The Gospel According To Some Random Internet Blogger

Let's talk about religion. I myself, uh, missed Mass on Sunday. My alarm broke. My dog ate my bus pass. I was caught in a blinding storm of locusts. I nearly drowned in a river of blood. It just didn't happen. Sorry, God. 


Like so many other topics, people often take the extreme position on religion. Many are evangelical zealots with "What would Jesus do?" bumper stickers on their hatchbacks (one thing I'm pretty sure Jesus wouldn't do: stick a "What would Jesus do?" bumper sticker on his car). Many others are hard boiled atheists who proudly display books like The God Delusion or Twilight Of The Gods on their coffee table. 

Me? I don't know. The truth is usually in the middle. While I have problems being a devout, unquestioning believer, I find many atheists silly. They sneer at believers but they are blind faith believers themselves. You can't prove God exists but you can't prove He (or She or Them or It) doesn't exist either.  Bible Thumpers and atheists are flip sides of the same coin: they've each convinced themselves of something without definitive proof. In fact, if I had to choose, I would probably give the nod to the total believers who stop off at Virgin Mary shrines on their way home from midnight shifts at Denny's because if you can't prove something either way, why choose to believe we're alone in the universe and destined to get eaten by worms in our black coffins? I think Atheists are folks who never completely outgrew their Alice In Chains phase. "I feel so alone / Gonna end up a big old pile of them bones". That was just Layne Staley's heroin hangover talking. Switch to the reggae station, for Jah's sake! You're going out of your way to be miserable. 

Besides, science hasn't killed God, only maimed him. Granted, the Earth is apparently 4.6 billion years old, not 5,000 years old. Granted, humans evolved from apes instead of springing from a skull, a piece of clay, or a rib. Granted, prehistoric plant life created photosynthesis which created enough oxygen for future mammals to breathe when we arrived millions of years later--it wasn't something God did in one super busy workweek. But isn't the story of evolution itself so strange and miraculous that it defies all rational logic? The idea that a species--many of them single celled organisms who would have bombed the bar exam more times than a Kennedy--somehow "knew" to promote genetic variations which led to more advantageous physical and mental characteristics? Defining this as "instinct" seem less of a true explanation than redundant semantics. Besides, many pagan religions believed in species changing, metamorphosing, shape shifting, etc. So ancient spiritual minded people intuitively saw the world in a similar way to modern scientists. A scientist might hate a priest and vice versa, but is Science and Religion so opposite after all? Or are they often strange bedfellows like Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes? And isn't Katie's divorce proof that God does indeed exist even if He sometimes sleeps?

And if the Big Bang Theory is true and the entire universe was once a ball you could have been held in your hand and maybe used on the 16th hole of a primordial Master's Golf Tournament until it exploded and expanded, where did that hot ball of matter come from in the first place? Who created something from nothing? The first rule of science is, "Nothing can be created or destroyed". Isn't that a veiled confession that science lacks the ability to fully explain the origins of the universe?

And even when science solves mysteries which may have once given rise to religious thought, it only stumbles upon new mysteries in the process----which could raise further suspicion that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamt of in our philosphy. If you were wandering around in, say, 16,000 BC, your hunter-gatherer self would have noticed something pretty weird--besides mastadons and a complete lack of Dunkin' Donuts on any street corner. Facing due north, when you get up in the morning the sun is to your right. Walk back inside during lunch time to cook your fresh game and it's right above your head. Go for an evening stroll and it's to your left. WTF? The sun is moving!?! Who the hell is moving it? And what's up with the moon brightening and darkening every month? And why is the ocean water moving too? Even the air is moving on its own when this thing called "wind" happens. Life is a magic show and some invisible magician is doing tricks. The birth of religious thought........?

But science has answered those questions.  You're not going to believe this, but it's actually the Earth moving. Granted, it's moving like a line at the DMV, so while it doesn't seem like it's moving, it really is. On the other hand, the sun is more stationary than a fat guy after 10 hot dogs before the 7th inning stretch. Magic show cancelled, trick exposed. Science is the victor! Einstein even explained just how that all works! E=mc2! Gravity explained. (I will fully explain the Theory Of Relativity in a later blog........when I understand it. Don't hold your breath). But after Einstein explained the movements of large bodies, other overly smart guys started exploring how microscopic objects move and they discovered.......they move differently! WTF? Apparently tiny atoms can skip over space like the crew of the Enterprise getting beamed up from a planet of angry Klingons. Even if a big body is travelling at the spped of light, to get from point A to point B it must travel the intervening space between point A and B. Microscopic objects appear to be capable of getting from A to B without having ever been between A and B! The "quantum leap". No one has been able to figure out why large bodies and small bodies move differently. Maybe it's a matter of time. Or maybe we're right back where we stared in pre-historic times: grappling with the mystery of movement and the possibility of a super-natural force behind it. If matter is beamed from one spot to another, how? Is there an invisible Scotty somewhere? Was the magic show cancelled prematurely like Star Trek itself? 


