ON THE ORIGIN OF GODS

ON THE ORIGIN OF GODS

R. B. STEWART, JR.

Since the beginning of consciousness, Man's fear of the unknown has given rise to the invention of mythical, omnipotent, deities to shield him from all real or imagined pestilence and suffering. Man refers to these omnipresent and all encompassing guardians as gods. They are all-powerful protectors, who recognize fidelity, and reward the faithful with everlasting life. This book chronicles Man's obsession with gods even before cave dwelling days, and how gods have been an essential element in the evolution of mankind. "This is good reading."

About The Author

R. B. Stewart is a teacher of psychology and a serious writer who thoroughly researches his subject. This excellent example exhibits his skill of analysis and ability to sum up a divisive and sometimes controversial subject. The author's clear and expressive writing style is invigorating.

e-BOOK

Maverick Publishing

HOUSTON, TEXAS

ON THE ORIGIN

GODS

R. B. STEWART

e-Book 2003

www.mittymax.com

ON THE ORIGIN OF GODS

R. B. STEWART, JR.

e-Book 2003

www.mittytmax.com

HOUSTON, TEXAS

ON THE ORIGINS OF GODS

R. B. STEWART, JR.

PREFACE

This book points out that of the 6 billion people of the earth, about 80% believe in one of the four major religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism. The other 20% are Atheist, Agnostic or believers in very minor gods.

The second major point of the book is that there are four great dividers of mankind. They are religion, language, culture and race, in that order.

One of the main characteristics of man is that he has always been an inveterate god maker, having fashioned thousands of them worldwide during his 2 million year evolution – down to and including these last four: Jehovah of Christianity, Allah of the Moslem faith, Brahman for the Hindus and Buddha. Essentially, man created God instead of God creating man.

Mankind created all these gods for a good and logical reason. He has but three motives in life: Security, Satisfaction and Recognition. The one element in security he could not provide for himself was protection from death and oblivion. He, therefore, concocted gods, souls, Heavens, Nirvanas and assorted Valhalla's to which he could escape after death, thus providing eternal life for himself.

Over the millennia religion has served a useful purpose for man even though it has been very expensive in terms of religious strife, wars, pogroms, etc. It is now, however, rapidly outgrowing its usefulness. Since the world is so much smaller than hitherto, religion brings on cultural clash, Jihad, ethnic cleansing and unprecedented political, social and religious intolerance as never before in history.

This book seeks to point out that religion is an evolutionary element that all mankind must and has grown into and out of as an essential part of development. Gods do not change while the minds of men keep expanding. Already, some 20% of us have escaped the clutches and associated mass hypnosis of the gods.

This book also seeks to accelerate and perpetuate the escape of all humanity from any further tyranny of the Gods. To escape that tyranny we must unite into a Universal Brotherhood of Athenostics and truly accept one another as brothers and equals at last.

This book is distributed by:

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Box 736

Powell, TN 37849-3779

ON THE ORIGINS OF GODS

R. B. STEWART, JR.

Chapter One

There are four major sacred books on the earth today. They are books that some 80 percent of mankind hold dear to their hearts as the sacred word of one of the four major gods presently worshipped.

Here we will discuss them in the order of their age, beginning with the oldest. First, there is the Vedas. About one billion Hindus of more or lesser degrees of piety adhere to this sacred book. This great work, nearly as long as the Encyclopedia Britannica extends farther back in the history of man than any of its competitors. The chief god of the Hindus is Brahman followed by lesser deities such as Shiva, Hanuman, Kali and a host of others. It also gave rise to the Buddhist faith, much as the Jewish religion gave rise to Christianity.

The Buddhist faith is the next oldest religion, encompassing the whole of the Far East, including Japan, China, the Malay Peninsula, Burma and even some of India. Its major sacred work is called the Tripitaka: Three Baskets of Wisdom.

