Of Religion and Politicians..

It started long back, when the 1^st 'thinking' human being mutated. He was strange, peculiar, he was kind of curious; he observed and reflected on that. It was something new because it was un-necessary and it didn't fetched food. But nothing could reverse this change, when after a hard day of hunting with stone axes and eating raw flesh, he laid down under the open sky and looked at the stars, he wondered what was it all about. The stars kept moving slowly through the skies, the clouds kept flying, there was wind which could be felt but not seen. The moon kept growing and shrinking and also moved across the sky. The sun got out of nowhere every morning and disappeared every night, sometimes suddenly there was water coming down from the sky, thunderbolts hitting the ground, sometimes the earth shook heavily, while other times there was huge fire in the jungles.

He felt helpless like his fellow humans and was afraid too, since he had no control over anything. And it baffled him; he couldn't stop brooding about it rather than accepting it as a fact and moving on with life. He asked his fellows about it and they didn't knew much either. Finally after few generations some genius solved the mystery and brought things to peace by declaring that all the above, sun, moon, stars, fire, water, air, clouds, earth anything beyond control was meant to be that way and the only thing that could be done about it was to be afraid of them and respect them, like was popular culture at that time, bow to what you can't fight (I am sure there must have been a feudal revolution against the aristocracy of the floods and volcanoes, but it wouldn't take a lot of thought to see what must have happened to such a revolution). They learnt some strage ways to try to appease these nature gods.

I can henceforth deduce this was the 1^st time when a form of God like figure were discovered or invented or produced to satisfy the need to fill that void. The void which was created in the minds of the 1^st thinkers, by the absence of any plausible reasoning they could attribute to these beyond control activities which kept happening all around them all the time. The earliest known Gods as are known today are in accordance with this hypothesis as followed by almost all cultures in pre historic times. Ancient pagans believed in Air, Water, Fire and Earth as the primary gods. Hindu religion also has similar analogies with an extra God the Sky.
Although I have a natural question here which is why were these things taken as gods and not demons? becasue all these forces harmed humans at least in the short term, so was it just out of fear we accepted them as gods? Was it lack of definition of good and bad at that time, so probably they couldn't attribute a good or bad tag to these forces?
Or was it a careful planned choice by humans, as in could they see the long cycle and figure out that over a long duration of time even a fire in the forest or a flood is good for life? Probably I am asking a trivial question, but perhaps there is point here, maybe just maybe the reason we respected Gods at the start and even worshipped them was pure fear. A fear that something wrong which was out of control, which was based on chance would happen to them if they don't worship gods.. probably it was right at that time, since at that time whatever was stronger then you had an upper hand and was be respected and feared.. But today atleast we can question ourselves that are we still holding a belief in God out of fear, as a hedge that somethign wrong doesn't happen, something uncontrolable, something we can't predict, something which depends on chance. Isn't that when we all think of god? Atleast I used to when I used to be in a trouble, like before start of an exam (pun intended) or before starting a journey. If I reflect back I can only think of times when there was some sort of chance a probablity of success that I remembered god. So I was just doing it to be on the safer side then. If there is a god and if he is powerful he will help me, its a hedge against that probablity of failure. I don't know how good a reason 'fear' is to believe in God but I am guessing quite a few of us believe in god for that reason. And moreover it kind of questions the goodness of god, doesn't it, if he was a good god by default things with good intentions and efforts would go fine, but since we need to ask for his mercy or blessings to be successful with any venture which needs some luck, means that despite great intent you might fail just because he didn't wanted you to succeed or probably you didn't ask for his help. Weird thought I know but worth a second thought. Anyways this topic is about an entirely different topic probably will cut this piece out of this post or something..
Anyways moving back to topic..

Now, very naturally we can follow the chain of thoughts of our predecessors until this point of time. But after this point of time, which would be around the year 500-600 BC or so things started changing in various parts of the world, and the thinkers reached new levels as 'philosophy' took birth almost simultaneously in Greece, China, India and Arab. This was to mark the end of an era, and start of another one. Various facets of human psychology were discovered, astronomy and mathematics took birth, and alchemists discovered and invented many hidden secrets of nature and science. Another notable change was the end of small tribe, nomad like way of living and settling down of humans into larger towns and cities. This meant now there was a large interaction of the thinkers and a lot of knowledge was shared and transferred through increasing movement of people for trade and explorations. And last but the most important factor was the rise of kingdoms and empires. Hence a consolidation of power, resources and humans which in peace time meant a lot of impetus went into the thinkers because their knowledge was proving critical in everyday matters including wars of the empires, these people got important recognitions, respect and positions in kingdoms. Soon they took roles of ministers and senates and planners and eventually schemers or king makers.

