The dynamics between power and belief are complex and interact. Ideas of gods and God may be used to protect power structures and, similarly, analysis of such beliefs may influence the nature of social systems. — Jack Cummins

Power imposes belief. at least on the lower orders. the priestly class tells everyone else their gods' demands, and the faithful obey. the system is enforced through a system of bribes, threats and bonding rituals - which, again, include alternate sacrifices and celebrations.
But this only holds true of civilized, organized modern religions of the last 6000 years. for maybe 30,000 years before that, there was as great a diversity of beliefs and practices as there were primitive societies.

Is God the evolving master-class, supreme intelligence? If he desires us to be ultimately good then through it we would only become better?

It could be argued that 'God' is consciousness, but this has been seen in an anthropomorphic way. Both theists and atheists may be talking about 'ultimate reality', but this way it is named and described are so different, as a source of arguments and perspectives.

With the history of religion, which emerged after magic, there were ideas of coercion and sacrifice. Even in Christianity, Jesus represents 'the sacrificial lamb', to atone for human 'sin'. With diversity, which may have preceded this, there is the possibility of a future return to diversity in the aftermath of so much which has occurred in human history, although from the way the world looks at present there is an extremely long way for this to happen. There may be small steps but if it is likely to be thwarted by hierarchies of power, which represent the interests of the elite.

With the history of religion, which emerged after magic, there were ideas of coercion and sacrifice. — Jack Cummins

i don't understand 'religion emerged after magic'. Emerged from what? What kind of magic precedes it and how is that magic distinct from religion?
All hierarchies involve coercion, in all aspects of life.

Even in Christianity, Jesus represents 'the sacrificial lamb', to atone for human 'sin'. — Jack Cummins

The sacrifice and resurrection of a young, virile god or semi-divine entity in order to benefit humanity appears in many early agrarian civilizations. it represents the cycle of seasons; death in winter, rebirth in spring.
but many other kinds of sacrifice are demanded of the people by civilized gods : the killing of prized humans [unlike like Isaac, most did not get a last-minute reprieve] and valuable livestock; giving food and money to the church, going on pilgrimage, holding fasts and vigils, etc.

There may be small steps but if it is likely to be thwarted by hierarchies of power, which represent the interests of the elite. — Jack Cummins

there's no guarantee those power structures will endure.

How may the development of ideas about 'gods' or one God be understood in the history of religion and philosophy?. — Jack Cummins

I think this may be answered by looking at it in the context of our evolving ability to think in terms of cause and effect, to make sense of the consequences of whatever may be. Combine this with the quintessential question asked by humans - "Why?" - and you have the foundation for gods, religion, mythology and philosophy.

Of course, this all necessitated our evolution of a mind that could conduct an inner narrative.

To understand the development, one has to understand the intuitive rationality of animism, and the counterintuitive nature of the modern, dead world. One has to disabuse oneself of modernity. — unenlightened

Found that quote:

The tremendously enlarged universe of modern cosmology is conceived as a field of inanimate masses and forces which operate according to the laws of inertia and of quantitative distribution in space. This denuded substratum of all reality could only be arrived at through a progressive expurgation of vital features from the physical record and through strict abstention from projecting into its image our own felt aliveness. In the process the ban on anthropomorphism was extended to zoomorphism in general. What remained is the residue of the reduction toward the properties of mere extension which submit to measurement and hence to mathematics. These properties alone satisfy the requirements of what is now called exact knowledge: and representing the only knowable aspect of nature they, by a tempting substitution, came to be regarded as its essential aspect too: and if this, then as the only real in reality.

This means that the lifeless has become the knowable par excellence and is for that reason also considered the true and only foundation of reality. It is the "natural" as well as the original state of things. Not only in terms of relative quantity but also in terms of ontological genuineness, nonlife is the rule, life the puzzling exception in physical existence.

Accordingly, it is the existence of life within a mechanical universe which now calls for an explanation, and explanation has to be in terms of the lifeless. Left over as a borderline case in the homogeneous physical world-view, life has to be accounted for in the terms of that view. — Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life:Towards a Philosophy of Biology

How may the development of ideas about 'gods' or one God be understood in the history of religion and philosophy?. — Jack Cummins

Could it be the case that the world with many Gods would allow the people more freedom to choose which God to worship, therefore allow more creativity in arts, diversity and the way of life?

