>Understaniding Human Ignorance< >>>>> Chapter Nine >>>>> The Religious and Spiritual Poverty of Humankind 2019

Inasmuch as humankind has so little understanding of the psychological principles unpinning human and other animal behavior, the religious and spiritual poverty of humanity naturally follows from such ignorance.


Across the globe, the seven billion people of the world tend to follow simplistic versions of the world’s great traditions, corrupt those traditions with abominable behavior contrary to the teachings of the great religious founders, or exist in a spiritual vacuum that knows no religion or spirituality but only crass material goals and conduct.

Even those very few people who live according to an acceptable code of personal conduct tend to have very little knowledge of the faiths in places and cultural contexts other than their own.  Further, many people have very little understanding even of their own faiths, credulously following what others tell them they believe:  Think, for example of ardent Christians who have never even read the Gospels;  much less have they read the Bible in its entirety or even the New Testament that they claim is the bedrock of all that they hold dear.

 

Understand first, then, these summary accounts of the history and most important principles of the world’s great faiths and belief systems:    

 

Judaism, the religion of the biblical Hebrews who in time became known as Jews, features three great patriarchs, Abraham and his sons Isaac and Jacob (also known also as Israel).  Abraham putatively lived in the first part of the second millennium B.C. (BCE);  it was he to whom Yahweh (God in the terminology of the Hebrews [Jews]) first spoke of a special relationship that would become known as the Covenant.  The biblical book, Exodus, records the story of another towering Hebrew figure, Moses, who followed the voices of his conscience and resolved to lead his people on an exodus (“going out” or “departing”) from Egypt, where many Jews according to the biblical account lived in exile.  Under leader Joshua the Jews completed the journey begun under the leadership of Moses and reestablished themselves in Palestine, forever regarding themselves as God’s chosen people of the Covenant, destined to dwell in the Holy Land promised to them by Yahweh.  The Old Testament features the first five books (Pentateuch) of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy that comprise the sacred text of Torah, conveying the story of the Covenant and detailing the essentials of Hebrew (Jewish) Law;  these are followed by the texts of history, the texts of poetry and wisdom, and the many texts of prophesy.  The Old Testament essentially relates the quest of the Hebrew (Jewish) people to establish an enduring relationship with God (Yaweh), chastised by the prophets when they go astray, and told by these perceptibly wise and prescient counselors to realign their behavior with the will of God.  Jews in the contemporary world may be classified as Orthodox, those who follow very traditional practices;  Reform, those who accommodate themselves in many ways to liberal social change;  and  Conservative, those resolving to strike a balance between Reform and Orthodox practice.

 

Christianity concerns the life and teachings of Jesus (conveyed in the gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John of the biblical New Testament), who was most likely born in 6 BCE and lived until 27 CE or so. Jesus’s birth is presented in the Gospels as a nonsexual miracle, whereby God chose Mary to bear and deliver a child who would become Christ the Messiah or “Anointed One,” at once God’s incarnation on earth and His Son.  Jesus was born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth, located in the region of Palestine known as Galilee.  At about age 30, Jesus was inspired to spread a religious message, beginning in his own region of Galilee at the seaside community of Capernaum.   He traveled also to other areas of Galilee and to such areas northward as Tyre, Sidon, and Decapolis.  According to gospel accounts, Jesus frequently taught in parables and performed many miracles.  His teachings emphasized compassion, love, and respect for those in humble circumstances.  Jesus incurred the wrath of both secular (Roman) and religious (Hebrew priests, especially of the Pharisee group).  He dined at a Last Supper with His disciples, the Twelve Apostles:  the fisher brother duos of Simon and Peter, James and John;  Matthew the tax collector;  along with Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, James, Lebbaeus (also known as Thaddeus), Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot;  thereafter he was arrested and given the humiliating sentence of crucifixion.  Jesus died on a cross in a place known as Golgotha;  according to Gospel accounts, though, three days later two women found Jesus’s tomb empty and he reappeared to his disciples in an assertion of the rebirth that would come to those who believed in Him and gained eternal life.  The first great missionary, Paul, a convert who had persecuted those who would become known as Christians, traveled with other leaders throughout the eastern Mediterranean;  the epistles of Paul, written to communities that included those of his own Jewish tradition but were dominated by Gentiles (non-Jews) in locales outside Palestine, form the bulk of the New Testament following the Gospels.  It was Paul who articulated the essence of a Christian theology that would prove enduring:  the saving grace of Jesus as the Christ, at once God, son of God, and the Holy Spirit abiding in the world:  the Holy Trinity.  The three major divisions Christianity are Roman Catholic, Greek (Eastern, Russian) Orthodox, and Protestant (the latter familiar to Americans as Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and the like). 

