Eternity Book Series: 4 Books – 8 Parts
Part 1 – Are We on the Right Path?
(Book 1: Are We on the Right Path?)
Anwar Shaikh
1st Edition: September 20, 2014
2nd Edition: August 28, 2016
Eternity
Eternity Parts Index
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Part 1 – Are We on the Right Path?
Part 2 – Judaism and Christianity
Part 3 – Islam and Fundamentalism
Part 4 – Mind and Matter
Part 5 – Life after Death
Part 6 – Free Will and Ethics
Part 7 – Politics
Part 8 – Mysticism
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Eternity Books and Chapters Index
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Eternity Book 1: Are We on the Right Path?
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Part 1 – Are We on the Right Path?
Introduction
Chapter 1: Fear and Favor
Chapter 2: Urge of Dominance
Chapter 3: Faith
Chapter 4: Middle Eastern Mythology
Chapter 5: Revelation
Eternity Book 2: Semitic Religions
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Part 2 – Judaism and Christianity
Introduction
Chapter 6: Judaism
Chapter 7: Christianity
Part 3 – Islam and Fundamentalism
Chapter 8: Islam
Chapter 9: Horrors of Fundamentalism
Eternity Book 3: Origins and Destination
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Part 4 – Mind and Matter
Introduction
Chapter 10: Epistemology
Chapter 11: The Creative Principle
Chapter 12: Mind and Matter
Part 5 – Life after Death
Chapter 13: Life after Death
Summary
Eternity Book 4: The Way
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Part 6 – Free Will and Ethics
Chapter 14: Harmony
Chapter 15: Free Will
Chapter 16: Ethics
Chapter 17: Psychology
Chapter 18: Sociology
Chapter 19: Law
Part 7 – Politics
Chapter 20: Politics
Chapter 21: Taxation
Chapter 22: Economics
Part 8 – Mysticism
Chapter 23: Mysticism
Postscript
Glossary
Bibliography
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Anwar Shaikh, the Indian Author, Philosopher and Islamic Historian
Part 1 – Are We on the Right Path?
Introduction
Whatever man does, is activated by considerations of pain and pleasure. The fear of pain, and desire for pleasure constitute his instinctive behavioural mechanism. Since death is man's worst fear, immunity from death, or eternity, ranks as the best favour.
Through fear, man began to believe that there is a god or goddess behind every force of nature such as the Sun, the Moon, the wind, the rain etc.; and if he submits to the deities they will show him favour by protecting him from disease, destruction and death. This is what gave birth to mythology i.e. the belief in superstitious gods and goddesses.
Dominance-urge, that is, the compulsive desire of some people to command their fellow-beings, and to be worshipped by them, is so great that they project themselves as gods to replace the existing mythological deities. This is the most convenient way of exploiting people's psychological susceptibilities. The Middle Eastern mythology vouches for this fact. However, the method used to secure this goal is called "revelation": a person desiring to be God, pretends that he is the Vicar of God and preaches only what is revealed to him by the Almighty. Through this veil, he eventually establishes his own divinity backed by a host of fairy tales.
Revelation is the biggest fraud that man invented to gratify his urge of dominance, but the propriety of revelation itself depends upon the concept of a Creator God which is totally irrational. Amongst many other fatal flaws, it follows that if the universe needs a Creator God, then the Creator God must have been created by yet another Creator God, and so on.
Chapter 1: Fear and Favor
Eternity is the destination of man, yet he is afraid of death. In fact, fear of death is the most dreadful and goads him to seek the equally compensating favour of an everlasting life, which is most delightful. This is what makes fear and favour man's instinctive behavioural mechanism because whatever he does is activated by considerations of pain and pleasure.
Psychological basis of behaviour
Strange as it may seem, the concept of morality cannot be visualised unless humans are endowed with the ability to differentiate between misery and mirth. The former refers to fear and the latter to favour: I do not molest my neighbour for fear of retaliation, and show him favour for reciprocal treatment. In fact, it is realisation of dole and delight which gives birth to such ethical values as vice and virtue: a person who does not know what is good or bad for himself cannot care about the consequences of his conduct in relation to others, and is thus, incapable of self-discipline and planning the right course of action; he is an idiot who looks for pearls in a coal mine and searches for coal in a shallow pond. This is the reason that children immune to algesia (sensitiveness to pain) are destructive, for being incapable of feeling physical pain, and the adults who feel the least pain, become the most thick-skinned.
All fear is not bad: rational fear is beneficial. For example, the fear of illness has provided motivation to investigate the working of the human body and environmental factors, thus leading to the emergence of numerous sciences such as biology and ecology. It has not only widened the horizon of knowledge but also narrowed the scope of effects associated with lethal diseases by spurring human ingenuity in medical and surgical fields. The modern increasing life-span is indebted to the fear of illness.
Favour and Civilisation
Favour, in its broader sense, is the fountain of civilization. When we talk of favourable circumstances, we actually think of the conditions that lead to the realization of expectations and fulfillment of goals. Thus favour and reward become synonymous. Is it possible to imagine that people will strive for higher and nobler situations without reference to corresponding rewards? In the absence of a reguerdon, the quality of action is bound to suffer. The resulting inaction will perpetrate an inertial state, utterly repugnant to cultural advancement. Thus man will become a regressive animal.
Extremes of Fear and Favour
People are governed by the extremes of fear and favour. There are some who are born greedy; the more one tries to gratify them, the less satisfied they feel; their mentality is like a bottomless pit which may devour all the riches of the planet but still experience the pangs of paucity, poverty and parsimony. The virtues of contentment, abstinence and self-restraint are too trivial for them to practice. Conscience, consideration and courtesy are the words alien to their understanding and palate. The greedy folks live to grab every penny and die to save every farthing. Such people dream of personal pleasure and self-elevation regardless of how much their avarice may displease and degrade others. They are always chasing favours. When they can't gain such favours, they pine for the imaginary ones.
Some people are prone to excessive fear by birth, that is why they feel frightened without any cause. They are timid and cowardly; they can neither defend their own virtue nor contribute to human values of honour and liberty. They live to evade the fear of death and die to escape the fear of life.
A healthy personality is the foundation of Godhead but its development is not possible without a rational sense of fear and favour. It involves training and to a large extent, control of personal behaviour based on one's own free will. Since we constantly react to environmental stimuli, the healthy growth of personality requires a sound attunement of the individual to society, and vice versa.
What is a healthy personality?
It is a garden full of flowers which despite considerable variance in size, makeup, colour and fragrance, combine to present a bouquet of natural excellence sustained by the common purpose of looking sweet, splendid and supreme. Behavioural beauty of an individual, which constitutes a healthy personality, depends upon the harmonious working of one's likes and dislikes, attractions and repulsions, obsessions and vagaries, beliefs and disbeliefs and instinctive and learned judgements. These elements in their disciplined operation bear the same resemblance to personality as flowers of various kinds have to a nosegay. However, for the emergence of a healthy personality, it is imperative that not only are these elements operated by a person's free will but the free will itself is sound and rational.
What I have said above is free from the resonance of exaggeration, and quite practicable yet congruent working of the elements of personality is a dream.