One God system might fall into an authoritarian society which restricts people's freedom to choose their preference in choosing their own Gods, and the way of life, and also creativity in arts, as from the historical fact of the medieval Christianity in Europe.

After the fall of the ancient Roman empire, the Christianity took over the control of the governments and justice system. The one God based religious authority has ruled the whole Europe with the iron fist controlling every part of human life for almost 1500 years.

Science, similarly to religion may be embedded in mythic understanding. What do you think, especially in relation to the concept of myth?

Sure, Charles Taylor speaks of this in A Secular Age. A dominant narrative, particularly with atheists, is that contemporary secular culture and scientism is just what you get when you apply reason to the world without superstition. He calls these "subtraction narratives." His point is that these subtraction narratives tend to ignore all the positive ways secularism was constructed, and indeed that some of its core tenants grow out of Reformation and Enlightenment era theology quite explicitly.

We could also consider here the secular "religious" holidays of the French Revolution, or more successful attempts since to create secular "festivals," or to turn religious holidays into secular festivals (e.g. the transformation of American Thanksgiving into secular Thanksgiving/Black Friday, or Christmas into a festival primarily of decorations, gifts, consumption, and a more amorphous "Christmas spirit" of good cheer and benevolence.)

Here is a related passage from C.S. Lewis:

If we could ask the medieval scientist 'Why, then, do you talk as if [inanimate objects like rocks had desires]?' he might (for he was always a dialectician) retort with the counter-question, 'But do you intend your language about laws and obedience any more literally than I intend mine about kindly enclyning? Do you really believe that a falling stone is aware of a directive issued to it by some legislator and feels either a moral or a prudential obligation to conform?' We should then have to admit that both ways of expressing are metaphorical. The odd thing is that ours is the more anthropomorphic of the two. To talk as if inanimate bodies had a homing instinct is to bring them no nearer to us than the pigeons; to talk as if they could ' obey laws' is to treat them like men and even like citizens.

But though neither statement can be taken literally, it does not follow that it makes no difference which is used. On the imaginative and emotional level it makes a great difference whether, with the medievals, we project upon the universe our strivings and desires, or with the moderns, our police-system and our traffic regulations. The old language continually suggests a sort of continuity between merely physical events and our most spiritual aspirations.

The Discarded Image

But of course, this shift did not come about by "removing superstition" alone, as it is often presented (nor did the "new science" immediately result in any rapid advance in technological progress or living standards-Europe's "Great Divergence" from Asia"- for another few centuries). Sometimes you will hear it presented this way though way: "oh, people spoke of the inclinations of rocks before because Aristotle thought rocks fell because they wanted to," (which is, of course, false, he didn't) "but then modern science came and got rid of all that bad baggage and gave us a "clean" view."

Yet this isn't what happened. The idea of the entire universe "obeying laws" was originally created with divinely issued laws in mind. It was created because the Aristotelian idea of a word populated by (relatively) self-determining natures seemed to encroach on divine sovereignty, as did Patristic notions of man attaining freedom and deification through the perfection of the virtues, which returned to him his original divine nature (Christ the God-man being ultimately, the preexisting type of Adam, and not vice versa).

Given some other popular assumptions at the time, any freedom for creatures came at the expensive of freedom for God. Even "only doing what is good" was seen as a limit on divine freedom. Thus, goodness had to be the result of a "moral law" dictated by the inscrutable divine will, while the behavior of natural things had to be the product of a "natural law" likewise dictated. Things don't do what they do because of what they are, so much as everything happens as it does according to inscrutable fiat. Man's reason is too damaged by the Fall to fathom the causes of nature (and this assertion unfathomable of "brute facts" at the center of all things still finds a home in atheistic scientism). The resulting image of Providence is thus far more totalizing (and we might say totalitarian) than that of the Patristics, for instance.

