An article on religion and how the concept of God arose in people from the year 'dot', to this very day...authored by a Preet Mohan S Ahluwalia. It's a little long, but nonetheless very informative, substantiating how things have evolved over the many years that people have lived on this Earth.

Religion and Society

In the past, numerous attempts have been made by people to define religion and its role in our daily lives. Religion is one of the fundamental institutions of human society. As Davis points out:

"so universal, permanent and persuasive is religion in society that unless we understand it thoroughly we shall fail to understand society."[1]

While contending that religious practices are rooted in society, Durkheim writes:

"there are no religions that are false. All are true in their own fashion; all answer, though in different ways, to the given condition of human existence...If science and philosophy were born of religion, it is because religion began by taking the place of science and philosophy...Men owe it not only a good part of the substance of their knowledge, but also the form in which this knowledge has been elaborated....nearly all great social institutions have been born in religion. If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion."[2]"

The following article is a brief attempt to establish various theories of religion and its impact on society.

Theories On Religion

Lowell W Bloss[3] divides religious theories into five categories: (i) Rationalistic Theories, (ii) Experimental Theories, (iii) Socio-Economic Theories, (iv) Psychological Theories, and (v) Symbolic Theories.

Rationalistic theories are based on the premise that religion is the result of a rational effort to understand basic questions of existence. Interpreters of these theories based their results on observation of primitive man's behavior to his environment. One such interpreter was Edward Burnett Taylor who attempted to prove that religion originated when primitive man asked himself two questions:

(i) What is the difference between a living and a dead person? A dead body appears little different from the body of a sleeping individual. Why then will one decay while the other will revive?

(ii) What are those shapes that appear in dreams? How could a friend who has died appear in a dream or how could the dreamer leave his body and travel in dreams?

These two questions led the primitive man to posit a soul or spirit which left the body permanently at death, but continued to exist in phantom shape. Taylor calls this belief in souls Animism. Since plants and animals lived and died, it was deduced that they too possessed a soul. Natural phenomenon such as earthquakes, avalanches, etc were thought to be caused by spirit in nature. This gave rise to primitive myths, rituals and beliefs. This reasoning of the primitive man, according to Taylor, is analogous to a child who talks to animals and toys believing these to be rational and alive.

Like Taylor, James George Frazer believes that before religion there was an era in which early man attempted to control nature through magical means. Here, too, the primitive man made two observations:

(i) Like produces like - If rain were desired, a primitive would climb a tree and, accompanied by drums and fire to imitate thunder and lightning, start urinating.

(ii) Law of Contagion - This was based on the belief that objects once in contact will continue to affect each other though they may be parted. Thus a magician may burn an article of clothing to control the person from whom they were taken.

Now man felt he could control and manipulate natural events. However, doubt arose when he found himself incapable of totally controlling nature at his will. Hence came the concept of deities and primitive gods, to whom man directed his worship.

Later, Andrew Lang suggested that when primitive man began making tools, he was confronted with the question:

Who is the maker of myself and the good things of this world?

This led the primitive to believe in a monotheistic non-natural man; a god who is the Father of all things and who has concern for the ethics of his children. It led the primitive into worshipping the deity in awe and obedience. Lang labeled this belief, in the creator, religion. Lang distinguishes religion from mythology, which to him is a product of fanciful and crude imagination. These beliefs gradually bring about the degradation of the faith in a pure moral creator. And, religion falls from rationality and morality to irrationality and mythology.

French sociologist Emile Durkheim begins his argument that religion is a social phenomenon. His conclusions were based upon analyzing the religion of Australian Aborigines. To Durkheim religion served a useful function by fostering a stable and secure culture. Influenced by the views of Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx believed religion to be a projection of human wants and traits on an imagined figure of God. By projecting his own traits to God man has alienated himself. To Marx religion was man-made. Being an illusionary realization it provided man with compensation for suffering. The oppressed are directed to await the promise of religion and not to attempt to change reality. Marx felt that religion would die if man realizes his true humanness and develops an attitude of love and respect for fellow humans.

Unfortunately, the proponents of the socio-economic theory of religion failed to deal in depth a deeper feeling attributed by some as religious experience. No doubt, social aspects of religion were important but was there something beyond that. The discoveries in psychology and the research of anthropologists have allowed religionists to perceive primitive man as a human dealing with basic problems like our own and answering these questions in mytho-poetic manner. Sigmund Freud linked religious phenomenon to the psychological development of the child. The belief in the all powerful Father arises in an infant's helplessness. This powerlessness arouses in the child the desire to cling to a human father for protection and love. When the child reaches adulthood he realizes that his human father falls short of his infantile image.

