Why do we need a god at all? Every single culture I have read about has at least one god.

I do not enjoy reading the Bible. The first four Books of the New Testament are short and sweet and not a bad read. But if I had the talent to recall chapter and verse, I would not waste it on these books.

I do not like to read the Old Testament either, with one exception. I think Genesis ranks right up there with the Iliad and the Odyssey.  For me it is a fun read. So many stories that we all grew up with, but it is good to read it for yourself and not somebody's take on the stories.Let me elucidate:

First Story of Creation

In the beginning, when god created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters

Then God said, "Let there be light"

I chose the Roman Catholic version. But notice God did not start with nothing.  

Hesiod, in the Theogony, on the other hand,  begins: In the beginning there was Chaos.....and out of Chaos was born Uranus (the Sky) and Gaea (the Earth).  

The Hebrews do not begin with Chaos or with nothing. God starts with something. A formless wasteland and water and a mighty wind.  I do not know if we are to assume that God was sitting around one day and thought, eons prior to where our story begins in the bible, hey, what about a formless wasteland with water and some wind and then I will figure out something else later?

If you like poetry, take a look at the Book of John:

Catholic Bible

In the beginning there was the Word
The Word was in God's presence
And the Word was God

King James Version

In the beginning was the Word
and the Word was with God
and the Word was God

King James; a little better with poetry, huh? Think about this for a minute. John does not start with a Nativity, or a flight to Egypt with Herod (like a ton of mythological figures including Arthur) sending out a decree calling for the death of all baby boys.  John does not begin with anything having to do with Jesus' birth or childhood.

But he kind of rewrites the Old Testament.  IT IS THE WORD you see that we must begin with. I always found that fascinating.  THE WORD'S THE THING. In the beginning was the Word.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

Jaynes' Take on God

What purpose does a god serve in the human mind?

Cognitive Dissonance

If we are correct in assuming that schizophrenic hallucinations are similar to the guidance of gods in antiquity, then there should be some common physiological instigation in both instances.   This, I suggest, is simply stress. (Cognitive dissonance)....Anything that could not be dealt with on the basis of habit, any conflict between work and fatigue, between attack and flight, any choice between whom to obey or what to do, anything that require4d any decision at all was sufficient to cause an auditory hallucination.

So Hector, faced with the decision-suffering of whether to go outside the walls of Troy to fight Achilles or stay within them, in the stress of the decision hallucinates the voice that tells him to go out. The divine voice ends the decision--stress before it has reached any considerable level.

...the stress caused by a person's death was far more than sufficient to trigger his hallucinated voice. Perhaps this is why, in so many early cultures the heads of the dead were often severed from the body, or why the legs of the dead were broken or tied up, why food is so often in the graves...(after awhile the voice stopped so that the body was required)

Again, In Hamlet, according to Olivier, is a story about a  prince who could not make up his mind.  He needs his father's ghost to get rid of his cognitive dissonance.  What shall I do?  Daddy says, kill the bastard.

The Original Gods

If you review Chapter One of this inquiry, you will note that Jaynes is saying the we have two sides to our brain and that going back several mellenia, one side of our brain helped us perform our duties.  The other side, told us what to do.There was an actual barrier between the two sides.

He says that we just did not understand death.  Supposedly you would get back home, and your 'buddy' was there but did not respond. As Adabsurdum put it you would fix dinner, and since he did not respond, you would actually attempt to shove food down his throat.

It sounds ridiculous because you were out there every day killing animals, bringing them 'home' and cooking them and eating them.

Jaynes points to the grave of Eynan in 9000 BC. The king is in regal dress and propped up on a pillow of stones signifying that people would come and ask him questions.This was the first king-god. The grave was the first church.  He goes on to speak of Osiris and I always am in awe of that story.  In many cases the deceased male ends up with an erection and in this myth Isis straddles herself on the male member and conceives Horus. Spooky is it not? Not only do we need a word from the god, we need his seed. No wonder they do not teach us this in elementary school.

Succession would involve the deceased king 'naming' his successor. And there would be  discussions between the successor and the last monarch. A little Hamlet. Geez Dad, you really do not like this new guy, do you?

I should add in all of this that Jaynes likes to talk about the evolution of the village. Where bands of twenty humans might morph into a settlement of two hundred or so and therefore the social group mirroring a group wolves would become a 'town'.This leads to cognitive changes based upon social needs.

