Conclusions
The reader may draw his or her own conclusions, of course, but a few seem to stand out in the view of this writer. Religion would seem to be a "cargo cult" phenomenon, cynically used and abused by those who would arrogate power over others. According to the definition given in the Introduction, religion is an institution that depends on the assumed existence of a deity entitled to dominion over mankind. In the absence of any evidence of such a being, the only alternative is that the deity's putative agents are those that assume actual dominion.
The classical issue is the existence of the deity of interest, of course, specifically one or another of the Hebrew deities. At present, no method of demonstrating or refuting said existence is even imaginable, much less known, so far as this writer is aware. That being the case, it would seem fair that the entire edifice of religion should be a matter of voluntary personal choice to choose or decline to support. As we all know, this is not the case.
Perhaps a note about "cargo cults" is appropriate. Made popular in a speech by R.P. Feynman, the term is a reference to a phenomenon observed in Melanesia in the Pacific. Briefly, the natives came up with the notion that their ancestors would bring them cargos of modern goods, and during WW2, when the military left such stuff after them, the natives tried to set up conditions by which they would return with more goods. Elaborate preparations were made, replete with airfields made of native material, towers and buildings where natives wore wooden headsets mimicing the military aircraft controllers, and even full sized mockups of airplanes, built of local materials.
The purpose was to elicit more goods of the type that were air-dropped there during the war, and the thinking apparently was that the ancestors had been fooled by the white folk into giving them the goods. So the natives set about mimicing the white folk as best they could. Didn't work, of course, but it did get them briefly invaded by anthropologists and the like. Essentially they were trying to invoke what they could not understand the only way they could imagine, by what has been called "sympathetic magic".
This writer finds the resemblance between these native attempts and the rituals practiced in the institutions of western religions eerily exact. No basis for the rituals of any of the Hebrew religions have been shown, yet they persist and are claimed to be valid in some number of different manners and contexts. So far as is evident, there is no difference between these rituals and those of tire-kicking in a used care lot. Tire-kicking is presumably a knowledgeable way of determining the air pressure in a tire, though no tire kicker known to this write has ever asserted some form of calibration such that the kick might yield useful information. And besides, the air pressure in a tire on a used car lot is of indeterminate value in assessing the value of the car in question.
Somewhat has been written about the psychological benefits of religion, though the subject is not included in this review. A cursory inspection of that literature yields the impression that such benefits are actually those that make the benefitted more tractable, presumably to the putative source of benefit itself. It does seem clear, however, that a human "need" is being fulfilled, and that is of interest.
It has been observed that individuals can be roughly cataloged according to their preferred approach to survival. There are those who seek freedom to fend for themselves as they see fit, and there are those who seek security from the need to fend for themselves. Without further analysis, it seems reasonable to suppose that those who seek security are also more inclined to accept the assurances of such offered by religion, for it is this assurance that appears to be the source of claimed pyschological benefit.
The arguable "cargo cult" status of religion says much about the state of evolution of modern western man, it would seem. The Melanesians possess no level of sophistication of intellect such as we presume is the lot of any given modern western man, and yet with the full knowledge of the phenomenon, western man cannot differentiate himself in this regard. But such is the price those who seek security must expect to pay. If they stop and think about it, that is.
Perhaps the reality is that modern man is now far beyond the capabilities provided for him by evolution. There are no real and constant survival demands in our daily lives, if survival is taken to denote physical survival. However, man has arguably redefined himself as a result of the level and depth of artifice in his environment. Issues that have vanishingly small connection with physical survival have taken on the importance of the latter, and mankind has not evolved inherent strategies for dealing with these matters. Given that physical survival is largely assured, barring accident or illness, survival is now primarily regarded as a social matter, an emotional matter, an intellectual matter, etc.; survival is thus an artificial consideration which nonetheless invokes the same responses that were evolved to address physical survival. It would seem that we can literally think ourselves to death!
Thus it is arguable that mankind has chosen religion as a mental narcotic, has prescribed himself the painkillers one might compassionately offer to the terminally ill. It makes no difference, then, what religion is or is not, and probably not even the price it exacts: It is only required to work without further invocation of mental effort. In testimony to this is the rise of fundamentalism in the west, and the rise of fundamental Islam in the Middle East, for these require no thought at all. That they also ban thought is their means of shutting off all escape that might be contemplated on further reflection.
In every situation there are exceptions to the dominant state of things, and we who retain the ability to think about these matters are such exceptions, it appears. It is assumed that the reader has retained thus, and this review was intended as a means to a "reality check" regarding the objective nature of religion, such that it may be more easily subject to rational choice on the part of the reader. Much more can be said on these subjects, but the purpose here was to point the way towards a clarity the reader can further use as appropriate.