Why is this dream still unfulfilled? What is inhibiting its realisation? Who is its arch enemy?
Chapter 2: Urge of Dominance
Urge of dominance is the arch enemy of a healthy personality, and the well-being of mankind.
Since this is the focal point of discussion, I must state that heading an organization or institution as a duty, is not dominance but leadership. Here, by dominance I mean imposing one's spiritual or secular authority on others with a view to controlling their lives even to minor details. This is the process which allows one person to paralyse the free will of millions by saddling them with his own determination.
What is an Urge?
It is a psychological term which may be described as a driving force. A motor car consists of an engine, a body, wheels and scores of other parts. Yet it cannot move without fuel which actually propels it. What petrol is to a motor car or coal is to a locomotive engine, urge is to man. Drive is just another word for urge. It is a strong emotional force which comes to control the behaviour of a person. Of course, man has many urges - the urge to satisfy hunger, the urge to gratify sexual desire, and so on. When an ordinary desire gains high intensity, it also ranks as an urge. For example, a man falls in love with a woman. If he is just fooling around with her, he is seeking the fulfillment of a desire, but if he becomes obsessed with the woman, and all his dreams and actions are directed by the considerations of her pleasures and displeasures, his desire begins to rank as an urge for being the driving force of his behaviour. Every urge plays an important role in human conduct but the urge that gains ascendancy over the rest is the supreme urge; its right operation and magnitude of success or failure may decide the quality of personality.
Dominance-urge, the root of evil
Of all urges, the urge of dominance is the most severe because it goads its possessor to gain control of other members of the species. It is evil by nature because "A's" dominance over "B" is not possible without the latter surrendering his rights to the former. And, there is nothing more sordid than depriving others of their liberties; it is in fact an act of neutralising the free will of the dominated person for making it a shadow of the dominant's volition. The evil nature of the dominance-urge is displayed by the dominance-hierarchies found in domestic fowl, birds, baboons, bumble bees, crabs etc. It is well explained by what is called "peck order" and is commonly seen amongst chickens where bird "A" pecks the weaker bird "B" who in turn pecks the still weaker bird "C". It follows that pecking or repression is the main characteristic of dominance-hierarchy which is organised on the principle of "might is right". A better understanding of this concept is provided by "Lek behaviour" which refers to a communal area where two or more males of a species perform courtship displays. By a demonstration of brute force, the winner establishes his dominance over all other males of the herd which acknowledge his right to seduce any female, and priority to enjoy food and water. This is what dominance is all about - the mania of self-preference to the total exclusion of others.
Dominance-hierarchy
Dominance-hierarchy, of course, is a must for social organization to avoid chaos, which is another description of death, but even as a pillar of organization, it is virtuous only when every member performs the allotted function as a duty to promote the cause of the society.
In a dominance-hierarchy based on dispensation of duty, it is the chief function of the ruler to establish a fair system of administration for the dispensation of natural justice to safeguard people's rights and liberties. Therefore, his office ought to rank as the most reverential, but in practice this is not the case because, as a rule, he does not administer rights and liberties to advance the cause of people but for the purpose of prolonging his own rule and enhancing his own dignity. As a dominant being, he knows that more freedom for the people means less power for himself. This is against his nature because power to the ruler is what sight is to an eye, lustre to a diamond and usury to a Jew. Since an increase in his power leads to a decrease in people's liberties, he is usually wise enough not to achieve his end with brute force. Therefore, he resorts to hypocrisy and raises the dignity and sanctity of people's duty (except his own) so far above people's rights that the former begins to look holy and the latter, profane. By projecting the state as a goal in itself, he makes it the most powerful and the f nal arbitrator because it is he who wields the state powers and therefore, the state becomes the shadow of his personality. Thus he prepares a highly sophisticated web of gubernatorial wizardry which allures people to get entangled in it to suffer a volitional paralysis of their freedom.
Tamburlaine
A dominance-hierarchy is usually operated by the mechanism of fear and favour to enforce the gubernatorial will which is the child of the dominance-urge. Timur or Tamburlaine, one of the greatest conquerors of history, provides a good specimen of the concept of dominance, and fear and favour.
The entrance to Timur's Palace boasted the inscription:
"The Kingdom belongs to Allah The Sultan is the Shadow of Allah on Earth."
In fact, this inscription sprang from his dominance-urge which prompted him to equate himself with God, though indirectly, as his shadow or viceroy. It is interesting to know the practical implications of this urge.
Timur, the conqueror, believed: "Just as there is only one God in Heaven, so the earth can support only one King". Therefore, he demanded of Bayezid (1360-1403) to acknowledge him as his overlord. Bayezid, the great Turkish Sultan was himself a formidable soldier and enjoyed the reputation of massacring a Christian army of 100,000 at Nicopolis in 1396. Being stunned by this insolence, he challenged Timur to a battle and threatened to take Saray-Mulk-Khanum, Timur's chief wife, as his concubine. In the ensuing battle near Ankara during July 1402, Timur triumphed. To display his dominance, he imprisoned Bayezid in a specially-built iron cage and to magnify the inferiority of the vanquished foe, Timur took his wife for a sexual partner!
His carnage of the Indians in Delhi stood at 75,000. When his chroniclers incorporated this fact into an official record along with the most horrifying details of rape and pillage, Timur became angry. Considering his campaign a glorious victory, he remarked: "A cook ought to be judged by the taste of the dish he prepares and not by the blood on his hands when preparing it".
During his military expeditions against the Arabs, he built high mounds with the decapitated heads of the victims. The heads, which had been secured in position with clay, faced outward to frighten passers-by. The mound at Aleppo was ten cubits high and twenty cubits in circumference.
Tamburlaine and Fear
It seems reasonable to think that a man like Timur would not be afraid of anything. But this view does not hold good when we realise that on his deathbed, he trembled with fear and continuously recited Kalma to acknowledge the lordship of the prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam who claimed to possess intercessory powers for granting his followers the delights of Heaven. Not only that, when his grave was opened up in 1941 by the Russian archeologists, they found two skeletons buried together; the other skeleton was that of Sayyad Imam Baraka, his spiritual protector; they had been buried together in the same mausoleum, and it was Timur's face that had been turned towards Sayyad Baraka who was a descendant of Muhammad and thus endowed with the grace to keep the flames of Hell at bay. Timur was as much afraid of death and Hell as anyone else!
Timur excelled not only in the art of frightening, but he was also generous to his loyal servants. He, like most rulers, secured obedience by activating the instincts of fear and favour to satisfy his urge of dominance. However, this urge is so frantic that its tentacles spread far beyond the grave. Why? This is a complicated question and does not admit a direct answer. Therefore, I shall add the next Chapter to explain it.
Chapter 3: Faith
To be afraid, and expect favour, is human. No matter how strong and proud one may be, there comes a point when strength turns into weakness and pride into humility. This change is brought about by the activation of fear or favour. A proud person may bow before his superior for fear of dismissal or in hope of favour, such as promotion. Whether a person is a suzerain or servant, he is subject to the influence of fear and favour.
