Evidence for religion

[andyhinch]

Also proving that Jesus ever existed, that Moses ever existed, Abraham, Noah, etc. There is hard evidence that certain historical figures existed in Rome, Greece, Macedonia, Crete, Egypt, Babylon and Assyria from the same eras as the Bible stories. But not a shred of proper evidence of the people described in the Bible.

A cynic might be of the opinion it’s all made up.

 

[ZenHalfTimeCrock]

Also proving that Jesus ever existed, that Moses ever existed, Abraham, Noah, etc. There is hard evidence that many historical figures existed in Rome, Greece, Macedonia, Crete, Egypt, Babylon and Assyria from the same eras as the Bible stories. But not a shred of proper evidence of the people described in the Bible.

I would say that you are on safe ground when it comes to most of the content of this post.

For example, Michael Coogan states in The Old Testament: A Very Short Introduction that 'not a single person or event known from the books of Genesis through 2 Samuel is mentioned in a contemporaneous nonbiblical text.' To that I would add that the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (dating from approximately 2100 BCE) has its own Flood narrative, which strikingly resembles the Biblical story of Noah. But the named protagonists are completely different.

Just to comment briefly on the historicity of some other religious figures, here are a few pointers.

Jesus - the relevant text here is possibly Maurice Casey Jesus : Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths. Casey was an independent historian (not a God-botherer in other words) who - as far as I know - still stridently affirmed the historical existence of Jesus. Not long before his death he got embroiled in some very bitter and acrimonious online feuds with several characters who had written material denying this. The remnants of that feud should still be out there somewhere in cyberspace. I have the book but haven't read it yet.

Muhammad - there is a fair bit of recent non-Muslim evidence that suggests - contra Cook and Crone and their infamous Hagarism thesis - that the Qur'an was written in Arabia at around the time that Muslims claim. The evidence for the historicity of Muhammad (for which there is, from memory, just about enough) is laid out in works like Fred Donner's Muhammad and the Believers, Stephen Shoemaker's The Death of a Prophet and Robert G. Hoyland Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam.

There are certain to be reviews of these publications online if anyone is curious.

When one steps outside the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions, things aren't much different. Let's take the Buddha, for example.

As far as the Pali Canon (the earliest compendium of Buddhist writing) is concerned, scholars are divided over whether it contains the words of the Buddha. Richard Gombrich has argued that some of the jokes in the Nikayas (or 'sayings') may go back to the Buddha himself, for ‘…are jokes ever made by committees?’ He also thinks that one of the main reasons for the creation of the monastic sangha was to preserve the Buddha’s words. Other scholars are more sceptical. As the earliest texts were not written down until long after the Buddha’s death we have no way of knowing whether the content was redacted in the intervening period.

But is this debate really important? Edward Conze didn’t think so. He wrote that ‘the existence of Gotama…is a matter of little importance to Buddhist faith.’ More recently, Paul Williams has stated that if someone finally proved that the Buddha never existed that this would not make much difference. Why? Because it is the Dhamma (his teaching, the truth about the way things are) that liberates beings not the Buddha himself. What is important is that the Dhamma (which includes claims like the fact life is inherently unstable and insecure, that unsatisfactory experience is inevitable because of this, and that what we take to be a substantial self does not exist etc.) is true.

I gather that it's pretty much the same when it comes to characters like Confucius, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu and other luminaries in the Chinese philosophical/contemplative traditions. From what I recall, they probably all did exist but it's more the case that texts like the Analects and the Tao Te Ching show evidence - to a greater or lesser degree - of having been shaped by a guiding intelligence during the period of their formation.

It's worth mentioning these characters, though, to remind some of the contributors to this thread of the following:

1. There is actually no scholarly consensus when it comes to the definition of what religion consists of, and no actual word for it in some cultures.

2. There is also some dispute about the origins of the word ‘religion’,though it seems to derive from a Latin word meaning ‘to bind’. In the way we currently understand the term in the West, it emerged as an object for study in the nineteenth century. There is also no precise equivalent of the word ‘religion’ in many languages. For example, in Sanskrit, the nearest we get is a word like ‘darsana’, which can be translated as a ‘way of seeing [reality]'. But in ancient India, this term encompassed what we would nowadays label as non-theistic or atheistic 'ways of seeing'. Your starter for ten there would include the 'Carvaka' and 'Lokayata' schools of Indian philosophy, as well as the sceptics (a group who devoted themselves to perpetual 'fence sitting' on all matters of metaphysical importance), the Jains and the Buddhists.