That said, we still have not directly addressed the primary material upon which religion is founded. In the section on Man, we looked at the possibility that the origins of current historical mankind may well be discernable, at least in part, in those accounts. We remarked on the apparent discovery of the Garden of Eden of the Torah and the HB. It may be that those earliest accounts contain references to actual historical reality, although no longer readily recognizable as such.
If the Judahites that entered captivity in Babylon as the Tribe of Judah actually did get much of their material during that period, we can perhaps identify some of the sources. We noted in the review of the Garden of Eden discovery that one of the rivers flowed from the Zagros Mountains, the traditional boundary between Mesopotamia and Persia, now Iraq and Iran. In general, the most active flow of contact between Persia and Mesopotamia had been around the southern end of the Zagros range, which asserted itself from the direction of the earliest areas of civilization at the head of what is now the Persian Gulf. Cultural and traditional lore from the south was a continual informing source, therefore, on Babylon.
To the extent that this found its way into the literature of Babylon it became a potent independent source of material and verification for the Judahite scholars who were tasked with developing what became the books of Moses, the Torah. Because the Zagros is difficult to traverse with large armies, the population and culture there remained, as it does today, remarkably stable. Thus it can be supposed that the traditions that informed the lore developed there maintained at least vestiges of those earliest days. And the Judahites undoubtedly fell heir to those legacies.
So it is that Babylon was the literary repository of the East as well as the Semetic west, and the Judahites were able to tap a source quite independent from those more familiar and better known to them. Indeed, it is still a subject of scholarly debate whether or not Persian Zoroastrianism was an old and mature, or young and powerful, influence on the Judahites from that easterly direction. The fundamental concepts of Good and Evil are demonstrably Zoroastrian, and it is generally recognized that it was an informing force on the development of the Mosaic code that came back from Babylon with the Jews.
But it is the oldest stories, specifically those we encountered in the opening chapters of the Torah that may be of greatest interest. We can identify the echoes of a fairly well understood development in the earliest history of man, that of the rise of agriculture. In the Cain and Abel story, we find that Cain had offered the product of farming, while Abel offered the product of herding. Here is an arguable reflection of the early recognition of the importance of this seminal episode of historical mankind's beginnings. The age-old battle between the farmer and the rancher over the acceptable use of land may have its historical inception here.
We speculated that the gods were the folk that appeared with "new" technology, a significant part of which was agriculture. Domestication of both plants and animals is now regarded roughly equivalent, but that has only been since technology enabled the provision of food for stock from a single location; otherwise, the herder followed the herd in migration from pasture to pasture. It's obvious that herding was far more accessible to the hunter-gatherer than farming, and so this "new" technology provided a sharp delineation between the lifestyles of the new folk and that of the old.
It is part of the basic lore of the Judahites and their Israelite ancestors that they were herders. That Yahveh chose the offering of the herder was natural, and the "sweet savor" of roasting meat from an itinerant campfire could be expected to trump that of the garden. Arguably, then, this story sets the background of the proto-Israelites, and establishes their ethos.
But there is more. One of the primary products of agriculture was, and still is, grain. It is now fairly well understood that a sudden increase of grain in the diet provides a source of energy that enables the development of an evolved brain. Bread thus supports the road to heightened intelligence, it would seem. If this is so, and it appears to be, then we might wonder if indeed it was not the fruit of a tree that was the key to Knowledge of Good and Evil, but a diet of grain that enabled the development of that kind of knowledge. The gods ate bread!
Yes, this is all speculation, but it has a well regarded basis, one that reaches into science and scholarship. It is not important that any one or other of these speculations turn out to be factual, if indeed any such eventually do. It is important to perceive the possibility that there is a sound historical basis for the accounts that gave rise to the mythology of the gods. It is this perception that gives us to understand that we can reasonably question this entire business, and that there is a decent chance we can make acceptable sense of it all.
If it is true that mankind has become addicted to the god myths he created, it is also true that a way out of that addiction exists. It is called an informed reality check, and that's why the study of the subjects raised here may have unexpectedly powerful consequences. Conceivably, on such set might just be the eventuality of a free humanity. And that alone is worth the effort, in the writer's opinion.
As in the Preface, this review is in its initial form and is intended to elicit comment and critique, as well as to supply edification. If it serves the latter purpose, the writer is edified as well. Comments are welcome and constuctive criticizism will be regarded seriously. Thanks for reading.
William D. Tallman