) Sky Father and (Dì) Earth Mother *Sino-Tibetan*

Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian: (An/Anu) Sky Father and (Ki) Earth Mother

Finnish: (Ukko) Sky Father and (Akka) Earth Mother *Finno-Ugric*

Sami: (Horagalles) Sky Father and (Ravdna) Earth Mother *Finno-Ugric*

Puebloan-Zuni: (Ápoyan Ta’chu) Sky Father and (Áwitelin Tsíta) Earth Mother

Puebloan-Hopi: (Tawa) Sky Father and (Kokyangwuti/Spider Woman/Grandmother) Earth Mother *Uto-Aztecan*

Puebloan-Navajo: (Tsohanoai) Sky Father and (Estsanatlehi) Earth Mother *Na-Dene*

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Sky Father/Sky Mother “High Gods” or similar gods/goddesses of the sky more loosely connected, seeming arcane mythology across the earth seen in Siberia, China, Europe, Native Americans/First Nations People and Mesopotamia, etc.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Hinduism around 3,700 to 3,500 years old. ref

 Judaism around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (The first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew” dated to around 3,000 years ago Khirbet Qeiyafa is the site of an ancient fortress city overlooking the Elah Valley. And many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed around 2,500) ref, ref

Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)

“Judaism is an Abrahamic, its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Some scholars argue that modern Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, by the late 6th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions.” ref

“Yahwism is the name given by modern scholars to the religion of ancient Israel, essentially polytheistic, with a plethora of gods and goddesses. Heading the pantheon was Yahweh, the national god of the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah, with his consort, the goddess Asherah; below them were second-tier gods and goddesses such as Baal, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte, all of whom had their own priests and prophets and numbered royalty among their devotees, and a third and fourth tier of minor divine beings, including the mal’ak, the messengers of the higher gods, who in later times became the angels of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yahweh, however, was not the ‘original’ god of Israel “Isra-El”; it is El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon, whose name forms the basis of the name “Israel”, and none of the Old Testament patriarchs, the tribes of Israel, the Judges, or the earliest monarchs, have a Yahwistic theophoric name (i.e., one incorporating the name of Yahweh).” ref

“El is a Northwest Semitic word meaning “god” or “deity“, or referring (as a proper name) to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities. A rarer form, ‘ila, represents the predicate form in Old Akkadian and in Amorite. The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic *ʔil-, meaning “god”. Specific deities known as ‘El or ‘Il include the supreme god of the ancient Canaanite religion and the supreme god of East Semitic speakers in Mesopotamia’s Early Dynastic Period. ʼĒl is listed at the head of many pantheons. In some Canaanite and Ugaritic sources, ʼĒl played a role as father of the gods, of creation, or both. For example, in the Ugaritic texts, ʾil mlk is understood to mean “ʼĒl the King” but ʾil hd as “the god Hadad“. The Semitic root ʾlh (Arabic ʾilāh, Aramaic ʾAlāh, ʾElāh, Hebrew ʾelōah) may be ʾl with a parasitic h, and ʾl may be an abbreviated form of ʾlh. In Ugaritic the plural form meaning “gods” is ʾilhm, equivalent to Hebrew ʾelōhîm “powers”. In the Hebrew texts this word is interpreted as being semantically singular for “god” by biblical commentators. However the documentary hypothesis for the Old Testament (corresponds to the Jewish Torah) developed originally in the 1870s, identifies these that different authors – the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source – were responsible for editing stories from a polytheistic religion into those of a monotheistic religion. Inconsistencies that arise between monotheism and polytheism in the texts are reflective of this hypothesis.” ref

 

Jainism around 2,599 – 2,527 years old. ref

Confucianism around 2,600 – 2,551 years old. ref

Buddhism around 2,563/2,480 – 2,483/2,400 years old. ref

Christianity around 2,o00 years old. ref

Shinto around 1,305 years old. ref

Islam around 1407–1385 years old. ref

Sikhism around 548–478 years old. ref

Bahá’í around 200–125 years old. ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Knowledge to Ponder: 

Stars/Astrology:

