

Hallucinated Gods - gwern
http://www.meltingasphalt.com/hallucinated-gods/

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The most irritating part about Jaynes' concept is the premise of alienation
foisted upon ancient people, as if they were all dimwitted, half insane,
immature fools, each with barely the intellect of a second grader.

I honestly don't buy that for half a second. I think there were a great many
very shrewd charlatans, who knew damn well they were telling ghost stories and
bluffing each other into superstition, wherever they could fit in a con game
that played to their advantage.

Sure, there's always lively mataphysical debate in every culture. Fine,
ancient people lacked a precise understanding of the subtleties of things like
microbial life. But the rest of the macroscopic world was rational enough to
keep most people grounded, in my opinion.

Different people have different takes on what a "god" is. Hallucinations and
dreams are powerful psychological cues, but I don't think they represent the
common perception for the origin of either polytheistic or monotheistic gods.

For most cultures, I think it's pretty obvious that "The Gods" simply
represent a conversational placeholder for forces of nature with origins that
are not well understood. In monotheistic religions, I think we see a shift in
the broader social understanding that large groups of humanity represent an
untamable force unto itself (mob rule), which must also be respected as an
emergent hazard in addition to The Weather, The Sea, Disease and other such
forces of nature.

In most sane scenarios, I think people are quick to understand that talking to
a toy soldier carved from a block of wood will only serve so much purpose. I
don't think people bought into such practices as deeply as we like to
sometimes think. I think ancient people merely keyed into the premise of
rubber ducky programming, when they needed to talk things out.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging)

When Socrates was ostracized for lack of piety (in The Apology), I think it
was quite obvious to everyone, that he was getting the shaft because he was a
busy body, and not because he failed to worship stone temples properly. Most
executions related to religion are highlighted for their obvious social
implications, in that the religion is a whitewash, and the reality is that the
motives were political at their core.

Yeah, cults happen with relative frequency, and the shifting sands of the
social order can present a murky atmosphere of moral relativism, but
ultimately I lend myself to the opinion that evolution favors those with good
survival instincts and a balanced mind.

I sincerely doubt that the vast majority of the ancient world was universally
suffering from mass hallucinations, to the point where they all agreed to blow
the same mental gasket, drink the kool-aid, and buy into the spaghetti
monster.

