Forgive me Tolkein for ripping off your beautiful poem from Lord of the Rings. It is perhaps aptly fitting, considering he was quite famously a devout Christian man.

I should preface this rant on monotheistic religion by saying I don’t intend to belittle your beliefs; I firmly believe that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and opinions. It is your God-given and basic human right to be allowed the freedom of thought. What I plan to do here is simply state just how out-dated and perhaps antiquated a lot of our religious doctrine and axioms are. I want you to see that just because you’ve been told something, it doesn’t necessarily make it true. Because someone (or some people) wrote something 2000 years ago, it does not make it accurate or true today.

Let’s begin with the creation of the Hebrew Bible, or the Torah, sometime around 1300 BC, and the major contributing factor to monotheism in the world today.

Curiously, depending on the interpretation, some people claim that the God that exposed himself in the Torah wasn’t the ONLY God — he was just the only God that showed himself to Abraham. He may have just been the God of Israel, an idea which would fit in with the polytheistic pantheon of Greek and Egyptian Gods, and the slew of other tribal Gods that existed all around the world. Over the following years, and as more scripture was divinely inspired and added to the Hebrew Bible, it seems that the Israeli God slowly pushed out all other Gods until he was the only one:

“Know this day, and take it to heart, that the LORD is God in heaven above and on earth below; there is none else.” Deuteronomy 4:39

And thus, monotheism was born. Polytheism quickly fell by the wayside, shunted aside by the vast strength of the monotheistic belief system. Christianity quickly followed in the first century AD, with Islam following a little later.

Fast forward to today and the belief in a single almighty, all-knowing and dreadful God rules more than half the world.

Humans have long believed in some kind of spirituality. We want to believe that we’re not just lumps of meat that walk around for 80 years and then die, to be consumed by the earth; there’s something in our DNA or our physiological makeup that makes us inclined to believe in some kind of higher power. Somewhere along our genetic time track, between being primordial ooze and the humans we are today, something went click, and we started explaining away certain phenomena as the actions of Gods, or at least some kind of omnipresent force that watches over us.

With so much belief, it’s unsurprising that Gods literally sprung up everywhere. A God of Wine, a God of Battle, a God of Love — you name it, at some stage there was probably a God that ‘oversaw’ that sphere of reality. When Caesar won a battle in Gaul against an army 10 times greater than his, that belief in something greater, that urge to find explicate all things wonderful, he attributed his overwhelming good luck to a benevolent Mars, the God of War.

It is this slightly odd urge to attribute everything that happens to some kind of higher power that makes us susceptible to religion in general, and monotheism in particular.

I wonder if, when a male lion fends off his pride from another male, he stops to thank the Gods or God, or if he just marvels at his own prowess and strength. Why then must we, as humans, always be humble in the eyes of God? Why can our greatest endeavours only be realised and ratified with the grace and benevolence of God? Why can we not be great and powerful in our own right, and why must we thank God instead of the work by other great men and women?

The thing is, monotheistic religion actually had a valuable place in ancient civilisation. Most things happen for a reason, and monotheism was required for the development of the world that we live in today. It’s widely believed that the development of monotheism went hand-in-hand with the development of large cities and trade between countries — as people moved from villages and tribes into larger cities, monotheism began to take hold. In such a large, messy and dangerous environment — a veritable melting pot of different cultures  and tribes — a single religion, with a single God, was undoubtedly a desirable resolution to such problems.

When you swear on mighty, vengeful God to make good on a trade agreement, other believers of the same religion are very likely to believe and trust you. Before monotheism, trading and buying goods from around the world was almost nonexistent. Unfortunately, for the believers, some intelligent people quickly realised something else about monotheism: it’s very good for controlling people.

While polytheism was generally about explaining away unknown phenomena, monotheism is much more about the control of people, and much more importantly about the control of thought. God expects you to act like this and treat other people like that; God tells you what is right, and more importantly what is wrong.