Maybe people much smarter than me could explain this--but I'm not so sure. The absence of God has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Science isn't necessarily the destroyer of faith in a higher power, it might in fact be its (inadvertent) PR man. Just don't tell Richard Dawkins or Sarah Palin that. 

Besides, would life really be better without religion? Most people who claim this are upper middle class people from Industrialized nations with a closet full of golf shirts. Who needs religion when you have a set of golf clubs or a PS3? But the world is a frequently horrible place. There are more poor people than rich people. There's famine, plague, disease, synth pop music--I mean the world is scary! The world gives many people very little reason to hope. And even if you want to claim religion is nothing but an outdated superstition, after the world has taken everything else from some folks, who are we to take away their illusions too?

I also believe the concept of holy wars is overrated. God is the stated reason for war, the infomercial and rationalization for it, but rarely the true cause. War is usually over territory. Or riches. Or a personal gripe (like when an Iraqi dictator tries to kill a guy but then his son becomes President, or when a creepy guy with a long beard gets banished from his home country and then feels he needs to "protect" his departed homeland from an evil invading power across the ocean so he can be triumphantly welcomed back home again, or when a stud from Turkey runs off with a hot Greek girl with a face that launched a thousand ships because she happens to already be married to a cuckolded Greek guy). Just as animals fight over territory and limited resources, so do humans. But unlike them, we need to rationalize our behavior by claiming we're doing it for a Higher Purpose on behalf of a Higher Power. I think we could end wars by overcoming our animal lust for territory, not necessarily by ridding the world of religion. Sorry, John Lennon.

Having said that...........religion does have a lot to answer to. Especially The Big Three: the monotheistic religions that came out of the Middle East: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Since these religions came to dominate our world, we assume ALL religious thought is contained within them. But in many respects, they are actually weird anomalies, not standard bearers for all religions ancient and modern. For one thing, they all measure people by their capacity to obey. God destroys the whole world with a flood to get his naughty, disobedient, ADHD suffering children to listen to Him for once. (Being a single Dad is never easy--if you want an omelet sometimes you have to break a few eggs). Jesus preaches to his "disciples", not his colleagues. And the word Islam literally means "submission". But Asian religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism really aren't so much like that. For them, a follower's main job is to become enlightened to the interconnectedness to all things, not a meek unthinking sheep. Religion is a secondary school, not a day care center. 


The concept of One God is also unique. Most religions of the world have had many gods--a divine family watching over us, not one single solitary father figure. Some  argue that monotheism is inherently problematic. Instead of a family or an intangible force, God is a single being. This belief may psychologically enhance people's perception of life as a loner's game. If God is solitary and complete in himself, isn't that what humans (made in His image) should strive to be as well? But all solitary notions of being are divorced from life itself--take it from this loner. Life is a joining, not a separating. Life happens when a sperm joins with an egg. Plant life grows when it joins with the elements of the air and the energy of the sun. The waves move in tune with the wind; the tides with the moon. Where there is no joining, there is nothing. There's only a note, never music. Actually, there's no note either because a note is a vibration. So there's silence. A void. So does the very concept of One God take people out of tune with nature and beauty?

And does it do something else..............? Diminish female importance. Monotheism  means a banishing of goddesses. Yahweh of the Old Testament was originally one of many Gods in the pre-Old Testament Semitic religion. He apparently had a wife/goddess named Asherah. Some believe the original meaning of Yahweh was "he who causes to fall"---rain, lightning, enemies.  In other words, in their pantheon, Yahweh may have been the god of war. What is really interesting is that monotheism apparently began to flourish only after Israel lost its independence. Northern Iraqis--the Assyrians-- conquered Israel around 750 BC. Later on, southern Iraqis--the Babylonians---joined in on the sack Israel party. (Don't those Iraqis ever stop causing trouble. I know they founded civilization, but what have you done for me lately?). The psychology of this seems easy to understand:. a conquered nation feels weak and emasculated, so such defensive-minded oppressed people develop the notion that they need to banish all goddesses and hippie-ish lyre playing gods in favor of one, single, solitary, thunder-wielding, warlike God? 

And it's possible to infer psychological scars from foreign rule and a lost homeland in stories in The Old Testament. In fact some books state it outright. Many of these stories were not tellings, but re-tellings of older stories. I recent read The Epic Of Gilgamesh--a story written in Iraq a century before the Old Testament about an Iraqi dictator (some things never change) who is humbled and humanized after losing his best friend which then causes him to face up to his own fear of death. Gilgamesh's father Utnapishtim was the only human ever granted immortality after he had built an ark and sailed to a distant land after one of the Sumerian gods had drowned the entire world in punishment for their sins. (Sound familiar?). 

