oldest religion !!

AnnaG

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Not at all, but in spite of you, that man was grateful to God Most Gracious, when he lifted his face up to heaven and showed gratitude.
Yeah, people like to blame gods for stuff they do themselves a lot.

In spite of you, all people (including the atheist) in danger supplicate their God: the Creator Most Gracious and they forget at that time about all their atheism and disbelief.
How would you know? I've been in danger a few times, but I never supplicated any god. So I guess this means only atheists and believers supplicate gods. I'm too busy avoiding danger to stop and beg for help from something that doesn't give a ferret's fart about humans. If I had the time to ask someone for help, it'd be someone that would actually DO something to help.


(And when distress touches you at the sea, [all] those to whom you pray will be forgotten, except Him;
[In distress, you supplicate God alone, with His name in your language, and forget about all your false gods and idols]
Speak for yourself.

but when He bought you safe to the land, you turned away [being averse and return to your idolatry];
Sorry, but I don't rely on gods and other stuff that has no interest in me. But, you go ahead if you think you'd get any help.

surely, man is ever unthankful.)
Yeah, men can be ungrateful twits sometimes, I agree.


The above between brackets is the explanation of the Quran 17: 67

وَإِذَا مَسَّكُمُ الْضُّرُّفِي الْبَحْرِ ضَلَّ مَن تَدْعُونَ إِلاَّ إِيَّاهُ فَلَمَّا نَجَّاكُمْ إِلَىالْبَرِّ أَعْرَضْتُمْ وَكَانَ الإِنْسَانُ كَفُورًا


[/QUOTE]
 

Downhome_Woman

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Not at all, but in spite of you, that man was grateful to God Most Gracious, when he lifted his face up to heaven and showed gratitude.






In spite of you, all people (including the atheist) in danger supplicate their God: the Creator Most Gracious and they forget at that time about all their atheism and disbelief.


(And when distress touches you at the sea, [all] those to whom you pray will be forgotten, except Him;

[In distress, you supplicate God alone, with His name in your language, and forget about all your false gods and idols]

but when He bought you safe to the land, you turned away [being averse and return to your idolatry];

surely, man is ever unthankful.)


The above between brackets is the explanation of the Quran 17: 67

وَإِذَا مَسَّكُمُ الْضُّرُّفِي الْبَحْرِ ضَلَّ مَن تَدْعُونَ إِلاَّ إِيَّاهُ فَلَمَّا نَجَّاكُمْ إِلَىالْبَرِّ أَعْرَضْتُمْ وَكَانَ الإِنْسَانُ كَفُورًا


You know what? I'm not a Christian even though I was raised as one. I also have Jewish and Muslim ancestors, but me? I KNOW there is something bigger than me? Doesn't 'take care if me'? Doubt it -- but I still feel its existence. Do I 'worshiped' it? Not in a 'churchly way, but yes, I worshiped whatever caused me to be created.
But I WILL tell you this, Ein Nassir, if you are claiming that the 'deity' that all these athletes etc are raising their eyes to is the same one I adore - and is your Allah?
NO WAY MAN!
Why?
1: Yes, your 'Allah' is merciful - even though it may be a forced conversion - to people that worship him- . One would think that an almighty deity would actually want people the believe in him - rather than be forced to believe, through all sorts of 'Djimmi' ways.

2: I always thought it strange that God - oops - ALLAH was beyond laking mistakes - yet mere male mortals seemed to have decided that the female gender is somehow flawed - if left uncovered it 'makes' the male have all sorts of nasty thoughts and therefore should be covered.
Now to my Allah given brain, that tells me that 'men' have decided that Allah's creation (women) is imperfect.
How can you as a man who claims to love Allah, reconcile yourself with the tradition that makes women cover and be less than men? Even
Mohammad the man enjoined both genders to dress modestly - funny how I see a lot of Muslim couples where the woman is wearing hijab and manteaux but the man is in a very stylish t-shirt and board shorts - with bleached and waxed hair. Yup - really modest. Even seen a woman suffer heat stroke while dressed up in hijab and manteaux? I did - it wasn't pretty since she was pregnant - and all the male members of her family in shorts and short sleeved shirts ....
I would reject your Allah if only for the fact that he doesn't do anything about the misogynist nasties in his entourage ....Hey - nut maybe you believe that women are 'less', weaker' than you ....
 

Spade

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Elephants mourn their dead. I have no doubt their religion predates any of man's myth making. And, their Gawd would be a pachyderm, not a puny simian biped!
 

