The Forward on page seven of World Religions: From Ancient History to the Present * with Geoffery Parrinder as Editor opens with the following paragraph:
The religions of the world provide a great record of human thought and artistic expression. From the earliest times of prehistory down to the resent day people have expressed their deepest convictions about the universe and mortal life in worship and symbol. All the arts have been brought into the service of religion: architecture and sculpture, painting and writing, music and costume.
This 515 page text has much to offer and is my recommendation for your greater understanding of the emergence of religion in the evolution of the third planet, Earth, that revolves around the Sun that resides at the center of our solar system in the Milky Way galaxy; all of which is moving through our universe. Needless to say, but to state the obvious, I am not going to repeat Parrinder’s work. I am going to offer my personal understanding of the function of religion as it resides in my consciousness that has developed over my 73 years of actively moving through the many diverse events that have shaped my consciousness to date.
On March 19, 2023, I spied a headline appearing in the online version of The Guardian. “A Brief History of Time is ‘Wrong’, Stephen Hawking told collaborator” instantly caught my attention because I had read A Brief History of Time when it first occupied bookstores in 1988. Among the plethora of information contained in Stephen Hawking’s book, two points have been highly significant in forming my world view. First is his description of our universe before the Big Bang exploded and second is the pope’s message at the close of the conference at which Hawking presented the material contained in A Brief History of Time. I definitely wanted to know where Stephen corrected whatever was his error in A Brief History of Time. These two issues are pertinent to my quest to discover the function of religion.
I purposefully wrote that lengthy sentence pinpointing the exact position of modern day homo sapiens to the reality of Earth (our habitat that we are destroying) that moves through the vastness of our solar system which is minuscule when compared to the hundreds of billions of stars populating our galaxy, the Milky Way. Scientists have estimated that our universe may contain up to two trillion galaxies. We must be well reminded of the infinitesimal size of our individual realities to the magnanimous vastness of our universe.
Nature’s Awesome Majesty
When my twin sons were very young (preteen), I, along with my wife, on a clear, crisp, late-fall night gathered our sons and a blanket to view a spectacular display of Northern Lights filling the sky over our house in Maine. Each of us assumed a comfortable prone position on the ground in our backyard to gaze up at a night sky full of airy, fingerlike, green rays shimmering all around us. This iridescent, ghost-like, energy-infused veil draped 360 degrees from a small, vacant, dark patch of sky directly above our house to the circular horizon all around us. It was magnanimously exquisite …. and …. frightening. My sons quickly took refuge back in the house under my wife’s comforting reassurance.
I was alone, back to the ground, gazing up into the shimmering abyss when I realized just how insignificant I was in relationship to all that is not me. This feeling diffused instantly throughout the totality of my consciousness that caused me to shiver with real fear that is intimately entwined with the awesomeness of facing an insurmountable, exquisite power. I, too, became overwhelmed and returned to the safety of my modern, wooden cave. Once inside, I smiled outwardly while inwardly I chuckled at my primitive response to what I knew quite well was merely sun particles interacting with the magnetic field of Earth.
Seashore Frolicking In the Ocean
This was not the first time that such a feeling radiated throughout my being. I have no doubt that it will not be the last. When my first wife and I visited my home town of Salisbury, Maryland, we took a ride to Ocean City, Maryland to enjoy a day on the white sands and body surf the waves of the Atlantic Ocean on a sunny day that was perfect for frolicking at a seaside resort complete with a boardwalk of amusements and good food from various venders.
When I was very young I learned how to swim in rivers. Family outings on hot summer days were trips to the different seaside beaches within driving distances of our home. Body surfing was a great entertainment for my two brothers and myself all the way up to the time each of us went off to college. My mother was a diehard sunbather. Her father and uncles were fishermen from Newfoundland. Becoming a strong swimmer was a family tradition because it was deemed necessary for working on and living around large bodies of water.
On this particular day during my summer break from college, an unexpected event took all of the joy out of my seashore happiness. In the early afternoon when the tide was moving out, there would be isolated sandbars far out from the shore line that swimmers could reach after a healthy swim. The fun of such an experience was to stand up when the sandbar was reached to discover that the water only came up to your knees even though you were many, many yards from land.
