World Civilisation And Universal Culture

19 Nov 202110 Jan 2024 nivtric1 Comment

The West and the rest

Suppose you try to understand why the world is the way it is. In that case, you should know about civilisations and cultures, especially Western civilisation and culture, as it drove modernisation. During the last 500 years, the living conditions of humans on this planet changed dramatically because of modernisation. To illustrate that point, someone who lived 2,000 years ago could go forward 500 years in time and more or less live the same life of subsistence farming. But someone who lived 500 years ago cannot. Modernisation involves the division of labour, industrialisation, urbanisation, social mobilisation, and increased education and wealth. Social mobilisation is organised via purpose-based groups, for instance, corporations. Expanding scientific and engineering knowledge allows us to shape our environment like never before. Modernisation was the most dramatic change in the history of humankind.

People from other cultures and civilisations feel resentment. The West’s imperialism unified the world but destroyed the ways of indigenous peoples and killed millions of people in the process. The Chinese speak of one hundred years of national humiliation when referring to the period between 1850 and 1950 in which Western powers broke the Chinese Empire and plunged it into civil war. Among Muslims, similar sentiments exist because of Western military interventions in Islamic countries. It might not be a solace, but Europeans killed more of their kind than of any other race. One might ask what the world would have been like if the Chinese or the Muslims had been the first to modernise. Perhaps Karl Marx had the answer. The bourgeois society may have been a historical necessity. And I think he is right insofar as it concerns modernisation.

Europeans created a bourgeois world rather than a Chrirstian one. Christian values don’t drive it, but those of Mammon, the god of money. How that happened is a complex historical process. A combination of trends converged in Western Europe, affecting its culture. This bourgeois culture of money has now spread over the globe. No culture has remained unaffected. Hating the West for what it is or what it did is not helpful as it doesn’t address the underlying issues that plague us. Money decides our lives, and the competition between nation-states leads us to war. Capitalists seeking profit drove modernisation. As there is a survival-of-the-fittest competition between societies, nations that supported this process came out on top. Modernisation likely could not have happened in another way.

Modernisation doesn’t change our human nature. When the Huns invaded Europe, they raped and pillaged. And so did the Vikings, the Mongols, and the Muslims. The Spanish in the Americas were keen on perpetuating this ancient tradition. But Europeans began to think ahead. Rather than extracting taxes from their conquests, they turned them into profitable operations. That trend reinforced itself as Europeans often invested their profits of economic exploitation in new enterprises or the expansion of existing ones. Past wars were about survival, conquest, honour, looting, or spreading religions like Christianity or Islam. Europeans made it a profitable enterprise that sustained itself and continued to grow. As a result, merchants started deciding what happened.

Even though the general level of opulence rose, we gradually came to live in a world without values where merchants make the decisions. That is the problem we face. You might try to hold on to your humanist, Christian, Islamic, Confucianist, Hindu or Buddhist values, or you might oppose slavery, discrimination or the oppression of women, but whether you succeed or fail often depends on profit-and-loss calculations. And if we hope to build the world on values rather than profit, we must face that truth.

And we don’t need capitalism for large-scale brutal warfare as war is an outcome of competition. China became unified and the most advanced country in the world around 200 BC after five centuries of gruesome warfare. There was intense competition between warring states that organised themselves increasingly efficiently to maintain armies of up to 500,000 soldiers in the field. That required setting up rational systems of tax collection with property registers. The number of Chinese states decreased over time because of conquest. The most ruthless and efficient state won out and unified China. China’s first emperor was merciless. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been the one who unified the country. Unification was also the end of the competition. Warfare never became that brutal again. And so, the unification of the world could pave the way for a more peaceful future.

Western culture

Hence, we might need a world civilisation and perhaps even a universal culture, as there is a limit to the diversity we can handle. You can’t allow harmful activities to continue, so all cultures need scrutiny. The West was the first civilisation to modernise. But why? Samuel Huntington mentions the characteristics of Western civilisation he believed crucial for modernisation.¹ Modernisation affects everyone, so, researching how a future global civilisation and culture will look, might include investigating which elements of Western culture are universal rather than typically Western. And to explain how we got here, we could focus on the features of Western civilisation and how they emerged and developed. According to Huntington, the defining characteristics of Western civilisation are:

The Classical legacy. The West inherited from previous civilisations, most notably Classical civilisation. This legacy includes Greek philosophy and rationalism, Roman law, and Christianity. The Islamic and Orthodox cultures also inherited from Classical civilisation, but not as much as the West.
Western Christendom, Catholicism and Protestantism. Western Christian peoples believe they differ from Muslims, Orthodox Christians and others. The rift between Catholicism and Protestantism did not change that.
Separation of the spiritual and the temporal. Jesus taught that his kingdom was not of this world and that his followers should respect worldly authorities, even pagan ones like the Roman Empire. And so church and state could become separate authorities.
The rule of law. It was often a distant ideal, but the idea persisted that power should be constrained. The rule of law is the basis of constitutionalism and the protection of human rights.
Individualism. Individualism gradually developed during the Middle Ages. Eventually, people began to promote equal rights for everyone.
Social pluralism. The West had diverse autonomous groups not based on kinship or marriage, like monasteries and guilds, and later other associations and societies. Most Western societies had a powerful aristocracy, a substantial peasantry, and an influential class of merchants. The strength of the feudal aristocracy helped to check absolutism.
Representative bodies. Social pluralism gave rise to Estates and Parliaments to represent the interests of the aristocracy, clergy, merchants and other groups. Local self-government forced nobles to share their power with burghers, and in the end, yield it. Representation at the national level supplemented autonomy at the local level.

The above list is not complete, nor were all those characteristics always present in every Western society. Some of these characteristics were also present in non-Western societies. It is the combination of features that makes Western civilisation unique. Huntington claimed that Western culture is not universal and added that such a belief is a form of arrogance promoted by centuries of Western dominance.¹

That view is not beyond dispute. For instance, liberal democracy has at least some appeal to people from other civilisations. The experiences from Taiwan and Hong Kong indicate that the Chinese may prefer liberal democracy too if they are free to choose. On the other hand, recent developments in the United States and Europe suggest that the legitimacy of democracy can still be contested. Most people would prefer food and security to political influence. So, if a dictator promises to address a real or perceived threat, he might even become popular. In any case, the West has seen an unprecedented amount of social experiments, and in the process, the West may have uncovered elements of universal culture.

The list above does not tell us why the West came to dominate the world for so long. Western culture is a product of a historical accident, but not entirely so, and therein lies the issue. The accident may be about how these characteristics emerged. Their interaction may be a different story. Presumably, there is competition between societies, and the most successful tend to win out. This process involves trying ideas and discarding less successful ones. Conquest usually comes with imposing ideas on others. And you cannot go back in time, so once successful ideas have spread, there is no going back. It is, therefore, not always clear what is typically Western about Western culture.

There are reasons to believe that the future will be entirely different from the past. Humanity is using far more resources than the planet can provide. Something has to give. If humans succeed in dealing with this issue in a civilised manner, then the world may change to the point that the present cultures have lost most of their meaning. The future is unknown, but the past is not. To explain where we are now and why Western civilisation has led the modernisation process, we can investigate the characteristics of Western culture and how they interact.

Greek philosophy

Traditional cultures centre around an idea of wisdom reflected in belief. Wisdom was a greater good than knowledge. If you studied the teachings of the great ancient prophets and philosophers, whether it was Buddha, Confucius, or Christ, you know all you need to know.² Traditional cultures do not pursue new knowledge for the sake of it, for instance, by studying gravity to come up with a theory of gravity. Greek philosophy was different. Greek philosophers engaged in a rational and fundamental inquiry into the nature of reality and our knowledge and beliefs. It was a quest for knowledge rather than wisdom.

Western Christendom

From Christianity, the West inherited a claim on universalism. Christianity, like Islam, claims to represent the only universal truth that everyone should accept. Christianity, like Islam, also maintains that all people are equal. Everyone can either embrace or reject the only true religion, so there are only believers and non-believers. Non-believers may be inferior to believers, but that is due to their own choice. The West thus inherited the principle of equality from Christianity. In the first few centuries, Christianity spread through individual conversions. Christianity promotes a message of personal salvation, and in this way, it planted the seeds of individualism in the West.

Confucianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism do not claim to be the universal truth, while Judaism lacks missionary zeal. Equality was not the main concern for these religions either. Ideologies invented in the West like Liberalism and Socialism and prescriptions to organise societies promoted by the West like human rights, democracy, and free trade also came with passionate claims on universal truth. Even some atheists demonstrate a desire to convert others. This missionary zeal is not prevalent in other civilisations, except Islam. For instance, China and India do not demand other nations to take over their religions or economic and social models.

Christianity features a division between the profane and the spiritual. Jesus allegedly has said that his kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). Hence a Christian does not need to challenge worldly authorities. And you should give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s (Mark12:17). A Christian could pay Roman taxes. That made it possible to separate church and state so that, in modern Western societies, religions can be equal before the law. And, Christianity came with a powerful message of mercifulness and equality that appealed to the masses.

And it allowed Christianity to spread within the Roman Empire without causing wars and uprisings. As a result, Roman authorities did not consistently view the new religion as the most urgent threat to the empire as there were barbarian invasions and rebellions to deal with. Periods of persecution thus alternated with periods of relative peace for the Christians. Christians believed the Creator to be a higher authority than the emperor, and they renounced the Roman gods, but they did not challenge Roman rule. The Jews did resist, and so Roman armies practically wiped them out.

