Originally I posed this question to chris but he didn't reply - but you are taking the same path so I will point it your direction ......
What joy
So you are saying that religion is an abstraction from the social circumstances of a primary human need - and the abstraction, idealisation, is actually abstracted from a social structure that is very corporeal in nature.
Think for a second about early life. The majority of animals around you would leave you dead - but then you didn't understand what 'dead' was. Things went on around you that you couldn't explain. When the ground shook, what was it? When fire, (something you didn't understand but knew hurt like a bitch), spewed forth from a hole in a big rock, (volcano). When bolts of electricity struck trees and golfers, when seas and rivers rose and resulted once more in that death you didn't understand. When you sat down and grunted at one of these people who didn't grunt back - and you didn't know why. Why is uguwoogu not grunting? Anyone's guess.
Fuck me, what a life that would have been. Even now, some thousand upon thousands of years later and we find most people dropped off in the middle of nowhere don't actually make it out alive. They don't know what to eat, what animals to avoid, what paths to take. Why, I admire the few tribal people left running round the jungle while their penis dangles freely. How could any man let his wiggly hang loose when his neighbours are pythons and tarantulas? It really is quite something.
When it comes to communication, how does one of these people tell his buddies that snakes bite and leave you unable to grunt? How does one tell his buddies that the ground shook and left 30 of his other buddies dead and underground?
Now I will attempt, (although the basis of this I cannot guarantee obviously), to give an early perspective of things.
It is one man's duty to explain the sun to another. He starts by informing the man that the sun is very very powerful, (which as we all know is quite undeniable). He knows that during the day the sun is there, no man can look at it, and it can cause some serious pain when it wants to, (sucks living without 50 block). This man also knows that when the sun isn't there, life can be decidedly worse - rain, storms, cold etc etc.
We almost have a two edged sword - do you root for the sun, which burns but generally helps life grow, or the rain and cold, which freeze or soak your nuts off but generally help things grow. You end up with a good and bad for each. I like the sun because it provides warmth and saves me on heating bills. I hate the sun because I get burned red raw and get heat stroke when I over do it.
These are gods. Something given a human persona, a human form that is sometimes nicer than pie, and sometimes quite disastrous.
Then, following the traditions of the majority of ancient cultures you have animal life. Again, how would you explain to a buddy that elephants are nice and tigers eat your bits? By personalising them. The all mighty elephant god - power, generally pleasant - slow to anger. Tigers - fearsome, evil.. don't go near one unless you're a christian that takes the biblical quote "preach to all of gods creatures" seriously.
This man then teaches his children - by use of stories, (an early version of old wives tales). Believe it or not, but they work, (well, I've personally never seen the benefit of rubbing butter on your testicles when you have an itch, but still) - and that is their very purpose. They are easy ways for what we will call the 'uneducated', (and don't take that word wrongly, we really cannot dispute that ancient people were 'uneducated' with respects to the works of the universe), to explain how things work - not why they work, but how. Tigers hurt, deadly night shade leaves you unable to grunt, move or anything else etc.
Humans can certainly be quite greedy. A man stands there wanting the bulk of the meat for himself. Animals do this very thing - but with them it's generally settled by 'stepping outside'. Humans learnt that their greed, their nature, was undoubtedly the same as the big being in the sky, or whatever they had elevated to supreme status. Surely that is logical, (for an early people), Not only them but animals showed this same trait - surely any supreme being would be the same. And thus sacrifice was born to give this supreme being it's fair share. This evolved whereby when shit got bad, (earthquakes/bad weather etc), it was a sign that this supreme being wasn't getting enough. And so on.
We can see a certain trend with ancient cultures. Indians worshipped elephant and tiger gods, South American gods were snakes, Egyptian gods were crocodiles, vultures and jackals. Mankind simply elevated that which was more powerful then they. Some, like elephants, were relatively friendly whereas some were outright mean. Rabbits were a symbol of fertility, rats were a symbol of doom.
Some eventually considered that gods would look like they do and so many human-like gods were born. A god for war, sex, thunder, vanilla ice cream. Some eventually considered that any powerful enough being could do all those tasks in one - and so all those gods were amalgamated into one being, (elohim - still left as a plural). Some then went further and said god would
really be like them and look like a hippy rabbi.
gods, ghosts, goblins, mermaids and whatever else you can think of are a way to provide answers that generally work and certainly back in the day helped individual survival. A need of society? Absolutely.
So I am asking you to discuss what the general principles are that one can ascertain that one social structure is clearly an abstraction of another?
That cultures spread stories, beliefs, knowledge and ideas is undeniable. The most popular current form would be movies most probably. Before some Japanese dude got into it, we had no ideas concerning godzilla - and yet now he is a household name. As cultures spread, they would spread those stories which would then be incorporated into the stories of other cultures.
From a biblical perspective, Abraham was Sumerian - a man who grew up listening to all the Sumerian stories. As he travelled, and founded a new people, those stories would have travelled along with him - being shared and ammended to fit with the current society. Utnapishtim and Noah are the same, just slightly ammended to fit a new people. Adamu, the serpent and the fruit of enlightenent and knowledge became Eden, (a Sumerian word), Adam and Eve, the serpent and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Sargon became Moses etc etc. Some few thousand years later it was time for a new belief - a new human ideal, and yet was that even original? (the answer to that is clearly not), and yet it served the current purpose which was much needed forgiveness. In a way it made it ok to die, to be killed. To have a god die just like everyone else at the time was dying, and say it was ok, is a tremendous lift to society.
If there was a god and it came down puffing on a ciggy and drinking Stella, I would feel more comfortable in myself, would feel that what I did was acceptable while human opinion became irrelevant.
Humans are like that. My daughter still looks at me for acceptance to do something from an older persons perspective I would probably look at dubiously. Do I like her bouncing around like a lunatic on a trampoline? It sometimes worries me, but my acceptance means the world to her - and I can confidently state that acceptance means the world to all of us. We undergo all kinds of things to get acceptance - not just from parents but from friends, enemies, colleagues. Hell, I started smoking because at some stage I sought acceptance from my peers. You probably took your would be wife to meet your parents to receive acceptance for your choices in life. The ultimate acceptance: you can come to heaven/you are forgiven - created specifically because that is what humans need the most. Funny thing is it's not even unique to humans, but every social species. Even my dog seeks acceptance - it is the most important thing any social animal can get.
I suppose this in itself is a minor reason for the shared stories in ancient texts. Easier acceptance. If you come along and completely change a belief system, you wont win many friends - if you adapt that which is already accepted, you can't lose.
Why do you think christmas, easter, pentecost have worked so well? Because they were adaptations of already accepted holidays.
My apologies for typing a lot.