In my youthful excitement on this particular day, I convinced my female companion to swim out with me to one of those sandbars in the hope that she would be amazed by the experience. We swam pretty far. As I was getting close to the targeted sandbar, I noticed that the current was a bit stronger. Since I was a stronger swimmer than my girlfriend, I was a few strokes ahead of her when I finally reached the sandbar. She was about eighteen to twenty- four inches from me, but she could not quite make it to my position where I was then standing knee deep in seawater at the sandbar’s edge.
I began to worry that she did not have enough strength to get to where I was standing and under her current position there was no sandbar for her to stand upon to rest and regain her energy before our swim back to shore. Her face was pale and she was trying hard to reach my spot to no avail. I jumped back in and swam behind her putting myself between her and the shoreline. I told her to put her hands on my shoulders, lock her elbows straight, and I would breast stroke her onto the sandbar. I knew she did not have enough energy to make the swim back to shore so I really, really wanted to get her onto the sandbar to rest.
I could not push her to our goal. Her face was more drawn out and pale. Her eyes were beginning to glaze. She was genuinely scared. I swam around her to change my position. I put her between me and the shoreline. Her eyes were fixed on me as we treaded water just out of reach of the sandbar’s salvation. I could see that the lifeguard was standing high on his stand. He was watching us. I waved at him to indicate trouble and gently told my future wife that I had called in the lifeguard to give us a hand. The lifeguard was in the water racing to us when I said, “The lifeguard will be here soon. He has a torpedo buoy for you to hang onto while we all swim back to shore. Don’t panic. He’s almost here.”
Fear is a perfectly good word, but it does not convey the reality of my experience. I was not afraid for myself. I was fearful for her. I did not want to watch her drown. I cannot know what she was experiencing. Back on our blanket, we were both relieved, thankful, and ready to go home.
What haunted me for days on end until the feeling faded away was the absolute vulnerability of my self in this vast world. To have clarity of mind that when the fight or flight response kicked in, I undeniably knew that I lacked the power to win the fight AND there was no escape route available upon which to flee. The absolute truth is that, in reality, I am puny. My physical body is puny. The ocean is powerful. The ocean can swallow me up.
Father and Son Bonding As Hunters
This same overwhelming feeling of absolute vulnerability of an individual human when faced with the full power of the world bearing down upon one’s self happened to me while I was hunting with my son during the fall bow season for white tail deer in Maine. I was a very enthusiastic archer when I was in my prime physical condition. Now, as a 73 year old male, with several medical conditions that impair my physical strength, I am retired from the arduous practice of hunting animals to sustain one’s need to feed oneself. I never harvested what I did not eat and I always shared what I harvested.
We were secure and quiet in our designated tree stands an hour before sunrise. It was quite dark when we entered the woods where our stands were located 50 yards or so from each other. To be deep in the woods before the forest begins to wake from its night’s sleep is wondrous to experience. In fact, that was the most enchanting experience about hunting. I loved it. A small bird’s song breaks the calm stillness followed by another farther off, then silence. A chipmunk unseen in the morning grey haze rustles the ground cover of the auburn brown and golden leaves of fall. Next, the wings of a raven whooshes overhead above the tree tops. The sound of the wings flapping the air is distinctive since it is the only sound to be heard. Again silence prevails. The sun is rising which means that Earth is turning towards the warming sun.
No deer meandered by my stand that day, but a little grey squirrel did scamper up the tree next to mine. He was about ten feet from my seat while he was gnawing on his nut as he perched on a thick branch parallel on my right side just below my line of sight. I could see him clearly so I know he could see me as well. I was not moving a muscle so as to mimic being part of the tree itself. The squirrel was not frightened and I was not moving so no fight or flight reflex was triggered in him. When he finished, he left. It was a grand moment in my life as a cemented-city-dweller.
My son and I hunted all morning and walked home for lunch. We were back in the woods by mid afternoon in different tree stands. I had not experienced any real action regarding white tail deer. I did hear a tom turkey drumming his chest muscles however. As soon as dusk was over and the time allotted for hunting ended, I was out of my stand and back on the ground walking toward our predetermined rendezvous point.