Not challenging worldly authorities allowed the Catholic Church to establish a vast network of priests, monasteries, and convents and a hierarchy to manage them. As a result of the Investiture Conflict, the Catholic Church gained control over the appointment of bishops and thus became an independent institution with political influence all over Europe. That contrasts with other civilisations. In Orthodox Christianity, the emperor oversaw the church. In Islam and Hinduism, priests and religious scholars could have considerable influence on political affairs. Only, these civilisations had no centralised independent religious institution like the Catholic Church. In China, established religion did not play a prominent role in politics.³

Rule of law and representative bodies

Law consists of the rules of justice in a community. In pre-modern societies, the law was often believed to be fixed by a higher authority, for instance, custom, a divine authority or nature. It made law independent from rulers, at least in theory, and to some extent also in practice. Religious law is administered by priests explaining holy texts. That applies to Judaism, Islam and Hinduism. In China, the state provided the law.³ There never was a Christian law like there is Islamic law, so Christians accepted worldly authorities and their laws.

The Catholic Church embarked on a project of introducing Roman Law throughout Europe. Consequently, Roman Law is nowadays the basis of the laws of most European nations and many nations outside Europe. Roman Law is a civil law meant to regulate affairs between citizens in a society and is not religious. The involvement of the Catholic Church in this project reflects the Christian separation between spiritual and worldly affairs. In England, another tradition of civil law called Common Law emerged.

The rule of law requires the law to be a countervailing power to worldly rulers. Feudal Europe did not have centralised states, so the Catholic Church could use its political power to introduce Roman Law. In England, a power struggle between king and nobility led the king to promote Common Law in the Royal Court to undermine his opponents who administrated the local courts.³ The king prevailed but remained checked by the rule of law and a strong aristocracy who forced him to sign a document, the Magna Carta, that guaranteed the rights of the nobility. The Magna Carta is a precursor to modern constitutions.

The rule of law often was a distant ideal rather than a reality. The outcome depended on the balance of power between the political actors in each society. These were the king, the aristocracy, and the clergy. Traditionally, the aristocrats and clergy were powerful. They had a representation in the Parliaments called Estates that decided over taxes. After the Middle Ages, centralised states began to emerge with kings trying to acquire absolute power and aspiring to decide on their own over taxes.

A power struggle between the kings and the aristocracy ensued. In Poland and Hungary, the aristocrats prevailed. These states soon collapsed because the aristocrats did not want to pay taxes for the defence of the country. In France and Spain, the king more or less prevailed by bribing the aristocracy with tax exemptions and putting the burden of taxes on peasants and the bourgeoisie, who had no representation in the Estates. This move undermined the tax base of the state. In England, a civil war broke out that ended with the arrangement that the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie represented in Parliament decided over the taxes they paid.³

It made taxation legitimate as it required the consent of those who paid taxes. The aristocracy and bourgeoisie in England had a stake in the success of the state. They profited from the colonies, for instance, via the slave and opium trade, so they were willing to pay taxes if they believed that it was necessary. In this way, England could win out in the colonial wars with France in the century that followed despite having fewer resources. England’s finances were in good shape, so England could borrow more money at lower interest rates to finance these wars than France could.

In traditional societies, male family lines were the basis of the organisation of families. Families rather than individuals owned property. Family elders made important decisions. In Western Europe, individuals could make important decisions about marriage and property themselves. They already had substantial freedoms in the Middle Ages. This development started soon after Germanic tribes had overrun the Roman Empire and converted to Christianity.³ Christianity comes with an individualistic message of personal salvation.

The Catholic Church took a strong stance against practices that held family structures together, such as marriages between close kin, marriages to widows of dead relatives, the adoption of children and divorce. It allowed the church to benefit from property-owning Christians who died without an heir. For that reason, women could own property too. These individual property rights undermined family structures.³ Individual property rights later became crucial for the development of modern capitalism.

As a result, the Catholic Church could finance its large organisation, provide relief to the poor, and become a significant power. Western Europeans in the Middle Ages did not trace their descent only through the family line of their father, which would be necessary to maintain strict boundaries between families. In this way, it became harder to carry out blood feuds as the circle of vengeance was smaller, and many people felt related to both sides.³

It allowed feudalism to replace kinship as a basis for social solidarity so that social organisation could become a matter of choice rather than custom. In theory, feudalism was a voluntary submission of one individual to another based on the exchange of protection for service. In practice, this was often not the case, but with the spread of the rule of law, feudal relationships turned into legal contracts in which both the lord and serf had rights and obligations.³

In the Middle Ages, there were no strong states in Western Europe. The aristocracy was powerful and responsible for the defence of their realms. As the economy began to flourish, an influential class of merchants emerged in the cities. Many cities gained independence and became responsible for their governance and defence. Serfs flocked to cities in search of opportunities and freedom, thereby further undermining the power of feudal lords. In Northern Italy, feudalism had already ended by 1200 AD and cities run by wealthy merchants came to dominate the area.

Kinship as an organising method had largely vanished. Europeans could organise themselves for a wide array of purposes. In the Middle Ages, there were monasteries, convents, and guilds. There were also military orders, such as the Knights Templars. Later on, societies and corporations emerged. This European pluralism contrasted with the absence of civil society, the weakness of the aristocracy, and the strength of centralised bureaucracies in Russia, China, and the Ottoman Empire.¹

The Renaissance

The Renaissance began in the merchant towns of Northern Italy. The elites of Northern Italy became less religious. This process is called secularisation. Wealthy merchants had money to spend on frivolous pursuits like art and literary works. Optimism replaced pessimism. Medieval virtues like poverty, contemplation and chastity came to be replaced by new virtues like participating in social life and enjoying life. The Italian cities needed the active participation of wealthy individuals to finance public efforts like defence.

The pursuit of wealth became seen as a virtue, which signalled the emergence of modern capitalism. People in traditional societies and Medieval Europe frowned upon trade and the pursuit of wealth. They believed that wealthy people must share their riches with their community. Trade often comes with questionable ethics and was seen as a necessary evil.

Building on the existing European tradition of individualism, entrepreneurial individuals came to be cherished. The Italian Renaissance tradition includes individuals like Michelangelo, who was known for his unparalleled artistic versatility, and Giovanni Giustiniani, a mercenary who organised the defence of Constantinople against the Turks and Christopher Columbus, who discovered America.

The separation between the worldly and spiritual realms reduced the obstacles to secularisation. The Renaissance started in the cradle of the Roman Empire. Italian merchants sailed the Mediterranean. The legacy of the ancient Greeks and Romans was everywhere around them. It prompted a renewed interest in classical antiquity, including ancient Greek and Latin texts. The works of the Greek philosophers and their rational enquiries into the nature of reality were rediscovered and began to affect European thought. These texts were secular and promoted virtues different from Christian virtues.

Printing and gunpowder were Chinese inventions that came to Europe. Around 1450, the first movable type printing system was introduced in Europe, making it possible to print books in large numbers. From then on, new ideas could spread faster. Constantinople, the last Christian stronghold in the Eastern Mediterranean, fell into the hands of the Ottoman Turks, blocking traditional trade routes with the Indies. The Portuguese then began to look for new trade routes by sailing around Africa, starting the European exploration of the world.

Double shock

Around 1500, two developments rocked Europe. The first was the discovery of a previously unknown continent, America. It uprooted the belief in traditional knowledge as Europeans discovered their ignorance. It spurred a fundamental questioning of existing ideas and a drive for knowledge² that would lead to modern science that uses observations to produce general theories. The works of the Greek philosophers turned out to be helpful in this respect.

The second was Protestantism challenging the moral authority of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church had become corrupted by the buying and selling of church offices. Martin Luther taught that salvation is a gift of God that you might receive through faith in Jesus Christ. In line with European individualism, he made faith a matter of personal choice rather than tradition. Luther taught that the Bible is the only source of divine knowledge, thereby challenging the authority of the Catholic Church. He translated the Bible into German, making it accessible to laypeople.

The Portuguese had found new trade routes to the Indies, and Columbus had discovered a continent that promised unparalleled riches. Small bands of Spaniards with firearms overran existing empires and plundered them. After plunder came exploitation. Colonisation was a profitable enterprise that could sustain itself. It generated sufficient revenues to expand the colonies further. Enterprise and investment capital rather than state armies and taxes drove European colonisation. The resulting larger markets favoured economies of scale. After the invention of the steam engine, these economies of scale propelled the Industrial Revolution.

A revolutionary mix

In 800 AD Western Europe was backward compared to the more powerful Islamic, Orthodox Byzantine, and Chinese civilisations. By 1800 AD, China was still a match for England and France, and the Ottoman Empire was a significant power. But the Industrial Revolution was taking off, tilting the balance of power decisively towards the West in the following decades. Europeans had acquired a mindset that made them more curious, enterprising, and flexible. When the gap between industrial and non-industrial nations became clear, Italy, Austria, and Russia started industrialising too. China, Persia, and the Ottoman Empire did not. It may now be possible to identify the elements of Western culture that were crucial to modernisation and shape the ways how Westerners behave:

a religion with a message of equality, missionary zeal and an uncompromising claim on the truth;
individualism promoting flexible organisation for different purposes;
a separation between spiritual and worldly affairs allowing for secular law and secular pursuits;
a quest for knowledge and truth, for instance, reflected in science and the scientific method;
an absence of a strong centralised political power, but instead, an uncertain balance between countries and political actors within countries that promoted competition;
a rule of law that limited the powers of political actors and guaranteed individual property rights so that investments were more secure;
entrepreneurial spirit and a drive for profit.

