• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

His truth is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:

“As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal”

Let the Hero born of woman crush the serpent with His heel

Since God is marching on.

The Confederate troops, of course, sang and prayed to the same God to do the same thing to their enemy.

FROM RELIGION TO GOD

God and religion are many things to many people, and reasons for belief are varied, thoughtful, and momentous. For centuries many a theologian, scholar, and scientist has attempted to explain why people need religion and believe in God. Their efforts have left a legacy of theories and libraries of books on the subject. Edward Tylor and James Frazer viewed religion as animism and magic, whereas Sigmund Freud saw it as an obsessional neurosis. Emile Durkheim said religion is a sacred part of the social structure, while Karl Marx said it is nothing more than another tool of alienation and the opiate of the masses. Mircea Eliade thought religion to be the most sacred part of the human psyche. while E. E. Evans-Pritchard saw religion as society’s “construct of the heart,” which it needs as much as science’s “construct of the mind.” Clifford Geertz believed that religion is a cultural system of symbols that act to empower, give meaning, and provide motivation. In evaluating these disparate theories, historian of religion Daniel Pals suggests asking the following questions: “(1) How does it define the subject? (2) What type of theory is it? (3) What is the range of the theory? (4) What evidence does the theory appeal to? (5) What is the relationship between a theorist’s personal religious belief (or disbelief) and the explanation he chooses to advance?”

Applying these questions to the theory of religion presented here: (1) Religion is a social institution that evolved as an integral mechanism of human culture to create and promote myths, to encourage altruism and reciprocal altruism, and to reveal the level of commitment to cooperate and reciprocate among members of the community. (2) This is a biocultural theory of religion. (3) The range of the theory is limited to deeper, ultimate “why” questions about religion and belief in God. The particulars of any one religion are not the subject of analysis. (4) This is a scientific theory, so the evidence is based on those sciences most allied with the study of myth, religion, and belief in God: archaeology, history, anthropology, sociology, cognitive and social psychology, neurophysiology, behavior genetics, and evolutionary biology. The theory attempts to probe deeply into the core of why people believe in God and religion, but does not focus on specific faiths or customs. (5) See the preface and first chapter of this book for the relationship between my personal religious beliefs and the explanation I have chosen to advance.

This theory of religion has presented a case for how humans evolved from pattern-seeking to storytelling to mythmaking to morality and religion. Where does God fit into this sequence? In short, everywhere. God is a pattern, an explanation for our universe, our world, and ourselves. God is the key actor in the story, “the greatest story ever told” about where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going. God is a myth, one of the most sublime and sacred myths ever constructed by the mythmaking animal. God is the ultimate enforcer of the rules, the final arbiter of moral dilemmas, and the pinnacle object of commitment. And God is the integrant of religion, the most elemental of all components that go into the making of the sacred. God and religion are inseparable. People believe in God because we are pattern-seeking, storytelling, mythmaking, religious, moral animals.

Chapter 8

GOD AND THE GHOST DANCE

The Eternal Return of the Messiah Myth

And almost every one, when age,

Disease, or sorrows strike him,

Inclines to think there is a God,

Or something very like Him.

—Arthur H. Clough, Dipsychus, 1850