Care, concern and consideration for other people's rights and liberty is usually in inverse ratio to the intensity of the dominance-urge, that is the more dominant a person, the less caring, concerned and considerate he is, and vice versa. Therefore, a higher position in the dominance-hierarchy denotes the comparatively intense self-mania of the dominant though exception happens to be a rule of nature.
Dominance, Fear and Society
Liberty is man's natural religion. Therefore, he hates servitude, but dominance-urge prospers on usurpation of liberties the same way as vultures thrive on carrion. This polarity of purpose tempts the dominant to activate people's mechanism of fear and favour. Members of the gubernatioral class under the patronage of their chief get together to form an impregnable coterie to subjugate the masses through a subtle code of fear based on a seemingly rational and humane system of law and justice. This leads to the moral degradation of the society: poverty becomes prevalent; fairness, justice and tolerance nearly disappear; trickery, torture and tantalization assume the status of decorum, discipline and dedication; hypocrisy replaces sincerity; sophistication puts on the hat of etiquette; good manners are ridiculed; guile is praised; triviality rides the truth; the silly flout the sagacious and vice derides virtue.
This social debasement transcends national frontiers. Nations find philosophical reasons for basing their cultural values on absolute competition, for breaking international agreements and for making deception and perfidy the cornerstone of political attitudes. Nationalism is raised to the status of Godhead and racism is adored openly. Every nation is made aware of self-importance and superiority, and is incited to plunder and exterminate foreign people for usurping their wealth and liberty.
As a consequence, the world begins to appear harsh, facinorous and murderous; sweet tastes sour and bright looks bleak. Not only the social but also the physical environment begins to fling, frighten and frustrate; life becomes an unbearable burden and everyone looks for a messiah with miraculous powers to cure their sorrows and lead them to a paradise where abundance, mirth and serenity eternally prevail.
Social disorder and Messiah
History testifies to the fact that the worse the social conditions, the greater the likelihood for the emergence of a god or guru, a messenger or messiah. It is because helplessness makes the human mind more receptive to superstition; it instigates people to spurn reality, which is usually harsh and inclement, and embrace the unreality of make-believe teeming with wishful thinking based on self-evasion.
Value of make-believe
Facing up to reality requires moral probity, courage and the ability to resist or accomplish, but in the short run, it may not bring peace and happiness to the ruffled mind. Ignoring the harsh reality is not a laudable act but indulgence in wishful thinking does provide relief by depicting the bleak as bright and black as white. It even gives hope and may keep the dreamer in a fair mood until the worst happens. In fact, what make-believe or wishful thinking is to humans, dormancy or hibernation is to animals.
Dormancy and Survival
Dormancy, i.e. the reduced state of metabolism, is a form of adaptation for certain animals. Stressful environment forces them to live at a much lower level which requires minimal chemical processes for staying alive. During a dry period when ponds, rivers and lakes dry up, only those aquatic organisms can survive which have the ability to become dormant until such time that their habitats are refilled with water. Similarly, bacteria survive scorching weather by becoming dormant. Perennial plants, which look dead during a hostile winter, come back to life year after year through a process of dormancy. To survive inclemency of the environment, even seeds become dormant and will not germinate during a certain period: seeds of the Danish Spergula Arvensis sprouted after a dormancy of 1,700 years and seeds of the Manchurian Lotus are known to have sprung to life after 1,000 years.
Arctic Squirrel
The Arctic ground squirrel is a typical mammal for during its hibernation it makes an underground nest of hair, grass or other suitable materials; its temperature drops to that of its surroundings and it appears to be dead; even its bones and teeth suffer deterioration, but when the stressful conditions have passed, it may resume normal life.
Reality of Dormancy
Since dormancy is a method of surviving at a much reduced level, it is a regressive living. During the period of hibernation, a mammal may lose as much as 50�70 of its weight and 90% of its total heat production. In fact, it is a precarious method of survival because the animal does not always return from its torpor.
Hibernation or dormancy as a method of survival by evading the challenge of reality which is stressful, harsh and inclement, leaves a profound mark on the behavioural response of the animal. In simple language, it induces into an animal the habit of evasion when the original causes requiring evasion or dormancy, no longer exist.
Dormancy and Faith
What dormancy is to seeds and animals, make-believe or wishful thinking is to mankind. It enables us to evade stresses and anxieties of life by pretending that the truth is not as it is but as we believe it to be. Another name for make-believe is Faith. This is the reason that Faith has been called opium, heroin, hashish and tranquilliser.
The main function of the drugs known as psychopharmacological agents is to distort the psychological processes such as perception, thinking and feeling, to give the sensed objects entirely different appearances; an illusion refers to the distortion of what is sensed, but an hallucination is the sensation of something which is not there.
Role of Faith
Faith, as distinct from dormancy, acts mainly on a person's faculties of understanding, and not the entire body, though effects of the mind on the body cannot be denied. It weakens the rational part and strengthens credulity, i.e. the disposition to believe without sufficient evidence. Thus a person who is highly critical and circumspect in ordinary life, and cannot be persuaded or dissuaded without a reasonable proof, as a believer becomes repugnant to evidence and reason in his religious capacity as a Jew, Christian or Moslem. It is because he believes or is made to believe, usually from the cradle, in certain wishful values which give him satisfaction and thus protect him from the inclemencies of reality; his faith acts as an opaque barrier between him and the stressful reality, he does not want to remove it because the act of removal may reveal to him what he does not like. Therefore, ignorance begins to look as a source of bliss which he habitually enjoys at the expense of the truth.
Nature of Faith
Pre-eminently, faith as generally understood and practiced, is a form of mythology for lacking rational cohesion. Yet it is a lush oasis in the desert of life; it serves as the pivot of sanity by acting as a shield against the hostility of foes and hypocrisy of friends; it provides hope against despair and enhances the chances of survival. Without it, man is like a shieldless soldier in the battlefield or a heatless sailor in deep waters.
Therefore, man must have a faith, but of a different nature. It must be rational, i.e. it ought to be largely based on evidence and reason, and must stimulate him to face reality with confidence, courage and concinnity. However, one should remember that absolute evidence is rare and every argument has a counter argument, which limits the effectiveness of reason. Therefore, rational faith is the one that is based on investigation but may carry an element of trust when reason becomes counter productive. However, the element of trust must be closer to fact than fiction.
Mythology and Faith
Unfortunately, such periods are rare in history when man might have practiced rational faith. In fact, there is hardly any difference between mythology and folk religion because they both are based on specific accounts of gods, demi-gods, gurus, messiahs, prophets, their supernatural deeds, divine gossip and extraordinary experiences Again, they both communicate in symbols rather than words. This is the reason that most believers are idolaters despite their avowed rejection of idol-worship.
A myth, by its advocates, is given decisive authority as the Word. For example, the Bible claims that the Word was in the beginning and the Word was God (St.John 1:1). Similarly, the Koran claims to be the Kalaam Ullah - the Word of God. Since validity of such statements is independent of veracity, it makes the revealed religion an extension of mythology.