This is key in that various flavors of scientism have both a mythos (i.e. "this view is what results from the triumph of reason and the discarding of superstition, e.g. the "New Athiests") but also a number of dogmas that go along with that vision. For instance, phusus, natures, being discarded in favor of "eternal natural laws" and initial conditions (a major philosophical extrapolation from mathematical physics, rather than "what the math tells us about being.").

But there are different forms of scientism. You have your Camus, Nietzsche, et. al. inspired "Overcomers," who can have a vested interest in smallism and the classical view of evolution as "blind mechanism," and the expulsion of all teleonomy as illusory, since this makes the world properly abusrd, while at the same time placing all moral and aesthetic judgement safely on the "subject" side of the dualist ledger (allowing man to be God within the confines of his own subjectivity), whereas others, e.g. Sam Harris, end pushing to ground almost everything in "neuroscience" (goodness and beauty, and potentially even truth being principles of neuroscience best explored via neuroimaging).

In either case the Problem of the One and the Many seems to haunt all the mythos. You see a constant floundering between a sort of bigism (there is just one thing, the universe, and everything traces back to the inscrutable brute fact of the Big Bang) and smallism (everything is made up of fundamental parts and is reducible to them).Sapolsky's Determined is an excellent example here, because in his efforts to disprove "free will" Sapolsky constantly flips back and forth between bigism and smallism, whenever one or the other helps his arguments (i.e. "you cannot be a [relatively] self-determining whole because your behavior relates to individual neurons (parts), but you also cannot be self-determining because all efficient causes can be traced back forever, to the brute fact of the Big Bang.") There is no via media available here because a framework of "laws and obedience" is very much baked into the mythos, as is the reduction of reason to mere ratio (dividing and composing in propositional knowledge), which pulls out the epistemic ground for any true wholes and seems to make nominalism inevitable.

Humans realise the human imagination and contribute to it, as aspects of the dreaming mind, as part symbolic reality, but whether it exists as an independent realm, as qualia, is a good question. — Jack Cummins

Some folks seem to think the platonic objects do exist in the real world, but it seems to be the cause for the confusion. As you say Platonic objects are imaginable, thinkable and describable as ideas, but they are not solidly existing objects in the real world.

And sadly some folks seem to confuse the symbols and signs in the external world which are to convey the ideas and information as physical objects, so the ideas must exist in the real world as solid entities.

But if they are coming from some religious background or upbringings, then maybe the confusion originates from their historical living experiences rather than their thoughts. Therefore would it be reasonable to say that the historical living experiences take priority in judgements over thoughts?

I am sure that there is an overlap between magic and religion, but magic often involves belief in nature as alive as opposed to being about a specific deity. For example, there is the idea of sympathetic magic, which underlies systems of voodoism. There is also a shamanic element to magic.

The story of the resurrection involves a shamanic aspect. It is true that there is a recurrent theme of a dying god, rising again, such as in the myth of Osiris.

With your comment about power structures may change, that is where myth and story come into play. It is likely that the stories we read influence what happens in real life, like the Book of Revelation, and Orwell's '1984'. When I read Orwell's writing it is as if he is describing the way the world has become in many ways. Therefore, fiction authors have a big responsibility, just like philosophers, because they provide the mythic material which may influence the course of history.

I am sure that there is an overlap between magic and religion — Jack Cummins

All of religion is based on magic. Nature exists, transpires, changes, proceeds - nature is alive, while gods are entirely imaginary projections of human characters into the supernatural.

You make sense very good points. In particular, I like the way in which you bring in neuroscience. That is because it may be the secular replacement of 'God', especially as an explanation for consciousness. The images of CT scans and in textbooks present a visual and causal explanatory logic which may be seen as fact and 'reality' itself. Also, science often claims objectivity as 'the truth', ignoring the way in which science, including physics only gives models. Science involves the mythic imagination.

It is true that religion does involve belief in the supernatural in most instances, but not always. One interesting area is that of a miracles, which was challenged by David Hume. However, I do see there being more than just superstition in miracles. There are the stories of the healing at Lourdes. There is also the recent story of the canonisation of St Luigi. He died as a teenager, who had created a website on miracles, and miracles have been attributed to him. It may be my Catholic side coming out but I do think that there may be more to miracles than many would admit. It is about an invisible dimension beyond the material one.