The introduction of railroads exemplifies this trend. The first commercial railroad opened in 1830 in England. By 1850 there were already 40,000 kilometres of railroads in Europe. Asia, Africa, and Latin America together had only 4,000 kilometres.² The first railroad in China was opened only in 1876. It was 24 kilometres long and built by Europeans. The Chinese government destroyed it a year later. In Persia, the first railroad was built in 1888 by a Belgian company. In 1950 the railway network of Persia amounted to only 2,500 kilometres in a country seven times the size of Britain which had 48,000 kilometres of railroads. The technology of railroads was relatively simple, but the Chinese and the Persians did not catch on. They could not do so because they thought and organised very differently.²

Until 1800, Europe did not enjoy an obvious advantage over China, Persia or the Ottoman Empire, but Europe had gradually built a unique potential. It had developed a culture of individualism, curiosity, and enterprise. When the technological inventions of the Industrial Revolution appeared, Europeans were in the best position to use them.² They were more innovative, motivated by profit, and organised themselves flexibly for new purposes like building and maintaining railroads.

On the back of these advantages, European ideas spread over the world. Ideologies invented in Europe like capitalism and communism inherited the missionary zeal and uncompromising claim on the truth from Christianity. Similar thoughts were formulated elsewhere, for instance, by Chinese philosophers, but not as a coherent ideology. A few Chinese philosophers proposed that theories require the support of empirical evidence, but they did not develop a scientific method. Science was at the basis of European inventions. Science produced results, which promoted European power and fostered European superiority thinking.

The culture of the future

As the first civilisation to modernise, the West has led in the culture of modernity for several centuries. During that time, the West could impose its will on other civilisations and often did so. Western ideas and values have spread over the globe. As other societies are catching up and acquiring similar patterns for education, work, wealth, and class structure, there may be a universal culture in the future.¹ It is by no means certain, but it is possible, most notably if some ideas are superior to others or work better, but that is the same.

Hegelian dialectic sees history as a battleground for ideas. Revolutions like the French Revolution illustrate this point. The old order tried to undo its achievements but failed in the end. Indeed, the French Revolution was why Hegel came up with his concept in the first place. It suggests that more powerful ideas replace weaker ones in a survival-of-the-fittest-like competition. Nearly all the ideological struggle has taken place in the West so the surviving ideas from the West could be superior. It might explain why liberal democracy is a success, to varying degrees at least, in countries with different cultures, for instance, Japan, India, Botswana, Turkey, Taiwan, Costa Rica, Pakistan, Thailand, Uruguay, South Africa, Ukraine, Indonesia and Hong Kong.

The future may be different from the past, so existing cultures may not last. Humanity must face issues like the limits of the planet and poverty as one civilisation. And modernisation does not have to mean Westernisation. Japan was the first non-Western country to modernise. Today it is one of the most advanced countries in the world, and also, a liberal democracy. At the same time, Japan has retained its unique culture and identity. So far, non-Western cultures have been modernising without disappearing. In many ways, Chinese, Islamic, Buddhist or Hindu cultures reassert themselves. As the wealth and influence of non-Western societies is increasing, they are becoming more confident about the merits of their cultural heritage and may be less likely to Westernise.¹

Furthermore, the West may not be in the best position for the future as the future could put different demands on societies than the past. There still is competition between countries. Other countries, for instance, China, may now be better positioned to deal with future challenges so that other civilisations, including the West, may have to adapt to China, most notably with issues regarding government effectiveness. That does not necessarily imply dictatorship, but other nations may increasingly copy features from Confucian societies. For the West, it may mean that individualism and individual rights will be reversed to some extent. And charging interest on money and debts may promote wealth inequality, financial instability, excessive government interference in the economy, and short-term thinking so other societies may have to adapt to the Islamic civilisation and abolish interest on money and debts.

People from different cultures interact more often, so a global culture may emerge in the longer term. In any case, the West cannot impose its ideas and values upon others in the future. Often people from other civilisations are resentful of the West’s imperialism.¹ The Chinese speak of one hundred years of national humiliation when referring to the period between 1850 and 1950 in which Western powers broke the Chinese Empire and plunged it into civil war. Among Muslims, similar sentiments exist. The West’s recent military interventions in Islamic countries stirred up these sentiments.

These feelings may subside over time, and non-Western peoples may develop a neutral stance towards the West and its past. In the process, they may discover that at least some elements of Western culture have universal appeal. Societies from different civilisations have much in common because human nature does not depend on culture. There may be concepts, for instance, democracy, that can work in other civilisations. The West has tried out more ideas than other civilisations, so it more likely has uncovered elements of a possible universal culture in the process than other civilisations.

Barring a collective challenge coinciding with the emergence of a universal religion that inspires people from all backgrounds, global culture is unlikely to emerge anytime soon. A universal religion has not yet arrived, but this universe could be a virtual reality created by an advanced humanoid civilisation for the personal entertainment of someone we can call God. And so, the advent of a new religion is a realistic possibility. This religion could provide a plausible explanation for our existence, promote a shared destiny, and allow for a greater degree of diversity than currently existing religions and ideologies.

Featured image: Map from Clash of Civilisations, Wikimedia Commons, User Kyle Cronan and User Olahus, GFDL.

1. The Clash of Civilisations and the remaking of world order. Samuel. P. Huntington (1996).
2. Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind. Yuval Noah Harari (2014). Harvil Secker.
3. The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. Francis Fukuyama (2011).

The Religion Paul Invented

30 Oct 202118 Oct 2025 nivtricLeave a comment

Paul’s reasoning

How did Christianity become the baffling religion it is today? A cloud of obscurity surrounds the first decades of the Christian movement. A few things we do know. Jesus started Christianity, but Paul of Tarsus, better known as Paul the Apostle, turned Christianity into the religion we know today. Paul was first a Pharisee who devoutly observed Jewish religious laws before becoming a follower of Christ. One thing we should know about Paul is that the scriptures were precious to him, far more valuable than the facts. Truth, in his view, is thus not according to the facts like Jesus taught, but according to the scriptures.

It is a matter of the utmost importance as it explains why Christianity has become the religion it is today. In Paul’s view, everything about Christianity should have a scriptural foundation. Paul’s education as a Pharisee is probably the reason why. We shouldn’t underestimate the consequences. Probably, everything about Jesus that is ‘according to the scriptures’ is a fabrication. The label ‘according to the scriptures’ should serve as a red flag, signalling ‘invented by Paul.’ Hence, ‘Jesus rose on the third day according to the scriptures’ means ‘Paul made up that Jesus rose on the third day.’

Christianity began as a small Jewish sect founded by an end-time prophet who claimed to be the Messiah. Many Jews awaited a Messiah but expected a strong leader who would liberate the Jewish nation from Roman occupation. Jesus didn’t live up to their hopes, and the Romans had him crucified. That wasn’t the end of Christianity, but just the beginning. Likely, he later appeared to some of his followers, thus demonstrating that he lived eternally and was the Son of God. It is hard to see how Christianity could have survived otherwise. That gave the Christians new hope and inspired them to carry on, which is the origin of Pentecost and the belief in the Holy Spirit.

Paul, whose name was first Saul, was initially a fervent persecutor of Jesus’ followers. When travelling to Damascus, he received a vision. According to his own words, a bright light flashed from heaven, knocking him to the ground. He heard a voice he identified as Jesus accusing Saul of persecuting him. Today, we would call the experience a psychosis. The encounter temporarily blinded Saul. His companions led him to Damascus. There, Ananias, a Christian disciple in Damascus, restored Saul’s sight and baptised him.

It was a turning point in his life and an event that shaped the future of humankind. It was a personal calling. His response was not to consult any human being (Galatians 1:16). In other words, he didn’t go for a reality check. Instead, he went his own way and started preaching among the Gentiles (Galatians 1:15-16). Paul preached his own distinct gospel, which he claimed was revealed to him. He didn’t meet with most of the other Apostles for fourteen years (Galatians 2:1-10). He saw Simon Peter after three years, as well as Jesus’ brother (Galatians 1:18-19). His mission succeeded. Indeed, God works in mysterious ways. In The Triumph of Christianity, Bart Ehrman attempts to reconstruct Paul’s reasoning, the foundation of Christian thought.

His vision proved to Paul that Jesus still lived as his followers claimed. Jesus had died, so he was resurrected, Paul reasoned. And therefore, he must be the long-awaited Messiah. That posed a few theological problems for Paul. The Romans had humiliated Jesus and executed him. So, why did Jesus have to die? Paul came up with an answer. In many religions, including Judaism during Passover, people sacrifice animals to please the gods.¹ The Gospels agree that Jesus died either on the day of Preparation for the Passover or on Passover itself. Now, that doesn’t seem like a coincidence, so that pushed Paul’s thinking in this direction. Paul must have known that Jesus believed himself to be Adam. Adam led us out of Paradise, and Jesus would return us to it.

And so, Paul reasoned that Jesus came to undo what Adam had done. The Jewish religion doesn’t place such a dramatic weight on the Fall. It definitely wouldn’t justify human sacrifice, or worse, murdering the Son of God. To make the argument work, Paul inflated the significance of the Fall to epic proportions. That is why Christianity, contrary to Judaism and Islam, places such an emphasis on sin. Paul turned Jesus into the sacrificial Lamb of God. In his view, we are all sinners because Adam was, but Jesus saved us by sacrificing himself. It is a novel idea not found in the Jewish religion and scriptures. The Jewish religion opposes human sacrifice, and it is even blasphemous to think that God would require it, so this is alien to Jews, which made Paul’s innovation truly remarkable.