Also, to reign in Gilgamesh, one of the goddesses creates his "double"--a recreation of "primordial man" named Enkidu. (The African sounding name is interesting. Did the ancient Iraqis believe--along with modern scientists--that human beings originated in Africa?). Note that in Sumerian mythology a goddess created humans, not a male God. Women are the birth givers. Duh! She creates Enkidu out of clay. Ringing any bells? Pretty similar to Adam. He starts out as a Tarzan figure---drinking from the same wells as gazelle and deer, running (sans fig leaf) with them, filling in holes trappers set to catch the gazelle and deer. But the trapper files a complaint. He's a small business owner just trying to make an honest living so he asks for government assistance against this animal rights jerk! Again.....nothing new under the sun. Gilgamesh suggests civilizing Enkidu by sending a priestess of the goddess Ishtar (the predecessor of the Greek love goddess Aphrodite and Roman goddess Venus) to seduce him. A temptress......like Eve. But apple eating Eve in Genesis is a chaste little schoolgirl compared with her counterpart Shamhat. WARNING: for mature audiences only.......


She stripped off her robe and lay there naked, 
with her legs apart, touching herself, 
Enkidu saw her and warily approached,. 
He sniffed the air. He gazed at her body. 
He drew close, Shamhat touched him on the thigh, 
touched his penis, and put him inside her.
She used her love-arts, she took his breath 
with her kisses, held nothing back, and showed him
what a woman is". 

I don't know about you, but I think that's a lot more exciting than an apple peddling serpent, isn't it? Shamhat is a temptress like Eve, but the apple from the Tree Of Knowledge isn't the object of temptation, it's her herself, sex itself. The effect of his seduction? His "fall"?

He turned his back to Shamhat, and as he walked
he knew that his mind had somehow grown larger, 
he knew things now that an animal can't know. 

And that's not all.........

Deep in his heart he felt something stir, 
a longing he had never known before, 
the longing for a true friend. 

That friend becomes Gilgamesh. But imagine: women as muses! Inspiration! Creators of empathy in men! What a concept. 4,000 years before feminism. This idea is only possible if you still have goddesses--like the Sumerians had when Gilgamesh was written. But what if you've banished your goddesses and exclusively hitched your wagon to one single domineering male God? You can't conceive of women this way. So Eve causes nothing but trouble. Nowhere do we read about her expanding Adam's mind or heart......or anything else for that matter. The fall of Man is not so much that which is described in Genesis, but in the re-telling of an old story itself deprived of all its original sex, hope, and compassion. 

But Enkidu does eventually die--killed by the Gods after he and Gilgamesh kill the monster guarding the Cedar Forest and the Bull of the Gods. In other words, our nature boy went from living in harmony with animals and trees to hunting and killing them--and that's what civilization is. That's the Fall Of Man--a self-imposed exile from nature, not a dirty trick played by a woman and a snake. Yes, this story which pre-dates The Bible seems to have both a pro-female and pro-environmentalist theme! But all such sense of kinship and responsibility to nature is removed by the time we get to the writing of Genesis: "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground”. In Genesis, women are just weak vessels and nature is just our slave. What a dreary outlook on life!


And Islam is also the story of ousting the feminine.  Allah was once just a face in the crowd of Arabian gods much like Yahweh had been one of many Semitic gods. He even lived in a house full of women! He had a goddess wife and three goddess daughters: Allat, Manat, and Al-Uzza. Early in his career, Mohammed apparently wrote lines in praise of the three moon goddess daughters and encouraged people to worship them. He later retracted this statement and claimed the devil tricked him into it. Seriously, that was his alibi. Hence the "Satanic verses". Islam was essentially a transformation into one male God---no goddesses allowed. Like their Semitic neighbors to the north had done over 1,000 years earlier, the Arabs, under Mohammed's leadership, were undergoing a spiritual extreme makeover. The View was cancelled.


So what have we learned? I have no idea. Maybe we've learned religion is not inherently good or bad; it's all a mater of what form it takes. Too often religions have gone the way of warlike Gods and the ousting of the feminine--out of insecurity and vanity, guys have created deadly serious spiritual sausage fests when there was once a super rad co-ed pool party with all the skinny dipping and mind expanding sex and drugs you could ever want. But we can't dismiss religion outright. Who did the Greeks consider the immortal embodiment of wisdom? Athena--a goddess. Who was probably the ancient world's most fervent and articulate pacifist? Jesus---a religious prophet. 

Amen.