 

Islam  (historic roots to approximately 570 CE) concerns the life and revelations of Muhammad, born about 570 A. D. to a humble family of Mecca, a traditional religious center on the Arabian peninsula.  On his West Asian journeys as a caravan driver, Muhammad met many Christians and (especially) Jews, from whom he learned the teachings of the New and Old Testaments.  At about 28 years of age, Muhammad married a wealthy widow by the name of Khadija.  His enhanced economic security gave the introspective young man more time to contemplate the religious texts that he had encountered on his travels and to compare these with his own reflections upon the religious ideas and practices common to Arabia.  In Mecca, there was a religious elite of priests who conducted rituals in worship of a variety of jinn (deities of nature and commerce) and superintended a number of shrines, including the mysterious Ka’ba, which drew circumambulating worshipers around its cuboid structure.  

At forty years of age Muhammad was inwardly rent by spiritual turmoil, leading him to retreat to a nearby mountain for deep thought and soulful solitude.  After a time, he perceived that the angel Jibra’il (Gabriel) spoke to him the very words of God, whom he would call Allah, giving him revelations destined to reshape the religious landscape of the Arabian peninsula, other parts of West Asia, an expanse of North Africa, and eventually the Malay peninsula and islands now known collectively as Indonesia.  The revelations of Allah (via Jibra’il) to Muhammad would eventually be recorded in the holy book, Qur’an (Koran).  Muhammad stirred the jealousy and moral discomfort in the established jinn priests, who rightly perceived the Prophet as a threat to their own power, prestige, and livelihoods;  he felt impelled to leave Mecca one evening in 622 A.D. (CE), an event known to the Islamic faithful as the hegira (hejira, hjra) for Medina, some 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Mecca.  There Muhammad regrouped, recited the revelations, and prophesied according to the mission that Allah through Jibra’il had given him.  Over the course of the next several years, Muhammad attracted a devoted following, trained a skilled army of soldiers for the holy war (jihad) against the religious establishment in Mecca, and planned his return to the holy city.  In 630 A.D. (CE), Muhammad implemented his plan, returning in force to Mecca.  His forces soundly defeated the army of the established priesthood and other members of the traditional elite.  Muhammad died two years later having set the tone and the context for a vigorous expansion of the new faith, first on the Arabian peninsula, and then far beyond:  throughout West Asia, across North Africa and Asia Minor (today’s Asiatic Turkey), and many other areas encompassed by or along the Mediterranean Sea.  The Five Pillars of Islam are 1) to repeat with sincere regularity the Muslim Creed:  “There is no God (Allah) but God (Allah), and Muhammad is his Prophet.”;  2) to give alms to the poor and for religious purposes, in the amount of about one-fortieth of one’s income;  3) to fast at the occasion of the holy month of Ramadan;   4) to pray facing Mecca five times each day;  5) to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least one time during the course of the able-bodied life.  The major followers are generally classified as Sunni Muslims (who constitute the majority) and Shi’ite Muslims, differences in which are rooted in a historical dispute over the successor (caliph) to Muhammad.  There is also a group known as Sufis, who seek direct experience with Allah via music, dance, and poetry;  they may be either Sunnite or Shi’ites.  And there are offshoots such as the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims), famously including Malcolm X as adherent before his conversion to mainstream Islam.

                                 

Hinduism (historic roots to 1500 BCE) is almost as ancient as Judaism and, in the same way that the Jewish faith inspired Christianity and Islam, provided many of the core concepts upon which Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) would work his many innovations. In about 1500 BCE) a people known as the Aryans stormed into the India from the steppes of Central Asia and forever changed the religious life of the subcontinent.  They brought with them belief in a pantheon of deities:  Agni (fire), Indra (Thunder and Lightning), and others that resembled in many features those of the Norse and Graeco-Roman traditions.  In the course of the last centuries B.C. (BCE), the Aryans worked their innovations upon ideas present in the land of their adoption, in time producing the synthesis that became Hinduism, which incorporates texts and ideas generated over many centuries.  Those in charge of leading ceremonies guided by the hymns, chants, rituals, and spells recorded in the texts knows as the Vedas were from the priestly class called the Brahmins, who were at the top of the social order that was in itself an important aspect of the Hindu tradition.  Hindu texts present four broad varnas (social classes):   1) Brahmins, a priestly class;  2) Kshatriyas, comprised of warriors and governmental leaders;  3) Vaishyas, comprised of farmers and merchants;  and 4) Shudras, servants who take care of routine tasks for members of the upper three varnas.  In time these major social groups gained subdivision into a multiplicity of jati, highly specific occupational categories, each with its own rules of conduct and expectations as to social interactions.  In contemporary times, many Hindu thinkers and leaders have endeavored to rework varna and jati in the context of democratic ideals of social equality.  Hindus have a multiplicity of gods, three of which are particularly important:  Brahma (the god of original creation), Vishnu (the god of preservation), and Shiva (the god of individual creation and destruction).   Other gods are often considered to be incarnations (different fleshly manifestations) of those three deities (as in the case of Rama and Krishna, incarnations of Vishnu);  many Hindus view the many deities as expressions of a unifying divine principle.  Hindus have made great contributions to abstract religious thought:  Brahman, the World Soul, explored in the Bhagavad Gita;  atman, the individual human soul;  Ultimate Reality beyond maya (illusion);  karma, the balance of good and bad deeds;  samsara, the cycle of births and deaths that end with moksha (spiritual liberation) and the achievement of the enduring blissful experience known as nirvana.