Cliffy

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Elephants mourn their dead. I have no doubt their religion predates any of man's myth making. And, their Gawd would be a pachyderm, not a puny simian biped!
What or who do Blue Whales worship? How about crocodiles? They are some of the oldest critters. Or sharks... Oh - cockroaches! Man is new comer to this planet. His gods are insignificant to the whale and the pachyderm. Perhaps we should take our inflated egos and go play in an insignificant sandbox.
 

SirJosephPorter

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What or who do Blue Whales worship? How about crocodiles? They are some of the oldest critters. Or sharks... Oh - cockroaches! Man is new comer to this planet. His gods are insignificant to the whale and the pachyderm. Perhaps we should take our inflated egos and go play in an insignificant sandbox.


The animals you mentioned (except whales, do not have enough intelligence to mourn their dead. As to whales, they may have the intelligence, but they live in water. There is no way they can come in contact with the bones of their ancestors etc.

Elephants, however, do have the intelligence, and they come into contact with the bones of their ancestors or their relatives. And they definitely have a ritual concerning the bones. They sniff at the bones; they walk around in circle around them etc. Research has also shown that an elephant won’t do it for just any bones he comes across, but only certain ones (presumably belonging to his ancestors or his relatives). Elephants could reasonably be said to possess rudiments of religion.
 

Downhome_Woman

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The animals you mentioned (except whales, do not have enough intelligence to mourn their dead. As to whales, they may have the intelligence, but they live in water. There is no way they can come in contact with the bones of their ancestors etc.

Elephants, however, do have the intelligence, and they come into contact with the bones of their ancestors or their relatives. And they definitely have a ritual concerning the bones. They sniff at the bones; they walk around in circle around them etc. Research has also shown that an elephant won’t do it for just any bones he comes across, but only certain ones (presumably belonging to his ancestors or his relatives). Elephants could reasonably be said to possess rudiments of religion.
But 'mourning' has nothing to do with 'intelligence' and everything to do with feeling. animals will mourn the loss of a mate, the death of offspring. I understand the intelligence of elephants and I've read about their rituals, but one can mourn without ritual.
If you are saying that most animals have less intelligence and therefore have not evolved to the point that they ritualize their grief - I might agree with you - but to claim that because they have less intelligence they don't mourn? Apples and oranges.
 

Ron in Regina

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The animals you mentioned (except whales, do not have enough intelligence to mourn their dead. As to whales, they may have the intelligence, but they live in water. There is no way they can come in contact with the bones of their ancestors etc.

Elephants, however, do have the intelligence, and they come into contact with the bones of their ancestors or their relatives. And they definitely have a ritual concerning the bones. They sniff at the bones; they walk around in circle around them etc. Research has also shown that an elephant won’t do it for just any bones he comes across, but only certain ones (presumably belonging to his ancestors or his relatives). Elephants could reasonably be said to possess rudiments of religion.


Wow, I kind'a feel sad for you in that you haven't (it seems) had a relationship
with an animal (other than the Human animal) close enough to see and feel
their grief at the passing of someone in their lives. Mourning isn't just a Human
experience SirJoe.

Grief in animals: It's arrogant to think we're the only animals who mourn | Psychology Today
 

SirJosephPorter

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Wow, I kind'a feel sad for you in that you haven't (it seems) had a relationship
with an animal (other than the Human animal) close enough to see and feel
their grief at the passing of someone in their lives. Mourning isn't just a Human
experience SirJoe.

Grief in animals: It's arrogant to think we're the only animals who mourn | Psychology Today

I never said it was, Ron (and DHW). Many animals exhibit grief, even in the wild. I remember seeing a footage where a rhino lost her baby through carelessness, vultures picked at the baby and ate it. She was plainly distraught, it took her a long time to get back to normal.

Also, they say that a lioness will search for her cub for up to three days after he goes missing. So grief is quite common in animal kingdom, at least among mammals.

What we are talking about here is the ritual surrounding death, not grief surrounding death. Let a year pass and that rhino or that lioness has forgotten all about the dead cub.

But if an elephant comes across the bones of his dead relatives or dead ancestors years later, he will still perform the ritual. That shows rudiments of religion.

Don't confuse grief (a short term phenomena, which many animals are capable of) with ritual (a long term phenomena, which requires intelligence).

But 'mourning' has nothing to do with 'intelligence' and everything to do with feeling. animals will mourn the loss of a mate, the death of offspring. I understand the intelligence of elephants and I've read about their rituals, but one can mourn without ritual.
If you are saying that most animals have less intelligence and therefore have not evolved to the point that they ritualize their grief - I might agree with you - but to claim that because they have less intelligence they don't mourn? Apples and oranges.