Now one of the biggest problems the kingdoms of that age had was the problem of maintaining peace within the empires. There was always a menace of nomadic tribes and barbaric people, who believed in no rules of the kings and looted and attacked and destroyed whatever came their way. There was a lot of suffering too, and it was difficult to maintain order in kingdoms and control revolts. This state of chaos, which in those times must have been a really huge problem, gave birth to the second subject of this post, the Politicians. They can be called descendants of the thinkers or philosophers in some way. Because definitely they put in a lot of minds and effort to understand the underlying principles and probably can be called the first morally grey people because unlike barbaric people these Politicians were educated and civilized but some of their actions as we will later see led to much worse massacres and human atrocities then any barbaric tribe ever caused. Barbaric tribes just looted and killed for food or gold or anything they could eat or trade, but these politicians were a much more complex class.

They developed the first observed cases of manipulation in the history of humankind. And with their abilities of persuasion and wit were able to sell it as something which was morally incorrect perhaps but a necessary measure for the bigger good. Amongst their various contributions to mankind as we know today, the most prominent and definitely the one with the biggest impact on human generations to come was the invention of Religion. This was their masterpiece. A truly classic piece of genius in part developed by luck and chance but definitely without the careful planning and execution of the politicians luck alone wouldn't have served any good to religion. By luck I mean the presence of some great thinkers and preachers of that time, who happened to be pretty simple and noble apparently, who had gained some sort a mass appeal during their lifetimes.

To give names the two major preachers/prophets to fall in this category of preachers were Jesus and Mohammad, they gained quite some following during their lifetimes and subsequently, but nevertheless both of their followers were not following a religion till that time. It happened few hundred years later, when some emperors, Constantine in the case of Christianity decided to be patron of Christ. Well it might be associated to stories like he saw a cross over the sun etc. But fact of the matter was that this was a very well thought of and intelligent move, by his advisors. Before this time most of Roman Empire followed paganism which had basically no or little rules. Besides it had no system of punishment for the ones who sinned in the lifetime. Nothing like a judgment day or heaven hell concept. So nothing really stopped people from committing crimes and violating rules.

Here the politicians saw an opportunity. A chance to put an end to this lawlessness. It was simple logic too, if the king made a law, people would feel oppressed and would revolt which the king didn't wanted so the laws had to come from a higher body. Thankfully the concept of one high god was born due to Jesus by that time. So the politicians tapped on that. They declared bible as the words of god. Wrote down a list of sins. Made Jesus the son of god. And defined extreme punishments for those who sinned like rotting in hell forever etc. This was then combined with force of the kingdom, and anyone violating the laws of religion were punished publicly. So now they were able to use force also because they could get away with saying it's for god that we punish. And obviously people couldn't revolt against both the king and god; they were just poor, ordinary people.

In a few generations a 100 years of so, people got used to the new system of life. Now anything bad they did wasn't against the king, a person. But was directly against the god's words. This kind of scared them, and hence the general people tended to be more civilized. The role of church here was equally dubious in the whole act. Since religion and politicians acted hand in hands while this whole operation. It was the church who actually wrote the laws of religion, and the kings executed them.

I must say it served the purpose for which it was created pretty well for around 2000 years till date. People do realized some moral values, some basic level of humanity and social behavior, and it made the lives much easier for everyone, including the people themselves. So it was for the general overall good in the long term that this necessary measure had to be implemented, and I don't really have anything against the religion as far as its impact is concerned, it has definitely done more good than bad. And secondly it gave people something to hold on to, a hope. A sense of belonging, something to recoil to when everything else has gone wrong. Perhaps this aspect of religion, which keeps people going through lives despite the difficulties is something truly worth admiration and unparalleled.

Now what remains to be seen is the impact of religion as times changed to medieval and then modern ages. The after effect of religion. Was it ethical to fool/force people into believing something which didn't really exist. Did people wanted to be fooled, did they wanted to have a religion, a belief or was it forced on them? Is religion relevant today, or in other words are people ready for the truth yet, are they capable of behaving humanely if there was no fear of god or the state laws? Has human kind evolved morally over the years or if the laws were taken out would we again start living like barbarians?

This post has gone too long now so we will cover all these interesting aspects in the next post. A lot of interesting observations are coming up so keep watching.

So long…