Gautama Buddha, an Indian prince who lived in the fifth century B.C., originated this faith. Without question, it has had a powerful influence upon humanity, much as its three competitors have.

Christianity is the third oldest of the four great faiths. We are considering only those faiths with roughly a billion adherents. According to Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, et al., it originated in Palestine. Its originator, Jesus Christ, was allegedly born to a woman who had never previously had sexual intercourse with any mortal man. Historians generally agree that this event took place in A.D. 33, a mere two thousand years ago. About a billion people adhere to this faith covering all of the Americas, Western Europe and extending all the way to Vladivostok in East Asia. Atheists are quick to point out that followers of Christianity are the most violent of all the faithful and are responsible for more wars than all of the others combined.

The great sacred book of Christianity is the Bible, consisting of the Old and New Testaments. The chief god is Jehovah with Jesus Christ running a close second.

The last of the great faiths is that of Islam. The prophet Mohammed originated this faith in A.D. 632 at Mecca in what is now Saudi Arabia.

At least a billion people adhere to this the last of the great religions to be created. They occupy lands from Morocco in northwest Africa, through the Middle East and Indonesia to the Philippine Islands. Their only god is Allah. Their main slogan is: “There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet”.

Their sacred book is the Koran. It was alleged to have been dictated originally to Mohammed, a poor camel driver, by the Angel Michael who was sent by Allah to Earth for that express purpose.

This event is strongly analogous to that of Joseph Smith who alleged some twelve hundred years later that Jehovah sent the Angel Maroni, an unheard of angel until that moment, to him to establish the Mormon faith – a minor Christian denomination. We will hear more of this later.

But the Islamic faith spread rapidly and within a hundred years had not only conquered the whole of North Africa but Spain as well. Historians generally agree that if they had not been stopped and turned back at the Battle of Tours in A.D. 732, Christianity would not have survived.

These then are the four great religions on earth today, each claiming the allegiance of roughly 20% of the minds of men. The other 20% are either Atheist, Agnostic or look to one of the other thousands of minor faiths for salvation.

Now, if there has been anything overwhelmingly consistent about mankind in the long history of his two million years of evolution, it is the well-established fact that he has been a fanatical god-maker.

Since the beginning of recorded history, only six thousand years ago, we have verifiable proof of the creation of hundreds of gods – all crafted by man himself. From Thor to Woden to Janus and Mars, Zeus and Apollo to Amen-Re, to Marduk of Ancient Babylonia to the Mayan and Aztec gods, the list is interminable. Prior to recorded history over the millennia of man’s existence the list must have been much longer.

Some of these ancient and extinct gods are still useful today. Woden and Thor, for instance, gave us our Wednesday and Thursday of today’s week. Janus and Mars evolved into the months January and March.

Let Atheists take notice of the simple fact that all these ancient gods were false gods and have faded into history to be replaced by successor generations of false gods. Still, mankind has not been able to get along without them, or he would not and did not.

This is very strong evidence that the gods were not only a very important element in the evolution of man but also a vital necessity as well. Indeed it is the only choice left to man to protect himself and loved ones from the greatest catastrophe he faced – inevitable death and oblivion.

Now in regard to false gods, this means that at least one billion in one faith must accept the premise that the three billion followers of the other three faiths are worshipping false gods. This is simple arithmetic. This is unlike the Atheistic view that lumps all of them together and dismisses the lot out of hand as false from top to bottom, including the present generation of gods. The vast majority of godly people have no problem at all dismissing all but their own. Logic is set-aside in this case.

Now mankind did not develop all of these vast gods without a good and sound reason, which still survives today. After all, human brain circuits are the only ones sufficiently complex to conceive such an idea. And this calls for a hard look at the motives of man.

Psychologists of today have determined that all animals, including man, have but three motives for doing anything. Nothing can be done, or ever has been done, but for one of these three motives. At first glance these motives seem simple enough. But when taken apart and minutely examined they become vastly more complex – even baffling at a certain depth. The first of these three motives is security.

