CONVERSATIONS IN THE PANTHEON - The Truth about God and Religion

What did I Learn?

The conversations between Mary, Mathew and Thomas at the Pantheon ended. This is what I learned from their discussions.

1 Our ancestors, in different areas of the world, shared similar beliefs of the spirit world and the gods that interacted with the physical one: the sun and moon gods, the earth good, the rain god, the mountain and volcano gods, to mention a few. The same gods were invented by different cultures everywhere. That they did so is not very surprising. They were all trying to explain the same natural phenomena that were not understood at the time. These were impersonal gods that mostly struck fear in the hearts of our ancient ancestors; and most cultures worshipped them and offered sacrifice, including human sacrifice, in the hope of appeasing them.

2 Ancient cultures also shared the concept of the spirit world. The fear of death is perhaps the greatest human fear and so it was easy and convenient, for our ancient ancestors, to postulate the existence of the soul and the afterlife. Anthropologists have found evidence of this in all primitive cultures. It comes primarily from ancient tombs that have been found intact, in which, along with the deceased, food and other personal belongings that might have been useful in the afterworld were also found. The ancient tombs of Egypt (Tutankhamun, for example) are well known, but two of the most recent excavations came from Peru, from the tombs of the Lord of Sipan and Lady of Cao, which may not be as well known.

3 Fear is the strongest human emotion and is responsible for keeping us alive. It's also the most exploited, especially by those who want to sell us things, or do things that we would otherwise not do. The fear of death made our ancient ancestors prey to those who had the means to capitalize on it. The promise of life the afterworld didn't come free of charge to them. They had to conform to the wishes of those who claimed to have contact with it: the shamans, or high priests, depending on what part of the world one lived in.

4 Monotheism(belief in a single god) and the concept of a personal god, one who created humans in his own image, came much, much later with Zoroastrianism, the precursor to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Its roots go back some four to five thousand years in ancient Persia. The worshipped deity was (and still is) Ahura Mazda (Wise Lord). Zoroastrians (aka Zarathustrians) believed in the concept of an afterlife comprised of heaven and hell. The destination depended on the person's deeds during his/her life on earth. Here was born the concept of 'free will'. One could choose to be good or bad with the knowledge that there would be consequences. The more recent religions followed on Zoroastrianism's foot steps.

5 Hinduism is probably as old, or older, than Zoroastrianism except that it has a multitude of gods. One is free to choose a god to venerate without fear of offending the others. While it doesn't have the concept of heaven and hell, it has the concept of reincarnation. The human soul keeps reincarnating until all its bad karma (deeds/actions), which accumulates from one life to the next, has been cleansed, at which time it can enter the realm of the gods. No one knows how long it takes to rid oneself of bad karma and be admitted into the celestial sphere, but it's believed to be a very long time, approaching an eternity.

6 The yearning for human immortality was a key reason for the creation of all religions, regardless of the number of gods, or whether they were personal or not. The gods were created to be immortal so that the soul of mortal humans could join them after death and thus achieve immortality in the realm of the gods. They weren't physically created, only wished into being; and through time, they became real.

7 Each religion has a creation story to explain how the universe and humans came to be. However, all of them are at odds, not only with each other, but also with current reality. All the holy books written centuries or millennia ago could not have anticipated the scientific discoveries of the last few centuries, let alone the last few decades, when both microbiology and astrophysics made huge leaps. What was believed to be true thousands of years ago is patently false now. That's to say that all religious foundations have been shaken by scientific earthquakes.