Sun, Moon, Pharaohs, Emperors, Gods
We’ve worshipped everything from the sun, to the moon, to Egyptian pharaohs and Roman emperors. Then we created mythological gods in our own image. Through our history, we’ve worshipped the many gods of countless polytheistic religions. About four thousand years ago, in the Middle East, someone came up with the idea that there is just one God. Keep in mind that this was just someone’s idea. Someone like you or me. This idea marked the beginning of the western concept of what we refer to as monotheism (one God). That religion was Judaism and the God Yahweh (misspelled Jehovah in the King James Version of the Bible). About fourteen hundred years later (twenty-six hundred years ago), Buddhism (in India), Confucianism, and Taoism (both in China), belief systems with no gods, emerged as powerful religious movements in the East.
In the last forty years of the first century A.D., in the approximate years 60 to 100 (no one knows for sure), long after the events that were claimed to have occurred, the New Testament gospels Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were created decades apart. Who wrote these stories? People theorize about the authors but no one knows who wrote these gospels. They were written anonymously by early Church teachers. Later, they were assigned to four evangelistic saints to bestow legitimacy.
What were these writers doing? Albert Einstein observed that we can’t solve our problems from the same level of thinking from which they originated. These writers boldly went to the next level. The Jewish laws had been around for two thousand years. It was time to move on, to advance and evolve. The writers were radical, progressive, and inclusive. They reached out to the gentiles. They sought to help the poor. Their followers congregated in homes. Churches (congregations) formed.
Theologians agree that the gospel authors, each with his or her own agenda and bias, created stories to match the prophecy of the Old Testament written two thousand years earlier. To embellish their stories, the writers employed the practice, common at the time, of incorporating fictional elements drawn from ancient writings of heroes and gods from pagan religions (today, we call this practice plagiarism).
In particular, they “borrowed” heavily from a rival and major religion in the Roman Empire, Mithraism, which had existed for at least seven hundred years. It originated in Persia, which is now Iran. Mithraism, based on a fictional character named Mithra, was popular in the first century with Roman soldiers and civil servants and was a competitor to Christianity for the first four centuries. The storyline of Mithraism, not surprisingly, was strikingly similar to Christianity. After all, a kind of formula for these types of stories existed back then. Because there was no such thing as plagiarism, one simply used what one liked from earlier stories.
So, as the story goes, Mithra was born of a virgin. At his birth were adoring shepherds and magi kings. Kings were commonly inserted into these stories to represent royalty, signifying that the birth was important. Mithra’s birth - like numerous other supernatural heroes and gods - was celebrated on December 25, the same day the Christians adopted. What’s so special about December 25?
It’s four days after the winter solstice (December 21) when in the Northern hemisphere the sun is at its lowest point. By the December 25, it was evident to the ancients that the sun was rising again. It was a time for celebration and an auspicious day to be born (as the sun, worshipped as a god, was rising). The rising sun provided the idea for ascension. In the tale of Mithra were stories of miracles, resurrection, and ascension. The similarity in story lines made possible the easy conversion of Mithraism’s followers to Christianity.
Out of all of this a new story was created (which learned theologians agree is near totally fiction) and a new religion born-Christianity. With it came another god, “Christ,” from the Greek word Christos, an interpretation of the Hebrew word for messiah, or mashiakh, meaning the anointed one (as prophesied in the Old Testament). At some point, someone declared that these contrived stories were the divinely inspired and infallible words of god. In other words, people were led to believe that the same god that they created in their stories was responsible for the stories they created.
About fourteen hundred years ago in Mecca, the leading city of Arabia, another prophet, Mohammed, appeared. He too heard the infallible words of God. As he could not write, he had a scribe make notes of what he heard. These notes, recorded in small segments over a twenty-three-year period, were compiled in a book known as the Koran (Qur’an). Four-fifths the length of the New Testament, the Koran is considered by Muslims to be the final and infallible revelation of God’s will. Born was another religion, Islam, meaning peace and surrender or submission to God. And we got yet another god, Allah, meaning literally “The God” - not a god but the God. The one true God.
We have given these gods great powers. We say they are omnipotent, meaning that they are all-powerful; omnipresent, meaning that they exist everywhere; and omniscient, meaning that they have all learning and knowledge. These stories have caused great worldwide confusion, conflict and suffering. And wars. Sixty-six percent of our wars have been fought over these stories. We kill each other over these stories. It is the ultimate irony and a complete absurdity that we create these stories to establish examples of exemplary behavior and proper rules for living, then kill each other over them.
One does not have to be a genius to conclude that there is something absurd and fundamentally wrong here.
Filed under: religion
You fail to point out the positive aspects of religion. Major religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism have been activite in the spread of literacy. Christian monks perserved the heritage of the old Greco-Roman world throughout the European Dark Ages, and Buddhist monks likewise were among the first to bring literacy to many countries such as Japan. Religion inspired Muslims to found the oldest university still operating, and some of the oldest universities in the world were also founded by Christian organizations. The earliest hospitals and hospices were founded Christian and Islamic groups. Religions inspire the creation of many of the world charities. While it is true that religion may have contributed to wars and massacres, it is also true that religion had nothing to do with some of the greatest massacres in recent (example Cambodia).
A second point is that the consensus of scholars is that the earliest gospel, Mark, was written around 70 CE, which was only 40 years. Also, the letters of Paul were written about 20 years after the events, and despite opinion to the contrary, his letters do have some key biographical information. Nor is the time lag all that unusual - our 5 primary sources for Alexander the Great (Arrian, Curtius, Plutarch, Diodorus, and Justin) were all written several centuries after time of Alexander, and Alexander was one of the most important person in history.
Thank you, Bart. Your points are true and well taken. I do not dispute them. My point is similar to that made by the Buddha, “To insist on a spiritual practice that served us in the past, is to carry the raft on our back after we have crossed the river.” I feel that it is time to move on from these old religions. They are the products of the infancy of our intelligence. As Ghandi said, “Religious ideas are subject to the same laws of evolution that govern everything else in the universe.” It’s time to move on from dated ideas and advance as life demands.