I recently watched some videos by Carl Sagan (I love him) that battled with my ideals about religion. It can’t really be denied anymore (if you accept scientific evidence) that we had arrived on this planet without what makes us who we are. That is to say, without our intelligence. It was something that developed and evolved over millennia. It started with one question which eventually lead to another and like a domino effect we came to another barrier that resulted in another question as to what in the world (or out of it) it could be, and we just hurdled right over with any explanation we could apply that made sense, if not to everyone, at least to the individual who presented the question and theorized its answer.
For example, Carl placed himself in a hypothetical situation 100,000 years into the past when man was only just beginning to harness and manipulate the insurmountable authority that was fire.
We know that our ancient stoner ancestors were nomadic tribes that lived in hunter-gatherer societies and that Prometheus had introduced fire to these communities. This acquaintance would then inevitably become an obsession and the focus, the epicenter of the community, the most important asset to it, worth any one of their lives. Why? Simply, because it made everything better. It offered protection, warmth, a means to cook food, weaponry, forging, light, landscape reformation (agricultural benefits as well as clearing land) and so on.
If there were a single object on this earth that could make all of our lives better in every aspect spanning the realms of comfort to security (the two basic necessities of any animal), wouldn’t it almost be considered polite on our part to praise such an awesome entity? Well this was in fact what happened, as we see the element of fire take on a divine attribute; and even today this day fire worship is still practiced symbolically in various sects and religions such as Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and even with Jewish mystics to some degree (the burning bush).
So could it have possibly been the revelation of fire that introduced God, Angels, and Demons to humans? As Carl's hypothesis goes, we questioned the fire that brought light during the night, then we questioned the light that had always shown at night but who dwelled in the sky. Light is light, it must come from fire, as it is proved true at night in our caves. But those lights in the sky, could they be campfires like ours? Are there people like us who cook and see and are warmed by this fire? They watch us from above like we watch them from below. If we are below stuck on the Earth, then they are above and stuck in the Sky, because we never see them come down. These people must be sky people. They must have wings if that is the case, like birds need wings to stay aflight. But what about after darkness when all those lights run away with the night and that one large bright circle takes over and spreads its light all over our world? That must be their master's light because it is so big and His light is much brighter than the little ones.
Eventually it comes to a point where the human conceptualizes something very powerful that dwells above and they relate it to fire. Why? Because fire has both good and evil. It can make everything incomparably better, or it can make everything terribly worse. When it is happy, it takes care of us. When it is angry, we suffer. When it is sad, the lights disappear and his tears fall on us.
These are the primitive observations of the first humans. And their theories were derived only from what they knew from their own experiences. They based the acts of nature only from their own personalities, their own feelings, as that was all we really knew when intellect was still an infant. We understood the feeling of hunger, pain, and joy, the three things that motivate us to move. These feelings were associated with those primitive Gods of these natural forces, forces beyond human comprehension at the time. It wasn't until thousands and thousands of years later when people began to utilize fire to its full potential, creating weapons and structures, that it was necessary to create organization in order to have stability- comfort and security. The need for organization requires much innovation from a people who have survived in an unorganized fashion. This became the process of civilization. The only way to create is to observe what is already there then reapply the interpretation in a way that is suitable to the needs of the individual or society. This essentially was the birth of science; the human endeavor to understand the processes of nature, to understand the behavior of the Gods, and replicate and/or manipulate those forces to supplement our goals.
And we see how as science progressed through the ages, how it became refined and inquisitive and brought about intellectual revolution and sharpened reasoning, that we see the form of the Gods and Goddesses change according the reason we apply on ourselves and them; the reason for god, the roles of gods in our society, and the way of their actions (the forces of nature).
Over time we tamed nature to accomplish our goals, therefore we tamed God simply by our understanding of nature, but it was always believed that God was out of human reach; so with the combination of that reality of control and the belief that god was uncontrollable, the nature of God changed to fit this conclusion so that humans would not have lost the meaning of life that the supposition of the existence of God seemed to provide. God was no longer a wild unpredictable being, as we realized the true process and patterns of nature and what caused nature's behavior. And we were no longer just the subjects that were subjugated to their whims as we ourselves had control of these same powers; we ourselves could harness the forces of nature, but we were not and could not be Gods. But if we had developed the capability to utilize those same godly powers, what then becomes of the Gods who originally ruled those forces of nature? There must have been some other God if those Gods were false, something beyond those Gods, a true singular God who created this all, not dozens of Demigods. Those Gods were not real, it's unreasonable to believe that. The belief of those God's existence is unintellectual, based off of misinformed primitive humans who had not the means to know the infallibility of their belief, and was impossible for them to recover that knowledge that their Gods were only imaginary. If it were not for the technological advancements made through science as a result of the progression of our knowledge since then, then we might still believe in our imaginary friends, simply because we did not understand the truth of nature; that it was not controlled by ethereal deities but was the result of a series of causes and their effects, as we have so observed. But we now have that information; so what does it imply? Through the evolution and progression of our understanding of the universe, we seem to be proving more and more through the scientific process of hypothesis, experimentation, and conclusion, which gives us our intellectual beliefs, our definitive reasons as to why that every observable event or thing is a result of some cause; that God simply has no reign in the natural universe; that everything is subject to a reason, a cause, which we can discover.
Eventually it comes to a point where the human conceptualizes something very powerful that dwells above and they relate it to fire. Why? Because fire has both good and evil. It can make everything incomparably better, or it can make everything terribly worse. When it is happy, it takes care of us. When it is angry, we suffer. When it is sad, the lights disappear and his tears fall on us.