Therein lies the rub: it’s not actually God telling us these things, it’s a bunch of prophets, scribes and priests. Not to be left out, even a few kings and emperors, over the millenia, have leaned over the shoulder of a scribe and said ‘Oh, I don’t like that bit… take it out.’ If an almighty being, one that was  actually omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent had written the Hebrew Bible or New Testament, then we might be on to something. Sadly, they didn’t — humans did. Now, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Religion had its place, historically. Sure, it preyed upon our inherent belief that there’s something bigger than us out there, but it did enable civilisation to grow, and develop. It made it possible for people to live in relative safety, and to develop empires that shaped the world we know today.

Now that we’ve reached modernity, religion seems a little outdated. It still controls what we say and what we do. Once upon a time, eating bacon or shellfish was undoubtedly risky; just as a homosexual relationship probably was too. Today, they are not. Today, religion — organised religion, with a hierarchy, with priests, and with a system for regulating our actions and thoughts — serves very little purpose. It might be argued that religion has killed more people over the past 2000 years than it has saved. It might be argued that the world would be a different, wonderful place if the intellectual and spiritual road-block of the Dark Ages had never existed.

The problem is this: our need to believe in something is so great and so unerring that once belief is instilled in us, it’s almost impossible to shake off. The most monstrous atrocities can happen to a person, and they will still believe in God’s infallibility; they will still believe that God is watching over them, and that he has a mighty plan that justifies everything.

The root of almost every failed civillisation can be traced back to an over-zealous High Priest

I use the term ‘High Priest’ loosely; it could be a king, emperor, president or anyone that is buoyed up by the belief of a religion’s followers.

The thing is if God actually existed, and he actually guided us, there wouldn’t be a problem. He would actually know everything that has happened and will happen in the future. Unfortunately, I can’t disprove God — no one can. That’s the key, the linchpin and the crux to every single organised religion: they prey on our fear of the unknown. That’s why every religion exists and why they are followed fervently — from tribal polytheism to modern monotheism — to explain unknown phenomena. Every single religion has some tie-in to an afterlife, or heaven, or hell, or purgatory, or even rebirth. They rely on ideas that most likely can never be proven wrong. They rely on appealing to that spiritual side of us that we seemingly have very little control over.

Perhaps it is finally time to throw away a God that disables and lessens our vast abilities. Letting someone else decide for us what is right and wrong, what we can and can’t do, is such a damn cop-out! We, the human race, are so infinitely capable; why would we listen to anyone, or a God, that tells us otherwise?

What happens when you die?

If you’re not spiritually-inclined, death is just a moment in time. You’re alive and then, a moment later, you’re dead. There is a cessation of all that makes us physically alive: we stop breathing, our blood circulation halts and finally our brain activity flat-lines — we are deceased.

And medically speaking that is true. Your time is up; the grains of sand have emptied and the ticking has ceased.

On the other hand, if you believe in some kind of soul, something beyond the world that we can see and measure scientifically, death is more of a way-point on your travels.  You might believe that heaven awaits, or that your soul takes a little trip before returning back to the physical realm, but it doesn’t really matter: you believe that death isn’t the end of your story.

What we really have to do is define ‘death’, a task that many people would claim is very easy: it’s body death; a flat line on both the ECG (heart) and EEG (brain) machines. Someone whispers into our ear or shines a light into our eyes and there is no response, no reflex — that’s body death. But then why are there billions of people that believe that we’re not actually dead, that our soul has simply left the building in search of other stomping grounds or greener pastures? Death is meant to be the end! And it is for every other animal and plant in the world! Why does it have to be so tricky when it comes to humans, why do we persist in refuting death? Why do we insist that we ‘live on’?

Maybe, just possibly, there’s something to it. Perhaps there is a soul. Perhaps body death isn’t the end! What if we are just poorly-equipped to define ‘death’ scientifically? What if science simply refuses, by definition, to acknowledge something that is impossible to measure and define?

But then why is more than half of Earth’s population so strongly opposed to the finality of death? Why, for thousands of years, have we tried to define life after death? For millennia we have struggled to elucidate what really goes on after death as we traverse the great unknown — and curiously, after 6,000 years of modern civilisation, we still don’t even know how to get there! Attaining spiritual immortality in ancient history and religion reads like a hilarious list of scatter-gun, maybe-this-will-work approaches. First, right at the cusp of recorded history, there were deified statues and bloody rituals. Then with the first great civilisations we had burial rites and coins on our eyelids to ensure our safe passage into the afterlife. The Dark Ages saw a change from polytheism to monotheism and it became more about repentance, seeking forgiveness for our sins and regimented worship. Finally, with the Middle Ages and the glorious, opulent lives of feudal nobility and merchant oligarchies, immortality could be obtained by paying someone that’s close enough to an Almighty Being — i.e. buy some new stained-glass windows and you’re in.

