Losing our Religion; The Twilight of the Gods

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, said Goethe, began as an abortive political revolution which turned moral. The uprising was against Roman power and suppression. It failed for the usual reasons; lack of organization, weapons, and suficient political will. All turned out well for the faith, in that it spread around the world and to this day illuminates the lives of more than two billion people. Its actual origins are deeper in history than that, dating back, in fact, to the dawn of history itself. All religions, approximately four thousand of them, have the same genesis; in the human imagination and ability to reimagine an incomprehensible universe in anthrophmorphic, all too human terms, in the image of humanity. God becomes a superhuman entity, and we his chosen children of the light. All religions begin with their votaries calling their invented beliefs "the light", or "the truth". The sun is the center, the focal point of all religion. God has many names. This is illustrated by a science fiction short story by Arther C. Clarke "The Nine Billion Names of God". When the last, final name of the last god is spoken, the universe, satisfied that it now knows itself, willingly, mercifullly dies. There is almost always a "messiah". Our ancient ancestors correctly perceived their own fragility, and the fragile, makeshift nature of human existence. The anthropomorphic deities were nonetheless somewhat emotionally fragile themselves, taking after their inventors, and required their own nourishment of the soul, in the form of human formalized adoration, worship, an exprssion of which isinherit in every ceremony ever held by every society which ever feared and failed to understand the essential harmony of nature, and in most cases harmlessness of thunder and lightening. We invent superior beings and set them atop Mount Olympus where we can relegate them to the status of observers who once upon a time intervened directly and constantly in human affairs, but gradually withdrew from our daily lives as our understanding of them grew and perhaps made them fearful that their fraudulant nature would be exposed, and their power over us, purely psychological, would dissipate and vanish altogether. Religion inspires and comforts people, the only real reasons for its existence. We are now in the twilight of our gods. Having largely outgrown them, we simply do not need them anymore. Though many people still cling to traditional religious beliefs, the sweeping growth of science, with our attendant advance in our knowledge of the universe, is inexorably reducing our pantheon of gods, for they have become relics of a benighted past, and we simply do not need them anymore. We should celebrate and not lament the passing of our ancient omnipotent, omnipresent heavenly benefactors. Thomas Jefferson,two hundred years ago, called relgious belief "our modern superstition". He understood that humanity's capacity to understand the world through our own faculties was freeing us from the need to assuage our fears and ignorance-based beliefs about the world, by replacing them with explanations for phenomena which are coherent, observable, verifiable, and ultimately far more comforting and satisfying than our previous reliance on fabricated narratives. As a species we are growing up, outgrowing our need for the comforting crutches of religious superstition. We are entering the twilight of the gods, and giving birth to a newand better way of understanding our world and ourselves. Childhood's end. We are yet unsure precisely how to adopt to and evolve with our new found freedom from the mental bondage of our inferior prior beliefs. For better or for worse, we will think of something.