[im3w1l]

I wonder.. Back in polytheistic times did people really believe all those stories about their pantheon? It seems to me that the lines between true history, pious belief, and entertainment were all kinds of blurred.

Maybe people simply didn't really care too much whether the stories were true or not?

[solresol]

Pretty much. The Greek pantheists weren't that different to Marvel or Star Wars fans. The point of the mythology was to have a common identity. If you asked the priest at the template of Demeter "Next spring, I'd like to go and meet Persephone on her journey to home to Demeter, which road does she normally take?" -- they would think you were some kind of fool getting reality and myth confused, while thinking up some mythology about your journey that would turn into a nice play next year.

The modern-day equivalent would be meeting a travel agent at a DC Comics convention and asking them to book flights for you to Gotham City. The best-case outcome is that they write some fan-fiction about you.

This was one of the reasons that Christianity was very disruptive, and exploded across the Graeco-Roman world over the following centuries. It provided a common identity with historical grounding -- if you wanted to go to the temple in Jerusalem where Jesus had kicked the merchants out, you could, and there was no ambiguity or vagueness about which one this happened in even after it was destroyed.

[asdff]

Graeco roman beliefs had historical grounding too. Mt. Olympus is a real place. The pillars of Hades were real. Cities were founded by gods and they existed right in front of people. Offerings would be made and outcomes would happen.

What was really so disruptive about christianity was the aspect of proselytization. That was new with christianity that wasn't really an aspect of judaism. And with proselytization came a need for formal organization of the faith, which served as a useful tool for government to maintain a mandate of power and quell divergent beliefs as heathen or even worthy of crusade, in contrast to synecratic greco-roman paganism.

[bee_rider]

I think this is not really true. They did all sorts of things… like, these fairly poor (by modern standards) people sacrificed valuable resources to their gods. There is no particular reason to think they believed in their gods any less than current religious people.

[JackMorgan]

I know people with tens of thousands of dollars of Marvel paraphernalia. They spend thousands a year on tickets, events, comics. These people are not well off, it's money they otherwise would do well to have in retirement savings. Humans are not always rational.

[bee_rider]

They had big rituals that cost them a lot. I could see these as being performative. But then, for something to be performative, the people it is being performed to need to believe in it, right? Like modern generals don’t perform a sacrifice to Iron Man because modern soldiers don’t believe it is necessary.

They also had boring little rituals that weren’t really very effective performative signals.

What reason is there to think they didn’t believe in their gods? It is hard to query what’s going on in the heads even of living people, let alone long-dead ones. But I think the null hypothesis should be that people in the past at least believe their religion as much as modern ones do.

[im3w1l]

The comparison I would make is Santa Claus. He is not all powerful, but he has a lot of supernatural powers. He makes demands of your behavior (but you don't have to align your whole life around him) that comes with a tangible reward (presents). There are big, expensive and complicated rituals relating to him.

[bee_rider]

Do you have any evidence of this or reason to believe it?

[cjameskeller]

The Christian Scriptures actually include something of a counter-example to this, in Acts 19:35 and following, where an angry crowd is settled by being reminded that the statue in their temple _fell from the sky_:

"When the city clerk had quieted the crowd, he said: 'Men of Ephesus, what man is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple guardian of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from (Zeus/Jupiter)? Therefore, since these things cannot be denied, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rashly. For you have brought these men here who are neither robbers of temples nor blasphemers of (y)our goddess. Therefore, if Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a case against anyone, the courts are open and there are proconsuls. Let them bring charges against one another. But if you have any other inquiry to make, it shall be determined in the lawful assembly. For we are in danger of being called in question for today’s uproar, there being no reason which we may give to account for this disorderly gathering.' And when he had said these things, he dismissed the assembly."

[bee_rider]

Sure, but for some reason we are assuming that people don’t believe their religions… if we apply that logic to Christians as well, I guess an excerpt from their book won’t be very compelling.

[simiones]

> The Greek pantheists weren't that different to Marvel or Star Wars fans.

What are you basing this on? (And note, I think you mean "polytheists", as pantheists are people who don't typically believe in gods, but in the idea that everything in the universe is divine).

Polytheistic people pray to the gods just like monotheistic people do. Some believe in more concrete notions of their gods, some in more poetic ones, and both co-exist in the same societies. Just like many Christians believe Jesus existed, lived, died, and became physically resurrected, so do many modern-day polytheists, and many ancient ones as well.

And beyond the specifics of the stories, people most of all believed and believe that performing or not performing certain rituals will attract the benevolence or ire of their gods. They perform rituals to attract the rain, or to bring good luck in battle, or to bless their crops. They try to put curses on their enemies or competitors. These are all real beliefs that exist today, in both polytheistic and monotheistic religions, and that have existed since the dawn of humanity based on everything we know.