Myths and Fear
Myths arose from fear of natural forces such as the sun, moon, wind, clouds, thunder, lightning, heat, rain, drought, life, death and, above all, uncertainty. Man ascribed a deity to almost every phenomenon; he started worshipping supernatural powers out of fear and with a view to appeasing them for gaining their favours. All major religions are sophisticated continuations of the old mythological traditions and have been given a more baffling interpretation by their founders, under the influence of dominance-urge, to be worshipped as gods.
Chapter 4: Middle Eastern Mythology
Man, the potential God
Potentially, every man is a god, yet his potential does not get a fair chance of realisation. Why? Because dominance-urge instigates the dominant to create conditions which hinder the progress of fellow-beings towards Godhead. In fact, he himself wants to be acknowledged as God for turning others into his worshippers. There is no mystery in it. The working of this tendency is betrayed by the hierarchial structure of any society; some individuals will do anything to gain superiority over other people, regardless of what it may take to achieve this goal.
Representation of myths by messiahs
Revelation, the biggest fraud that man ever invented, is the most effective way of projecting oneself as God under various devices such as Avatara, God's son, God's messenger, prophet, guru, messiah, medhi or Imam. Such individuals know the force of mythology and its devastating appeal to the masses. Therefore, they represent the existing myths with a renewed vigour by giving themselves the pivotal position in their system of fairy tales which appeal to people's instinctive mechanism of fear and favour.
Indian and Semitic traditions of mythology
Largely, there are two mythological traditions - Indian and Semitic, but I shall base my case on the latter for its homogeneity. To establish that the doctrines and beliefs advocated by the Semitic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - are nothing but the continuation of the mythological tales that existed in the pre-Jewish era, I may mention them here briefly and should also emphasise that as mythology denotes infant thinking, man does not seem to have grown rationally since the time of the Deluge.
i. Egyptian mythological traditions
The Egyptians believed that in the beginning, there was nothing but a great expanse 1 of water called "NU", covered by the cloak of darkness. From the power of NU arose a huge shining egg which was Ra.
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1 Note the resemblance: Genesis starts the story of creation with water, and mentions the Creator God.
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a. They also believed that Ra the all-powerful who could assume any form, took the shape of man as Pharaoh. He ruled Egypt for thousands of years and eventually became very old.
This seems to be an adaptation of the Indian doctrine called "Avatara" which
means that God appears in human form to help mankind whenever it is enveloped
by the pernicious forces of evil.
b. In his capacity as Atum 1, he was considered as the creator of the world.
c. Because of his longevity, Ra became very weak. People laughed at him and flouted his laws which he had made binding on them; nothing annoyed Ra more than disobedience to his commandments 2. He appointed his daughter Sekhmet to wreak vengeance. She carried out destruction and carnage on either side of the Nile and the desert. Ra and the other gods rejoiced when she tasted the blood of her victims.
d. Ra named 3 all things of the earth.
e. It was Akhenaton the Pharaoh who first decried the existence of many deities and decreed the worship of one supreme God 4. He was originally known as Amenhotep IV. God Aton was not a figment of his imagination but the renaming of the hawk-headed sun god, Ra-Harakhti. However, Akhenaton's religion was not as monotheistic as it sounds because by declaring himself the son of Aton, he ranked as a god in his own right, and being Aton's high priest 5, had the most direct access to him. It gave him the sole right of worshipping Aton on behalf of all believers. The special relationship between Aton and Akhenaton blurred the distinction between the two. It was especially so because Akhenaton, like Aton, also had a high priest and thus they shared their jubilees.
f. The Egyptian mythology states that the Ark (Chest) of Osiris was made of cedar from Lebanon, ebony from Punt and the south end of the Red Sea; it was inlaid with ivory and rare gold and silver and its inside was painted with the figures of goods, animals and birds. Moses was told by Yahwe to construct an ark or chest of similar kind for storing the second tablets. It was this ark which constituted the proof of a special Jewish relationship with God.
g. The Egyptian mythology narrates an interesting episode: Isis, the sister-wife of Osiris had the chest containing his (Osiris) body placed on a ship which was headed towards Egypt. As it passed through the Phaedrus River, its strong currents became reluctant to move the ship. Isis was disturbed by the behaviour of the river. She laid a curse on it and its stream dried up forever.
This episode is the forerunner of the Jewish story that describes the parting of the Red Sea, enabling the children of Israel to escape.
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1 Note the resemblance: Genesis mentions the Creator God.
2 Jews escaped from Egypt where people believed that Ra had given them commandments to obey. Ra dealt with them severly
when the Egyptians disobeyed them. Moses received similar commandments from Yahweh who wanted to be obeyed under pain of annihilation.
3 Islamic mythology states that Allah taught Adam the name of things.
4 Monotheism or the idea of one God as adopted by Moses in Egypt; it is not indigenous to the Jews.
5 In many ways, Moses was a high priest to Yahwe as Akhenaton was to Aton.
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h. Besides mythology, the Egyptians had developed certain customs which commanded supernatural reverence: for example, Egypt ranked as the whole world
to its people; they were born and buried there, worshipped their own gods, practiced their indigenous laws, developed their own architecture, engineering techniques, arts and literature. They came to prefer everything that was Egyptian - loved isolation and thought of themselves as a different species in their own right.
The Jews had similar attitudes towards Israel. Even Yahwe was God of Israel. The Jews obviously brought with them the Egyptian culture and its religious traditions.
i. The geography of Egypt was another source of superstition. It was a country 800 kilometers long with hardly any breadth and thus made governing difficult unless the people obeyed their rulers as a matter of faith. Again, the faith had to be rewarding: it led to the belief in resurrection 1 and the day of judgement when the god Osiris would pronounce a favourable verdict on the believers who were obliged to acknowledge the divinity of Pharaoh as the first step towards salvation. This is why the priesthood became an integral part of kingship.
j. Just the concept of salvation was not enough to hungry people. Amon-Re, the state-god, became entitled to wage 2 war against the foreigners; he received Pith of the plunder, and the rest went to the participants. Yet another aspect of the ruling class was nepotism. It was the king's relatives who possessed the most high ranking and administrative posts.
ii. Hittite and Mesopotamian Traditions
1. The Hittites did not believe in mentioning or writing the names of their gods openly and expressed them by hidden signs. Only the priests knew what they meant. This is the source of the Jewish Tetragrammation.
2. The divinity of the King was not acknowledged in Mesopotamia. The Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian monarchs were believed to receive their authority from gods and thus their rule was not original but vicarious. Such a ruler was a divine viceroy.
Here lies the seed of the Semitic prophethood or viceroyalty: both Moses and Muhammad claimed to be the prophets or viceroys of God, and did not directly declare themselves to be God.
The concept of viceroyalty led the Sumerians to believe that they owned nothing; everything they had, belonged to gods; they worked on gods' lands as their vassals and lived in gods' cottages as their tenants.
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1 Here lie the seeds of the Christian concept of ressurrection.
2 The Jewish predatory raids into Canaan for tribute were modelled on this Egyptian practice which turned out to be the fundamental military principle of Islam requiring the vanquished to pay poll tax or embrace Islam.