  • Possibly, around 30,000 years ago (in simpler form) to 6,000 years ago, Stars/Astrology are connected to Ancestors, Spirit Animals, and Deities.
  • The star also seems to be a possible proto-star for Star of Ishtar, Star of Inanna, or Star of Venus.
  • Around 7,000 to 6,000 years ago, Star Constellations/Astrology have connections to the “Kurgan phenomenon” of below-ground “mound” stone/wood burial structures and “Dolmen phenomenon” of above-ground stone burial structures.
  • Around 6,500–5,800 years ago, The Northern Levant migrations into Jordon and Israel in the Southern Levant brought new cultural and religious transfer from Turkey and Iran.
  • “The Ghassulian Star,” a mysterious 6,000-year-old mural from Jordan may have connections to the European paganstic kurgan/dolmens phenomenon.

“Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Different cultures have employed forms of astrology since at least the 2nd millennium BCE, these practices having originated in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications. Most, if not all, cultures have attached importance to what they observed in the sky, and some—such as the Hindus, Chinese, and the Maya—developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. Western astrology, one of the oldest astrological systems still in use, can trace its roots to 19th–17th century BCE Mesopotamia, from where it spread to Ancient Greece, Rome, the Islamicate world and eventually Central and Western Europe. Contemporary Western astrology is often associated with systems of horoscopes that purport to explain aspects of a person’s personality and predict significant events in their lives based on the positions of celestial objects; the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems.” ref 

Around 5,500 years ago, Science evolves, The first evidence of science was 5,500 years ago and was demonstrated by a body of empirical, theoretical, and practical knowledge about the natural world. ref

Around 5,000 years ago, Origin of Logics is a Naturalistic Observation (principles of valid reasoning, inference, & demonstration) ref

Around 4,150 to 4,000 years ago: The earliest surviving versions of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, which was originally titled “He who Saw the Deep” (Sha naqba īmuru) or “Surpassing All Other Kings” (Shūtur eli sharrī) were written. ref

Hinduism:

  • 3,700 years ago or so, the oldest of the Hindu Vedas (scriptures), the Rig Veda was composed.
  • 3,500 years ago or so, the Vedic Age began in India after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization.

Judaism:

  • around 3,000 years ago, the first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew”
  • around 2,500 years ago, many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed

Myths: The bible inspired religion is not just one religion or one myth but a grouping of several religions and myths

  • Around 3,450 or 3,250 years ago, according to legend, is the traditionally accepted period in which the Israelite lawgiver, Moses, provided the Ten Commandments.
  • Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, a collection of ancient religious writings by the Israelites based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh, or Old Testament is the first part of Christianity’s bible.
  • Around 2,400 years ago, the most accepted hypothesis is that the canon was formed in stages, first the Pentateuch (Torah).
  • Around 2,140 to 2,116 years ago, the Prophets was written during the Hasmonean dynasty, and finally the remaining books.
  • Christians traditionally divide the Old Testament into four sections:
  • The first five books or Pentateuch (Torah).
  • The proposed history books telling the history of the Israelites from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon.
  • The poetic and proposed “Wisdom books” dealing, in various forms, with questions of good and evil in the world.
  • The books of the biblical prophets, warning of the consequences of turning away from God:
  • Henotheism:
  • Exodus 20:23 “You shall not make other gods besides Me (not saying there are no other gods just not to worship them); gods of silver or gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves.”
  • Polytheism:
  • Judges 10:6 “Then the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD, served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the sons of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines; thus they forsook the LORD and did not serve Him.”
  • 1 Corinthians 8:5 “For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords.”
  • Monotheism:
  • Isaiah 43:10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me.

Around 2,570 to 2,270 Years Ago, there is a confirmation of atheistic doubting as well as atheistic thinking, mainly by Greek philosophers. However, doubting gods is likely as old as the invention of gods and should destroy the thinking that belief in god(s) is the “default belief”. The Greek word is apistos (a “not” and pistos “faithful,”), thus not faithful or faithless because one is unpersuaded and unconvinced by a god(s) claim. Short Definition: unbelieving, unbeliever, or unbelief.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Expressions of Atheistic Thinking:

  • Around 2,600 years ago, Ajita Kesakambali, ancient Indian philosopher, who is the first known proponent of Indian materialism. ref
  • Around 2,535 to 2,475 years ago, Heraclitus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor or modern Turkey. ref
  • Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, according to The Story of Civilization book series certain African pygmy tribes have no identifiable gods, spirits, or religious beliefs or rituals, and even what burials accrue are without ceremony. ref
  • Around 2,490 to 2,430 years ago, Empedocles, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. ref
  • Around 2,460 to 2,370 years ago, Democritus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher considered to be the “father of modern science” possibly had some disbelief amounting to atheism. ref
  • Around 2,399 years ago or so, Socrates, a famous Greek philosopher was tried for sinfulness by teaching doubt of state gods. ref
  • Around 2,341 to 2,270 years ago, Epicurus, a Greek philosopher known for composing atheistic critics and famously stated, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?” ref

This last expression by Epicurus, seems to be an expression of Axiological Atheism. To understand and utilize value or actually possess “Value Conscious/Consciousness” to both give a strong moral “axiological” argument (the problem of evil) as well as use it to fortify humanism and positive ethical persuasion of human helping and care responsibilities. Because value-blindness gives rise to sociopathic/psychopathic evil.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

While hallucinogens are associated with shamanism, it is alcohol that is associated with paganism.

The Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries Shows in the prehistory series:

Show one: Prehistory: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” the division of labor, power, rights, and recourses.

Show two: Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”

Show tree: Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”

Show four: Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”

Show five: Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”

Show six: Emergence of hierarchy, sexism, slavery, and the new male god dominance: Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves!

Show seven: Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State)

Show eight: Paganism 4,000 years old: Moralistic gods after the rise of Statism and often support Statism/Kings: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism)

Prehistory: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” the division of labor, power, rights, and recourses: VIDEO

Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO

Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO

Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO

Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Pre-Capitalism): VIDEO

Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves: VIEDO

Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State): VIEDO

Paganism 4,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism): VIEDO

I do not hate simply because I challenge and expose myths or lies any more than others being thought of as loving simply because of the protection and hiding from challenge their favored myths or lies.

The truth is best championed in the sunlight of challenge.

An archaeologist once said to me “Damien religion and culture are very different”

My response, So are you saying that was always that way, such as would you say Native Americans’ cultures are separate from their religions? And do you think it always was the way you believe?

I had said that religion was a cultural product. That is still how I see it and there are other archaeologists that think close to me as well. Gods too are the myths of cultures that did not understand science or the world around them, seeing magic/supernatural everywhere.

I personally think there is a goddess and not enough evidence to support a male god at Çatalhöyük but if there was both a male and female god and goddess then I know the kind of gods they were like Proto-Indo-European mythology.

This series idea was addressed in, Anarchist Teaching as Free Public Education or Free Education in the Public: VIDEO

Our 12 video series: Organized Oppression: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of power (9,000-4,000 years ago), is adapted from: The Complete and Concise History of the Sumerians and Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia (7000-2000 BC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szFjxmY7jQA by “History with Cy“

Show #1: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Samarra, Halaf, Ubaid)

Show #2: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Eridu: First City of Power)

Show #3: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Uruk and the First Cities)

Show #4: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (First Kings)

Show #5: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Early Dynastic Period)

Show #6: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (King Lugalzagesi and the First Empire)

Show #7: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Sargon and Akkadian Rule)

Show #8: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Naram-Sin, Post-Akkadian Rule, and the Gutians)

Show #9: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Gudea of Lagash and Utu-hegal)

Show #10: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Third Dynasty of Ur / Neo-Sumerian Empire)

Show #11: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Amorites, Elamites, and the End of an Era)

Show #12: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Aftermath and Legacy of Sumer)

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

The “Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries”

Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ Atheist Leftist @Skepticallefty & I (Damien Marie AtHope) @AthopeMarie (my YouTube & related blog) are working jointly in atheist, antitheist, antireligionist, antifascist, anarchist, socialist, and humanist endeavors in our videos together, generally, every other Saturday.

Why Does Power Bring Responsibility?