We are on the same page here, DHW. Grief is a short term phenomena; religion, ritual is long term phenomena.
 

darkbeaver

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But 'mourning' has nothing to do with 'intelligence' and everything to do with feeling. animals will mourn the loss of a mate, the death of offspring. I understand the intelligence of elephants and I've read about their rituals, but one can mourn without ritual.
If you are saying that most animals have less intelligence and therefore have not evolved to the point that they ritualize their grief - I might agree with you - but to claim that because they have less intelligence they don't mourn? Apples and oranges.

Mourning has everything to do with intelligence as does compassion empathy and love, dosen't it? Some say that love is the apex of intelligence. The ultimate exercise of consciousness. But if we see intelligence only in terms of machine logic then maybe not.:smile:
 

Downhome_Woman

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Mourning has everything to do with intelligence as does compassion empathy and love, dosen't it? Some say that love is the apex of intelligence. The ultimate exercise of consciousness. But if we see intelligence only in terms of machine logic then maybe not.:smile:
You have something there!
:)
 

SirJosephPorter

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Mourning has everything to do with intelligence as does compassion empathy and love, dosen't it? Some say that love is the apex of intelligence. The ultimate exercise of consciousness. But if we see intelligence only in terms of machine logic then maybe not.:smile:

Mourning doesn’t really have anything to do with intelligence, most mammals mourn the death of their young. That comes from the instinct of survival of the species, which is hard wired into every species.

However, most animals do not mourn the death of adults. A bear male or female, will not mourn the death of another adult bear. Even where animals live in a pack, (wolves, hyenas, zebras etc.) there is no evidence that one member of the pack will mourn the death of another member. There may be some temporary grief if he sees the other member die, but it quickly passes away.

Elephants do mourn the death of adults and they perform some sort of ritual around the bones, even years after their death. That is the difference.

As to compassion, empathy and love, if you are talking of what a female displays towards her young cubs, that is hard wired into every species (particularly mammals) and is not by itself a sign of intelligence. It is a sign of the instinct of survival of the species.
 

AnnaG

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The animals you mentioned (except whales, do not have enough intelligence to mourn their dead. As to whales, they may have the intelligence, but they live in water. There is no way they can come in contact with the bones of their ancestors etc.
WOW! The immensity of your ignorance is stupefying. Cetaceans have terrific memory retention and a lot of them travel in pods.
Or do you mean that somehow they all crawl up on land to die so the surviving ones can't see their bones?
Owls aren't particularly intelligent but their mates come back several times to the places of their mates' deaths and stay there hooting for hours.
Perhaps if you'd quit paying attention to the Reader's Digest version of the animal kingdom and actually get off your butt and take a hike or at least read about the psychologies of animals ....

Mourning doesn’t really have anything to do with intelligence, most mammals mourn the death of their young. That comes from the instinct of survival of the species, which is hard wired into every species.
To a point. Adult males will kill the young of the same species though and that has little to do with the survival of the species and a lot to do with the survival of specific genetics.

However, most animals do not mourn the death of adults. A bear male or female, will not mourn the death of another adult bear. Even where animals live in a pack, (wolves, hyenas, zebras etc.) there is no evidence that one member of the pack will mourn the death of another member. There may be some temporary grief if he sees the other member die, but it quickly passes away.
So how does this support your claim that animals don't have the intelligence to mourn?

Elephants do mourn the death of adults and they perform some sort of ritual around the bones, even years after their death. That is the difference.
So elephants are animals?

As to compassion, empathy and love, if you are talking of what a female displays towards her young cubs, that is hard wired into every species (particularly mammals) and is not by itself a sign of intelligence. It is a sign of the instinct of survival of the species.
So?
 

Cliffy

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I think the problem here is that man can only imagine that intelligence is some how relative to his own concept of what intelligence is. To me it is just an ego trip, because intelligence has nothing to do with how humans think, particularly of their own self importance. For example, humans of western persuasion have great difficulty think of the Earth as an intelligent entity, and yet many cultures, including our own indigenous populations have great reverence for the intelligence of Mother Earth/Gaia.

