Reply #36: “..increasingly highly suspicious and warranting further investigation”

[ironbark]

Ok, that’s the standard of probability/suspicion I was seeking.

There is a great/global bedrock of animist and indigenous religion (the primeval religious breading stock herd if you like) that still thrives.
Beyond that-
Moses Lad began his run at about 1500-1350 BCE up against a heavy field of contenders (and State sponsored ‘favourites’) Resheph, Baal, Anath ,Astarte, Ashtoreth, Hadad, Nebo, Dagon, Melek, Yau, Ahijah, Amon-Re, Isis, Osiris, Ptah, Molech... but none of the contenders are still running. (Dead faiths, dead god/horses, fell at the historical hurdles, no adherents. (Here’s a list of 500 candidates…take your pick for this and subsequent time periods- http://atheismblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/500-dead-gods-plus-1.html
)

It’s the same story with each of the successive Major Living Religious Traditions (horses ;-)-
Moses 1500-1350 BCE….Krishna 2000 BCE…. Zoroaster 628-527 BCE… Buddha 563-483 BCE…Jesus 1-33 CE… Mohammed 570-632 CE…. Baha'u'llah 1817-1892 CE

Questions-
1/ It’s a ten thousand+ year timeline. Not once do we get a Moses and Krishna contending in the same time frame, not once do we get a Jesus and Mohammed in the same period.
Why not?
There have been thousands of cults/religions starting in the same time frame as others…or starting in the context of existing/dominant faiths…..how come the contenders all fall at the hurdles and the horses that run on >never< started at the same time?
Why do we never see >two< major living religions starting up in the same time frame?

(Quite prepared to discuss ojections re Shito, Confucious and contemporary religious movements)

2/ Geography. It a big planet but if you open an atlas you can almost cover the geographical origins of the worlds major living religions with your thumb. No major living faith out of Africa…Europe…The Americas….why not? I understand colonialism and imperialism and the colonial and imperialist imposition of religion….but ten thousand+ years is a long time in which whole continents have the opportunity to breed a new major living faith…..but they haven’t and don’t. Why not? Why do all these major religion horses come from the same geographical area?
(The only exceptions are the indigenous bedrock and contemporary {too early to tell} religious/cult movements that may or may not leap the hurdles to survive. eg Scientology)

I’m not putting it forward as ‘proof’ or ‘conclusive evidence’…but the separation in time (as sole winning horses or stepping stones set at intervals through history) of the major living faiths strikes me as “..increasingly highly suspicious and warranting further investigation”.

Further investigation may lead to the chance/probability anomalies of the Theosophists and their conclusions, William Miller (Millerites/Adventists) and his conclusions and the events in Persia which opened up the speculation now referred to as Progressive Revelation (The possibility that religion has been ‘dispensed’ at specific times and has progressively evolved).

The greats, genius/influential’s from your chosen realm of human endeavour reveal what would be expected and found selecting from any other realm (Art,Music ect)… the greatest figures standing both isolated in time (no major contenders in their lifetime) and figures in clusters sharing the same overlapping time period.

Isolated-
Nicolaus Copernicus (19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543)

Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642)

René Descartes ( 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650)

Cluster-
Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882)
Louis Pasteur (December 27, 1822 – September 28, 1895)
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931)
Albert Einstein ( 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955)
Niels Henrik David Bohr ( 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962)
Jonas Edward Salk (October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995)

Add to the list and you still get isolation and cluster...as would be expected.

Their geography (even though clearly drawn from a Western Science bias) is one that still reflects great geographical diversity.
If your designated great scientists (who were also surrounded by failed contenders- Caloric theory of heat, Mechanistic Universe- fallen/dead horse science) were laid out through history with a minimum of 200 years between them…would that not also be improbable/suspicious?

Copernicus… Galileo… Descartes… Darwin… Pasteur… Edison… Einstein… Bohr… Salk………….never two or more in the same timeframe.

And if so laid out separately in time and yet all came from the same geographic region? ”I'd say increasingly highly suspicious and warranting further investigation.”

Hope the hypothesis merits your curiosity.