I stepped out of the woods onto a hay field that had all of its large, round, hay bales scattered all over the 20 acres of field behind my house. I was southeast from my house. My son would be coming from the northeast of the field I just entered. The field being wide open was much more of a strong grey than the dark interior of the woods. I could see very clearly a large coyote standing atop one of the round hay bales and staring at my house. He was northwest of my position and between myself and my son’s tree stand.
I crouched down, nocked an arrow onto my bowstring as I stared intently at the coyote. Another coyote walked out from behind a different hay bale just to the east of the bale-climbing coyote. There were two. I was not carrying my 45 automatic sidearm. I had a sudden wish for it as soon as I saw a third coyote join his companions. Three large coyotes with healthy shinny coats were on the prowl between myself, my house and my son. Coyotes hunt in packs and are ruled by Nature’s law of the wild to eat the weak when hungry. Were there more? If so, where were they? The laws of civilized homo sapiens that govern my actions have no meaning for coyotes. I heard them many times hunting and yakking with delight when the kill was made as I was lying in my bed waiting for sleep to overcome me. Would I become the target of their desires?
The odds were three to one in favor of coyotes who looked healthy and strong. I thought to myself that my aim was good but I was unsure of my speed with shooting and reloading my bow three times if I were to be rushed by three coyotes. If I dropped one would the other two run off? Their fight or flight response was up to them just like mine was up to me. I had no way of knowing for sure how this would all play out. I tired to call my son on my cell phone to alert him that there were three coyotes on the prowl in our area. Had I had my 45, there would be no problem. I’m a good shot and three rounds could be dispatched very, very quickly, much faster than dispatching three arrows accurately. I had two elements in my favor. First, I was down wind from my potential enemies so my scent was not in their air. Second, coyotes on the prowl don’t stay in one place for too long.
I was able to make contact with my son to alert him of the potential danger and decided to give these swift four footed friends a wide birth moving south and pausing behind the randomly placed round hay bales farthest from the coyotes while they were moving in the opposite direction. Needless to say I watched them intently while they moved in a northwest direction far from my house. Once back home my son and I spoke of the evening’s excitement.
I had another experience of coming face to face with the profound awesomeness of the naked vulnerability of humanity facing the predators of the wild, wide world. This one involved a black bear cub and its mother, but I believe I have conveyed enough events to demonstrate my perspective of the function of religion.
Homo sapiens were hunters and gatherers long before they were anywhere near becoming city dwellers so the following observation recounted by Parrinder is pertinent to my experience as a member of modern-day, city-dwelling homo sapiens.
R.R. Marett in 1899, …considered that early peoples were actors rather than thinkers, saying that their religion was ‘not so much thought out as danced out,’ and so it was very little different from magic in its early stages. Page 11
The bold, italic lettering is mine to highlight the significance of this understanding. The implication is that, for early peoples, emotions moved religious expression rather than verbal conceptualization. It is crystal clear to me that the events of my life described above were dominated by a strong emotional response to experiencing the absolute vulnerability inherent in the frailness of the human body. Homo sapiens are not the strongest, fastest or biggest of animal species. We are not equipped with razor sharp teeth or claws. We do not have sharp talons.
Our defining characteristics that has lead to our becoming the most powerful animal on Earth are our hands with opposing thumbs, our developing brains and our voice box. The coordinated application of these three characteristics of Homo sapiens has facilitated tool making and language invention that has lead to huge libraries with thousands of books filled with diverse and expansive information to be communicated and used for the advancement of reality.
Written language evolved into the printing press that allowed for the mass production of books in which to store that information and make it available to the general population of Homo sapiens. More impressive is that humans, who learned, recorded and transmitted new ideas, perceptions and answers to challenges faced thousands of years ago can convey that insight to future generations of humans thereby facilitating the ability to produce an evolving collective consciousness of the reality perceived by modern homo sapient presence on Earth. Knowledge, understanding, applications, evaluations and judgements are cumulative for those who wish to access such a wealth of reflections as a foundation upon which to learn even more about the status of homo sapient impact upon Earth.
