Unification Of Humans: Religions: Sapiens a Brief History of Humankind
Religions role in unifying humans
The first part of this was about the monetary order, and how money factored into unifying the humans. Last week I talked about the imperial order, which had to do mainly with empires. I also mentioned how religion and empires actually assisted each other when talking about the unification of humans.
This week, religion is precisely what I will talk about, and I will get into the details of how empires helped religions develop!
Before learning about how religions are the third great unifier of humans, I will go through some of the types of religion.
When I say type, I realise many must be thinking of Christianity or Hinduism. However, what I mean is what categories these religions can go into.
The first is monotheism. This is when people believe in only one God. Christianity is a monotheist religion, as Christianity believes in only one God, Jesus.
However, Christianity is also a dualist religion. Dualism refers to the belief that both good and evil coexist, and that evil is an individual power. Dualism often brings controversy to the idea of monotheism, because if both good and evil exist, and God is good, then why did God create evil?
Yuval Noah Harari says “monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order.”
He also gives the solution to this riddle, saying that is one solution: God created everything, and He is evil.
The first time I heard this I questioned that if He is evil, then why create good? But then I thought that if God did exist, and He was evil, then like other beliefs that humans made, good could also be something we made up. That the idea of good is also a myth.
Before both monotheism and dualism, there was polytheism. Polytheism is believing in more than one God, which actually allows polytheists to be much more open-minded to other religions. Polytheism is the type of religion that was influenced by empires, and went on to influence monotheism and dualism.
Because empires did not care about what the land they took over believed in, many religions happened to be believed within one empire. This is what caused the spread of religions. As we know, the imperial cycle involved the merging of different cultures. The same occurred with religions.
Since there were so many religions within the same territory, it was natural for certain parts of one religion to be reinterpreted into another religion. For example, the Romans added the Asian goddess, Cybele and the Egyptian goddess, Isis, into their religion.
Although monotheism came after polytheism, polytheism is much more common in religions. Whilst Christianity is a monotheist religion, there are many angels in the religion. This can be similar to the different gods in the Hindu religion. For example there is a god for death, and an angel of death, which could be quite similar in that context.
It also makes sense for there to be more than one god, rather than believing in one entity. This can be shown through Hinduism, as it is based on Atman, however only few Hindus known as Sadhus believe in Atman. Most believe in gods with their partial powers.
The final ism in religions is animism. This is the belief of the supernatural, which was probably the first form of religions. It occurred in the agricultural revolution, where farmers would pray to supernatural beings, such as ghosts or fairies, so that their crops and plants would grow. Often they would also pray for rain.
When aminism first came to be, it did not have the purpose of getting others to have the same beliefs, but rather for the farmers to have hope in the weather especially. They did not care how the other small village was dealing with their crops.
Trying to spread one’s belief was a phenomenon that came after aminism.
The two things that make a religion is that religions hold a superhuman order and that those superhuman orders are what beliefs and behaviours are based around. This means that one, the superhuman order must not be the product of humans, and two the superhuman orders must result in creating norms and values. Just believing in ghosts is not enough for religion, but a change in behaviour or value that follows with that belief is. This is why religions often have their own set of “rules”, one might say.
I think the reason that religions became so powerful as a tool to unite humans is because they allowed everyone to have the same belief. Getting people to follow religions was fairly simple. Like Harari says, the way to get people to believe in something that is not real, is to never admit that it is not real.
This is why people believed in superhuman order, because they did not think to think that the belief is not real. However, I am a strong believer that contradictions in society is extremely important, and this book furthered my belief of that. Without contradictions, even in a religion, there can be no change.
In the Hindu religion, girls used to be put in cow barns during their periods, and could not go into the house. This caused many diseases and infections. Of course back then, there were no sanitary options, and going into the kitchen especially could have contaminated the food. However without any contradictions to this, it would still be occurring today. It would be happening without reason, as there are sanitary options in today’s world, and girls would be suffering.
Without contradictions to the way our society is, there can be no positive change, but rather the same negative things happening.
The way we believe in religions is similar to the modern day rules that govern our countries. The same way Christians have faith in their God, and Budhists have faith in Buddha, we have faith in laws. In fact laws are much more universal, since it is a system that we all follow, religious or not.
I would like to end with something Harari said:
| “In fact, monotheism, as it has played out in history, is a kaleidoscope of monotheist, dualist, polytheist and animist legacies, jumbling together under a single divine umbrella. The average Christian believes in the monotheist God, but also in the dualist Devil, in polytheist saints, and in animist ghosts. Scholars of religion have a name for this simultaneous avowal of different and even contradictory ideas and the combination of rituals and practices taken from different sources. It’s called syncretism. Syncretism might, in fact, be the single great world religion.” |
If there was anything you didn’t understand let me know and please do tell me if you wish I could do something better. Thank you and I hope you continue to learn with me.
