A Journal for Western Man-- Issue III
Part I
G. Stolyarov II
Humans have, throughout their existence, wondered whether beings so advanced as themselves and surroundings so complex as their own could have had a supernatural origin. Indeed such an idea seems appealing to many a humanist, for it labels our species as unique and apart from all the savage and primitive critters that surround us. Whether or not it was for the better, religion has played a crucial role in the development of every society and at one time was even vital to technological progress. Yet in a scientifically advanced world such as that of our time, another lifeline to progress has been created, belief in only that which one knows to be true. Do the major religions of the world today have a strong enough base and sufficient proof to be upheld in the minds of educated men? That is what we shall now explore.
During humankind's first steps from a nomadic existence to an agriculturally-based one, tribal solidarity was required more than at any previous or subsequent age. The doctrines of individual rights and free market capitalism had not yet been developed, and in order for a group of farmers to survive against the petty raids of whimsical barbarians around them (usually a stronger people, else they would not have taken to migratory hunting of large game), they needed to coordinate their defenses and lives in general, so that they would not only be able to produce a sufficient output of crops to feed the community but also preserve these from the clutches of avaricious foreigners, for whom there was no constant income of goods. But how would the people of a newly formed settlement, with the mobile life of an animal still engraved on their instincts, act with such efficiency? How could they stay attached to their tribe's permanent territory? A more charismatic person, a priest, would have to explain that the new land was holy and destined for a people by an all-powerful superbeing, denying whom would be a grave folly. How would the pre-Western, pre-Scientific Method era people realize when to sow and reap the fruits of their labor? A priest, once again, would invent the myth of Osiris rising from the dead at the time of the Nile floods, which would be a signal for planting, while the collection of food would have to be completed prior to the arid season, when the evil Seth had killed Osiris. What would motivate a people to unify into massive armies for defense of the land and an occasional raid on an enemy growing in power? A crafty priest would convince them that they are a god's chosen people, above all others, and have been assigned the holy mission of purging the countryside of any infidels. As a matter of fact, the latter explanation had survived even in religions of the present day, for we read in the Bible's Book of Joshua how a chieftain of the Israelites, "blessed by the heavens," committed genocide against the native dwellers of Canaan. Contrary to popular belief, the author sees neither holiness nor virtue in mass exterminations of foreign children, but such evidence from the Bible supports the fact that religion was not created with the purpose of civility or genuine morality. Had the contrary been true, then God would have damned Joshua for disobeying his sacred commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." Religion, from the earliest times, had existed to ensure but one thing, tribal security.
Such would explain the "Love thy neighbor" clause from as far into history as the New Testament, yet would justify in the eyes of religious zealots the countless persecutions of foreigners that were committed by the devotees of every religion, no less atrocities performed by Jews than Assyrians or Romans. The implication that the early tribal worshippers have squeezed from a seemingly innocent premise is that of “loving one’s neighbor and furiously resenting an outlander.” One's neighbor is yet another member of a tribal community and would need to be protected in order to ensure that the initiatives of an individual did not intervene with the “benefit” of the whole, i.e. the caprices of its autocrats. Such was the early thought pattern, a form of bloody socialism that had been passed down through the ages.
Yet from this tribal mentality were spawned certain foundations of virtue without which the present level of human decency would never have been acquired. Theft on a local level, an act against the community, had become an act of shame only with the advent of religion. Adultery, a disruption of the family structure essential to a tribe's survival, had also been condemned in the words of the priests who controlled the first societies. Yet despite the less than pure motivations of early religious principles, they have had the impact of stability and even, to some degree, personal security upon the cultures that obeyed them. A society in which theft and adultery are permitted, on the other hand, is destined for collapse from within. A society which abolishes the former and condemns the latter, however, entails genuine advantages for the particular individuals comprising it.
However, keeping in mind the aims of a religion, we may also find that other less obvious principles have been established to retain tribal solidarity. The forebears of the Jewish/Christian/Muslim faiths (which all had common foundations as the only three major systems for worshipping a single supreme being. They shall be referred to here as the Monotheist Branch of Religions) have had as significant holy laws the prohibition of idolatry and the utterance of God's name in vain. Idolatry, the worship of relatively mundane objects in comparison with the great Holy Spirit, would mean opposition to the faith itself and thus a separation from the structure of the tribe, which the latter could not permit. Had all people been free to choose their means and object of worship, the newly formed nation would have fallen apart due to a lack of a common ideal to keep the society tightly bound. It would have been likely that agriculture would still have been pursued by the people for their own rational self-interests, but the power would have been deprived from their early leaders, who had more than coincidentally dubbed themselves intermediaries of the deity or deities. Religion, from the earliest times, was a utensil for perpetuating the social hierarchy of the status quo through bestowing supernatural authority upon it. It only yielded progress when the said hierarchy had been freshly established and itself a byproduct of advancement, as a theocracy, no matter how repressive, is an amelioration of the destitute nomadic collective driven by destructive animal impulses.
As for the speaking of God's name "in vain," the original intention of such a principle was to restrain people from using God in order to contradict the will of the authorities. Thus, religion had slowly evolved from a means to settling a horde of migratory savages into a permanent location to a method of conserving through millennia the then new system, which was rapidly becoming obsolete. Monarchs later replaced priests as rulers of slowly evolving states, yet their will to conserve their power was no different from that of the previous elite, and thus they had used the religious principles already firmly ingrained in commoners' minds in order to retain it without excess struggle against the plebeians. Such were the origins of the Western Divine Right, the Arabic Caliphate, and the Chinese Mandate of Heaven.
The structures that existed before the advent of strong crowned figures resisted the slight twist to their ideas at first. Those struggles we can observe in the conflicts between the emerging European kings and the Popes of Rome during the early second millennium AD, which ended with Philip IV's relocation of the Papacy to Avignon and the emergence of the theory that kings transmitted God's will onto Earth, thus possessing a "divine" authority. The priests who did not submit to this new system were quickly cast aside from the political scene, since, though they had charisma, the monarchs were free to utilize a significantly greater force than the Holy Catholic Church could hire through its funds. Eventually, manipulation through subtle intimidation gave way to outright control through means that no one had the shame to conceal. Those churchmen who valued their power rallied to gather even greater support for the new Earthly "apostles" of God. Thus, the Catholic Church was slowly being fitted into the framework that the kings created to harness its power and use it to enhance their own. What was the most efficient way for a king to carry out swift cleansing routines against potential opponents? To declare their views to be opposite the will of God and the heavenly scheme of things. And whom to utilize for the purpose of stopping an act of "heresy" than the Church itself? Thus the monster of Inquisition came to be, devouring in its flames all the avant-garde writers, scientists, thinkers, all the suspicious nobility, anyone who stood out sufficiently to attract the attention of a monarch and challenge the system of widespread ignorance that the latter developed to govern his state with the minimum effort.