The problem is: they can’t all be right. Is obtaining life after death simply a matter of mentally flagellating or prostrating yourself before the eyes of a suitably-powerful deity? Almost all religions claim that that they are correct and infallible, their scriptures often divined or prophesied from a god. They don’t all claim that other religions are false but most do — my god is more goddy than yours! — which causes a little problem: who’s right? Are they all right? Or, as I’m inclined to believe, are they all wrong? I won’t turn this into a theological discussion, but I do want to work out which religion got it right because the concept of everlasting life must be pretty enthralling if five billion people want to believe in it.

In fact, the concept that we might simply cease to exist, both body and soul (if it exists!), is a relatively new concept. An enlightened concept that we’ve been scared of acknowledging all along, just in case it’s true. We’ve finally arrived back at the stage where challenging or disproving religion doesn’t end up with you being burnt at the stake. We’re finally at the point where we can question our existence in this universe with some semblance of objectivity. Pure and absolute rationality is still a little way off — maybe quantum mechanics has the real answers? — but we can still revisit with a critical eye, unfettered by either dogma or tradition, the concept of allaying or postponing our ultimate death.

Science has gone a long way to explaining many things we’ve historically considered ‘magical’ or ‘miraculous’ but there are still many unknowns. There are a whole slew of phenomena that can be explained by the existence of a ’spiritual universe’ too — in fact, it’s a very good way of explaining away almost anything that remains a mystery to us. Eventually though — and this is guaranteed — someone will get to the bottom of near-death experiences and the continued consciousness that people experience throughout brain death. In a truly ‘eureka!’ moment a scientist will discover exactly what happens, if anything, when we die.

It’ll feel like the unravelling of the greatest of magic tricks: one of the few remaining mysteries of human existence ripped apart and laid bare for all to see. And then, like all exploited magic — or technology — it’ll just become a ubiquitous part of everyday life: if we do have souls, we’ll make glorious plans for the afterlife; if we don’t we’ll be able to finally stop wasting our time trying to earn and validate our ticket to the afterlife.

I hope people won’t be too disappointed when they find out that all those years of prayer and sacrifice and unwavering belief were for nothing. The Norse and Greek had the right idea: perform amazing deeds of strength and bravery, kindness and mercy. Achieve immortality through renown alone. Of course, they also knew that if any gods just happened to be watching they were hitting two birds with one stone.

I’ve covered the sorry state of knowledge and inherent lack of truth that plagues contemporary society.

But it didn’t start yesterday or even 100 years ago! It’s an eternally recurring theme of dumbing-down and almost-truths dispensed by nasty people posing as intellectual authorities over thousands of years. There is an endemic ‘loss of wisdom’ that has an iteratively degenerative effect, gaining more momentum with each generation.

Historically these lies, these tales, were of a philosophical or mythical nature and virtually harmless. They were stories that became true through retelling: Hercules, Romulus, Arthur. The stories were told first by the travelling bard, then more abstractly through tribalism and shamanism. Polytheism followed with its anthropomorphic (god of wine, god of war) pantheon of valiant heroes and demigods. Finally monotheism trumped them all and wrapped up with its epic, fearsomely vengeful tale of apocalyptic events.

Old wives’ tales (or fables or myths or whatever!) might’ve been lies or half-truths but they didn’t really harm anyone; they might have been ‘not ideal’, but that’s not the point — they were moving towards the ideal — they were retold to children with good intentions! The same could be said for the basic spiritual maxims of most religions: everlasting life; don’t murder; try your best not to sodomise your brother’s wife; treat others how you would like to be treated. All good but… it sadly didn’t last. Something changed. All of a sudden enforcement entered the equation. Arbitrary enforcement: rules, laws and peer pressure with little or no basis in moral/cultural advancement or ethical living. If abstract/intellectual enforcement wasn’t enough, there was a strong physical aspect too: witch-hunts, the Inquisition and the Crusades are but a few obvious examples.