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iii. Babylonian Traditions
a. Marduk, the Chief god, told the assembly of deities that Babylon was the centre of the universe where he had built a "magnificent house", for himself.
Here lie the germs of Solomon's Temple, and the reason why Jews thought of Jerusalem as the centre of the universe.
b. The Babylonian epic (Enuma Elish) held that gods created mankind to serve them. It was because they (gods) were lazy and wanted man to work hard for providing them with the choicest foods. The Islamic idea that God created mankind simply to worship Him originated from this epic.
c. The Babylonian Gods assembled in the Halls of Heaven to bestow upon Marduk the creative and destructive powers as his reward for slaying Tiamat, the monster Showing a piece of cloth to Marduk, they said, "Bel Marduk, our lord, now you are the first among gods. You can create 1 or destroy by just uttering a word: speak the word and this cloth will disappear; speak again and it will reappear in its original form".
d. The Sumerian god Enlil who was also known as Ellil 2 gained a dreadful reputation for being the mover of hurricanes and the deluge. For his retributive nature, he was called "the Wild Ox".
e. All Mesopotamian gods had sons and daughters. They practiced a culture similar to that of humans but at a higher level. Thus, they had been invested with finer human attributes by the believers.
Yahwe the Jewish God and Allah have attributes similar to those of humans.
f. Fear was the origin of gods and goddesses who were supposed to represent the various forces of nature. For example, the Canaanite deity, Baal, was the god of rain, thunder and lightning. He announced that he would no longer acknowledge the authority of MOT "Death".
The worst fear was the fear of death which prompted people to search for everlasting life. Gilgamesh, the Akkadian hero, mirrored the spirit of the Sumerian myths that had existed for centuries. He was stricken with fear of death and looked for immortality everywhere. He failed, and at the end wept with dreadful grief and frustration.
During his search, he came across the magic plant called "Man Rejuvinated In Old Age". He found it growing at the bottom of the sea. He managed to secure a branch of it and on his return journey, he found the sun extremely hot. He took off his clothes and plunged into a pool of cool water. A serpent appeared and carried off the magic plant into a nearby well. The plant was true because the old skin of the serpent fell off and the new skin appeared, having all the signs of rejuvination. The mention of the serpent in Genesis is not a mere coincidence.
g. Gilgamesh (and Enkidu) suffered terrible dreams and ghastly visions of The Land Of No Return. This is the prototype of the concept of Hell.
h. According to the Sumerian legend, the first man was Adapa who invented speech He was not immortal. He made the mistake of denying the "food of life" and "water of life" when offered by the god Anu and thus contracted disease and death for his progeny. Eve made a similar mistake in misleading Adam.
i. The Babylonian myth states that at the behest of the god Anu, the goddess Aruru shaped clay in the form of Anu himself and told Ninurta, the son of Enlil, to breathe life into this new man.
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1 Islamic creative principle: "Kun Fa Yakoon", i.e. Allah commands "Be and it becomes", is surely an extension of this fable.
2 Ellil seems to be the Allah of the Moslems. Yahweh as a retributive God also appears to have a great deal in common with him.
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Another myth attributed to Marduk claims that the god (Marduk) declared that he would make an animal to be called "Man". His father, the god Ea. offered to do the shaping of man and infused it with the spirit of gods so that a drop of divine blood should flow into his veins. He did so to mingle a bit of god in man.
Here lies the origin of the creation of Adam as found in Genesis!
j. El, the near image of Yahwe "ruled the source of rivers". "One of the rivers flowed out to water the garden" which scholars believe resembles the Biblical Eden.
k. Enki the Sumerian water god, is associated with a myth which provides the fabric of the Hebrew story of Adam and the Garden of Eden.
Enki lived with Ninhursaga, the earth mother, in the paradisial Dilmum (which was situated in Bahrin). Dilmum was the home of mirth and serenity where misery and suffering were unknown because there was no ageing or disease, everybody lived in harmony, and even the animals were extremely friendly with one another. The spousal love between Enki and Ninhursaga which was the source of heavenly delights, turned into dreadful dole when Enki swallowed the eight plants grown by Ninhursaga. She laid upon him the curse of death and even Enlil could not help him. Eventually a fox brought Ninhursaga back for a suitable reward. To cure her companion, she created eight deities, one of them being Ninti, "the lady of the rib".
In Dilmum, the paradise, there was also a sacred tree called Kiskanu which was the focal point for all ceremonial acts.The Biblical Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is surely an imitation of the Kiskanu. And so is the story of Eve's birth from Adam's rib!
iv. Indian and Canaanite Influence
One is surprised to find so many Indian-sounding names in the Syrian, Palestinian and Babylonian mythologies. Some examples are: Ashurbanipal, Gilgamesh, Utnapishtam, Yam, Ram, Paul, Sarpanitu, Zuisudra, Namtar, Nergal, Siduri, Ninhursaga, Kamrusepas etc. Resemblance of the Babylonian temple with the Indian temple, the practice of the Indian doctrines such as Trimurti and polyandry, provide further evidence of the influence of the Indus Valley civilization on the ancient Semitic World.
a. The Canaanite or Palestinian god El is the father of all gods except Baal. He is the creator of man and earth. The Bible has extended his image as "the maker of Heaven and Earth" (Genesis 14:19). He was also described as "merciful" and portrayed as a seated figure, wearing bull horns personifying his sexual power. Thus, he represents a modified version of the Indian god, Shiva, in his capacity as Pasupati.
b. Ball, the storm god, is yet another prominent Syrio-Palestinian god meaning "Lord, Master". His title, "Cloud rider, has been attributed to Yahwe (Ps 68:4) Because of his fighting skill and persistence, he was considered a "Prince" anc "The Conquering One".
c. In the Canaanite Ball epic, he is described as returning from the dead, thus, confirming the concept of resurrection adopted by the Semitic religions.
d. The Hebrew Leviathan is no different from the Lotan, "the primeval serpent . . . the twisting snake", that Baal defeated; the same description signifies Yahwe as the dragon-slayer in the Old Testament (Isiah 27).
e. The art of prophecy is described by the Mari texts dating back to the 18th centurY B.C. It is also found in the Egyptian sources of 1100 B.C. Temples were visited by the uninvited prophets and prophetesses who used various methods to induce frenzy for delivering messages of gods to kings and notables. It is wellknown that prophets of the Tyrian Baal achieved ecstacy through self-laceration, dancing and incantation. These methods have been used right down to our age by sufis, saints, mystics and fortune tellers.
f. The old Canaanite rituals such as "sacrifice", "peace offerings", "burnt offerings", "wave offerings" were adopted by the Hebrews. Even the Biblical Psalms have been traced back to the fecundity cult of the god, Baal.
g. Finally, the conquests of Alexander the Great in 333 B.C. marked the start of Hellinization in the Near East, giving dominance to the Greek traditions and institutions. Its influence can be judged by the fact that the Talmudic corpus contains 2500-3000 words of Greek origin which became the currency of not only the popular sermons of the rabbis but it also gained ascendancy in the fields of government, law, religion, science, philosophy, arts and technology.
v. Indian and Iranian influence
Now, we shall see how the Indian Vedas shaped Judaism, Christianity and Islam through their influence on the Middle Eastern mythology, especially Zoroasterism and Mancheism. Upanishads, the ancient Indian texts, mention that soul is welcomed in paradise by five hundred Cloud Maidens (Apsares). Zaroaster, the Persian prophet, who was inspired by Vedas, the holy Indian Scriptures, described the Cloud Maidens as beautiful damsels who meet souls in Heaven.