The first thing about security is food. No one who has not suffered true hunger will know this very well. For all practical purposes, nothing else can be done until hunger is first satisfied. Refrigerators, deep freezers and pantries full of food are the first priorities in any home. An adequate re-supply takes on vast importance. Any threat to the food supply is met with immediate resistance.

After food comes shelter. Shelter is protection from the elements: wind, rain, violent storms and cold. A secure home and comfortable place to rest for himself and those dear to him is the motive that drives a man to leave a warm and comfortable bed long before the break of day and make his way to the dreariest kind of work and torturous labor – even that of loading sixteen tons of coal without standing once in an eighteen inch seam.

After food and shelter comes protective security. This involves much more than keeping weapons in the home to fend off intruders. Deadbolts and security doors are in widespread use. Electronic security systems are very popular. Watchdogs that will bark and maybe even bite have been man’s first line of defense from time immemorial. There is also protection from social upheaval, riot, mayhem and highway robbery, which means an adequate Police Force. This requires capital outlay in the form of taxes.

Along this line of thought, we consider the armed forces. They protect the country from foreign invasion and threat of international blackmail, or worse. All in all, security is indeed mankind’s first motive for action. And, boiled down to essentials in modern society, security is mostly about money, but not only money, as we shall presently see.

Security also entails paid up insurance policies, savings accounts, Social Security, bonds, retirement accounts, liability insurance, medical insurance, insurance and insurance ad nauseam. As a matter of actual fact, security, with all of its ramifications and importance, occupies more of man’s time and effort than the two other motives combined.

Men are probably less secure today than a century ago. This is due to the fact that so many have moved from the country to cities where they are no longer self-dependent. Working for himself on a farm, he had near to complete independence. Working for industry in the city, he had bosses and could, therefore, be fired at any time – thus posing a serious threat to himself and his dependents. For those living from pay-day to pay-day, the wolf could be at the door in a matter of days and the children would soon be crying for food. It is small wonder that some short-fused, over-stressed types take up arms and start firing at random.

The struggle for security is universal. Ground dwelling animals, for instance, dig burrows. When groundhogs and squirrels finish digging their homes deep underground, they don’t rest until they dig escape tunnels extending several yards from the nest chamber. They know instinctively that they can escape out the back while a predator is digging frantically at the front entrance.

The struggle for security in the animal world is truly amazing. Many of them can change color right before one’s eyes, for instance, the chameleon.

But mankind, right from the beginning, even before he came down from the trees and took up cave dwelling, was faced with one area of security for which he could not provide. That was protection from death – worse yet oblivion. Stone spearheads and even fire were useless in the face of death. And death was universal. There was no hiding from it, no escape tunnels and no means of providing any. This was an intolerable situation.

Now, man has a long history of not putting up with intolerable situations. By this time in his evolution, he had come down from the trees where he had been forced to sleep at night to avoid predators, just as the higher primates do to this day. Only the discovery of fire allowed him to do this because even the most aggressive predator could be held at bay, even put to flight, with a brightly blazing firebrand.

This was a great advance in the evolution of man, perhaps even outranking the invention of the wheel. Mankind spent millennia very low on the food chain where he was fair game for lions, tigers, hyenas, leopards, etc. Fire lowered him off that chain almost entirely and boosted him to the very top of it in one fell swoop, turning him into the most successful predator ever to walk the Earth. In fact mankind has very probably consumed more meat than all other species combined. It would soon take only a small band of men with firebrands to chase the most dangerous animal from its kill and consume the carcass at leisure.

Fire was a great leap forward in man’s security. It brought him down from the trees where he could sleep comfortably on a flat surface by a roaring fire. It also gave him access to clothing in the form of animal skins. This allowed him to leave the tropics and follow migratory flocks and herds to cooler climates, eventually even into the arctic. With these cultural advances, it didn’t take longer than a few million years for our species to reach a population greater than the migratory herds.

