Modern-Day Cave Paintings - Without the Art

JoeCarl

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Sunday November 15, 2015 · 11:00 PM PST

2015/11/15 · 23:00

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Millennia after we emerged from the cave, we cling to the paintings on its walls: modern man turning to sympathetic magic to better the hunt. We've traded the cave for massive cathedrals and pretentious temples, and we’ve traded the paintings for prayers, but the act is the same. Well, almost.

Cave paintings at least were about the hunt. Paganism was about the hunt. Monotheism couldn’t care less about the hunt. What we really traded is hope for servitude: hope that the physical universe is persuadable for servitude to some magical creature outside of the physical universe. Humans went looking for the cosmos of "Field of Dreams" but settled for intrusive restrictions on their lives and for the opportunity to have sacrifice and adoration demanded of them by an unprovable and improbable authority. Genital mutilation was thrown in as a bonus.

Finally, we also settled for being manipulated by the all too human representatives of one or another improbably authority, manipulated into everything from wearing silly clothes to committing murderous acts of terror.

Religion does offer that stuff about eternal life. Unfortunately, the offer cannot be verified and has disputed criteria. Worse, it includes an all too easily realized, catastrophic alternative in which the loving god that supposedly created both man and his nature tortures man with eternal, inescapable pain for having that nature.

Who would worship such a god? And of those who would, how far might some of them go?

Humans invented religion for the same reason we always have turned to magical thinking. But with religion, we got it backwards: instead of using magic to manipulate our environment, we ended up with the worst among us using religion to manipulate us.

We were better off in the cave.

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