Say-So

Religion demands respect. No opinion on other topics has me tip toeing around the speaker with same care. After all, believers of all faiths base their daily and seasonal routines and often their entire lives around “dos” and “don’ts”. They curtail their experiences limiting their range of foods and activities to fit within the constraints of their chosen dogma. Attempting to debunk the existence of God with a theist is an assault on their philosophy threatening to subvert their entire life. How did it come to be? How did a cosmology based on a compilation of self contradicting ancient oral traditions (bible) gain such high degree of respect? This question surfaced for me once again recently while reading a superficial and lighthearted “Marx for Beginners” which fell into my hands as a result of a conversation with a friend. While the book does very little to significantly summarize the Marxist theory, it is a fun, quick, illustrated overview of the western man’s history, from the cavernous times to to the industrial age and society which was a fertile ground for the rise of communism. The simplified format presents the human thought in stark light and brute manner but with fascinating clarity. Religion has been with man since since the beginning of conscious thought. Rius writes:

In the beginning, ignorance and fear predominated. Because they didn’t know the meaning of things, early peoples were afraid of everything which moved, and their first thought was about the supernatural: Who made the noise of thunder? Who moved the earth? Who made it rain? … To provide some kind of explanation of natural events mankind created the gods: the god of rain, of fire, of earth, of sun, the goddess of fertility, the god of hunting… Out of this came the magicians and sorcerers, who exploited the idea of divinity for their own benefit. By using all kinds of cheap tricks they passed themselves off as special delegates of the gods with fantastic powers… This is the way gradually an upper class was formed - or the ruling class, and a lower - or ruled class… As time went on - and profits rose - the ruling class perfected its religion and added more gods, more myths, more rites and ceremonies, temples were built in which gods an goddesses were worshipped, which usually meant donations of money or other things had to be paid up to attract divine favors… At the same time, a divine cast set itself apart. Witch doctors had elevated themselves to priesthood. Their power was so great that together with kings and pharaohs, they created huge empires of faithful slaves “by the will of the supreme gods.”

With the advent of philosophy, logical thought and dialectic exchange gained prominence over the mythical view of the universe yet it seems that the more the idea of god was debated, the more strongly rooted it became in the human psyche. Whether is was Xenophanes who refuted the anthropomorphic gods in favor of “incorporeal eternal being”, or Thales who presumed water to be the primary element in nature and not gods yet believed in “soul (which) was the cause of motion, permeating and enlivening the entire cosmos” or Heraclitus described by some as atheist, who hinted at a presence of element of the “divine” in the world’s order. Since the pre-Socratic times till today, the idea of god has undergone innumerable permutations. It continues to be debated, its essence is attempted to be captured and defined by Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche , and Heidegger and so many more. Admittedly, by now “god” must be the most universally recognizable term yet one that is, despite the eternal length of debate surrounding it, most poorly defined. It is, and here by throwing in my 2 cents I join in with the millions adding to gods superfluous credence, a “carte blanche”, an ace, a joker in the making of our own custom flavored reality, in our own image, according to our very personal tastes.