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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Teneb]

I suppose that the earliest humans were irreligious.

as far as we know they were shamanistic.

I meant the very earliest humans. Before any real culture formed.

Still a form of crude shamanism/animism. Unless you mean pre-sapient hominids, in which case they would be as religious as any other primate (which is to say: probably not at all, but hard to tell).

[KittyTac]

I somehow doubt that the very first hominids that could be called sapient had any belief system. By that I mean literally the first generation.

[Reelya]

From a scientific point of view, there isn't going to be a clear "line" anywhere between pre-hominids and hominids. There was nothing special that happened at that generation compared to any other generation.

From a cognitive evolution point of view however, some sort of ritual phenomena probably started growing at some point, perhaps as a group bonding thing. However, it's probably not right to call that the point of "first hominids" because all the things we take to define hominids probably started at quite different times, all gradually.

[Hanslanda]

Fun fact I saw on a nature show. Chimpanzees may 'worship' certain trees or locations. They take turns throwing rocks at the tree til all of them have done it, then move on. Could be the formation of proto-religious rituals.

[smjjames]

I'unno, you might not be able to get away with anything living, depending on how you look at it. There's some radical pacifist groups that consider basically everything alive to be sacred, iirc, so both talbukian gnarldoggo and angler fish would be included. Might have better luck with inanimate/unliving stuff, maybe.

There are sacred places, which tend to be geographical features though unless associated with things people built.

From a scientific point of view, there isn't going to be a clear "line" anywhere between pre-hominids and hominids. There was nothing special that happened at that generation compared to any other generation.

From a cognitive evolution point of view however, some sort of ritual phenomena probably started growing at some point, perhaps as a group bonding thing. However, it's probably not right to call that the point of "first hominids" because all the things we take to define hominids probably started at quite different times, all gradually.

Fun fact I saw on a nature show. Chimpanzees may 'worship' certain trees or locations. They take turns throwing rocks at the tree til all of them have done it, then move on. Could be the formation of proto-religious rituals.

Yeah, theres pretty good evidence of proto-culture and proto-religion among some non-human primates, so, theres probably no clear line anywhere as it would have been a gradual development.

[RAM]

There really isn't any way to tell if lions or ants are doing some sort of "divine mandate" thing with their government... Not to mention that trees likely have some sort of zen thing going on and bacteria have that whole "for the swarm" deal that is popular amongst grey goos...

[Criptfeind]

The idea of a pervasive supernatural force that draws connections between cause and effect and like and like even when physical phenomenon doesn't show any such connection does sound like the sort of religion that pretty much everyone subscribes to at least a little bit and comes up on their own (more so then intelligent animal gods I think) and so is probably the answer to RAMs theory. Sadly, since the reason why people think this is pretty easy to explain (drawing connections is useful, even if you draw a lot of bad ones the ability to draw a lot is still worthwhile.) that seems to be a flaw in the logic of it being the most likely to be accurate.

[RAM]

That's fair. Guess I was focusing too closely on organised religion. Still, as far as collective/shared religions go...

[redwallzyl]

I'unno, you might not be able to get away with anything living, depending on how you look at it. There's some radical pacifist groups that consider basically everything alive to be sacred, iirc, so both talbukian gnarldoggo and angler fish would be included. Might have better luck with inanimate/unliving stuff, maybe.

There are sacred places, which tend to be geographical features though unless associated with things people built.

From a scientific point of view, there isn't going to be a clear "line" anywhere between pre-hominids and hominids. There was nothing special that happened at that generation compared to any other generation.

From a cognitive evolution point of view however, some sort of ritual phenomena probably started growing at some point, perhaps as a group bonding thing. However, it's probably not right to call that the point of "first hominids" because all the things we take to define hominids probably started at quite different times, all gradually.

Fun fact I saw on a nature show. Chimpanzees may 'worship' certain trees or locations. They take turns throwing rocks at the tree til all of them have done it, then move on. Could be the formation of proto-religious rituals.

Yeah, theres pretty good evidence of proto-culture and proto-religion among some non-human primates, so, theres probably no clear line anywhere as it would have been a gradual development.

There was this really interesting documentary that I watched about Baboons. The Baboons were fairly normal Baboons, that is to say dicks. Then all the assholeish Baboons at the top of the social ladder died due to disease. The whole culture of the group permanently changed. Suddenly they were all nice to each other and even when new Baboons came in to the group acting like assholes they now nice Baboons reformed them to be nice as well. So yes, primates do have massive behavioral influences from what you might call proto-culture. As a side note this is well known in the biological anthropological community at this point. That behavior is heavily effected by past influences even down generations. I had a professor who wanted to try and find some monkeys free from human behavioral influences in an uninhabited part of the Amazon until he realized that there had been people living their in the far past.

[hops]

"this one dog in Talbuk with a gnarly toe"

Dude, have you ever been to Thailand? We worship any animals with interesting features.

[Descan]

That does explain your cult.

[Rolan7]

That does explain your cult.

This

[Rolan7]

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[Egan_BW]

It's our messed-up climate that makes the storm so bad, so you probably should get used to getting hit by at least one every year.

It doesn't make sense to say that it's just nature when it is, in fact, partially us humans' fault.

[Rolan7]

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