Why did it happen? For thousands of years our focus had been on becoming a more advanced race. But one day, probably after the fall of Rome, we woke up and well… we fell asleep again. Life was no longer about pushing the progress of civilisation. Perhaps it was our growing understanding of human anatomy and psychology that caused the change. Maybe it was due to the formation of metropolises like Rome and the urgent need to control large groups of people quickly and easily. Personally I think the continued development of written and spoken language — and rhetoric — played a big role. Whatever it was, something snapped. No longer was storytelling used to share wisdom or morals to improve our progeny’s standard of living. Gone were the tales that frightened children away from actual dangers like dank caves or poisonous fruits.

A new breed of story started to appear, tales that weaved lies and believable half-truths into their narrative. And we know that words, both written and spoken, have a terrible power. Instead of cresting taller peaks and pushing towards new horizons people started to fear their surroundings. Authorities of knowledge slowly faded away to be replaced by scary chieftains, oppressive teachers, greedy priests and, of course, a vengeful God.

I’ve written about magic before and how it is ultimately synonymous with technology. Television was magic (find an old person that was around when television was invented and talk to them about it!) but sure enough, it very quickly became mundane. What do you think would’ve happened to the inventor of the television if he had been around in the Middle Ages? What do you think ‘witchcraft’ actually was? With such an attitude towards innovation and revolution (or evolution, hah!), is it a surprise that books, education and intellectual enlightenment all but disappeared for 1,000 years?

For a very, very long time the pursuit of knowledge and truth — science! — was frowned upon, persecuted. Scientists were shunned or burnt at the stake. Why?

Because they were dangerous. Knowledge is power.

We humans learnt just enough for the monotheistic surge to take place. We learnt how to exploit the human love of mystery with smart wit and sharp turns of dogmatic phrase. We have become a scared and tentative flock too fearful to break from the pack. In essence we learnt just enough to be dominated and no more.

And now we await — or do we create? –  the next Renaissance where veracity of knowledge is returned to us.

***

Still more to come, I think; on prejudice and ignorance. Oh, and if you’re reading this on the blog itself, remember you can double click a word to find out what it means!

Darkness.

Enigma.

Secret.

Curiousity.

Surprise.

Paranormal.

Superstition.

Rapture.

Riddle.

Myth. Magic. Mystery.

* * *

The definition of mystery, though multi-faceted, is a good place to start:

Anything that arouses curiosity or perplexes because it is unexplained, inexplicable, or secret.

That [which] is not fully understood or that baffles or eludes understanding; an enigma.

But it goes further. I’m not the only one that has noticed the prevalence of mysticism in contemporary civilisation:

The skills, lore, or practices that are peculiar to a particular activity or group and are regarded as the special province of initiates.

A religious truth that is incomprehensible to reason and knowable only through divine revelation.

An incident from the life of Jesus, especially the Incarnation, Passion, Crucifixion, or Resurrection, of particular importance for redemption.

The derivation is even more interesting:

From Latin mystērium, from Greek mustērion, secret rite, from mustēs, an initiate, from mūein, to close the eyes, initiate.

So you can see, the concept of mystery is old and likely prehistoric, pre-dating all forms of modern civilisation. Though Christianity is the only religion mentioned by name in the definitions, all theistic religions rely solely on mystery as their driving force; their ‘hook’, if you will. That’s why those few that actually communicate with God (or gods) are referred to as ‘mystics’ — they’re dealing with mysterious, inexplicable, unprovable phenomena. Gods are mysteries, in other words.

The fundamental axiom of all advanced lifeforms can be generalised as ‘What’s around the next corner?’ On a low-level it might be as simple as finding new hunting grounds; for humans it might as complex as finding a new partner, a new job — either way, it’s about moving. Not necessarily forward or back, but moving. There are higher concepts but at the end of the day it’s exploration and horizon-hunting that really does it for us; what really satisfies us.

