We Anthropomorphized Nature As God
By
Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
20 January
2024
I am of the view that God gave humans Reason,
not Religion, and that Reason is a gift of God while Religion is a human
construct.
By Myerli
You're
right but allow me to go a step further and state that both god and religion
are human constructs.
Nature has
endowed us with reasoning. Alfred Wallace, the man who independently reached
the same conclusions Charles Darwin also reached in his Theory of Evolution,
opined that reason and logical thinking were acquired by humans after lakhs of
years of (human) evolution.
Please
refer to Dr Ajay Kansal's, 'The Evolution of Gods: The Scientific Origin of
Divinity and Religion' and Pascal Boyer's 'Religion Explained: The
Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought.' Both argued that mankind
created god and religion and not the other way around.
We must
remember that evolution is a constant process and not just humans but all
creatures are slowly and imperceptibly evolving. We needed (we still need) some
kind of support from nature for our survival. Since the human brain is
programmed to anthropomorphize things and give a concrete shape to all that we
(want to) believe in, we anthropomorphized nature as god.
All our
fake philosophical thoughts and discourses that god has no form are absolute
self-deception and theological Double Dutch. Human brain (not mind; it doesn't
exist) cannot think or envisage in formless context/s. So, we created and
conceptualized gods as per the level of our evolution. With the passage of
time, we superimposed our own instincts and emotions on the gods our primitive
ancestors fabricated long ago.
Anthropologically,
god is a manifestation of humans' evolutionary development. Religion came
rather late in the history of human civilization. When humans realized that
this concocted god could be better used through an agency or conduit, religions
came into existence. A simple analogy will make you understand. We often form
trusts, NGOs and other such organizations to facilitate our missions and
objectives.
Religions
were created by humans to 'serve' the gods as John Updike wittily said, "A
suspended god without a religion is forever in a limbo." So, god and
religion are not just human constructs but also the oldest human undertakings
with a semblance of vested interests. The semblance has now become a worldwide
business.
See, the
level of idiocy going on in India. Idols of Ram and Sita are being consecrated.
They call it Praan-Pratishtha: Infusing life into the idols. You're
giving life to your deities! What an irony! This is a metaphor for our
concoction of gods.
We created
them and also enlivened them. To quote an Urdu poet, "Mere Haathon Ke
Tarashe Hue Patthar Ke Sanam/ Aaj Bhagwan Bane Baithe Hain Butkhanon Mein"
(The stone idols I carved out with my own hands/ Are installed at temples as
gods). It's religion that has divided the whole world and it's god that has
deluded mankind. What our prehistoric ancestors created, degenerated into
Frankensteins as time glided by. But deluded brains will not understand this.
To them,
their Allah, god, Jesus, Moses, Trinity (the biggest theological hoax), Ram
etc. will remain their guiding spirits till the end.
----
A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul
is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He
has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several
languages including Persian.
URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/anthropomorphized-nature-god/d/131551
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