Humankind’s ageless belief in the worship of the determinative existence of an everlasting, creative, omnipotent, omnipresent “Deity” has played, in our view, far too an impactful a role in his evolving history, not to appropriately warrant discussion. This writing is not intended to criticize the conventional believer, but, rather, to explore the presumed metaphysical origins, and endurance of (non-empirical), “faith” and as a brief reflection on Man’s evolved sapience and his enduring desire for an acceptable existence.
It is our view, based on our various readings of man’s early history, that belief in a higher and controlling power, originated in Man’s thoughtful observation of the immutable natural phenomena, the striking change of seasons, the meteorological phenomena, daylight and nighttime darkness, and the significant and visible effects of the Sun, viz., for warmth and agricultural nurturance. Presumably, humankind’s joint capacity for curiosity, and aspiration to understand, together with the factor of elemental fear in the absence of available explanation, led to the worship-fear conception of a higher, controlling power; one that, pragmatically was to be revered and satisfied, to the end that, when needfully implored, it might render good fortune, needed relief, and, essentially, sustain life.
In our view, the classic and most instructive example of the above declaration may be observed from the observation of the ubiquitous primitive belief in the “Sun God,” credited for the delivery of light, clement weather, and most impactfully, the growth of foodstuffs. It was universally observed that this existentially vital Deity seasonably declined in power and started its short period of demise each Fall season; tragically succumbing to death by the winter months. Yet it was miraculously observed that certain trees (evergreen) magically survived death in winter despite the mortality of other flora.
Early Man’s annual performance of specific tribal rituals, notably involving the miraculous evergreen trees, found themselves reliably successful in the resurrection of the Sun God (at Springtime) when there was a renewal of sunlight and agricultural growth. Later times saw analogical, annual services of the Roman Feast of Saturnalia, exemplified by traditional gift-giving, feasting, and a carnival and a similar Greek Winter holiday celebration of “Kronia.” We believe such religious events were the advent of the later Christian liturgical belief in “Death and Resurrection.”
At this point in our writing, we would take the time to reveal that we are believers in the “Empirical Theory” of epistemology, espoused by philosophers such as Francis Bacon and John Locke to the effect that the sole source of knowledge is Man’s lifetime of experience, not inspiration or personal faith. Locke famously said that Man is born with a “tabula rasa” (blank slate) and that his knowledge is accumulated solely through his empirical experience, This view would eliminate non-factual beliefs such as religious faith and unprovable superstition.
The intention of this writing is not to castigate religious beliefs, which, are culturally determined simply by the happenstance of birth but, where relevant, to emphasize the inarguable fact that religious belief and its consequent ethnocentrism are factually irrational. History has demonstrated the horrific impact of religious evangelicalism, (i,e., war, pogroms, inquisitions, religious hatred and discrimination, and a brokenhearted litany of irrationally based misery.
We acknowledge the existence of certain benefits of ethnic religion, viz., its contribution of a salutory sense of communal identity, its fine ethnic literature and music, and perhaps more utilitarian and compassionate, its function as a calming rationale concerning the fearful concept of inevitable death. However, religious belief seems to carry simultaneously, a history of disgraceful human misery caused by the innate tendency of faith adherents to impose, their faith-based belief on others, of divergent or no faiths are all, by morally repugnant, ethnocentrically permissible, cruel and non-humanistic means.
Aside from its inconsistency with the word “sapient,” in the designation of the Homo Sapiens, religious faith and dogma has historically been the cogent source of divisiveness, hatred, and oppression; a remarkable feature of this societal feeling of loyalty to an inherited and non-factual conception.
The advancement of universal human tolerance, and conceivably, true brotherhood would be attained by eschewing atavistic homage to the primitive Sun God or his fearfully conceived successors. The existential skills in farming, the development of cities, the improvement of travel and trade, and the cures for polio and COVID-19 were the result of rational growth developed through empirical experience, A human race without the irrational limitation of pre-existing irrational assumptions would indeed be salubrious.
The ubiquitous belief that the world and its flora and fauna were created in six days, after which a purported, all-powerful (“omnipotent”) Deity, was physically required to rest on the seventh (Sunday) is irrefutably belied by scientific proof showing that the Earth is more than eight million five hundred millennia and constitutes an insignificant portion of a vast, unmeasurable expanding universe, should be sufficient, to rationally eradicate such ubiquitous and sophomoric myth.
The human brain has limitations and it is an egotistical and reductive assumption to hold that it can comprehend things beyond its innate capability by atavistic faith of one kind or another. To sophomorically attempt to fill the uncomfortable void regarding the infinite quantity of metaphysical questions that are beyond our ken, it is “Sun God” mentality to irrationally conceive theories that have no basis and moreover, block the possible route to objective human advancement and universal fellowship.
-p.
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