The Lamb of God

The sacrificial lamb is a revolutionary new type of saviour, someone who, by his death, provides redemption to his followers. According to Mark, Matthew, and Luke, the disciples shared bread and wine during the Last Supper. And Jesus said, ‘Take it; this is my body,’ and, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.’ It is outside the Jewish tradition and part of the sacrificial lamb imagery. So, did Jesus say these words, or did Paul invent them? Probably the latter. Paul wrote (1 Corinthians 11:23-26),

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

It begins with, ‘For I received from the Lord.’ In other words, the origin of this tradition lies in Paul’s imagination rather than in Jesus’ words at the Last Supper. It is unlikely that Jesus laid that out in detail during Paul’s psychosis. It is therefore noteworthy that the Gospel of John fails to mention it. The Gospel of John comes from a separate tradition outside Paul’s influence, and its sources may include an eyewitness account. In the first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul writes (1 Corinthians 15:3-5),

For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Simon Peter and then to the twelve Apostles.

It is another for-I-received sentence, so many scholars believe these things have been passed on to him, possibly by fellow Christians as a creed, and that it reflects the earliest Christian beliefs.² However, the repeated reference to the scriptures makes the supposed creed suspect of being a product of Paul’s creative ingenuity. He has proven himself capable of writing a beautiful poem about love, so it wouldn’t be that hard for him. A passage in Isaiah can explain the ‘died for our sins according to the scriptures’ (Isaiah 53:4-6),

Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

You need not be too imaginative to apply this to Jesus, even though Isaiah had someone else in mind. Concerning the raising on the third day, Hosea 6:2 may come to assistance, as it says, ‘On the third day he will restore us.’ The larger the body of scriptures, the easier cherry-picking becomes. What comes next is even more unbelievable. Jesus supposedly appeared to more than five hundred at the same time. Paul was such a fantasist that it is unlikely to have happened.

Paul tried to answer the question of why God made Jesus sacrifice himself, which is a profoundly troubling question for a Jew. As a religious Jew, he looked for the answer in the scriptures, so facts were of secondary importance. Facts were never that important in religion, and are something scientists may care about. And humans are creatures who live by stories rather than facts. So, think of it as doing God’s work rather than lying. That was probably how Paul viewed it as well. And for good reason, because his diligent work united the early Church, a tremendous achievement.

And so, we should be cautious in concluding that Jesus believed that he had to die for our sins. The Gospel of John fails to mention that Jesus died for our sins, even though John the Baptist calls Jesus ‘Lamb of God’ twice in the first chapter. It is a modification. The other Gospels don’t mention this when describing the same event. It is an image from Pauline theology, so there is no chance that John the Baptist said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God.’ And despite the author of John supporting the claim that Jesus died for our sins in his letter, that could be telling. After all, the letter expresses the author’s opinion, which Pauline theology could have influenced, while the Gospel of John is his redacted account of the evidence handed to him.

Jesus’ teachings were another reason that led Paul to believe Jesus had to die for our sins. So, what did Jesus teach? It was the forgiveness of sins. Mark tells us that John the Baptist preached baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and that he baptised Jesus (Mark 1:4-9). These also became Jesus’ teachings. Jews already practised ritual immersion and washing for purification, spiritual cleansing, and as a conversion rite, so John the Baptist operated within an existing tradition.

Jesus began as one of John’s followers, a fact the Gospels don’t mention for obvious reasons. Instead, they say that John was the messenger sent ahead of Christ, thereby fulfilling a prophecy of Isaiah (Mark 1:1-3), which suggests that it is contrived. John the Baptist probably had said something like, ‘Jesus comes to take away our sins’ rather than ‘Behold, the Lamb of God.’ Nevertheless, it gives a possible answer to the question of why Jesus had to die, so the conclusion Paul arrived at is not far-fetched.

It leaves us with the question of why Jesus willingly went to the cross. Mark tells that Jesus was deeply distressed and troubled. He prayed that the cup would be taken from him (Mark 14:32-36), which is a very different prayer from the one in John (John 17), where he hopes to await great glory. Many scholars think it is a later embellishment to explain that Jesus died in accordance with the will of God. Such an explanation doesn’t presume an intimate relationship between God and Jesus. And so, it probably was Jesus’ choice, perhaps made under duress. Jesus could have avoided the execution by rescinding his claims of being the Messiah and the Son of God. That would be denying the truth and his mission. Believing himself to be Adam and eternally living, he expected to survive, which emboldened him and strengthened his resolve. And don’t forget what people do for love.

Defining the Christian faith

It must have been God’s plan to save ~~Her~~/His people this particular way, thus by Jesus sacrificing himself, Paul reasoned further, so observing Jewish religious laws is not critical for your salvation, nor do you have to be a Jew. Jewish religious laws being irrelevant is another truly revolutionary thought for a Pharisee. Prophecies in the Jewish Bible foretold that all the nations would accept the God of the Jews. To Paul, Jesus was the fulfilment of these prophecies. After all, Jesus was Adam, the father of humankind. And from Adam, God made all the nations that inhabit the Earth (Acts 17:26), so Jesus’ message applied to everyone, not just Jews alone. There were already Gentile Christians, and Paul preached to them, so that was his view from the outset. Making them all adhere to Jewish religious law proved ‘a bridge too far’ and could hamper the spread of the religion. Paul then concluded that rejecting false gods and having faith in Jesus would be enough. Paul believed he was God’s missionary to spread the good news.¹

Paul was a knowledgeable scholar of the Jewish scriptures, whereas the other Apostles lacked such education. He shaped the beliefs of the early Church and the future Christian religion by establishing the theological foundation of the Christian faith. Paul defined God’s image as the Father, the amalgamation of the Jewish Yahweh and the Christian Mother Goddess. The product of this processing became a hybrid, a Father who can give birth. Jesus also became a hybrid, thus a human who is also godlike. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says, ‘Abba, Father.’ (Mark 14:36) More than a decade before Mark, Paul used that particular phrasing twice (Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6). You read Paul’s words in the Gospel of Mark, just like at the Last Supper. Also, ‘The Twelve’ is a quote you can trace back to Paul. Likely, there were no twelve disciples. It took Paul over a decade to work out his new theology, and perhaps also countless sleepless nights.

Around 55 AD, Paul wrote that the woman came from man (1 Corinthians 11:7-8), thereby reasserting the biblical account from Genesis rather than the original Christian account, of which we can still find traces in the Gospel of John. In Galatians, Paul also writes that God sent His Son, who was born of a woman (Galatians 4:4). That Jesus was born of a woman is a statement of the obvious. You don’t need to stress that, even if God is Jesus’ Father. If God were a Father, this factoid could be one of the most uninteresting disclosures of the entire letter. The original Christian teaching, which Paul rejected, was that Jesus was Adam reincarnated, so he was born of God. Paul claimed that Jesus is the Son of God the Father rather than Adam. And so, he was born of a woman rather than God. For once, Paul didn’t lie by stressing that particular factoid. It is also noteworthy that he didn’t write ‘born of a virgin.’ Had he known about the virgin birth, it would have been worth mentioning. By 55 AD, no one still knew of this miracle.

For religious Jews, it was blasphemy to say that God was a woman who married Jesus. And so, it was probably also problematic to many Jewish converts, while non-Jewish converts had no problem with it. The Greek and Roman traditions had several gods and goddesses who had children with humans. For the Greeks and the Romans, God being a woman marrying a man who lives eternally is not that spectacular, while it is unthinkable for Jews. That made uniting the early Church an enormous challenge. To Paul, a former Pharisee, the truth of the scriptures mattered more than the facts. He could dismiss the Christian creation story and change God’s gender. Not having been a firsthand witness and not having spoken much to the other Apostles for the first fourteen years further helped him maintain his independent and particular perspective.

And the facts created problems that Paul’s imagination could solve. In the first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul writes, ‘It is reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans don’t tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife. And you are proud!’ (1 Corinthians 5:1-2). Possibly, a scribe watered down this controversial fragment during copying. The man could have slept with his mother. After all, it is sexual immorality that even pagans don’t tolerate. And the Christians in Corinth took pride in it, a remarkable response. Perhaps they believed this man followed the example of Christ.

Paul’s unique advantage, which placed him in the position to shape Christian theology, was that, apart from being an educated scholar with a dedication to the scriptures, he was not a firsthand witness to the events. To him, reality had to fit the scriptures rather than the other way around. He never met Mary Magdalene and Jesus, and didn’t meet with the other Apostles during the first years of his preaching. It allowed him to develop his theology, independent of the facts.

As a Jew preaching among the Gentiles, he could bridge the gap between the Jewish and the Gentile views. His theology appealed to Jewish Christians because it connected Christianity to the Jewish scriptures and portrayed Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. At the same time, his preaching tours and letter writing provided him with a support base among the Gentile Christians as well, who saw Jesus as godlike. Pauline theology also shares that view. God the Father became the compromise between Yahweh and the Mother.

Paul’s diligent labour provided Christianity with an elaborate theological foundation, and his view could also bring unity within the early Church, so it prevailed. Most people only knew Jesus from stories, and few knew the details, so it was possible to sway opinions with false stories. It is still possible today, even when everyone can check the facts. The outcome of Paul’s intervention was that Christianity became an entirely different religion. Had a close follower of Jesus from 30 AD accidentally run into a time portal and leapt into the future, he wouldn’t have recognised his religion already in 100 AD, let alone today.