While Homo sapiens may be physically puny when compared to “lions, tigers and bears, oh my,”** we have become enemy-free via these three seemingly trivial attributes for defending our puny physical manifestation. After inventing language and the printing press, we Homo sapiens invented the computer that has advanced into the realm of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that can crunch vast amounts of data at incredible speeds and now we are exploring Organoid Intelligence (OI) that seeks to merge human brain tissue with AI computers mimicking human cognition. Homo sapiens are progressing toward creating a true thinking android being — a marvelous creative endeavor with a very dangerous, potential catastrophe hidden in modern homo sapient inclination for hubris.
With this evolving collective consciousness, (which is the accumulative increase of said knowledge and the reflections upon that knowledge, as well as the results of any applications of that knowledge), religious beliefs and practices have been, and will be, impacted.
Consider Parrinder’s casual reflection found on page 21:
Magic functions on the lower levels of belief, though it is universally practiced and it lingers in sophisticated societies in astrology and the use of lucky charms. Religious belief and practices are found at all levels of civilization, though reforms and changes come with growing knowledge.
My interpretation of this reflection is that it focuses more on the magic reference with the “reform” issue being more of an add on. I perceive that the impact of knew knowledge is much more significant. Knowledge informs and transforms one’s world view (one’s consciousness). If your world view changes due to new knowledge and that new world view does not jive with your religious belief, then a conflict develops which creates tension. As tension increases a point is reached where the tension achieves a quantum state to alleviate that growing tension. Either the world view is changed or the religious belief is changed or an increasing tolerance to live with an inconsistent perception of reality begins to permeate one’s consciousness. Hypocrisy becomes a potential criticism of those who live by double standards. Hence the integration of new knowledge is a particularly momentous issue for the priestly caste of any given institutionalized religion.
Stephen Hawking notes on page 116 of his A Brief History of Time:
At the end of the conference the participants were granted an audience with the pope. He told us that it was alright to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God. I was glad then that he did not know the subject of the talk I had just given at the conference — the possibility that space-time was finite but had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning, no moment of Creation. I had no desire to share the fate of Galileo with whom I feel a strong sense of identity, …
The pope (i.e. the priestly caste) dictates what knowledge can be pursued and what cannot be investigated. I am reminded that other animals in the animal kingdom have a propensity to protect territory by driving out other would be invaders into their staked out territory.
This simple recording on page 116 of his A Brief History of Time demonstrates the core function of religion — to control behavior, to control actions. The pope attempts to limit scientific investigation via the rigorous application of the scientific method. This is a boundary set not by a discovered unknown phenomenon of nature that confounds current understanding, but by the authoritative expression of the revered holy man running the Roman Catholic Church. It is a decree from the leader of a large institution of religious believers. In this situation, this is religion seeking control by authoritative decree.
For our ancient hunting and gathering ancestors before they became domesticators of other animals and plants to evolve into an agrarian culture, vulnerability was the motivation toward religion. As a homo sapient, modern man, who momentarily lapsed back into his primitive state of being amazed by an overwhelming natural occurrence that so profoundly affected his senses that emotion overrode his cognition to shatter his self confidence to become filled with fear, I, too, retreated to the safety of my modern, man-made, wooden cave. When an individual faces the absolute truth of his or her physical puniness in the animal kingdom that manifests such a vulnerability, a deep fearfulness is the result. I have never been physically close to a raging tornado other than watching footage of them on television, but I did come face to face with three, well fed and very healthy coyotes looking for something to eat. A potential death by drowning in the ocean was another. At this moment in my life, writing these words in the safety of my home, I am full of gratitude for these experiences. I am glad that I was scared enough, but had the courage to see with clarity the physical vulnerability of my human existence. My evolved language, thinking, tool use, and education, etcetera are what really protects my living amid the wild wide world.
As was stated earlier, our ancient ancestors were more feelers, than thinkers. They did not contemplate vulnerability. They felt the full effect of their vulnerability which meant they felt the presence of a force greater than themselves. They acted accordingly. They got religion.
* ©1971, 1983, 1985. World Religions: From Ancient History to the Present. Geoffery Parrinder, Editor. The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, News Books: New York.
** From the movie The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland, released August 25, 1939.