I find Harris to be very interesting because there is a lot I think he gets right and a lot I think he gets woefully wrong. Of course, "goodness" relates to desires, and so to "well-being," "happiness," or "flourishing." He's right to dismiss Hume's guillotine as more or less begging the question.

But he has to ground all of morality in neuroscience because he has a pretty naive/myopic conception of metaphysics. So, for him, because we need neurons to experience good things and well-being, "goodness" is a principle of neuroscience. To my mind this is a bit like hoping to explain flight by an appeal to an in-depth analysis of the cells in the wings of animals. Sure, they need those cells to fly, but flight is not best explained in this way. Plus, the entire enviornment is equally relevant to both flight and perception, nothing generates lift or consciousness in a vacuum.

I suspect that part of the problem is that the "mythos" of scientism has long been packaged with notions of reductionism and smallism. At least for me, my education tended to always lump them more or less together. And I think this baggage follows us around long after we have decided to dismiss it, and it can often act as a barrier to understanding ideas that fall outside the confines of our model.

I recall seeing a Quora post of someone who was confused about Plato's metaphysics of eidos because "red is just light of a certain wavelength which is just photons." We might certainly find problems with Plato, but I think the move to immediately start thinking of things in this sort of way (i.e. "what are the physical parts involved.") can often be unhelpful.

Daniel Dennett is also one who speaks the language of neuroscience in a very concrete way. I like the way in which some Buddhists incorporate neuroscience, but in a less reductionist way.

I am inclined to the view that all explanation is mythic because narrative is built into human understanding. We have narrative identity and it is from this starting point that we develop all pictures of the world. I am not sure that 'reality' can be explained in a way which is different from myth, whether it is in terms of models or metaphors. I work from the assumption that my thinking, and that of all others, is based on story, and this involves the way in which a person has been taught or chosen to understand.

I have considered before that the biggest difference between a philosophy and a religion is the degree to which you believe in the supernatural. Ultimately, they are both semi-formalized structural guides for living, imo. From my understanding, taosim can be either a religion or a philosophy, depending on how one interprets it.

t is true that religion does involve belief in the supernatural in most instances, but not always — Jack Cummins

Which are the exception?

I do see there being more than just superstition in miracles. — Jack Cummins

Miracle means something not brought about by natural means: magic.

It may be my Catholic side coming out but I do think that there may be more to miracles than many would admit. — Jack Cummins

Okay. Catholic sides can be very persuasive. Certainly, there are events we don't anticipate and can't explain. But as science advances, the window on miracles is closing.

Found that quote: — Wayfarer

That is a case at best of two minds sharing the one thought. I have other read your man at all

I am of the view that inner as opposed to outer, objective aspects of 'reality' are important here in the tradition of human understanding. Science, similarly to religion may be embedded in mythic understanding. What do you think, especially in relation to the concept of myth?. — Jack Cummins

A topic-adjacent interview you might find interesting:

Re: the relevance / significance today of (German) Idealism?

https://philosophynow.org/issues/165/Robert_Stern

It makes sense that they are trying to live adequately given the knowledge at their disposal. It doesn't make sense that the same regime is worshipped today given new knowledge. Some of the methods, like God, can be reasoned with(as a medium of control or a faith inhibitor) - but are taken far too seriously so much so we drift off course(warring over whether a supernatural being governs existence).

The idealism of Hegel and some others does make an important contribution. From what I have read it seems that Hegel sees history as a realisation of potential. In this way, all the events in life can be seen as the enfoldment of mythic possibilities.

Religion is bound up with worship, which in its worst form may involve distance from the dramas of life. In it's best form, it could be awareness of the 'transcendent', as the underlying force of nature, which is often called 'God'.

fIn thinking about the anthromorphic representations in the form of deity, it probably occurred because it is easier to imagine by thinking of as a 'person's to relate to. The problem may be where this became too fixed, with so much projected onto 'God', resulting in diminished consciousness of human nature and its flaws. The concept of the 'devil' or Satan allowed for evil to be projected outside or, if realised inside oneself as a source for guilt. The mythic aspect of good and evil within religion may have become too separate from the process of self-realisation.