Spreading the good news

Paul dedicated his life to spreading the good news that faith in Jesus could save everyone. During his many travels, he founded Christian communities. His mission wasn’t easy. His message caused upheaval, and Jews expelled him from their synagogues several times. But he was determined and worked hard. Paul’s gospel of personal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, which is open to everyone, appears to have caught on. However, it is a most peculiar tiding and not something you would believe if you had grown up in a different tradition, whether you were Jewish or worshipped other deities. And so the success of Christianity begs for a better explanation. Ancient sources indicate that stories about the miracles Christians performed made people convert.¹ An example was the healing of a lame man when Paul and Barnabas visited Lystra.

We have to take Paul’s word for it, as he is a likely source. Had we not known Paul as a fantasist, it appears plausible. In other words, it might have happened. In other words, it might have happened. As the story says, Paul had healed the man. The Lycaonians then concluded Paul and Barnabas were gods in human form. The priest of Zeus brought bulls and wreaths to the city gate, as he and the crowd wished to offer sacrifices to them. Paul and Barnabas explained that they were only human and messengers of the good news that the God of the Jews, who had made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them, had decided that all nations should no longer go their own way. And the proof, they said, was that the Jewish God had shown kindness by giving us rain from heaven and crops in their seasons and filling our hearts with joy (Acts 14:8-18). The proof thus was the seasons, the crops and the rains, and, of course, joy in our hearts. The seasons and the crops had always been there, and people had been joyful before, so that didn’t prove much. Hence, it must have been the miracle of healing that made people believe Paul’s unusual message.

Paul’s activities led to a riot in the city of Ephesus. Demetrius, who made silver shrines of the goddess Artemis and brought in a lot of trade for the local businesspeople, realised the consequences of Paul’s good tidings. He called the craftsmen and workers in related occupations together and said, ‘You know, my friends, we receive a good income from this business. And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray many people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited and that the goddess herself will be robbed of her divine majesty.’ When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting, ‘Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!’ Soon, the whole city was in an uproar (Acts 19:23-29). A mob seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul’s travelling companions from Macedonia, and brought them to an assembly in a theatre.

A city clerk managed to quiet the crowd in the theatre. He said, ‘Fellow Ephesians, doesn’t the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven? Since these facts are undeniable, you should calm down and not do anything rash. You have brought these men here, though they have neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess. If Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a grievance against anybody, the courts are open, and there are proconsuls. They can press charges. If there is anything further you want to bring up, it must be settled in a legal assembly. As it is, we are in danger of being charged with rioting because of what happened today. In that case, we would not be able to account for this commotion since there is no reason for it.’ After he had said this, he dismissed the assembly (Acts 19:35-41). Had it been untrue, then the spread of Christianity would have become a bit harder to explain, but not impossible. More upheavals were to come in the following centuries.

Contending versions of Christianity

During the first centuries, there were several versions of Christianity. It highlights contentious issues, suggesting that early Christian beliefs differ from those of Christianity today. Christianity today is not what it originally was. Likely, the alternative views are closer to the original faith in some aspects. The most well-known deviant groups were the Nazarenes, the Marcionists, the Ebionites, and the Arians:

The Nazarenes continued to observe the Jewish religious laws. Jesus didn’t intend to abolish them. It was Paul who came up with that idea.
The Marcionists taught that the God of the Gospel is the true Supreme Being as opposed to the evil Jewish God. Indeed, God is not the deity the Jews invented.
The Ebionites didn’t believe that Jesus was divine, nor did they think that he was born of a virgin. That is also correct.
Arianism emerged around 300 AD. The Arians opposed the doctrine of the Trinity, which was not an original Christian teaching.

Except for the Arians, these groups existed from an early period. Christianity was in flux. That began to change once the Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. Constantine invited all the bishops in the Roman Empire to the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. It was the first effort to create a uniform Christian doctrine. More efforts followed. The Roman state promoted the Church’s official teachings. Consequently, other strains of Christianity faded into obscurity.

The Gospels of the New Testament date from 70 to 100 AD, more than forty years after Jesus preached. Mark, Luke, Matthew, and John did not write the Gospels attributed to them. The Apostles were uneducated Aramaic-speaking Jews, while the authors were Greek-speaking, educated Christians who were not eyewitnesses. Scholars believe Mark, Luke, and Matthew are collections of stories that circulated among early Christians. The author of the Gospel of Luke even says so (Luke 1:1-4).

Whenever someone retells a story, details change, new episodes emerge, and parts get omitted. And the story may become more spectacular. And so, the Gospels likely don’t accurately tell what happened. Several letters in the New Testament have unknown authors, despite claiming to be from Peter, Paul, or another well-known person. Jesus’ brother couldn’t have been the author of the Epistle of James because it contains no inside knowledge about the relationship between God and Jesus. And we don’t have the original texts of the New Testament. The oldest preserved copies date back to the second or third centuries AD. Scholars have used these copies to reconstruct the original texts as much as possible.

Latest revision: 10 October 2025

Featured image: Head of St. Paul. Mosaic in the Archbishop’s Chapel, Ravenna, 5th century AD (public domain)

1. The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World. Bart D. Ehrman (2018).
2. How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher. Bart D. Ehrman (2014). HarperCollins Publishers.

Explaining the Unexplained

14 Oct 202118 Jul 2025 nivtricLeave a comment

The paranormal is a subject of controversy. The evidence is often problematic and certainly not scientific. Take, for instance, psychics. Scientists have investigated their abilities. In experiments, psychics fail to perform better than guessing. Scientists isolate a psychic so others can’t supply this person with information. Sometimes, psychics make stunning guesses, but not in these experiments. Divination can be fraud or manipulation. The same is true for the paranormal in general. Paranormal incidents can be natural phenomena or the result of fraud or delusion.

Still, a large number of paranormal incidents remain without explanation. Few scientists dare to investigate them, as it could make them a laughingstock to their peers. And what can be worse than getting zero publications in respectable scientific magazines because you take reincarnation stories seriously? That is groupthink and intellectual cowardice on a grandiose scale. Apart from that, there is little science can say about the paranormal because there likely is no such thing as the Third Law of Paranormal Activity that explains it all neatly in an elegant mathematical formula.

Thinking that science will one day give the answers is also a belief. Science can become like a religion once you discard evidence that contradicts it. Evidence for the paranormal doesn’t meet scientific criteria, but that doesn’t make it invalid. Science requires that we use a theory, such as the existence of psychic abilities, to make predictions that we can subsequently check. So, if a psychic doesn’t do better than chance guessing during an experiment, this individual has no psychic abilities from a scientific perspective. But there is more to the world than science can prove.

Countless times, witnesses have observed things that the sciences can’t explain. In the early twentieth century, Charles Fort collected 40,000 notes on paranormal experiences. They were about strange events reported in magazines and newspapers, such as The Times, as well as in scientific journals, including Scientific American, Nature, and Science. Most incidents probably never become public, so the total number of these incidents is impossible to guess. It could be billions. Fort had worked on a manuscript suggesting a secret civilisation controls events in this world. He compared the close-mindedness of many scientists to that of religious fundamentalists.

So, did my wife’s father make himself noticed from the other side? Or was the wind gust and the clocks being back just bizarre coincidences caused by natural phenomena? Or did my wife make it up to have a good story to tell at birthday parties? I know her better than you do, and I don’t think she did. I have witnessed countless strange incidents, so I don’t think she was mistaken either. She could only have noticed that these clocks were back by looking at other timepieces. Even if she had been wrong and did not find out about it, it still would have been a remarkable coincidence.

The wind gust was peculiar. The clocks made it even more mysterious. In virtual reality, the laws of nature don’t have to apply. Clocks can stop for an hour, and elephants can fly. We haven’t seen flying elephants, but virtual reality makes it possible. Psychic abilities may exist, even when the scientific method can’t certify them. And Jesus could have walked on water and raised the dead. And meaningful coincidences, even when caused by ordinary natural phenomena, may indicate someone is pulling the strings.

Latest revision: 18 July 2025

Featured image: Psychic reading room

Building a Nation with Religion

26 Sep 20216 Dec 2025 nivtricLeave a comment

Israel emerging

The Jews started as tribal people in Canaan, the area currently covered by Israel and Palestine. For a long time, the area was under Egyptian control. The earliest known reference to Israel is on an Egyptian stone engraving from around 1200 BC. It lists the enemies the Pharaoh Merneptah defeated during his campaigns. Among them was Israel, which had revolted against its Egyptian overlords. The engraving lacks detail. There was no state of Israel, so quite possibly the uprising was no more than a few skirmishes with local hill dwellers. However, the Egyptians had already called the land Israel, named after the principal local deity, El, so the tribes living there had their own distinct religious beliefs.

Around 1150 BC, Egypt faced droughts, food shortages, civil unrest, corruption, and court intrigues. This period is known as the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Similar crises in neighbouring civilisations led societies to turn inwards and focus on local issues. Egypt retreated from Canaan. Setbacks at home were the reason the Egyptians gave up Canaan, which was an insignificant border province to them, filled with unruly hill dwellers who caused nothing but trouble. It was a footnote in Egyptian history, nothing more. The Egyptians, who had been there for centuries, suddenly went home,¹ leaving the Israelites a victory they had not fought for. The locals may have viewed it as a miracle and came to suspect that their favourite deity, El, or perhaps Yahweh, had done some magic. Poof. The Egyptian army, which had been there for centuries, had suddenly vanished due to setbacks at home.