The control of fire also greatly improved the human social condition. Once he had come down from the trees and started crouching around open fires, men naturally sat closer to each other. Previously, they were spending the night a tree’s distance away. This led to improved language skills and conversation. It also led to the knowledge that roasted meat tasted much better than raw meat.

Man is of an inquisitive nature. Some of the first things they asked each other, once language permitted, were, “What causes thunder and lightening, wind, storms, rain, floods and volcanic eruptions?” They also wanted to know where fire went when it went out.

Now, a tribe sitting around a fire would have a dominant male. These males are presently called chiefs, captains, etc. We can assume that most questions were directed to this leader. We can also imagine that he grew weary of questions he could not answer. Let us go one step further and say that he, being the dominant male, was a little older than the others. He could not help but consider his own demise.

Tribal custom required that when a member became too old and decrepit to keep up with the band in their eternal migratory hunter/gatherer lifestyle, they were left in their hut with whatever food could be spared, their own weapons and a fire. The band marched on without them. North American Indians practiced this ritual as late as the nineteenth century.

But, let us imagine a chief who was a little brighter than usual and a great storyteller. One starlit night while sitting around the fire, he began to relate to his band how he had learned in a dream where the fire went when it went out. A wispy ghost had told him about spirits. It seemed that everything had a spirit, including the trees, the mountains, the nearby stream, the fire and even those very tribesmen who were crouching about the fire, awestruck by such a fabulous revelation.

It was at this moment that the seed of the very first god in human history penetrated the brain circuits of mankind, culminating some five hundred millennia later into the four remaining gods. These are the very gods upon whom most of us depend for salvation to this day. Of course, a person worships only one, depending upon individual choice. But the Atheists and Agnostics would have all gods relegated to fantasy, mythology and superstition.

The leap from spirit to god would not have been a very difficult transition for the mind of early man. He was in dire need of their protection from death and guidance through life.

At this point recognition enters the picture in a big way. There have always been a great number of priests, monks, gurus and Fundamentalists standing ready to make a name for themselves. For many centuries this was the most likely way for anyone to achieve recognition, other than in battle. Priests and preachers are still at it, to all atheistic dismay. The rest is history.

We have a very good example of the evolution of spirits to gods on the North American Continent. The Plains Indians had no god. They had a great abundance of spirits, but the closest thing they had to a god was a Great Spirit. Given a few more centuries undisturbed, these spirits would, no doubt, have achieved godly status. Their neighbors to the south in Central America, South America and Mexico had already promoted their spirits to gods. The Inca, Maya and Aztec Indians recognized a multitude of gods. One of them was a great, feathered snake named Quitzequatil, still revered, at least to some extent, by a remote and isolated few Mayan and Aztec descendants.

But these original spirits envisioned by the wily old chief back at the open fire did nothing to enhance the security of his band of tribesmen. In fact, they were a further menace to their security and to be dreaded and avoided at all cost. An angry wind spirit, for instance, could blow away one’s hut and all in it, or even blow out the fire! This would have been an unmitigated disaster for all.

Now the method in the old chief’s madness begins to come clear. He could offer a measure of protection from these ever-present, menacing and threatening spirits. A simple cross, drawn by his forefinger on the foreheads of a hunting party would nearly always ensure that they would return to the camp with a bountiful supply of meat. No, this old chief would not be abandoned in the wilderness to waste away and be consumed by carnivorous beasts and insects. His bones would not lie bleaching in the sun until covered over by blowing sand and volcanic ash, only to be dug up and carbon dated some hundred centuries hence. He knew instinctively that he would be revered and cared for, even carried by liter, to the very end. Perhaps he would even be laid to rest in a stone-lined sarcophagus with enough stones piled on top to deter any carrion eater.

Indeed the old chief’s legacy to his tribe would live on for generations to come in song, dance and ritual. He had devised a means of security and protection from evil spirits hitherto unknown to his contemporaries.