These are the primitive observations of the first humans. And their theories were derived only from what they knew from their own experiences. They based the acts of nature only from their own personalities, their own feelings, as that was all we really knew when intellect was still an infant. We understood the feeling of hunger, pain, and joy, the three things that motivate us to move. These feelings were associated with those primitive Gods of these natural forces, forces beyond human comprehension at the time. It wasn't until thousands and thousands of years later when people began to utilize fire to its full potential, creating weapons and structures, that it was necessary to create organization in order to have stability- comfort and security. The need for organization requires much innovation from a people who have survived in an unorganized fashion. This became the process of civilization. The only way to create is to observe what is already there then reapply the interpretation in a way that is suitable to the needs of the individual or society. This essentially was the birth of science; the human endeavor to understand the processes of nature, to understand the behavior of the Gods, and replicate and/or manipulate those forces to supplement our goals.
And we see how as science progressed through the ages, how it became refined and inquisitive and brought about intellectual revolution and sharpened reasoning, that we see the form of the Gods and Goddesses change according the reason we apply on ourselves and them; the reason for god, the roles of gods in our society, and the way of their actions (the forces of nature).
Over time we tamed nature to accomplish our goals, therefore we tamed God simply by our understanding of nature, but it was always believed that God was out of human reach; so with the combination of that reality of control and the belief that god was uncontrollable, the nature of God changed to fit this conclusion so that humans would not have lost the meaning of life that the supposition of the existence of God seemed to provide. God was no longer a wild unpredictable being, as we realized the true process and patterns of nature and what caused nature's behavior. And we were no longer just the subjects that were subjugated to their whims as we ourselves had control of these same powers; we ourselves could harness the forces of nature, but we were not and could not be Gods. But if we had developed the capability to utilize those same godly powers, what then becomes of the Gods who originally ruled those forces of nature? There must have been some other God if those Gods were false, something beyond those Gods, a true singular God who created this all, not dozens of Demigods. Those Gods were not real, it's unreasonable to believe that. The belief of those God's existence is unintellectual, based off of misinformed primitive humans who had not the means to know the infallibility of their belief, and was impossible for them to recover that knowledge that their Gods were only imaginary. If it were not for the technological advancements made through science as a result of the progression of our knowledge since then, then we might still believe in our imaginary friends, simply because we did not understand the truth of nature; that it was not controlled by ethereal deities but was the result of a series of causes and their effects, as we have so observed. But we now have that information; so what does it imply? Through the evolution and progression of our understanding of the universe, we seem to be proving more and more through the scientific process of hypothesis, experimentation, and conclusion, which gives us our intellectual beliefs, our definitive reasons as to why that every observable event or thing is a result of some cause; that God simply has no reign in the natural universe; that everything is subject to a reason, a cause, which we can discover.
Those causes are subjects we still question today, and which we are consistent in finding answers to. Our growing knowledge of the universe threatens the idea that God causes this or does that and is responsible for this which happens in the world. And in the closer anyalyses of newer modern religions, such as the monotheistic approaches of Christianity, Islam, and Judiasm, this reality that God(s) that have no role in the natural world is reflected in their beliefs. God becomes no more an intangible force, God becomes part of us. The free will of the Gods that our ancestors believed themselves to be subjected to has become the very nature of ourselves, and is the mirror image of that single God that created all, that even created all those other false representations of God (if they ever were real). For example we can look at the general idea that man was created in God's image; we are the multiple representations of that one God of all knowledge and all power. In Christianity and Judaism, their shared creation story even tries to explain how our knowledge freed us from ignorance, but at the cost of eternal bliss because of our choice to question God, question his authority, by indulging the fruits of the tree of knowledge.
So we see the evolution of religion from how it was before the knowledge we have now, and we see that it has been molded to fit our constantly changing knowledge of the universe. How then does religion still remain credible, if it is supposed to be related to something so divine, when it is endlessly being proved inconsistent to the truths of reality we discover? Religion seems only to be theory based on the limited ability of a people to investigate thoroughly the aspects of their beliefs. What they couldn't understand completely in the world they believed the only explanation was that these unknowable things were of another supernatural being's prowess; But with the onset of our intellectual revolution, and when we reason critically with those ideas; weren't those beliefs misinformed or under-informed conclusions? As modern people, we know the acceptance of conclusions based on misinformation is simply unreasonable; it is stupid because it is wrong. How can you believe in an old theory which is the cause of a misunderstanding, especially when we have a better, more reasonable understanding of it now that is the result of an unarguably better method of explicit scrutiny and experimentation, and from which our new conclusions and theories are constantly proven correct or false. How can you have faith in something that is tainted in your ignorance and your overall lack of understanding of the truth about subject?
These sorts of questions are asked and answered with much more substance in this video called Night: The Backbone of the Universe, presented by the late Carl Sagan, along with the evolution of science and human reason, including stunning looks into the revolutionaries that inhibited the quest for knowledge and became the model of the way in which we see the world now. I deeply encourage you to watch, learn, and interpret for yourself what Carl presents in this documentary if you really want a clear understanding of yourself in this world. The video is an hour long, but it extremely interesting and Carl is a fun guy to watch and listen to, so it's definitely worth stealing that hour from your sleep. It may unexpectedly cause additional hours of your sleep to be lost though, due to the intense unignorable thoughts that will be provoked. But active thought is better than passive thought I suppose- at least more productive.
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