perspective I guess. They made alot more important discoveries and inventions that do more for mankind than anything we are currently making. I rate fire and the wheel higher than iPhones and cell processors =)

important inventions yes, because they were some of the first and there wasn't much or anything before them. However, I think you'd find it difficult to argue that ancient man was on average more knowledgeable than modern man, regardless of how important their inventions were.

Are you implying that religion helped those people discover how to control fire and how to make things round so they could roll?

It's interesting that animism doesn't require the belief of a greater thing. You certainly don't have to have faith to see and worship something greater than yourself. You can worship a mountain or the moon or the sun, etc.

You can worship the sun and pray to Joe Pesci and still be an atheist and a great person and a genius.

@rubang
No, I was talking about them being smarter than people credit early man for. Techncially, if you worship the sun, you are likely a follower of Ra, but I digress. Also, once you pray to someone or something, it disavows the concept of athiesm, as prayer is the sending of a divine message to a deity. Your sentence about Joe Pesci implies the person sees them as a god. Thus if they believe Joe Pesci is god, then they are not athiest.

@fkusumot
You don't have to tell me about worshiping the skies for good weather, the lands for good harvest etc, as my faith is heavily rooted in the practices of the ancient druids.

I know the conversation has moved on now, but I just wanted to say that:

The law has nothing to do with what is morally right or wrong, and everything to do with keeping people in order.

That was directed at Million, who said that Humans can't have laws without an objective God, because Humans don't have morality without a God (even though we do).

see my post, I stated basically the same thing but explained it in 4 paragraphs.

The sun/Pesci thing was a George Carlin joke.

Yeah early man was smart enough and learning fast, but they were still freaked out by lightning and earthquakes and coming up with crazy ideas to explain them.

Worshipping the sun makes sense. It is the source of all life on this planet. It makes the plants give us oxygen. It gives us heat and light and food.

Earlier religions that focused on the seasons and prayed for a good harvest didn't make up crazy shit to control what people do on their own time. Nobody said "Hey you can't kiss your boyfriend or the sun will burn out and we'll all starve and go to hell."

The claiming moral authority and scaring people so you can control them was an invention of monotheism.

@The Ghost of RubangB

I couldn't have said it better myself. Early religions were indeed about explaining things that were mysterious to primitive people, not about controlling them.