Tales of his birth, magical life and powers would be told and retold, with ample embellishment, about campfires for generations far beyond his time. He would, in fact, become the first high priest. However, the transition from spirit to soul, much less to a god, and the idea of an afterlife would not penetrate the primitive brain circuits of man for millennia uncounted.

In fact the planet Earth would orbit the sun a million times or more before even the idea of counting could begin, much less a written record of it. There is no denying the fact that man has evolved through an amazing wall of ignorance and superstition. This becomes even more apparent when it is realized that we have only known that the world was round for under one thousand years.

But the human search for protection from death and oblivion had begun. Generation after generation of successor gods would rise up to promise all manner of reward to anyone who would rally to them and bring them their tithe, loyalty and praise, not unlike modern politicians. If reward seemed to be insufficient they switched to threats of Hellfire and eternal damnation.

In the Moslem Hell they even allow the skin to be burned off so they can issue a new one on an ongoing basis.

Christian wardens of their Hell are only a little less ingenious. They run a red-hot fire poker down the throat of all who are foolish enough to plead for water. For heaven’s sake! It is small wonder that Atheists and Agnostics evolved amongst us. And all of the threats and promises of the gods were not even necessary! Man’s struggle for security is innate. From the cradle to the grave, he could provide it himself. And beyond the grave, Heaven, Paradise, Nirvana, Reincarnation, etc., awaited. By hook or crook and a little labor, there was plenty to eat and other accouterments in abundance. But beyond the sting of death and the grave, life would be unimaginably better.

Not only that, even death had been forever banished in the afterlife. Eternal life became virtual reality to, say, fifteenth century men. After that time, a certain lingering doubt began to creep into surviving literature. A certain isolated few began to wonder whether or not they might have to wait until the day after their last day on earth to know for dead sure that religion in its entirety was not based on mythology and without real substance.

These were the first stirrings of Atheism and of course ecclesiastical authorities branded them as heretics, seized them at once and burned them at the stake, a la Joan of Arc, Giardano Bruno and many, many others. Even the brilliant scientist and Catholic priest, Nicolaus Copurnicus, who discovered that the earth was not the center of the universe but revolved about the sun, contrary to church doctrine, would not permit his work to be published until after his death in A.D. 1543. Indeed it did not take long for word to get around that if anyone harbored any negative thoughts relative to the absolute authority of Holy Writ they had better not be divulged to anyone. Even the illustrious Galileo Galilie (1564-1642) was placed under house arrest at the convent of Minerva in Rome for merely siding with Copernicus. He did not receive an apology for this until the reign of John Paul II, Pope Head of the Roman Catholic Church and God’s Vicar on Earth. This is surely the slow-learning record of all history.

But the reluctance of man to accept new information has always been one of his distinguishing characteristics. Atheists are eager to point this out with glee.

Sure, we have evolved through an appalling wall of ignorance. From crouching around open fires to E = MC² has been a long and difficult struggle. We still have a few unfortunates, with brains as thick as the jungles of Guatemala, who vehemently insist that the earth is flat, just as ancient Biblical scribes said it was – The Flat Earth Society for instance. But there is a good and logical reason for this. Near to total security for man, from the cradle to beyond the grave, was not attained until comparatively recent times in a historical sense. First, benevolent gods had to be invented who were kind enough to provide a Heaven, a Paradise, Nirvana, etc. And this alone took many generations. Then a transportation vehicle had to be fashioned – the soul. The High Priest who dreamed up this method of escape from six feet below the surface of the earth to an eternal home somewhere high in the sky must have been the Einstein of his age.

Why! The discovery of the non-existence of souls is almost analogous to the discovery that one has no heart, spleen, liver or hypothalamus gland. But there is no verifiable evidence, and never has been, that the soul really exists.

The soul has been an integral part of man’s anatomy for so long that even well informed and broadly educated men have a problem departing ways with it. To walk around without a soul must give rise to a little further thought, even to a confirmed Atheist.

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