Think, how often is it the powerless that start wars, oppress others, or commit genocide? So, I guess the question is to us all, to ask, how can power not carry responsibility in a humanity concept? I know I see the deep ethical responsibility that if there is power their must be a humanistic responsibility of ethical and empathic stewardship of that power. Will I be brave enough to be kind? Will I possess enough courage to be compassionate? Will my valor reach its height of empathy? I as everyone, earns our justified respect by our actions, that are good, ethical, just, protecting, and kind. Do I have enough self-respect to put my love for humanity’s flushing, over being brought down by some of its bad actors? May we all be the ones doing good actions in the world, to help human flourishing.

I create the world I want to live in, striving for flourishing. Which is not a place but a positive potential involvement and promotion; a life of humanist goal precision. To master oneself, also means mastering positive prosocial behaviors needed for human flourishing. I may have lost a god myth as an atheist, but I am happy to tell you, my friend, it is exactly because of that, leaving the mental terrorizer, god belief, that I truly regained my connected ethical as well as kind humanity.

Cory and I will talk about prehistory and theism, addressing the relevance to atheism, anarchism, and socialism.

At the same time as the rise of the male god, 7,000 years ago, there was also the very time there was the rise of violence, war, and clans to kingdoms, then empires, then states. It is all connected back to 7,000 years ago, and it moved across the world.

Cory Johnston: https://damienmarieathope.com/2021/04/cory-johnston-mind-of-a-skeptical-leftist/?v=32aec8db952d  

The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist (YouTube)

Cory Johnston: Mind of a Skeptical Leftist @Skepticallefty

The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist By Cory Johnston: “Promoting critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics by covering current events and talking to a variety of people. Cory Johnston has been thoughtfully talking to people and attempting to promote critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics.” http://anchor.fm/skepticalleft

Cory needs our support. We rise by helping each other.

Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ @Skepticallefty Evidence-based atheist leftist (he/him) Producer, host, and co-host of 4 podcasts @skeptarchy @skpoliticspod and @AthopeMarie

Damien Marie AtHope (“At Hope”) Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist. Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Poet, Philosopher, Advocate, Activist, Psychology, and Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Historian.

Damien is interested in: Freedom, Liberty, Justice, Equality, Ethics, Humanism, Science, Atheism, Antiteism, Antireligionism, Ignosticism, Left-Libertarianism, Anarchism, Socialism, Mutualism, Axiology, Metaphysics, LGBTQI, Philosophy, Advocacy, Activism, Mental Health, Psychology, Archaeology, Social Work, Sexual Rights, Marriage Rights, Woman’s Rights, Gender Rights, Child Rights, Secular Rights, Race Equality, Ageism/Disability Equality, Etc. And a far-leftist, “Anarcho-Humanist.”

I am not a good fit in the atheist movement that is mostly pro-capitalist, I am anti-capitalist. Mostly pro-skeptic, I am a rationalist not valuing skepticism. Mostly pro-agnostic, I am anti-agnostic. Mostly limited to anti-Abrahamic religions, I am an anti-religionist. 

To me, the “male god” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 7,000 years ago, whereas the now favored monotheism “male god” is more like 4,000 years ago or so. To me, the “female goddess” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 11,000-10,000 years ago or so, losing the majority of its once prominence around 2,000 years ago due largely to the now favored monotheism “male god” that grow in prominence after 4,000 years ago or so. 

My Thought on the Evolution of Gods?

Animal protector deities from old totems/spirit animal beliefs come first to me, 13,000/12,000 years ago, then women as deities 11,000/10,000 years ago, then male gods around 7,000/8,000 years ago. Moralistic gods around 5,000/4,000 years ago, and monotheistic gods around 4,000/3,000 years ago. 

Gods?
 
“Animism” is needed to begin supernatural thinking.
“Totemism” is needed for supernatural thinking connecting human actions & related to clan/tribe.
“Shamanism” is needed for supernatural thinking to be controllable/changeable by special persons.
 
Together = Gods/paganism

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope (Said as “At” “Hope”)/(Autodidact Polymath but not good at math):

Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist, Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Jeweler, Poet, “autodidact” Philosopher, schooled in Psychology, and “autodidact” Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Pre-Historian (Knowledgeable in the range of: 1 million to 5,000/4,000 years ago). I am an anarchist socialist politically. Reasons for or Types of Atheism

My Website, My Blog, & Short-writing or Quotes, My YouTube, Twitter: @AthopeMarie, and My Email: damien.marie.athope@gmail.com

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