Stories retold grow more sensational over time, so the Bible now tells us that God sent seven devastating plagues to Egypt, and appointed a fellow named Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, under the guidance of an irate and fiery cloud, split the Red Sea, drowned the Egyptian army and let the Israelites escape. The Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:1-18) could be the oldest text in the Bible, together with the Song of Deborah, and it mentions the drowning of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea. The song seems much older than the rest of Exodus, and it doesn’t mention Moses. Scholars disagree on whether the account has a historical basis, and therefore, also the song. It could date back to the Babylonian captivity 600 years later. In that case, the author used archaic language in the Song of the Sea to make it appear older. That would require the author to have knowledge of ancient Hebrew, which seems a stretch. Likely, parts of the song are ancient.

It took several centuries for new civilisations to take over, creating room for small local polities in Canaan until that time. Several small kingdoms emerged, including Israel and Judah. These petty kingdoms existed for a few centuries until new imperial powers overran the area. At first, the Israelites worshipped several gods and goddesses, among them Yahweh. Archaeological finds indicate that El was the supreme deity in the Canaanite belief system. The goddess Asherah was his wife.²

They were the parents of the other Canaanite deities, Baal, Anat, Yahweh, and Yam. Asherah is Yahweh’s mother and El his father. El was often depicted as a bull and was also known as Shor-El, the bull god. And so, we have the highly peculiar situation that half the world’s population now worships one of the children of El and Asherah, two deities of an insignificant tribe living somewhere between the more advanced civilisations of Egypt and Mesopotamia 3,000 years ago, as the supreme God who rules the entire universe. That might have been a hilarious observation if people hadn’t been murdering each other in the millions for their delusions.

States and kings used religion to justify themselves. It matters whether a powerful entity like a god or a goddess supports the state and the king, for only the stupid and the suicidal defy the gods. The kings of Judah, and perhaps also those of Israel, promoted a national religion centred around Yahweh. Other kingdoms in the region also adopted national deities. Milcom was the deity of Ammon, while Moab had Chemosh to defeat its foes and supply the country with blessings (1 Kings 11:33).

Yahweh thus became the deity of the state religion in Judah and possibly Israel. Many in the area also worshipped other gods alongside Yahweh, as having multiple options is prudent. If Yahweh forsakes you, perhaps Baal or some other deity will still assist you. The Bible testifies to tensions between those who still worshipped different gods and goddesses alongside Yahweh and those insisting on worshipping Yahweh alone. As Yahweh had become the favourite deity of the Israelites, El became the word for ‘god’, and Asherah became Yahweh’s wife.

Writing the Bible

As time passed by, new empires arrived on the scene and set their eyes on Canaan. The Assyrians overran Israel in 720 BC. The Babylonians conquered Judah in 597 BC, following their takeover of the Assyrian Empire. The Babylonians deported many of the Judeans. Others fled to Egypt. It was the beginning of the diaspora. The Jewish communities in Egypt, Babylon, and Judah became dispersed. The authors of the Jewish Bible tried to reconnect them by showing that they belonged to a larger group, a nation with common ancestors. Judah already had religious writings. They became part of the Bible. The Jewish Bible became a compilation of tales from these communities and the royal archives of the former kingdom of Judah. The Jewish Bible presents the history of Israel and Judah from the perspective of the Kingdom of Judah.

After the Persians had conquered the Babylonian Empire, the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great allowed the Jewish people to return to Canaan. He commissioned the rebuilding of the Jewish temple. Those still living in the area were not keen on a group of religious zealots entering their country. They opposed the plan, and a political struggle unfolded. After seven decades, Ezra and Nehemiah succeeded in rebuilding the temple. Jewish society was on the brink of being wiped out. Israel and Judah no longer existed. The remaining Jews were mixing with the surrounding population. Jewish leaders had to find a way to keep their people together. Marrying outside the community became frowned upon, and the Jews became a seclusive group. That has caused them a great deal of trouble in the centuries that followed.

The authors of the Jewish Bible sought to preserve Jewish identity through a shared religion, history, and cultural heritage. The Jewish religion gradually became monotheistic. At the time, Zoroastrianism, a dualistic religion, became the official religion in the Persian Empire. The prophet Zoroaster believed in a good creator and an opposing evil power. And it had considerable influence. It brought Judaism monotheism, messiahs, free will, heaven, hell, and, of course, that horned fellow named Satan. Zoroastrianism not only affected Judaism. Some Greek philosophers around 400 BC were also monotheists.

The polytheist origin of the Jewish religion may explain why God says in Genesis, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.’ Later, the Jews became henotheists. They believed that other gods existed, but that they should worship only Yahweh. That is why the commandment says, ‘You shall have no other gods before me’ rather than ‘You shall believe there is only one God.’ Yahweh was jealous and didn’t appreciate offerings to other gods, such as Baal. Several texts in the Jewish Bible have that henotheist perspective.

The Jews wrote most of their scriptures between 600 BC and 300 BC, but there are older parts that date back to the royal archives of Judah. The Ketef Hinnom amulets are the oldest surviving evidence of texts that are now part of the Jewish Bible. They date back to 600 BC. So, before the Jews went into exile to Babylon, they already had an established religion with scriptures. And that later helped them maintain their Jewish identity. The Song of Deborah is one of the oldest texts in the Bible, dating back to the 12^th to 10^th century BC. Only, the Song of the Sea might be older. Little evidence supports the historical account in the Jewish Bible of the period before the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. However, that doesn’t mean that all these stories are entirely fictional.

Scholars believe David may have been the king of Judah, rather than the king of a united kingdom, as the Jewish Bible states. Based on archaeological excavations, experts have estimated that Jerusalem had around 1,000 inhabitants at the time David supposedly lived, suggesting that Jerusalem was a minor regional centre rather than the capital of a larger kingdom. However, archaeologists have also uncovered a 9^th-century BC stone engraving with the lettering BYTDWD in northern Israel, possibly referring to the House of David. Another engraving found in the former kingdom of Moab contains the same lettering. That could raise questions, such as whether a larger kingdom existed.

Creating a nation

Whether or not it was fiction, the authors of the Jewish Bible employed the concept of a united kingdom to foster unity among people originating from Israel and Judah. A shared history united the inhabitants of Israel and Judah, as well as their offspring, into one great nation. The purpose of the Jewish Bible was to establish the Jewish nation based on a shared history and religion. That can be a reason to imagine a united kingdom that once existed. If you go back in time to before the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the history of the Jews becomes murky. No written records exist from these times. The tales about Abraham, Isaac, and Moses may have originated from different communities, merged into a single narrative to promote a single Jewish identity.¹ To make the proposition more attractive, the Jews believed they were the chosen people.

The survival of the Jewish people has been hanging by a thread for a long time. They were a small nation between great powers. They hoped for a Messiah who would save them from oppression, just as Moses had once done. Great powers came and went, but the Jewish people remained. After more than 2,500 years, the Jews are still around, so their nation-building project proved a successful long-term survival strategy. They managed to reclaim their original homeland. It is also remarkable that Judaism stood at the cradle of Christianity and Islam. The Jews have played a central role in world history, unmatched by any other nation. It is an impressive feat, considering their numbers. Today, Jews have an imposing power, and they slay their enemies at will. So, what do they need a Messiah for?

Historical analysis

How do historians and scholars look at the Jewish Bible? Apart from the lack of archaeological evidence, they find the early Jewish history in the Jewish Bible too neat to be correct. It presents an agreeable genealogical line extending from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, who had twelve sons who, coincidentally, became the twelve tribes of the nation. The number twelve has religious significance, so the facts must have undergone some religiously inspired processing. Jacob and his family went to Egypt during Joseph’s days. Later, Egypt began to oppress the Israelites, and they escaped under the leadership of Moses. The Egyptians kept records, and they tell nothing about the Exodus. The reason is probably not that the Egyptian defeat was too embarrassing.

After Moses’ death, the story goes, Joshua took over and led the Israelites into the Promised Land. Following the death of Joshua, a series of judges took over. They governed Israel and saved it from its enemies. Each judge came from a different tribe, which is also unbelievably neat. It smells like fiction. Then Saul, Israel’s first king, was not up to his task, so David replaced him. The kingdom fell apart into two after the death of Solomon, David’s successor. From then on, the descendants of David ruled only in the south, thus in Judah. The northern part, called Israel, had several dynasties.

Many of the people described in the Jewish Bible may have once lived. Probably, they had very little to do with each other. The authors of the Jewish Bible compiled them to create a unified history of Israel. Abraham was probably not Jacob’s father, Moses was not Miriam’s brother, and David was not Saul’s successor. They may have figured in local tales from tribes and petty kingdoms that later became part of the Jewish nation. The stories in the Jewish Bible originate from several sources and have been revised and retold multiple times throughout the centuries. And the stories have undergone some religiously inspired processing. Think of God sending plagues to Egypt because the Pharaoh took Sarah as his wife. The Jewish Bible is a nation-building project rather than a historical account.¹

Textual analysis

It might be interesting to see how scholars analyse the texts to understand biblical history and arrive at their conclusions. Professor Jacob Wright explained the basics using the example of Genesis 26 to illustrate how the authors of the Jewish Bible have woven the story of Isaac and Rebecca into the broader historical narrative of Israel.¹ Biblical scholars attempt to uncover the construction process of the texts by examining various sources within biblical texts, including additions and other editing techniques. Genesis 26 tells the story of Isaac living in the Philistine land of Gerar, located west of Judah.