Again, the concepts of Nerg and Swarg, i.e. Hell and Heaven, are part of the Indian mythology which is undoubtedly the oldest in the world.
a. In the Upanishads and the Yajurved, the ancient holy books of India, soul is required to cross a bridge. Zoroaster called it the Bridge of the Requiter which leads good souls to Heaven but the bad souls fall down into Hell. It has become an integral part of the Islamic Day of Judgement.
b. Zoroaster, also known as Zarathushtra and Zartosht, was a Persian sage who is said to have lived in the 6th Century B.C.
Following the Indian concept: ``Avatara", he declared that this world would be visited by the saviours at different times. He claimed that he received a vision from Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord who decreed him to preach the truth.
Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths draw their concepts of Messiah and Messenger from this source.
c. Zoroaster propounded the idea of one supreme God who created Heaven and Earth; both darkness and light emanate from Him alternatively; He is the ultimate law giver, the origin of nature and the final judge of the whole world.
The Jewish and Islamic theories of creation and monotheism, are more influenced by these Zoroasteran thoughts than anything else.
d. The teachings of Zoroaster bear a clear testimony to the concepts of resurrection when judgement shall be passed by Ahura Mazda, the highest god, who alone is worthy of worship. He also illustrates his vision of Heaven and Hell; after judgement, the virtuous enter the kingdom of eternal joy and light but the wicked are thrown into the cold dark regions of horror as depicted in the Indian mythology. The Day of Judgement would be marked by an incalculable outburst of fire which would turn the metal of mountains into molten lava flowing like a river of fire. The righteous would feel the effect of the scorching heat as "warm milk" but the evildoers would taste its real torture. This process is essential to cleanse the sins of the wicked who like the righteous would be resurrected in the original bodies along with their souls.
The Islamic principle of reward and punishment is firmly established here in terms of Heaven and Hell, seeking to eliminate fear of death by guaranteeing favour of immortality.
The idea of resurrection is also found in the Babylonian myth of Tammuz and Ishtar where the dead lover (Tammuz) is returned to life for half of every year. Egyptians also believed in the resurrection of Osiris and his followers.
e. After the Babylonian exile, the Jews developed the Persian concept of Ahriman into that of Devil. The Book of Enoch describes Satan as the son of God, who as a matter of envy, refused to pay homage to Adam. Yahwe banished him from heaven along with his followers.
This episode gave birth to Christian demonology with the idea that every soul was attended by a good and an evil angel. In Islam, these angels assumed the role of two witnesses who record everything that a person does.
f. The Persian Sraosha, literally meaning "to harken", is said to have assumed the status of Allah's messenger as the Archangel Gabriel in the Islamic religion.
g. To purify the dead body, Zoroaster's followers prescribed that a "four eyed" dog should be brought before the corpse five times a day.
h. The Old Indian principle of Rta-Druh, i.e. vice and virtue, was boldly stated by Zoroaster as a battle between Asha and Druj (truth and falsehood). The first human couple were led astray by Ahriman, the prince of darkness. The fight between Ormazd, the prince of light and Ahriman, will last until the Day of Judgement when virtue will defeat vice.
All Semitic religions have borrowed their philosophies of vice and virtue from this principle of duality.
vi. Further Iranian Influence
Mani, another Persian sage, preached in the 3rd Century A.D. that:
a. prophets come from time to time to teach true religion; he held that Adam, Enoch, Buddha, Zoroaster and Jesus were prophets and they formed links of the same chain. In fact, it was a modification of the belief that the disciples of Zoroaster had developed: they held that until their Prophet (Zoroaster) appeared on the Day of Judgement, this planet would be visited by three saviours on his behalf, at intervals of a thousand years.
b. Each religion is distorted in time and the purpose of a prophet is to restore its original precepts.
c. He treated himself as the last-comer in the family of prophets. He emphasised that as he was the "seal of the prophets", there would be no other prophet after him. Further, as he had committed his teachings to writing, they would be incorruptable.
d. He prescribed seven daily prayers of the elect, and four for the hearer which he should say at midday, mid afternoon, just after nightfall and three hours after sunset.
e. Fasting was yet another of his basic prescriptions which occurred frequently. The longest period of fasting consisted of twenty-six days. All these principles have been incorporated by Islam in one form or another, yet it claims to be a revealed religion!
To recapitulate what I have said in this Chapter, I must add that mythology grew from fear of death and natural forces such as the sun, wind, rain etc. People believed that there was a god or goddess behind every natural force which could be appeased through submission and worship for securing favours by way of immunity from hunger, disease and death.
Those who wanted to make a lucrative business and gain spiritual prestige out of man's fear, concocted fabulous tales to enhance the glory of gods and goddesses, commanding the forces of nature. On the one hand, they made these gods and goddesses divine and sublime, and on the other, they projected themselves as vicars and viceroys of these deities who could not be approached without them. This is how the vicar became part of divinity!
In the beginning these were local cults. As time went by, there appeared men with a greater urge of dominance, accompanied by a higher vision and a stronger will To substitute themselves for the current gods, each of them used various methods of launching himself as a vicar of God (prophet, messiah, messenger etc.), Son of God or God himself but they all retained the myths associated with the previous deities they intended to replace. Why? It is because these myths had a strong psychological appeal to their followers and thus they were readily susceptible to the new contenders of divinity.
These new messengers (message bearers of God) and messiahs perfected the technique of revelation: it means that the preacher is preaching the Will of God and not of his own, and has no personal axe to grind. Though this device has degraded mankind through division and absolutely appalling mutual hatred, it has worked well for these messengers and messiahs whose stature has grown higher as the standing of mankind has sunk lower through religious odium, malevolence and murder.
very friend of mankind ought to look into the technique of revelation which is likely to annihilate the human race through sectarian hatred, intolerance and regression.
Chapter 5: Revelation
Revelation plays a major role in projecting man as God. It shows how Middle Eastern myths have been cleverly transformed into elements of the Semitic religions by their founders.
True Purpose of Revelation
What is revelation? It is a process of exploiting man's instinctive fear of the supernatural with a view to establishing one's self as God. In plain language, it means that man is afraid of the unknown and believes that there is a deity behind every force of nature. Thus he worships gods out of fear, hoping that they will bestow favours upon him. Men, infused with high dominance-urge, love to be adored and seek to replace the mythological figures of gods with their own images through the process known as revelation. This device needs in-depth investigation and I shall extend the scope of scrutiny to the Semitic religions, i.e. Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Mechanism of Revelation
According to these religions, revelation means that God chooses a good person as his spokesman, who is charged with the duty of conveying the divine message to people irrespective of their reactions and consequences to himself. Such a person, in theory, is God's servant who has no personal axe to grind in the matter. He is called a "prophet" or "messenger" and God may communicate with him directly "as friend to friend", through Gabriel, ecstasies, dreams, visions or auditions. No matter what medium of communication God may choose, the fundamental purpose is to establish the absolute sovereignty of God and remind man that the sole purpose of his existence is to humble himself before Him through worship.
