On Religion

Decided to write an extra-post influenced by the group’s discussion about God, destiny, determinism, creation etc.

I believe that in order to talk about religion correctly, we have to understand how religion (in general meaning not bound to any particular one) was born. And for simple understanding, I can offer you my manual that is partially based on the Soviet times, when any believing in something extraordinary except the power of mighty communistic party was weird, and officially none of the religions was supported by the government.

So, imagine yourself somewhere in a cave, forty thousand years ago, in the age when homo sapiens appears as a new stable form of a “Homina” kind. You’re standing in a cave - hungry, angry, and bloody hell – stupid, with a big heavy stick in your dirty hands. There’s only one right choice – go and hunt mammoth – dangerous, almost impossible mission, especially for a small group of people. You decide to do it, and miracle!! It works!! You’ve done it, hero. But everybody understands that it just kind of luck... or a magic. So – direct conclusion – your stick is a magical one. Stick of power, yeah, +10 damage from both hands. Congrats! We’ve got the first type of religion – fetishism. Now we have to remember Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, and his “regular man” stage of existence. 

How is the world working? It’s like theater – magic of luck, and total determinism – destiny. So magic, next. Time is going, a population is growing, and small private unions based on familiar relations are meeting each other and those, who decided not to kill each other – connecting and starting their development together, and each of this groups has its own “stick of truth”. Which one is the best? Nobody knows, so that one who not killed each other for cult-idol (or whose stick was more powerful), deciding to put all the sticks together. Lots of junk, couple tanks of saint-barbarian-faith and we’ve got the second type of religion – Totemism. 

But ones upon a time, there was awful, really awful weather, and the wind was blowing cold and light bolts were smashing ground like Zeus throwing his bolts, ah, sorry, this guy will be much later. One of the Thunderbolts smashes the holy totem, it’s the end of the world, but in the same time with thunder, eagle flew over it, and we’re trying to fix our broken world-picture, connecting two different events and creating first mind-based (idealistic/imaginary) religion called Animism – believing that some of the animals are holy ones. 

Bullshit, yeah? Say hello to Muslims and Buddhists. Crazy, but all religions are going through these stages if you can’t find one of the stages – analyze on which stage analyzing religion is now, and find its roots (previous incarnations of a particular religion). Then one of holy animal have more power, or it was a lean year, and the tribe was forced by circumstances and ate a holy animal, but the world still standing, so not animals are holy, but spirits of those animals – voilà, Next type of religion – Spiritualism. Each spirit needs its own magician or a priest, so we already having fun not just with spiritual animal, but with separate god – usually with animal head or bird wings, who cares. Polytheism, or multiple gods systems, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the Roman Empire, Indian tribes, Slavic tribes and more and more examples. But one day, first – you’re tired of the line of sacrifices to tons of gods, second – some people starting to talk about mystical one-god-creator. Mister X, greatest leader. Yeah, one more thing – in this time there are already existing strong verticals of power-based governances. Anyway, happy to present to you – Monotheistic religions. But it's only beginning. From this point, I will take Christian religion for example. Third age a.c. Christians are making first government approved editions to their holy book: “Then Jesus said to them, "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." And they were amazed at him.” Brilliant. Less than one age ago- there’s only one choice – believing in Jesus or painful death. The atmosphere of fear and stupidity became a normal one. Aurelius Augustinus, the guy who sacrificed his life for god-serving first of Christians thought about a relation between goodness will and power, destiny and human will and human freedom inside god’s providence. So he was the first one who placed God over nature, God is absolute being, but he didn’t give a lot of freedom to a person. People were created totally free, but after an act of sin - they now determined by the god's will. Next guy who tried to understand world structure was Thomas Aquinas, he was so Christian, that he tried to prove gods’ existence. He made five proofs of gods’ existence. To make this – he used the philosophical legacy of ancient Greece. Watch this – Religious guy, using philosophy to make almost scientific proving of gods’ existence. Panoptical. But his harvest was great – human-being stage between animals and angels, his main features – freedom of will and rational soul. And that means, said Aquinas that each person responsible for things it was done. God created us free. 

Then a long time of Christian terrorism all over Europe, western and eastern. 

Seventeen century brought us new word – pantheism. Pantheism in direct interpretation will be something like “everything is God” Actually there’re three types of pantheism, but it doesn’t matter for our today's discourse. Main critics were declared from church supported by saint inquisitions power, God is not everything – cause if it so, then magic, national cults, and local gods are part of big God and it has rights to exist – unexpected rivalry. Then was French philosophers of eighteen centuries, first atheists, who knew all church staff, knew the bible better than own names, grown in the atmosphere of gods’ eternity and immortality. And strange stuff – these guys were first atheists. First ones who told that God is not existing, that’s bullshit, we don’t need it. In same time Francis Bacon writes his inductive logic and starts a scientific boom. Educational level growing from one day - to another, and logical end of religion – atheistic existentialism, total responsibility for everything and everyone. That’s it. There’s no place for something religious anymore. We (humanity) have done this cycle. Passed it.

I wanted to tell and show you that religion is logically gone. So there’re no points even to talk about it anymore. Religion has to become something disgusting, something you want to step over and never remember again.