A One Page History of Human Religion: from Pre-Science to Post-Science

Introduction to Religion21

At some beginning a brilliant thought occurred. It evolved into Judaism -- celebrating the idea that reality is managed and handled by an entity that we humans are not in a position to depict or characterize: God. So realizing Jews considered themselves 'chosen' and with their common sense considered God to be using human intermediaries to dispense orders, instructions, commandments to affirm His rule. It was also becoming to assume God to be loving, caring, and listening to prayers. All around them people believed in man-made Idol-Gods, so the Jews hardened as a people, singled out by their core belief in unencumbered unfathomable description-defying divinity.

After centuries of isolation, the Jewish God was repackaged for larger crowds by violating the Bible’s Second Commandment and detail-drawing a generous and forgiving God who also offers permanent accommodation in a gated community called heaven. The result was a spreading community that subscribed in principle to the Jewish God but claimed the comfort of divine leniency rather than strict accountability. Alas, while the Jewish people saw themselves as chosen and as such duty-bound to repair the world, Christians were commoners and used religion to ease the burden of daily living.

Next rose Islam, taking the Jewish God as its foundation, embracing the eternal life providing God developed by Christianity, and then building on the Jewish sense of being duty-bound, to prescribe a complete, full attention, persistent action, and dedication-stamped life. Islam imposes its version of the Almighty on everyone -- nobody is excused, no society without; no goal, no role, no aim other than practicing as anciently prescribed. And definitely not a parallel life of care free joy and recreation as was very much the practice of Christianity.

The Judaic branch of human religion is curiosity driven, is motivated by the sense of human ignorance which is driven to undo its blindness, referring to what they don't see as God, then coming up with different views of this divinity. In other branches of humanity the burden of life was met with a desire for tranquilly and acceptance of what there is without undue pain and nervous agony -- the eastern way. Also in south America, mainly, rose the idea of mysteries and rich variety of beyond-human entities living in parallel and above human living.

Religion21 lumps the mysteries of southern religions, the tranquility of the eastern kind, and the curiosity of the western folklore, upgraded in light of everything we learned in the centuries since these religions were framed, resulting in holding fast the Second Commandment: God is -- but what is is -- we don't know. We acknowledge our unbound ignorance and do two things:

(i) we live our lives accordingly -- with humility, with forgiveness, with trying again, realizing that what we know is at best a small cut of what there is to know, and more likely a distorted view of what there is to see.

(ii) We reframe the Islamic Jihad as a duty-bound drive to relieve the burden of ignorance-unbound, committing to learn our reality home as it really is, and not as is self-serving for us to believe that it is.  Religion21 sees God Almighty as the point of universal human attraction, striving to get ever closer.

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