Some of the revelatory relationships are exhibited in varying degrees, by the Jewish covenants with their patriarchs, rabbinic Judaism which came into being during the Babylonian Exile, Christian belief in the person of Jesus as God's own Son and the ministry of his apostles, and intercessory powers of Muhammad as the "last" messenger of God.
Mission of Messiah
Closely connected with prophethood is the concept of Messiah who comes to restore the faith revealed through prophets. He appears when the world is in a turmoil owing to the trickery and tyranny of the infidels, and believers are made to live under conditions of injustice, poverty and servitude. His mission is to reverse the process by assuring descent of the infidels and ascent of the believers. The Jews and Christians dream of the coming of the Messiah and Moslems are awaiting the appearance of the Mahdi or Imam.
When we look into the device of revelation it becomes evident that it is a stratagem of the dominant who desire to command mankind even from their graves and passionately want to be adored and worshipped. If the reader is prepared to examine the following statements sincerely and fairly, he/she may have no problem in grasping this conclusion:
Case against revelation
1. God proclaims His laws to establish His own sovereignty and wants man to obey them to the letter. If man obeys, he goes to Heaven, otherwise, Hell awaits him with open arms.
a. If God wanted absolute submission and the purpose of man's creation was to worship Him, He would have created man according to similar laws that govern the operation of the natural phenomena.
b. Man's existence is based on Free Will, the freedom to choose and act. After creating man on this principle, if God still wants him to adopt robotic behaviour, then God surely does not know what He is doing, and thus does not deserve to be called God.
Irrelevance of Divine Law
c. God's laws which are eternal and inflexible, seek to glorify Him instead of solving man's problems. To be able to serve mankind, law must belong to the present and not to the past. It is for this reason that every country has a legislative assembly to enact, suspend or repeal laws to suit national needs.
It is madness to ignore modern attitudes and insist on obeying the laws which represent ethos of the past generations going back centuries. Obedience to such laws is simply the introduction of slavery. In fact, they are no longer practicable because when they are introduced, it is done by the force of false interpretations which contradict the original laws. This hypocrisy is exercised to maintain the sanctity of the divine law because it is the source of dignity, power and wealth to the members of the priestly classes.
Hell and Heaven versus Free Will
d. Frightening man with Hell and bribing him with Heaven, is a cheap trick which goes against the grain of Godhead; it is an exact antithesis of free will.
God versus Man
2. Since the purpose of revelation is to glorify God, it is an instrument to harass, humiliate and hypnotise man, and not to elevate him by allowing him to steer his own destiny.
a. It is obvious that revelation is necessary for God but not for man whose interest is opposed to that of God.
b. Revelation is thought necessary to defeat or destroy evil.
If God is the creator, then He is also the creator of evil. Is it not hypocritical of God to warn man of evil after creating it? Again, there is no evidence that divine laws, prophets or messiahs, have ever vanquished evil. In fact, each messenger and messiah, by demanding exclusive submission to himself and denying other gods and gurus has created further divisions in mankind and thus promoted the cause of evil through hatred and wars.
Again, is it not crazy that God creates all sorts of irresistible temptations which mislead man and then wants him to avoid them? Isn't he playing a vicious game?
Prophet, an irrelevance
3. If the purpose of revelation is to defeat evil, the person of the medium, i.e. the prophet or messenger, becomes quite irrelevant. Why?
a. Evil is always here. Its suppression demands that God must live amongst people permanently in a visible manner so that they can see Him and seek His advice directly. Again, His presence is bound to be far more inspiring and decisive to conquer the evil.
b. Once people can see and contact the Supernatural Being, they are far more likely to follow Him than the evil. On the contrary, the medium, i.e. the prophet or messenger, is human: he eats, drinks, answers the call of nature, walks, talks, sleeps, feels happy and sad, needs sex, falls ill, requires medication and so on. If despite all these facts, he claims to be divine, then this claim is dubious by its nature, to say the least.
There is no proof that what he says is inspired or commanded by God. If people don't believe him, it is God's fault because He chose the suspicious and inferior method of revealing Himself. He must reveal Himself directly, if revelation has anything to do with Him at all.
Revelation, the Source of Mischief
4. The more prophets and messengers God sends, the greater discord He causes amongst people through divisions, sectarian hatred and the bid for disciples. Thus revelation ceases to be the divine guidance, and becomes the source of mischief.
a. It is even worse when a prophet declares that he is the last one and no more prophets will follow him. If he is needed for the eradication of evil, which is always here, then there is surely need for prophets all the time. Thus he belittles his own purpose.
b. However, the more important aspect of the "last prophethood" is that as time moves on, the teachings of the prophets are subjected to interpretations to elicit the meanings that are not there. It is done for several reasons: firstly, the written doctrine or the scripture is not capable of providing guidance for all occasions and times. Secondly, religion is not only the biggest business on earth but also the greatest source of power. Therefore, fundamentalists, especially the religious leaders, resort to all sorts of holy tricks to keep their faith alive.
Finally, there are individuals in every religion who are as keen to gain godly stature as were their founders but lack the courage and ability to set up their own divine shops. Therefore, they drum up the reverence of the founders out of proportion to give him divine status and project themselves as his deputies or viceroys. Thus they establish a similar relationship with their founder as the founder is supposed to have with God.
Now, it is easy to see that revelation does not serve its declared purpose because it matters not whether there are few prophets or many. Neither it makes any difference whether the sacred teachings are written or oral. Over a period of time, the words of the scripture may remain exactly the same but their spirit and meanings are grossly distorted, thus rendering it unfit to guide.
Revelation the source of misguidance
5. Each revealed religion claims to be the only true faith and calls other religions false. Out of ten such religions only one may be true. Since nine are false, the tenth must also be false.
How can a revealed religion provide guidance, when it is not possible to choose the true one? It is surely the source of misguidance.
Revelation and Prophecy
6. Revelation is closely connected with prophecy which is a form of divination. It is amazing how diviners and fortune- tellers have always appeased their clients through skillful presentation and double-edged tongue since inception of time. It is a vice but made to look a virtue by the play of words versed in the art of deception and duplicity which tempt the seekers to find in them what is not there.
a. Miracles are also an integral part of prophecy. These are the fairy tales which are forged by the followers for giving godly status to the founders of their religion to raise their own prestige.
Miracles can neither be performed nor can they have any relevance to the quality of the message or the doctrine. Look at the modern illusionists who call themselves magicians. How wonderful and incredible their performances are! Yet their marvellous acts form no part of piety, but demonstrate a skill in trickery.
b. One should also remember that prophecy is injurious to the concepts of morality and piety. If it is possible to tell the future events, say 1000 years, beforehand, then everything is determined, and there is no need for people to struggle for piety or listen to revelation.