Isaac’s wife, Rebecca, was a beautiful woman. When his neighbours asked Isaac about Rebecca, he claimed she was his sister, so Isaac followed Abraham’s footsteps. Isaac feared the Philistine men in Gerar would kill him and take his beautiful wife. One day, Abimelech, the king of the Philistines, gazed out his window and spotted Isaac and Rebecca making out. He demanded an explanation. Abimelech feared one of his subjects might have slept with her, which could make his kingdom subject to divine retribution.

Abimelech then issued a decree stating that whoever touched Isaac or his wife would be put to death. Rebecca would become one of the matriarchs, a crucial figure in Israel’s history. Isaac prospered among the Philistines and eventually became mightier than them. Everywhere Isaac went in the waterless environs of Abimelech’s kingdom, he discovered water wells. His success aroused jealousy among local inhabitants. That amount of luck captures the imagination like Gladstone Gander’s in a Donald Duck tale.

Instead of fighting for his territories, Isaac moved on and ended up in Beer-Sheba in the south. Abimelech visited Isaac there. The Philistine king blessed him. Isaac invited him to a feast. After eating and drinking all night long, they exchanged oaths of peace. Later that day, Isaac’s servants discovered another water source, in yet another stroke of unbelievable luck. Isaac named this well Beer-Sheba, referring to his treaty with the Philistines. The story served a political agenda, which was to demonstrate that Beersheba was part of Israel.

A closer look at Genesis 26

Genesis 26 contains two kinds of material, which are the story about Isaac’s clan and how he came to possess towns in the far south and Beer-Sheba, and the broader narrative of the book of Genesis, which links this story with the other parts of Genesis to make it a coherent history of the nation. There are multiple ways of looking at the text. Hence, different scholars may come to different conclusions. One way of viewing Genesis 26 is as follows, with the parts that link the story into a broader narrative underlined:

1 Now there was a famine in the land, besides the previous famine in Abraham’s time, and Isaac went to Abimelek, king of the Philistines, in Gerar. 2 The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, ‘Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. 3 Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham. 4 I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, 5 because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees and my instructions.’

6 So Isaac stayed in Gerar. 7 When the men of that place asked him about his wife, he said, ‘She is my sister,’ because he was afraid to say, ‘She is my wife.’ He thought, ‘The men of this place might kill me on account of Rebecca because she is beautiful.’ 8 When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelek king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebecca. 9 So Abimelek summoned Isaac and said, ‘She is really your wife! Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’?’ Isaac answered him, ‘Because I thought I might lose my life on account of her.’ 10 Then Abimelek said, ‘What is this you have done to us? One of the men might well have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us. 11 So Abimelek gave orders to all the people: ‘Anyone who harms this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.’

12 Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold because the Lord blessed him. 13 The man became rich, and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy. 14 He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him. 15 So all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up, filling them with earth. 16 Then Abimelek said to Isaac, ‘Move away from us; you have become too powerful for us.’

17 So Isaac moved away from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar, where he settled. 18 Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died, and he gave them the same names his father had given them. 19 Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and discovered a well of fresh water there. 20 But the herders of Gerar quarrelled with those of Isaac and said, ‘The water is ours!’ So he named the well Esek because they disputed with him. 21 Then they dug another well, but they quarrelled over that one also; so he named it Sitnah. 22 He moved on from there and dug another well, and no one quarrelled over it. He named it Rehoboth, saying, ‘Now the Lord has given us room and we will flourish in the land.’

23 From there, he went up to Beersheba. 24 That night, the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bless you and will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham.’ 25 Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord. There he pitched his tent, and there his servants dug a well.

26 Meanwhile, Abimelek had come to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath his personal adviser and Phicol the commander of his forces. 27 Isaac asked them, ‘Why have you come to me, since you were hostile to me and sent me away?’ 28 They answered, ‘We saw clearly that the Lord was with you; so we said, ‘There ought to be a sworn agreement between us’—between us and you. Let us make a treaty with you 29 that you will do us no harm, just as we did not harm you but always treated you well and sent you away peacefully. And now you are blessed by the Lord.’ 30 Isaac then made a feast for them, and they ate and drank. 31 Early the next morning, the men swore an oath to each other. Then Isaac sent them on their way, and they went away peacefully. 32 That day, Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug. They said, ‘We’ve found water!’ 33 He called it Shibah, and to this day, the name of the town has been Beersheba.

34 When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith, daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and also Basemath, daughter of Elon the Hittite. 35 They were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebecca.

The first five verses are part of the larger narrative, except for the first part of verse 1. In verse 6, the story itself starts. Abraham comes up in verses 15 and 18. The intervention of the Lord in verses 24 and 25 is also part of the larger narrative. The mention of Esau at the end is part of the encompassing story. That raises the question of where Jacob and Esau were all that time. They were adults at the end of Genesis 25. One explanation is that Genesis 26, without the underlined parts, was once a separate story.

The stories about their sons, Jacob and Esau, seem wrapped around the story of Isaac and Rebecca and their dealings with the king of the Philistines. In this way, the authors created a larger narrative. Genesis 25 contains the story about the birth of Esau and Jacob and how Esau sold his birthright to Jacob. That story resumes at the end of Genesis 26. In Genesis 27, Jacob deceived his father into giving him his blessing with the help of his mother. These interweaving narratives come from different sources.

One is the P-source or priestly source. It tells an independent story of Israel. The authors merged it into the narrative. According to the P-source, Jacob didn’t flee from Esau because of stealing the birthright but because he was in danger of a mixed marriage. The P-source describes how Esau married a Hittite woman and how Rebecca asked Isaac to send Jacob away so he would find a woman who would not make her life miserable.

There is an older account of Isaac and Rebecca and how they came to possess Beersheba. Around it is wrapped a story of their children, where Isaac is the son of Abraham and the father of Esau and Jacob. Another small story tells how Rebecca sent Jacob off to find wives from her own family. Another source tells us how Jacob stole his birthright from his brother Esau. The authors of the Jewish Bible thus wove an older story and two other sources into a broader narrative.¹

Theories from scholars

The P-source is a late source from after the exile in Babylon. It deals with Israel’s identity and its relationship to others. Mixed marriages outside the Jewish people became a huge issue after the defeat of Judah. Marrying within the clan or nation helped to maintain a community defined by a shared culture. Therefore, the marriages of Esau to Hittite women caused Rebecca concern.

Another source is the Jahwist source, also dubbed J-source. A part of Genesis 25 comes from the J-source. It tells about the birth of Jacob and Esau. It continues in Genesis 27 and 28, where Jacob stole Esau’s birthright and pursued the deal with the help of his mother, Rebecca. Jacob then had to flee from Esau. According to the J-source theory, the J-source has incorporated an older source into the broader narrative. Later, the P-source altered the reason why Jacob had to flee.

The formation of the earliest sources, the histories of Israel, whether it be the history of Israel’s ancestors and the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the exodus leaving Egypt and the conquest of the land, is built upon the linking of stories. The authors brought separate individual representatives of clans together in a larger narrative to create the idea of a Jewish nation. Many scholars believe that the first chapters of the Jewish Bible, known to Jews as the Torah, comprise four distinct sources.¹

Countless authors have contributed to the Jewish Bible over the centuries. The Bible even reveals how a book came into existence. King Josiah had commissioned artisans to work on the Temple, where they ‘discovered’ the Book of Law (2 Kings 22:8), probably Deuteronomy. Likely, King Josiah had ordered the writing of the book to advance his political agenda of centralising the worship of Yahweh in the Temple of Jerusalem. That could increase his standing as a king. And so, these artisans stumbled upon this work that had supposedly been gathering dust there for centuries.

Much of the writing and editing took place to serve purposes other than accurately presenting the facts, so you can’t expect that the Jewish Bible is an accurate account of historical events. There is more to say about scholarly research into the Jewish Bible. For our purposes, this brief explanation is sufficient. It illuminates how the first chapters of the Jewish Bible, which describe Israel’s earliest history, evolved and how scholars interpret the texts to arrive at their conclusions. Likewise, scholars attempt to reconstruct the origins of the Gospels, as that is an even greater mystery.

Latest revision: 5 December 2025

Featured image: Torah scroll (public domain)

1. The Bible’s Prehistory, Purpose, and Political Future. Wright, Jacob L. (2014). Coursera.
2. El the God of Israel-Israel the People of YHWH: On the Origins of Ancient Israelite Yahwism. In Becking, Bob; Dijkstra, Meindert; Korpel, Marjo C.A.; et al. Only One God?: Monotheism in Ancient Israel and the Veneration of the Goddess Asherah. Dijkstra, Meindert (2001).

Lionheaded figurine from Stadel in the Hohlenstein cave in Germany

On The Origin of Religions

6 Sep 20212 Oct 2025 nivtricLeave a comment

We, humans, have become the dominant species on Earth. That is because we collaborate flexibly in large numbers. Social animals, such as monkeys and dolphins, work together flexibly but only in small groups. Ants and bees cooperate in large numbers but only in fixed ways. Language enables our large-scale, flexible collaboration. Some animals use signs and calls or give each other names, but we use far more words.¹ That allows us to cooperate in more ways and for a wide range of purposes. Language allows us to make and communicate agreements. And we can describe things in detail. We can write, ‘Please read these safety instructions carefully before using model T92.’ Then follow many pages of instructions. Butterflies don’t observe a written list of safety instructions before leaving their cocoons like NASA does when launching a spacecraft. That is why butterflies have never landed on the Moon.