Why then are we so damn addicted to mystery? Mystery is the polar opposite of exploration, science, truth. But we embrace it! We find comfort in the not-knowing. We set out on epic journeys to seek out new continents and new civilisations, all the while seeking solace in the gods that illumine starlit skies. There’s something about that which we do not know.

And these mysteries will forever remain because we don’t try too hard to solve them. No matter how hard we try, a mystery remains just beyond the reach of our grasping fingertips — or rather, we don’t stretch our hands too far in case we actually reach the mystery. The moment we close our fingers and find it to be nothing more than insubstantial smoke and deceptive mirrors — we shatter. Our world-view contorts and shifts and finally buckles under its elusive enormity. The shattered fragments of mystery lay limp and unravelled between our fingers. There’s nothing there. There never has been. There never will be.

Gosh.

Why do we keep reaching? Why do we raise our hands to the sky in search of salvation and heavenly oases?

Why does it hurt so much when we find out that a mystery is really nothing more than random chance or laws of physics? Because we’re rational creatures; we feast on order, reason. For every effect we must attribute a cause.

Someone somewhere once prayed to the very first heavenly and inexplicable body: the stars. The constellation of Orion perhaps. ‘Let tomorrow’s hunt be a success’ he prayed. And you know what? It was. The hunt was a rave success. Forever after, he prayed to the stars.

Then one day, sometime in the near future, the hunt wasn’t a success. In fact, some of the hunters were gored by the wild boar and died. So of course he prayed harder. What other option was there?

Yesterday I laid the ground rules for mysteries and why they have played such a huge role in the development of our society.

Note how I say ‘huge’ rather than important or vital.

Are these mysteries a good thing for survival? Better yet: is this incessant hunt for the unknowable a human-only trait? Did we evolve this love of mystery?

The general argument goes like this: we like to see patterns. We attribute cause to every effect. We like to believe that there’s something more to life than just 80 years of humdrum mundanity followed by death and burial and rigor mortis. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know if animals and plants feel the same way, but it’s often stated that only humans ponder the existence of an after-life (though who knows if this is true…) So it’s something in the brain — our brain — that sets us apart from the rest of them. We must’ve evolved that functionality, or been given it by our Creator — whatever, I’m not going to get into a theological discussion here.

The point is, at some point in time, we grew to love mystery. Like, seriously adore. You can look at certain times in history when almost everything in your day-to-day life was ritual. Wake up; pray. Hunt; pray. Eat; pray. Old wives’ tales. Turning three times widdershins before crossing a cursed threshold. Naming of children. Gods! Astrology! It’s all attributing cause to effect.

I sometimes wonder if people realise how feeble it is to be nothing but a pawn of the universe. You are merely the result of billions of random-chance-and-cause-unknown effects. Only, wait a second, the cause isn’t unknown! It’s the god of war! Of the hunt! Wine! The Israelites — God!

But, hang on, we’re not all mystery junkies. There are some people that hate the idea of mystery. They’re called ’scientists’.

And that’s the bit I don’t get. There are people that can only sleep at night knowing that God is looking over them, that Jesus makes their miserable, sinful life bearable — and then there are those that are the complete opposite. There are people that find the idea of spirituality or immortality repulsive: ‘that which can not be proven does not exist, so why give such concepts such credence?’

Are these scientists, these doubters-of-mysterious-coincidence, an evolutionary creation? Are they relatively new — the last few thousand years or so — or have there always been questioning, discerning doubters since the dawn of time? Was fire really stolen from the gods, or did Ug the Caveman create it through trial and error? Throughout history there have always been a few that question their surroundings. Rarely are their voices heard — usually only for a split, blood-curdling second before the guillotine drops or the tinder is lit. In fact, today and for the first time in history, scientists seem to finally have gained more respect and gravitas than theologians. Thank God.

The sad bit is that mystery, or at least those that ‘believe’ in mystery, far outweighs the truth, the cause-seeker, the scientists. The vast majority believe in the omnipresence and omnipotence of God or gods. On top of that there a lot of people that are apathetic to the discovery of knowledge and truth. It seems to me that ‘mystery junky’ is the dominant genetic trait. Maybe we can genetically engineer our DNA to remove such a trait…