If You’d Go Back Far Enough…
This post was originally meant to be just a brief comment about the impact of The Da Vinci Code, the reaction religious authorities had to it and how that made it even more believable, though the author originally said it’s just a work of fiction. Then Zeitgeist was noticed by the media and they ended up focusing almost entirely on its first part and vehemently criticizing it for that while almost completely ignoring the rest of it. That made me want to write something about how any perceived attack on Christianity is taken by the general public in the countries where it’s the majority religion and how that reaction may make an external viewer even more likely to think there’s a dark secret to hide. But as time passed and I never got around to writing that either, I decided to focus on one of the potentially darkest secrets of all religions: What would you find if you’d go back far enough?
It’s no secret that most religions have things in common and similar myths and legends. That’s especially true for those who have succeeded each other in a certain area or social group, in fact in this case some of the myths and legends can be said to be identical, only the names being changed and the story retold in such a way as to appear to support the teachings of the new religion. I’m not going to give examples, if you’re interested I assume you already know several such cases and you can do your own research anyway.
Starting from that, it’s not difficult to reach the conclusion that there is a common source from which all those stories have been adapted. That should make people with different religious views more tolerant of each other, but of course those who are unwilling to be tolerant won’t be and instead they’ll use that fact as one more “bullet” against everyone else, saying their religion is the “true” one and all others are inspired from it. Of course, anybody who actually thinks for just a second will realize that such a conclusion is most likely to mean that no religion is the “true” one, each having been inspired by stories told at the time it was founded, seen from a new perspective and perhaps connected with certain other events that might have actually happened at the time. That realization should make everyone think things more thoroughly and become more willing to discuss their beliefs with others, in hopes of figuring out some more pieces of the Truth.
But if you ride that train of thought a little further you have to wonder what you could find if you’d go back far enough. Yes, they do seem to have common sources, but are they real? Are we talking about real events that actually happened and then have been retold and used for various purposes through the ages or are we talking about misunderstood natural phenomena that have mistakenly been given a mystical significance? Or, worst of all, are we talking about stories invented by somebody many thousands of years ago for the sole purpose of controlling others, stories so effective that they still work to this day, and perhaps so effective that even those who use them to control others these days believe them themselves?
If you could go back far enough, how dark would the secrets you’d uncover be? How frightening? How disheartening? Knowing that possibility and assuming you could go back and find out, would you be willing to do it? I’m not asking militant atheists, those would certainly be more than willing, just like I’m not asking those who are determined to believe in something no matter what, those would certainly be completely unwilling, I’m asking everyone who considers themselves to be open-minded when it comes to this issue while still believing in something. Scary prospect, isn’t it? But food for thought…
I don’t know how I’d answer that question, to be honest. And I’m saying that even though my beliefs rely more on different states of energy and the existence of highly evolved entities than myth and legend, plus that I do find myself often wondering what if there’s nothing really there… I guess I can sometimes be serious about my beliefs and somewhat agnostic at the same time. Yet even though I know it’s highly unlikely for any of the current religious views, including my own, to really be correct, even though my own beliefs wouldn’t be shattered by the revelation that these myths and legends aren’t based on real events at all, or they’re based on mundane events which have been misunderstood at the time, and even though I do sometimes take into consideration the possibility that there’s nothing beyond the physical realm, I’d still be edgy if given a hypothetical chance to find out the real sources.
Truth be told, we all need to believe in something and I’m no exception. Yes, for some of us that need to believe translates into the idea that there’s nothing to believe in, but that’s just a belief like any other. The only question is what do we do with that belief…
Personally, I’d rather stick to the idea that any religious belief that’s imposed on others or claims to be the “one true religion” is wrong, but any that stays at a personal level can be as close or as far from the Truth as any other or none at all. What worries me are all the people who don’t see it that way and would want everyone to believe as they do, those who wouldn’t accept any evidence that they’re wrong even if it’d stare them right in the face…