And one clear proof that people truly believed and still believe in the importance of these things is the significant resources they are willing to invest in them. Sometimes they directly perform sacrifices, sometimes they give money for the building of altars, sometimes they sacrifice their time or enjoyment towards these goals.

[mcmoor]

This article argues that people did believe it, or at least believe that their rituals actually matters https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polythei...

[bee_rider]

Darn, I wanted to link the article.

Something that really stuck with me is that they seemed to believe in their gods in an interesting way: they specifically negotiated their vows, being very explicit about what is promised. Because they really expect the gods to punish them in the corporal world, shortly

We’re a lot more loose with our vows nowadays. Although to be fair, negotiations with all-powerful monotheistic gods don’t make as much sense in the first place, really. Most of these gods are so powerful that you can’t really offer them anything but obedience/loyalty/love.

[Earw0rm]

"believe" and "true" as you're using them are relatively modern, secular concepts, the idea that anything can be tested to destruction and deemed true or false, and the idea that stories are superimposed upon the world rather than being inherently part of it.

If as a pre-modern person, you don't believe in a God or Gods, what fills the void? Nowadays the boundary of our knowledge stretches far beyond day to day life in many respects, but if you don't know about a round Earth, or the solar system, or how weather systems work, how else do you explain phenomena that have a material impact on your day to day life as a subsistence farmer?

Pre Christianity, there wasn't really God's law and Man's law, there was just law. Even today, if you ask a highly educated religious person about their faith, you'll often find a concept of truth in some ways broader than the secular, material variety.

[asdff]

Back then people probably didn't even all have the same sorts of stories about their myths straight. And while we think today we are so enlightened having little faith in these things, we are more in line with these people than we might admit, the common thread being herd mentality. Consider yourself, are you an atheist because you sat down one day and came up with your own philosophy about it? Or are you an atheist because there are millions of westerners today who are also atheists and its an existing off the shelf philosophy that is easy to adopt, and you happened to fall into it? Maybe you did work it out yourself, but for many people their sensibilities and beliefs tend to fall into discrete categories already present to a good degree in a society, versus being truly novel concepts unique to them.

[Earw0rm]

"Atheist" feels like such a strange and artificial category, lumping people together on the basis of what they don't believe rather than what they do.

It's a bit like defining everyone who isn't Indo-European or Asiatic as "black", even though there's more genetic diversity in Africa than the rest of the world put together.

[renox]

> "Atheist" feels like such a strange and artificial category

Bah, not any more that any other category: I have religious friends who are in theory from the same religion: some believe in heaven some don't, some believe in the miracles some don't, etc..

But yes, there can be atheists who believe that the earth is flat or that crystals can heal, etc.

[Earw0rm]

But they all identify with the same hierarchical structure to some degree, at least if we're talking about a group like Roman Catholics, Sunni Muslims etc. It gets more complicated of course where e.g. Judaism is concerned, because that's more than just a religion.

[krapp]

I think they certainly believed in the existence of the gods as something more than metaphor (although there were skeptics then as there always are,) and many people probably considered their own local myths to be true.

It doesn't seem any less likely to me than Biblical literalists today. I think people forget that what we now consider mythology was more often than not religion to people of the time.

[lotsofpulp]

Those stories also serve as a tapestry upon which to build tribal bonds. Beliefs are not necessary for them to serve a purpose.

Just like how 90% of people who proclaim they belong to x religion don’t actually believe in stuff the religion proclaims, but it is useful for displaying tribal allegiance.

In some cases, the feigning of belief in obviously false things can even help to serve as a signal for how strong your conviction is to others in a tribe. In the same vein, being a hypocrite can also be seen as a display of “look at the rules I am willing to break, and so I might be willing to break some for you”. Or at least, it shows the belief that some people are above the rules.

[User23]

> It seems to me that the lines between true history, pious belief, and entertainment were all kinds of blurred.

This is (unintentionally?) hilarious.

[lazide]

Do you really believe in the existence of Pluto?

For them, it was the same type of situation.

[peoplefromibiza]

> did people really believe all those stories about their pantheon

They did, in the same way we still believe in the horoscope, lucky numbers, miraculous diets or having success by reading the same books CEOs read.

Does it really brings bad luck if 13 people sit at the same table for a dinner?

And what about Friday the 13th?

In many sports competitions the number 17 is removed, because, you know, better safe than sorry.

[bee_rider]

Or in the same way that modern religious people believe the stories in their books, right? Which is to say, opinions vary, but some go right up to literalism.

I’m very confused as to why folks in this thread seem to think that ancient people were any different in their religious beliefs than modern ones.