True purpose of Revelation
7. The true purpose of revelation ought to be the elevation of man. But this is not the case because it promotes the cause of God who seeks to subdue man through threats of torture and temptations of treats. The God who desires self - promotion at the expense of human dignity is neither beneficent nor creator, nor all-powerful.
a. Maybe it is not God who resorts to such devices. It is more likely the person of the revelationist, i.e. the prophet who seeks self-adoration. Why? Because God seems to be his prisoner who is obliged to address people through him. Since God cannot be seen or contacted, and He is nothing more than what the prophet presents Him to be, it is the word of the prophet that becomes all-important and all powerful. It is not suprising that in all "revealed" religions, believers show more respect to the prophet than to God.
By choosing a man to be His prophet, God invites him to participate in Godhead because the person of the prophet becomes indistinguishable from the person of God. This certainly demolishes the concept of monotheism.
Bigotry and Revelation
8. The revelationist must address the whole of mankind and show concern for everyone. But this is not the case: the Jewish God, despite claiming to be the creator of mankind, is infatuated with the Jews only; the Christian God is determined to bless the believer and blight disbelievers and the Islamic God hates the infidels.
Revelation versus progress
9. Revelation is the recipe not only for bigotry, barbarity and sectarian hatred, but also for regression, primitiveness and superstition. This fact emerges clearly when we consider the attitudes of the religious authorities towards scientists and inventors. The treatment of Galileo is an example in point, and brilliant men, like Newton and Einstein who did not believe in the logical conclusions of their own deliberations and discoveries, explain the superstitious effects of revelation. The modern progress which vouches for the eminence of man, came into being as a revolt against revelation.
a. Again, revelation is not the least concerned with the welfare of mankind. Has God ever revealed the cure for Smallpox, Cancer or AIDS? It is man himself who has to find the ways for his survival. He is capable of discovering the path of eternity as surely as he promotes his secular longevity.
Revelation and ignorance of human problems
10. Revelation, to be genuine, must concentrate on the main human problems such as:
a. Slavery, and
b. parity of the sexes.
Quite to the contrary, the Christian Church sanctioned slavery as the Will of God. Neither Moses nor Muhammad abolished it. Worse still, these revealed religions subjugated woman to the iron will of man.
Revelation is the tool of viceroyalty, that is, though the revelationist seeks divinity for himself, he claims to be the servant or lieutenant of God who is the Supreme Being. Since all Semitic religions are founded on the concept of a Creator God, one is inclined to speculate if the existence of such a deity is possible. The more one thinks about this postulate the less convincing it becomes. Why?
IS THERE A CREATOR GOD?
Creator God is not a possibility
1. It is irrational to think of a Creator God in the beginning of the universe because God is considered to be perfect in skill, power and wisdom but we know that everything comes into being on the principle of "simple to complex", "elementary to elaborate" and "imperfect to perfect".
a. The idea of perfection automatically raises another issue: the perfect God must have been created by yet another Creator who is even superior to the Creator God.
b. Reason cannot admit the existence of a Creator God; such an admission can be made only on the grounds of faith which is not a guide but a shield. The function of a guide is to lead out of a dilemma, provide release and vision whereas a shield is protection against immediate injury but at the expense of a genuine solution and opens the door to eventual despair, derision and devastation.
Composition and Godhead
2. Any system or being is composed of individual parts. God is a being and, therefore, must have constituent parts. These parts must have existed before He assumed His final shape. He could not have existed as perfect right from the beginning nor could He have been the Creator because He Himself needed composition.
a. In this respect, one should remember that all Semitic religions speak of a physical God: Jews had seen Yahwe who conversed with Moses like a friend; Jesus was the God incarnate, and Allah, the Islamic God, sits on the throne and is carried by angels. A physical God is surely a composition like all other physical entities.
Universal law versus Creator God
3. The physical study of the universe shows its subjection to the fundamental laws and not to the will or caprice of a Creator.
Creator God and incompetence
4. The Creator God is responsible for all the doom and destruction, despair and disease, gloom and grievance, treason and trickery, mutilation and murder, theft and thuggery, rape and racism. All these vices must originate from his design and constitute the proof of His incompetence and imperfection.
Creator God and purpose
5. If there is a Creator God, then the creation must have a purpose. It is not possible to assess the divine purpose with certainty:
a. Some say that it is the union of man with God. No two distinct entities can be merged together. Merger is possible only if they both are of the same essence. If this were the case, they would be one and the same thing, and thus could not have separated in the first place. Therefore creation could not have materialised.
b. Some say that God has created man to worship Him: the obedient shall be offered the pleasures of paradise, but the disobedient shall roast in the inferno.
Far from being divine, such a God does not qualify even for the merits of ordinary humans. This system of reward and punishment is unjust and arbitrary because it is He who made people what they are.
However, this cannot be the purpose of creation because man is endowed with free will which is the power to choose or refuse, and thus implies an inherent contradiction in the concept of creation.
c. The purpose that the universe may have is tantamount to the divine desire which must take precedence over everything else. Much as the priests would have liked us believe in the compassion, wisdom and caring nature of God, He turns out to be extremely selfish and self-centred because His ultimate aim is the fulfillment of His own desire and not the welfare of man.
Creator God versus perfection
6. All Semitic religions ascribe such attributes to God which are of human origin; He is subject to spasms of dole and delight, feels murderous and merciful, condemns the foe and commends the friend, indulges in love and hatred and expresses the nice and nasty sides of His disposition.
The God that is an aggregate of opposite properties and is so easily excited, lacks the stability, composure and wisdom to rank as the Creator or the Perfect. He is nothing but a flight of the human imagination.
Creator God, the tool of revelationists
7. Unless God is the tool of dominance for the revelationist, He cannot confine His disclosure to the agency of a particular person who is subject to all human frailties. He must reveal Himself to everyone individually and openly if the purpose of revelation is the good of mankind and not the revelationist.
Creator God is not Almighty
8. To be the Creator, God has to be Almighty. Can He kill himself? Can He do without this universe? Obviously, He cannot because if He could, He wouldn't have created the universe. If He did so unnecessarily, then all that this universe contains is futile and God loves to play a fool's game. No fool can ever be AllPowerful and All-Wise. This world is too wonderful to be within His creative ability.
Creation as compulsion
9. If this cosmos is a creation, then creating is God's greatest passion and thus, creativity begins to rank as a compulsion which lacks will, wisdom and planning. It is like being used to narcotics which the addict must consume to survive.
God cannot be absolute
10. God is a being. Therefore, He is subject to the conditions of His environment, and cannot be absolute and all-powerful. If He is not a being, He does not exist because whatever exists must have a body of some kind, no matter how rare.
Having delved into the Semitic mythology, I shall examine in the next book the Semitic religions i.e. Judaism, Christianity and Islam for establishing the premises enunciated in Book One.
Next Part
Eternity Part 1
Eternity Part 2
Eternity Part 3
Eternity Part 4
Eternity Part 5
Eternity Part 6
Eternity Part 7
Eternity Part 8
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