It is interesting to note how the evolution of human understanding about God has run in the opposite direction of the evolution of the human understanding about humanity. While religion has moved in the direction of divine unification, from polytheism to monotheism over the course of millenniums, science has largely moved in the direction of human diversification, from the human race to categories of different races, over the course of mere centuries.
The paganism and polytheism of the ancient religions saw all the forces of nature as each constituting a god. This eventually gave way to henotheism, where one god reigned supreme over all the others, as we saw with Greece and Rome, eventually giving way to the monotheism of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Our conception of space and time have followed our understanding of the cosmos as well. First we assumed that Earth was the center of the universe, only to discover that the Sun was the center of our solar system. Then we thought that Earth was more amazing than all the other planets, only to discover the opposite was true. So we assured ourselves that the Sun was the most amazing star in the galaxy, only to discover it is but an average star. We then assured ourselves there was only a single galaxy, only to discover there are billions of them. And we finally decided there is but one universe, only to discover that we may well live in a multiverse.
And this leads us to wonder: what if the contraction in our mind about God being singular, was just as much a mistake as our ideas about our earth and our cosmos?
During much of this time, humans had hardly considered whether humanity was cut from anything other than a single seamless genetic cloth, much like the one that was said to belong to Christ, for which the soldiers threw dice at the foot of the cross upon which he hung.
That image of Jesus hanging on the cross, while the soldiers threw dice to divide up his "seamless garment," is an appropriate one here.
Like those soldiers who had helped to crucify Christ, so the scientists who have advanced ideas of racial differences over the centuries - even though the mapping of the human genome has demonstrated that there is, and has always only ever been, one single human race - have likewise only helped to crucify countless millions around the world, from Bengalis under the British Raj, to Chinese under the British opium trade, to Africans and Native Americans and countless others, and all of it buttressed by Christianity (i.e. a "belief" of spiritual superiority) that operated under the delusion of a "belief" of racial superiority. And of course, the two only served to mutually reinforce each other.
Talk about ironic.
And as humans unified God, they diversified each other. Yet both ideas about god and race, are pure religions, and nothing more. In this respect, wealthy white Christian empires have long used the biological religion of race to crucify all other "races" in the name of Christ, and in pursuit of the Christian ideal of what they alone decided it means to be a human being.
Amen.
The paganism and polytheism of the ancient religions saw all the forces of nature as each constituting a god. This eventually gave way to henotheism, where one god reigned supreme over all the others, as we saw with Greece and Rome, eventually giving way to the monotheism of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Our conception of space and time have followed our understanding of the cosmos as well. First we assumed that Earth was the center of the universe, only to discover that the Sun was the center of our solar system. Then we thought that Earth was more amazing than all the other planets, only to discover the opposite was true. So we assured ourselves that the Sun was the most amazing star in the galaxy, only to discover it is but an average star. We then assured ourselves there was only a single galaxy, only to discover there are billions of them. And we finally decided there is but one universe, only to discover that we may well live in a multiverse.
And this leads us to wonder: what if the contraction in our mind about God being singular, was just as much a mistake as our ideas about our earth and our cosmos?
During much of this time, humans had hardly considered whether humanity was cut from anything other than a single seamless genetic cloth, much like the one that was said to belong to Christ, for which the soldiers threw dice at the foot of the cross upon which he hung.
That image of Jesus hanging on the cross, while the soldiers threw dice to divide up his "seamless garment," is an appropriate one here.
Like those soldiers who had helped to crucify Christ, so the scientists who have advanced ideas of racial differences over the centuries - even though the mapping of the human genome has demonstrated that there is, and has always only ever been, one single human race - have likewise only helped to crucify countless millions around the world, from Bengalis under the British Raj, to Chinese under the British opium trade, to Africans and Native Americans and countless others, and all of it buttressed by Christianity (i.e. a "belief" of spiritual superiority) that operated under the delusion of a "belief" of racial superiority. And of course, the two only served to mutually reinforce each other.
Talk about ironic.
And as humans unified God, they diversified each other. Yet both ideas about god and race, are pure religions, and nothing more. In this respect, wealthy white Christian empires have long used the biological religion of race to crucify all other "races" in the name of Christ, and in pursuit of the Christian ideal of what they alone decided it means to be a human being.
Amen.
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