01-06-2008, 12:00 AM
You're posting on a Toltec site, for the most part at least, and the Toltec religion was honed over the centuries and improved from the morbid association with IB's to a more enlightened practice for obtaining total freedom. Even though this was an advanced society, with agriculture and buildings, they also held onto the spiritual practice of 'Spirits' or energy in all things; organic and inorganic. All living things are equal and imbued with their own unique energy signature. It was the increasing amount of leisure time, versus a hunter gather whom has less, that allowed the further refinement of their spiritual pursuits.
An aboriginal spiritual belief is not more or less than that of a modern Toltec; the paths are different.
Catholicism is not practiced as originally intended but was changed to exert more and more control over the masses for, mainly, economic expansion and crowd control. There are better examples of agricultural based religions that have not strayed far from the original path; Hinduism being but one of them.
My point about 3,500 years ago was when agrarian societies were first popping up and, no, they didn't drift towards atheism. I do see your point and I feel it was an attempt to show the necessity of a spiritual life for survival as a hunter-gatherer. On the other hand, one could easily learn basic survival skills without adhering to some sort of spiritual belief system; the two concepts together are not prerequisite. And this is why I disagree with your original premise, Sid.
An aboriginal spiritual belief is not more or less than that of a modern Toltec; the paths are different.
Catholicism is not practiced as originally intended but was changed to exert more and more control over the masses for, mainly, economic expansion and crowd control. There are better examples of agricultural based religions that have not strayed far from the original path; Hinduism being but one of them.
My point about 3,500 years ago was when agrarian societies were first popping up and, no, they didn't drift towards atheism. I do see your point and I feel it was an attempt to show the necessity of a spiritual life for survival as a hunter-gatherer. On the other hand, one could easily learn basic survival skills without adhering to some sort of spiritual belief system; the two concepts together are not prerequisite. And this is why I disagree with your original premise, Sid.