We are also imaginative creatures. We imagine things into existence. We envision laws, money, property, corporations, social classes and states. We imagine that there is a law, and that is how the law works. In other words, we envision the law, and lo and behold, it exists. The same is true for money and corporations. We humans say, ‘Let there be corporations.’ And lo and behold, there are corporations. Only humans do that. No other species envisions money and corporations. I can’t give a dog a debit card to go to the supermarket to buy dog food. A dog lacks the imagination for that. A dog can’t think of money, laws and corporations. And so, you can’t make dogs work together in a corporation to produce dog food by paying them money. Our fancifulness existed long before civilisations emerged. Archaeologists uncovered a 32,000-year-old sculpture of a lion’s head upon a human body. These lion-men only existed in the imagination of humans.

We are also religious creatures. We cooperate using myths. People of the same religion can go on a holy war together. Faith can also motivate people to engage in charitable work and provide for the poor. Religions promote social stability by justifying the social order and promising rewards in the afterlife for those who support it. As societies grew more stratified, the elites, such as kings and priests, tried to justify their existence and lavish lifestyles, and why peasants had to toil. And so, creation myths emerged, explaining that the gods created humans to work the ground. Established religions were often schemes to exploit peasants. You can’t let a dog submit to you by saying obedient hounds will go to heaven and enjoy everlasting bliss after they die, and unruly canines will be fried forever in a tormenting fire. A dog lacks the imagination to even think of it, let alone believe it. We have a religious nature. We make up stories and believe in them. We are social beings and need a group to survive. Beliefs hold groups of humans together, so it is a matter of survival to believe in our own imagination

Small bands of people cooperate because their members know each other and see what everyone contributes. In larger groups, that becomes more difficult as people can cheat. That is where states, money, and religions come in. They facilitate collaboration between strangers, allowing us to operate on a larger scale. States do so by coercion, money by trade, and faith by inspiration. As there has always been a survival-of-the-fittest-like competition between societies, those who cooperated most effectively survived and subjugated others. Religions forge bonds and help maintain peace within a group, or inspire group members to go to war. Religions played a crucial role in the survival of humans. If believing means surviving, it is rational to have faith, regardless of how curious the belief may be. It is in our nature to be religious, and usefulness rather than correctness is the essence of religion. And so, it is better to view a religion not as a set of lies, but as something people agree on to believe in, which helps them to cooperate and survive.

We make up stories and believe them. Hollywood films featured reptiles disguised as humans. Since then, some people have claimed that reptiles live among us disguised as humans. You can see how we can go collectively crazy in this way. When we retell stories, they change. We forget parts of a tale, add new elements or alter their meaning. And so beliefs and religions evolve. The evolution of religions has been a process in which ideas emerged and interacted. Early humans were hunter-gatherers who believed that places, animals, and plants possessed awareness, feelings, and emotions. They asked them for favours, like ‘Please, river, give me some fish.’ Hunter-gatherers felt they were more or less on an equal footing with the plants and animals around them.¹ Animism is the name for these beliefs. These beliefs were local and concerned visible objects like a tree or a mountain. Over time, people began to imagine invisible entities like fairies and spirits. A crucial step in the development of religions was ancestor veneration.

The first humans lived in small bands based on family ties. Their ancestors bound them together. And so, they began to venerate the dead. It was a small step to imagine that the spirits of the dead are still with us and that our actions require the approval of our late ancestors. Ancestor veneration made it possible to envision a larger-scale relatedness in the form of tribes. A tribe is much larger than a band. The belief that its members share common ancestors holds a tribe together. Tribes are too large to identify their common ancestors, so tribespeople imagined their ancestors, and the stories about them are myths. The Romans started as a tribe. They had a myth about their founders, Romulus and Remus. As the tale goes, a she-wolf raised them. Tribes are much larger and can muster more men for war. That is why tribes replaced bands. It helps when people attribute magical powers to their ancestors and fear the consequences of angering them. In this way, ancestor veneration turned into the worship of gods. The previous beliefs didn’t disappear completely. Many people still believe in ghosts.

Hunter-gatherers can move on in the event of conflict, but farmers invest heavily in their fields, crops, and livestock. Losing their land, animals, or harvest meant starvation. With the arrival of agriculture, property and territorial defence became paramount. States defend their territory and can afford larger militaries. Kinship is an obstacle as states enlist the people within their realm, regardless of family ties. States thus needed a new source of authority, and the worship of gods replaced ancestor veneration. When humans subjugated plants and animals for their use, they needed to justify this new arrangement. Myths emerged in which the gods created this world and ordained that humans rule the plants and animals. In Genesis, God says, ‘Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’ (Genesis 1:28) Most of the world’s major religions originated in agricultural societies.

Religions emerged from ancestor worship. And so, gods could be like mothers and fathers. People gave devotion to several ancestors. Each ancestor had a specific admirable quality. Consequently, early religions featured multiple gods and goddesses, each with a distinct role. That is called polytheism, which is the belief in several gods. Henotheist religions emerged later when people became emotionally attached to one particular deity. Henotheism is the belief that multiple gods exist, but that we should worship only one of them. Even polytheists can believe there is a supreme being or principle. However, that supreme being is indifferent to our concerns, so it doesn’t make sense to direct prayers to it in the hope of receiving help. The gods, being on a lower level, have desires, so we can befriend them by making offerings, polytheists believed.¹

The next step is monotheism, or believing there is only one God. Monotheists believe that there is only one God who rules the universe. Monotheistic religions were successful because monotheists, most notably Christians and Muslims, have missionary zeal. They believe that God craves our worship. Converting others is an act of mercy, as unbelievers will end up in hell. The worship of other deities is an offence to monotheists. After all, it contradicts their belief that there is only one God worthy of infinite adoration. Failing to take action against the unbelievers could anger God. Polytheists are less likely to feel offended when some choose to worship just one of the many deities or invent a new one.

In the first centuries AD, Christianity replaced the worship of local deities. To help pagans accept Christianity, the Church replaced these deities with saints, who often had the same purpose, and took over existing holidays. Each saint had specific qualities, just like the previous deity. In Ireland, St. Brigid of Kildare replaced a Celtic goddess with the same name. Both occupy themselves with healing, poetry, and smithcraft, and their feast day, 1 February, is the same, which is not a coincidence. And so, polytheism didn’t disappear entirely, as Christians continued to pray to saints. The Church also took over the Roman holiday commemorating the winter solstice, which was on 25 December. It turned pagan rites to celebrate the rebirth of the Sun into a Christian feast commemorating the birth of Christ.

Monotheism comes with a few logical difficulties. We hope that God cares for us and answers our prayers. However, prayers are often not answered, and bad things are happening. So, how can an almighty Creator allow this to happen? The obvious answer is that there is no god, or God doesn’t care. That is not what we want to hear. And so people imagined Satan, God’s evil adversary, who makes all these bad things happen.¹ And we hope that the people we hate receive punishment, if not now, then in the afterlife or a final reckoning on Judgement Day. Religions cater for our sentiments, a psychologist might say.

In modern times, Europeans developed ideologies, such as liberalism, socialism, and fascism, which, like moral philosophies, describe how we should live. These ideologies are much like religions. They have prophets, holy books, missionary zeal, and preachers. The prophets of communism were Marx and Lenin. They had theologians who explained their writings. The communists had public holidays, such as 1 May, and heresies like Trotskyism. The Soviet army units had chaplains to oversee the faithfulness of the troops, although the Soviets named them as people’s commissars. The communists further expected an end time, the proletarian revolution, after which they would enter Paradise, world communism. A fanatic missionary zeal further characterised Soviet communism.¹ And so, communism is much like a religion. The foundations of the ideologies of liberalism and socialism are the Christian values of freedom and equality. Fascism developed from nationalism, and the struggle for survival in nature inspired Nazism, which helped to make it especially cruel.

After the Middle Ages, educated Europeans began to doubt Christianity. The contradictions in the Scriptures began to attract attention. And then came the party pooper, Charles Darwin, who wrote On The Origin Of Species. Plant and animal species are the outcome of a struggle for survival. Despite the frantic efforts of religious people to fiddle with the facts, the evidence continued to mount. Religions exist because we invent stories to promote cooperation, and that contributes to our success, not because there is an invisible fellow in the sky. But human imagination reigns supreme. We live in such a universe created by an advanced humanoid civilisation. That already happened. We live in such a universe. And so there is a God after all.

Latest revision: 23 September 2025

Featured image: Lion-headed figurine from Stadel in the Hohlenstein cave in Germany. J. Duckeck (2011). Wikimedia Commons.

1. A Brief History Of Humankind. Yuval Noah Harari (2014). Harvil Secker.

The Plan For The Future

There is a plan

World Civilisation And Universal Culture

The West and the rest

Western culture

Greek philosophy

Western Christendom

Rule of law and representative bodies

The Renaissance

Double shock

A revolutionary mix

The culture of the future

The Religion Paul Invented

Paul’s reasoning

The Lamb of God

Defining the Christian faith

Spreading the good news

Contending versions of Christianity

Explaining the Unexplained

Building a Nation with Religion

Israel emerging

Writing the Bible

Creating a nation

Historical analysis

Textual analysis

A closer look at Genesis 26

Theories from scholars

On The Origin of Religions

The West and the rest

Western culture

Greek philosophy

Western Christendom

Rule of law and representative bodies

Individualism and social pluralism

The Renaissance

Double shock

A revolutionary mix

The culture of the future

Paul’s reasoning

The Lamb of God

Defining the Christian faith

Spreading the good news

Contending versions of Christianity

Israel emerging

Writing the Bible

Creating a nation

Historical analysis

Textual analysis

A closer look at Genesis 26

Theories from scholars