The little grave with the propped up god-king becomes an entire house. An effigy replaces the corpse. BUT THE WORSHIPER IS SPEAKING TO THE STATUE AS A GOD, not as if the statue was a god.

The early gods...according to cuneiform texts, liked eating and drinking, music and dancing; they required beds to sleep in and for enjoying sex with other gods...they had to be washed and dressed and appeased with pleasant odors.

Remembering of course, Jaynes is speaking of the statues as gods.  He posits that tables were placed before the gods (statues) with flowers and food.  This 'became' the first altar. What he says is that our peeps would take two statues, male and female, and place them in a bed overnight.

Read Adabsurdem's musings in the previous chapter.  I like him. He likes to think at the bus stop. My point was that later in our development, the statue began to represent the god. Exodus would represent a transformation.  Moses and others were afraid of icons and idols. Because animism was still prevalent and because there was still this reality in the statue itself. Once created it WAS a god. You spoke with him.

My problem with Jaynes here is that somebody today will go a thousand miles to witness a shadow on a wall in Mexico that looks like the Virgin Mary. Because a special rosary has special significance. Because I witnessed passengers on planes grasping at the crosses on their necklace.

The point is that somewhere along the line, the statue became a representation during the four phases of development. It is no longer animism at work.

Let us get back to the Word. And feel free to reread Q and Adabsurdum and TheraP and Obey.. Jaynes sees the importance of language in all of this and whether you agree with him or not, his discussion of language and its development becomes part of this story.

For there is precious little archaeologically up to 40,000BC, other than the crudest of stone tools.

Sometimes the reaction to a denial that early man had speech is, how then did man function or communicate?  The answer is very simple: just like all other primates, with an abundance of visual and vocal signals which were very far removed from the syntactical language that we practice today.

Or as TheraP says: Our ancestors clearly had family groups as many mammals do now.

...again, my linguistic friends lament my arrogant ignorance and swear oaths that in order to transmit even such rudimentary skills from one generation to another there had to be language...This art was transmitted solely by imitation, exactly, the same way in which chimpanzees transmit the trick of inserting straws into ant hills to get ants.

Somebody asked about Neanderthals.  Why did Cro-Magnon man alone survive?

But the most recent view is that they were part of the general human line, which had great variation, a variation that allowed for an increasing pace of evolution, as man, taking his artificial climate with him, spread into these new ecological niches. I am emphasizing the climate changes during this last glacial age because I believe these changes were the basis of the selective pressures behind the development of language through several stages.

Stage One: The Intentional Call

The first stage and the sine quo non of language is the development out of incidental calls of intentional calls, or those which tend to be repeated unless turned off by a change in behavior of the recipient.

The central assertion of (my) view is that each new stage of words literally created new perceptions and attentions, and such new perceptions and attentions resulted in important cultural changes which are reflected in the archeological record.

Stage Two:  The Modifier

...the differentiation of vocal qualifiers had to precede the invention of the nouns which they modified, rather than the reverse. ..This slow development was also necessary so that the basic repertoire of the call system was kept intact to perform its intentional functions. This age of modifiers perhaps lasted up to 40,000 BC where we find archeologically retouched hand axes and points.

The next stage might have been an age of commands, when modifiers, separated from the calls they modify, now can modify men's actions themselves.

From fossil evidence we know factually that the brain, particularly the frontal lobe in front of the central sulcus, was increasing with a rapidity that still astonishes the modern evolutionist.

Stage Three:  The Noun

Then came the age of nouns.  Just as the age of modifiers coincides with the making of much superior tools, so the age of nouns for animals coincides with the beginning of drawing animals on the walls of caves or on horn implements.

Stage Four: The Name

But the next stage in linguistic development was the name.  This change did not occur until 10,000-12,000 years ago.The next line from Jaynes always makes me laugh:

Previously, man, like other primates, had probably left his dead where they fell, or else hidden them from view with stones or in some instances roasted and eaten them.

They say it kind of tastes like chicken

I get lost in Jayne's arguments. But I know that John had something new, when he states that in the beginning, there was the Word.  And there had to be physical changes in the brain and organizational changes in the development of society to prepare us for the Word.