Just thought it might be worth drawing attention to this, as online discussions of 'God' and 'religion' tend to omit the very different conceptions of Ultimate Reality that abound in the major non-Western traditions. To take Buddhism as an example again, terms like 'sunyata', 'Tathagatha-garbha', 'alaya-vijnana' and 'tathata' take us a long way from Western notions of God, as does this quotation from the Madhyamika Shastra :

'It cannot be called void or not void, Or both or neither; But in order to point it out, It is called “the Void".'

And it's the same in Taoism when it comes to the ineffable notion of Tao.

Of course, these terms could be referring to what amounts to a load of old bollocks too. though the great thing about Buddhist and Taoist writing is that this possibility is actually entertained by some of the more spiritually anarchistic authors of the texts themselves, with Chuang Tzu, Dogen and Nagarjuna perhaps being the prime examples. The modern Zen writer Brad Warner makes the same kind of move with one of his book titles: 'There is no God and he is always with you'.

 

[Grassland Blue]

Any proof been posted yet?

When we pipped the rags to the title in 2012
I thought,"There IS a god!".
Is that considered proof?

 

[Elbow beards]

When we pipped the rags to the title in 2012
I thought,"There IS a god!".
Is that considered proof?

No cos the c*nts won it the year after.

 

[feelymcfeel]

I'll stick with my magic underpants and free spaceship ride to Kolob when I die, thanks.

 

[arfurclue]

What? You didn't understand what he said?

Let me break it down for you;

jfejfspoafasrf;cjaeflf;ihrvbraoifjaerbcrlnuc,opcjraei obfcasp,ojf uarbfAW,XK eab,[acrpl cra e,f obdar mioarugbnxep,o crbpa ufb ;oixfper,ogkeri hbx r;ouvó;áxv'xlc;OIS HVF; oisagjc'paenate[,povn aribg'oan cgasru f; ubnasj o'fas mgae;ingce pf;isbfcm aei and a giant pigeon
g[w0maji eCPUBGSM'PGJAE' GIAE PJG [OAH GIONASDVLCKP'[ oj fip IJ 'PRTP G HJDSRCV PBAONBC;O AINGC JjpoIOAOIGH AEPRG ADOI IJjioso ihs righsd;g hadio; h

and they all lived happily ever after. Get it now?

Here. Maybe I understand why my words might seem like gibberish to you, more than you do ? Like, have you ever studied a martial art along the lines of, eg, wing chun, tai chi, Brazilian jui jitsu,, aikido? In these arts, you begin to learn how to 'listen,' By listen, I mean that you come to know how to feel the force and direction of how another might move..and move with this ? Not your thing? Ok. Fair enough. Beyond this, I came to find that there was a difference between egotism and wholeness. Given that I live abroad, I don't get to get to fully appreciate the wild beauty of how City play. I only have tv pictures.

 

[Metal Biker]

Here. Maybe I understand why my words might seem like gibberish to you, more than you do ? Like, have you ever studied a martial art along the lines of, eg, wing chun, tai chi, Brazilian jui jitsu,, aikido? In these arts, you begin to learn how to 'listen,' By listen, I mean that you come to know how to feel the force and direction of how another might move..and move with this ? Not your thing? Ok. Fair enough. Beyond this, I came to find that there was a difference between egotism and wholeness. Given that I live abroad, I don't get to get to fully appreciate the wild beauty of how City play. I only have tv pictures.

Yes, I studied Bujinkan Ninjutsu and dabbled in Wing Chun for a while.

And I really have no idea what point you're making. Comparing religion with martial arts discipline? Really? You're mostly coming across as pretentious.

 

[arfurclue]

Yes, I studied Bujinkan Ninjutsu and dabbled in Wing Chun for a while.

And I really have no idea what point you're making. Comparing religion with martial arts discipline? Really? You're mostly coming across as pretentious.

tea ceremonies, flower arranging, archery, martial arts, dance, poetry, cooking, circle walking - just off the top my head, all stuff used by 'religions'...basically anything can be used - but, yeah, that will seem pretentious for ego. That's just the way it is. Anyhow, enjoy.ps if you learned sticking hands in wing chun, what was it teaching you?

 

[denislawsbackheel]

To use a wanksock?

 

[andyhinch]

No cos the c*nts won it the year after.

The Dippers winning in 2014 made me stop believing.