 

Buddhism focuses on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama (563-483 BCE).  The story goes that there lived in the sixth century BCE a good but naïve young prince in a northern kingdom of India who one day in his early twenties ventured for the first time beyond the palatial luxury that he had known all of his life to confront the realities of sickness, old age, and death.  Deeply moved, Siddhartha embarked on a spiritual journey that led at last to Enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree and the revelations of the Four Noble Truths (suffering at the core of life, caused by desire, ended with the termination of desire, achieved by the Noble Eightfold Path of Right Understanding, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Occupation, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Meditation).  Upon attaining these insights, Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha (Enlightened One).  He deferred entrance into nirvana upon achieving moksha so that he could continue his travels, now with the purpose of conveying his startling revelations to others.  The Buddha did not seek deification, nor did he speak of God.  But adherents of his teaching did in time develop practices of puja (worship) in demonstration of bhakti (devotion), demonstrating the reverence in which the Buddha was held.  Buddhism was the least successful of the religions that developed in India on home turf, but by far the most popular in other societies.  The major divisions of Buddhism became Theravada (Doctrine of the Elders) and Mahayana (Great Vehicle).  Theravada Buddhism, practiced in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and the Southeast Asian nations of Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, and Cambodia, focuses on the support of pious monks who aspire to the spiritual journey of the Buddha.  Mahayana Buddhism, practiced in East Asia (Vietnam, China, South Korea, and Japan), takes generally less monk-focused, more salvation-oriented forms in which adherents worship bodhisattvas  (those who have attained Enlightenment but dedicate themselves to the salvation of devotees).  Schools of the latter include Pure Land (Qingtu [Chinese];  Chingdo [Japanese]), Maitreya, Tientai (Chinese; Tiendai in Japanese), Nichiren, Zen, and the Tantric Buddhism of Tibet.

 

These are the major religions that have had a major influence across the world.  More regionally based are Confucianism, Daoism, and Chinese popular belief that constitute the religious complex of Han Chinese societies;  and the many animistic and polytheistic belief systems throughout the globe.

 

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So terrible are the education systems across the world that people know very little of other people’s religions;  what’s more, they often know very little about their own.  In the latter case, they merely accept what they have been told by family members and imbibe the lessons from pastors, priests, and rabbis without exercising much critical analysis on their own.  Further, many pastors, priests, and rabbis have little knowledge of the faiths led by others.  Thus does humanity abide in ignorance of religions, and a person may be abominably ignorant of the very faith in which she or he professes ardent belief.

 

Such ignorance does not prevent but rather abets violence perpetrated in the name of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and even Buddhism, which at its very defining core is antipathetic toward violence and all ill-considered conduct.  Thus do Roman Catholics fight Protestants in Northern Ireland;  Sunnis murder Shi’ites in Iraq;  corrupted assemblages such as the Taliban and ISIS (ISIL) carry out a warped form of jihad (“holy war”) that is anathema to devout Muslims endeavoring to more accurately follow the actual teachings of Muhammad;  and Hindus and Buddhists violently assert their claims in Sri Lanka.

 

The world’s people do indeed suffer for a lack of knowledge.

 

Only as humanity becomes better educated and learns to coalesce on the basis of ethics shared by all of the world’s great faiths, all of history’s magnificent teachers and prophets, will humankind arrive at enlightened religious and spiritual insight, reject exclusivist claims, and assert shared values for the intellectual and cultural advancement of humanity.

 

In the United States, women and other groups just now coming to the fore as leaders must formulate the spiritual and ethical values upon which all will agree.