did dinosaurs worship a god?

[vinphetamin]

No! I don't think so------So why do so many people waste their lives doing just that?

[Hippy]

Vinphetamin, I like your reasoning and agree with your conclusion, but the implied question "Why DO humans do the god thing" is I think based on a few simple principles that you can observe for yourself.

Humans are not dinosaurs, or any other animal and assume, because they can think and talk &ct., they must be "special". They exhibit the same territorial and tribal dominance behaviour as other animals, but with much more destructive weapons. Their feeling of "specialness" makes them think that they were "created" in a different way, and have a wholly different destiny than the rest of the natural world. This, of course is a self-delusional confidence trick.

It is part of the human psyche to believe that things are just about to get better. In many ways this phenomenon is good as it helps us get along without too much despair, but when religion enters the equation it is used to "confirm" those thoughts of a wonderful God eventually taking us to a glorious yet indefinable never-never land.

Finally, religion has been used since prehistoric times as a means of social control. The rulers use religion and the guilt response to keep the population in tune with the thoughts of the earthly leaders. For example, the idea that Roman Catholics commit a sin by using contraception (denying natural life; killing unborn people; guilt, guilt ,guilt!) is in fact a mechanism to create more Roman Catholics and dominate the world.

Religion is a vast confidence trick, but do not belittle those that practice it. It is only the behaviour that is crazy and ultimately futile, the people themselves are usually as nice and/or as nasty as anyone else, and just as valuable.

Stay safe and live long.

[Spellmaster]

Hippy - of course human beings are animals - as any biolgist, anthropologist, etc will tell you!!

[Hippy]

I never said that humans were anything other than animals; but I did say that they were not dianosaurs or any other animal. In other words what I was about to say did not apply to species other than Humans.

You will note I later said, "They exhibit the same territorial and tribal dominance behaviour as other animals".

I did not think I was being arrogant or presumptious and was certainly not dismissing people for their beliefs. I was attempting to explain the reasons why religion is a powerful and pervasive human behaviour, which was the original question. You might like to re-read the penultimate paragraph where I clearly stated that, whilst I consider religion to be futile, the people themseves should be valued just as much as anyone else.

[snaykz]

Dinosaurs didn't go to parties, paint the Mona Lisa or fly to the Moon either. Are these things a waste of time? Some might say so but they are only speaking from personal preference. I find many people who claim to be acting on behalf of religion to be hypocritical and exploitative, but this doesn't mean those who are religious are wasting their lives. It obviously serves a purpose to them. We all have a philosophy on life, how it should be lived, what it means to us etc. Some people prefer to manifest those beliefs in religion. It can help certain people cope with life when they are feeling down, or can help them feel even better during a celebration (marriage for example holds no religious meaning for some, and strong religious feeling for others). And no, I'm not religious myself. The true answer to your question is that dinosaurs weren't intelligent enough to worship a god, so the reason they didn't wasn't out of choice, it was out of limitation. If they had been as intelligent as us, they almost certainly would have worshipped a god, as just about every human culture on Earth has during our existance. On average, who do you think has (or had) the more fulfilling life, humans or dinosaurs?

[grumpy_boy]

although religion does give many people hope, all it seems to do is cause war after war.

[WendyW]

How do you know that dinosaurs didn't worship a god?

[Hippy]

Bobbobley, You have the words I said yet (I think) are reading them to mean that I think that humans are not animals.

Look at that word "assume" and consider this. I used this rather contracted form to indicate that in the history of mankind humans (as animals) have assumed (wrongly) that because that they can think and talk &ct. (things that they thought made them different from animals) that they must be "special". I surrounded that last word in quotation marks to emphasise the point that I was making, i.e. that this belief was a wrong assumption.

Writing stuff for Answerbank in tiny lumps is a bit like writing poetry, where every word has to be measured and retried a dozen times for secondary and tertiary meanings.

I hope this clears up this simple point.

Stay safe and live long.

[sft42]

Surely a good way to look at this is this Humans assume we are the most intelligent animals on the planet and dolphins second cause all they do all day is lark about in the water and eat fish. Dolphins know they are the most intelligent for exaclty the same reason. Nuff said