I'd written this in response to one of Ink's posts in an earlier thread, just wanted to muse a bit more on it...

Am reading a fantasy sci-fi trilogy called 'The Game World' by this young Indian guy called Samit Basu.....(great stuff, but you won't find it on Amazon just yet, its just been published by a major Indian publisher so far).

Anyway, he draws heavily from some ideas of Terry Pratchett's Discworld....and one concept is that there are Gods, many of them in fact, but they operate purely on the Thomas Hardy idea that all living creatures are playthings, and are largely there to be killed for sport of the Gods. The 'worlds' are like gameboards to them, and they entertain themselves by watching how the human-pieces in the game survive (or don't survive) obstacles hurled at them. Their 'grand plan' is to be amused by puny creatures of this world. And they hurl 'unexpected calamities' purely for the entertainment of seeing how humans would cope with them. They watch death, mayhem, large scale wars with the same avid interest in hopes of seeing a good crash plus seeing who win as folks who watch NASCAR. But they are completely indifferent about well-beings of humans -- -- "you are less than amoebas to the Gods", the main characters are cordially informed by one god at one stage.

In fact, they seem to be just slightly nastier versions polytheistic Gods of most ancient beliefs. Supremely powerful, but not necessarily on the side of 'good' or 'evil'. Those Gods, if I recall, could occasionally be cajoled and placated through praise and sacrifice, but were as likely as not to act capricious when they felt like it (one of the standrad lines I recall from 'The Illiad' are "Zeus accepted the sacrifice but shook his head at the request.").

So anyway -- my conjecture is that humans conceive their God/Gods based on their circumstances and environment. And some of those God/Gods appear reprehensible when human society evolves and sensibilities and 'tastes' change.

In fact, I'd argue that all down history, people have rejected the 'Older Gods' who they found unpalatable and exceedingly harsh when a newer and more palatable faith came along. So Meditarranean Gods who were capricious, cruel, lustful, only marginally respected warriors and priests and cared little for anyone else, and were wont to turn maidens into spiders if their pride was offended -- gave way gradually in a changing society to the Christ God who seemed more accessible to the masses, and actually appeared to care for all folks, not just the warriors and high priests.

But again as human society evolves even further, some of the harsher aspects of the Christian God may start sticking in throats a bit, for example -- assigning folks to eternal damnation for relatively trivial reasons. In which case, either he gets replaced by a more palatable option, or he retains his 'name', so to speak, but morphs quite a bit (for e.g., more and more followers start ignoring instructions to put folks to death for various little transgressions) and keeps on generating 'spin-off' groups that significantly modify original teachings (I was very interested to find out the Mormon version of the original Eden and fruit story, for e.g.).

Anyway, all of the above are largely musings (and I do still need to finish my book :)). I'd enjoy hearing others' thoughts (and yes, I do expect the usual suspects to tell me I don't have a clue about Christianity, LoL, etc....)

As a side note, Hinduism seems to be a case where the religion per se was not replaced, but morphed to become very different from original, so that the Vedic Gods (rather like the ancient Meditarranean gods in their capricious and extremely 'human' natures) were superceded by the grander, kinder, and infinitely more 'personal-God' Deities like Vishnu/Krishna, Shiva, or the Great Goddess. Of course, Vedic as well as current deities are still just supposed to be 'aspects of' or 'paths to' the Ultimate Brahmon, but just the fact that the 'paths' changed so much as society changed is quite interesting!

"In fact, I'd argue that all down history, people have rejected the 'Older Gods' who they found unpalatable and exceedingly harsh when a newer and more palatable faith came along"

How then do you account for Einhv and his Norse gods? Is this proof of anti-evolution or just nostalgia?

An interesting muse, I have no time now, just popped in. I will pop back later to see what thoughts your muse has awoken xxx

religions tend to be like the goverment they have. where you have power scattered all over the place then you get many gods who bicker a lot. where you have strong central power then a supremo god takes over. in modern times, equalty is the big thing so religions have to have gods that like everybody and treat them fairly.

Actually as someone who follows "mem theory" I actually DO think religions "evolve" -as all ideas do.

They are passed from person to person and there is competition in which only some survive and become predominant.

Christianity is actually a collection of ideas.

The original Jehovah was just a god like Zeus - the differential was that he claimed to be the god of a specifi tribe and forbade the worship of other gods, like Zeus.

(Zeus could care less if u sacrificed to Jehovah).

Allāhu Akbar

This was the original distinction, which over time became the idea that Zeus didn't exist - what we call monotheism.

The effect of all of this was to create a religion (Judaism, CHristianity and Islam) in which the prime commandment and most important value was to BELEIVE in the right god and not believe in any competing gods.

This was the most important commandment - both in the 10 commandments and from Jesus.

It is a brilliant idea if you consider that it will cause this particular meme to be more competitive than other religions, that don't care what you believe so much.

Judaism was hampered because its rules only applied to it's tribe - god's people.

But once Christianity spread beyond the Jews it has mowed down most of the religions it has come across, with the exception of Islam which shares it's origins.

One thing to recognize about memes such as this is that they are hightly infectious due to their evolution, and that their success does not imply that they actually are good for the well being of their carriers. They have evolved with the prime goal of surviving and spreading, so an adaptation which is good for the meme but bad for the host is a "good" adaptation from the religion's point of view.

Thus the "good" things that a person can do is to sacrifice their lives and fortunes spreading the religion, and if one sacrifices their life to spread the religion one is a "martyr" and a "saint".

Allāhu Akbar :))

This almost supposes that a mem has an independent existence outside of its "host". If they have evolved and been successful, that can only because their host has also been successful. Had the meme's goals been counter to the welfare of the host, then over time such meme-infested hosts would not have been favoured for breeding and so would have died out. As Christianity has patently not died out but has expanded globally, then the worst that could be said about the Christianity meme is that it is not inimical to the well being of its host. It may even be beneficial, even from a worldly perspective.

How then do you account for Einhv and his Norse gods? Is this proof of anti-evolution or just nostalgia?

There will always be an element of 'randomness' even in trends, and people dissatisfied with the current mainstream religions of the day may seek deeper meaning in the (or variations of the) more ancient religions -- in fact blending elemnts of the more ancient and more current religions is often one path of 'evolution/morphing'.

Plus its not always a one-way street. As I was re-reading my lead post, it occurred to me that there have also been examples of temporary 'regressing', if you will, when a religion or sub-sects of a religion have embraced a harsher and more judgemental form of its Deity and doctrines than their predecessors did. We're seeing a bit of that in our current world too.....

Neat post, tip! And spock raised a couple of neat questions too -- lloking forward to more discussions :)

I suggest that the meme's and their hosts typically have a symbiotic relationship. The meme's opportunity to win the competition with other memes would likely depend in part of the success of the host.

Well then the martyr meme, like the suicide disposition, must be abberations and should not be used to characterise what must otherwise be described as a good double act.

Had the meme's goals been counter to the welfare of the host, then over time such meme-infested hosts would not have been favoured for breeding and so would have died out.

Actually this is false - we have plenty of examples in nature of biological parasites, for instance, that thrive through being harmful to their hosts.

The biggest example today would be Islam and it's encouragement of martyrs - the individual may die but each one seems to generate dozens of converts and the religion is doing extremely well

For a starting place on Memes:

<link>

And

Viruses of the Mind

No doubt that the memes that encourage martyrdom etc are not advantageous to the individual host (the individual human) but may well be to the body of humans who share that meme (the state, the religion, etc).

Cannon fodder for the good of the 'greater war' ?