Intelligence is relative to the species and is not dependent on whether or not we recognize it. I think the problem lies in our own restricted definition, not in what intelligence is. If we were intelligent enough to communicate with porpoises, for example, we may discover how limited our intelligence actually is.
 

eanassir

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Mourning has everything to do with intelligence as does compassion empathy and love, dosen't it? Some say that love is the apex of intelligence. The ultimate exercise of consciousness. But if we see intelligence only in terms of machine logic then maybe not.:smile:

Compassion and mourning certainly indicate the deep feeling and the intelligence.
Pigeons have feelings and reaction more than mourning: the mate will abstain from eating (not always of course) and may die after its mate. Anyhow, the usual sound of the pigeon is like the crying and waling, and we cannot say it is mourning. But it has been observed that the mate may die after being depressed from sadness; this is following the death of his mate.

Wolves also: there is a story by the founder of the Scout movement: I think his name was Poul? He told a true story of a wolf in America; its title: Lupo the king of wolves: I read its Arabic translation: a clever wolf, of large size, the chief of the herd of wolves ... the farmers in America could not seize him, until after catching its young white she-wolf:smile: ... and he was out of his wisdom ... so they trapped him and he found his mate dead ... abstained from eating then died :-(

So how could you know Sir (I mean SJP :smile:) that such animals do not mourn ? Haven't you ever noticed the mourning of the cat for her lost young catty

So I confirm DB; and I noticed once the mourning of the bulbul or the nightingale for their young eaten by a cat; and they : the parents started shouting for one hour or so.

Here I remembered His saying - be glorified - in the Quran 6: 38

وَمَا مِن دَآبَّةٍ فِي الأَرْضِ وَلاَ طَائِرٍ يَطِيرُ بِجَنَاحَيْهِ إِلاَّ أُمَمٌ أَمْثَالُكُم مَّا فَرَّطْنَا فِي الكِتَابِ مِن شَيْءٍ ثُمَّ إِلَى رَبِّهِمْ يُحْشَرُونَ


The explanation:
(No beast is there [moving] on earth, nor any bird flying with wings, but are communities like yourselves

We have neglected nothing in the Scripture [: the Quran and other heavenly scriptures],

then they shall be gathered together to their Lord.)
 
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jackie cox

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when king of hungary cortez and his bishop landau, for the none nobility, landed in the mayan empire they lived among the natives trying to decipher their literacy, more advanced than theirs, the mayans had constructed the worlds first known binary computer, rows of knotted ropes with one larger knot to turn one knot in the next row when the first row of knotts were counted once, it could be reversed and used for subtracting, they had hundreds, they were electroplating gold onto copper castings, cortez and landau watched them for a few months trying to learn the language, they had thousands of books, on papyrus, their pyramids were actronomical observatories, they knew the earth moon, mars and saturn orbited the sun, and thought the great spirit had something to do with the sun. after some time cortez and landua decided they were guilty of heracy since moses stated the earth was the center of the universe and moon, sun and tiny stars rotated around the earth daily, and they were nothing but supersticous heathens, so they murdered all the scientists, burned all but a few books, and the computers were burned as well. Their year was measured by 18 months with 20 days each and a 5 day festival dedicated to the great spirit each year and sometimes more than 5 days. Over the milenuem they had constructed a really long calender and a short one, the long one thousands of years old ststes something will happen around perhaps 2012, although no one has the code and only one computer was preserved, its at the vatican archieves. There were more than 10,000 tribes in North America. When an exceptional kid cmae into being he was sent into the culture of the mayan, one dedicated to the discovery of science. It would take the judeo-christian culture another 500 years to discover electrical energy, amd 700 for the binary computer. Given the level of their intellect and the long count computer, they are without doubt the oldest culture whose recordings survived. The believed the " Inuit " or the eskimos to be the people who survived the last great ice age. by living in ice homes and eatin blubber, from th coldbloodied creatures of the seas, and possibly the polar bear, we really don't have the answers, and academia is continually being disproven. the judeo-christians said it was bull for years and ultimately stated africa to be the beginning of man with a few bones to prove their theories. Now the seabottom core samples have revealed the true cycle of earth, consistant as far down as the core samples are readable. the cycle is, the earth goes for hundreds of millions of years in ice ages, followed by a few 10's of millions in warm times, this cycle has repeated itself some 6 times. the african theory is awash in axiomic suppositions. the native americans are likely the first civilized tribal communities on actual record, although they were discovered by the nobiity of europe less around 700 years ago, the vikings or germanic tribes, much earlier. the truth was not recorded with instrumentation which stood the test of time, other than the native american artifacts, which in reality outweigh any other stated evidence. The dead sea scrolls, upon discovery were examined by forensic scientists , who promptly declared them to be fraudlent, then some israeli experts denied these studies and the newsmedia took their words as fact, (lies)