Freud believes that this situation leads mankind to project a magnified father to the heavens, assuring punishment of those who make us suffer and explaining the privations caused by the rules of society. Also, dreams for Freud expressed unfulfilled or repressed wishes. He, therefore did not dismiss myths as fantasies but human wishes having underlying truth about human wishes and desires. Carl Gustav Jung, a student of Freud, gave a greater scope to the definition of religion than Freud. Symbols were the mode by which the unconscious side of the psyche speaks to the conscious part of the personality. It judges the personality for it represents a message about an imbalance, but it also possesses a power to bring about a new balance. For Jung, this symbol can never be translated, for it affects the total personality including the will, the emotions and the reason. The result of the correct openness to a series of dreams is the healing of the psychic imbalance. This imbalance shows itself in an intense experience of wholeness. Jung equates this experience, which is beyond expression, with the religious experience of the mystic.

One of the early proponents of Symbolic Theory of Religion was an anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski. Myths, Malinowski points out, are not viewed by the primitives as mere stories but as revealing the sacred basis of life.

"Myth fulfils in primitive culture an indispensable function; it expresses, enhances and codifies belief; it safeguards and enforces morality; it vouches for the efficacy of ritual and contains practical rules for the guidance of man. Myth is thus a vital ingredient of human civilization; it is not an idle tale, but a hard-working active force; it is not an intellectual explanation or an artistic imagery, but a pragmatic character of primitive faith and wisdom"

Mircea Eliade believes that religious phenomenon can only be justly dealt with if they are seen as something religious.

"To try to grasp the essence of such a phenomenon by means of psychology, physiology, sociology, economics, linguistics, art, or another study is false; it misses the one thing unique and irreducible element in it - the element of the sacred."

Of course, he continues, there are no pure religious phenomenon because religion as human must also reveal social, psychological and other fundamental aspects of human culture. More specifically, religion exists wherever man experiences a force that is alive, significant, powerful and real as against the profane that is ordinary, undifferentiated and meaningless. It is seen as extraordinary and full of the power of life. The experiencer noting the life-giving force of this sacred object wishes to participate in this power. He therefore orients his whole existence around the sacred.

For Eliade, a truly religious symbol reveals the real or life-power which is not ordinarily evident. The symbol is also able to express the paradoxical while it speaks to a specific existential situation. In this situation, the symbol, as it did for Jung, judges man - reveals something about his existence. In this sense myths reveal powerful activity of the sacred. To Eliade, myth involves participation. The primitive participating in the sacred.

Eliade contrasts the actions of religious people to the mode of life of modern man. He states that while the one seeks to make his life meaningful by participating in the sacred, the other leads a life in the profane, making his own destiny and disdaining the experience of the sacred. Eliade believes that modern man has closed himself to an important human possibility - that of being religious. It is an effort to challenge man to this possibility which would give his life greater depth.

The final category of interpreters of religion is that of the Romantics or Experimental who stressed the intuitive and emotional side of mankind. The most important interpreter of this theory was Rudolf Otto. Otto believes that religion arises in a mystical experience. This experience is totally independent of and irreducible to emotion and feeling, as well as of reason. It arises from a source in the deepest recesses of the human soul that is independent of ordinary senses. Otto contends that, while the experience comes into being amid feelings and in the midst of sensory data, it does not arise out of any of these. The category of religion, for Otto, is the category of the holy. Since this term is ordinarily equated with ethics he coins a term, the 'numinous' to designate the irreducible essence of religious experience that cannot be taught but only evoked. The numinous experience is beyond emotion and reason, and therefore, beyond articulation. However, it has a structure.

Otto believes that when one has had the numinous experience, one is aware of something 'wholly other' outside one's self. This wholly other gives rise to great wonder and blank astonishment to which Otto assigns the term, 'mysterium.' The wholly other's mysterium leads to two other feelings: that of 'tremendum' and that of 'fascinans.' The first is that of religious fear or awe; while the second allures or fascinates the experiencer. However, Otto warns that the he uses words fear or awe only as ideograms that are to provoke the mind and point beyond the ordinary meaning of the word. He is not expressing the experience with such words but only approximating it.

According to Otto, the doctrine of judgement and divine wrath arise from the tremendum aspect, for this induces a feeling of absolute insignificance, dependence and unrighteousness in the experiencer. The element of fascians, on the other hand, leads to the doctrines of grace and salvation, for the experiencer is allured to God by feelings of justice, power and love. Experience and expression are necessary elements in every religious system. The experience must lead to expression for it to speak meaningfully to a specific historical situation. However, expression must continually renew itself in experience or it may become dogma devoid of depth, significance and feeling.

Otto remains one of the most important interpreters of religion. By designating a category of the psyche beyond comprehension - an a priori category that we possess by the fact that we are human - and by positing the numinous as sui generis, so that religion can only be expressed in religious terms, and not reduced to another human dimension such as reason or society, Otto added a necessary dimension of depth to religious phenomenon. If his work is taken seriously, one cannot dismiss religion as merely reason, emotion, or as a reflection of social or economic needs, but must be seen as a separate element of human existence.

Like Otto, Joachim Wach perceives all religious systems as springing from the experience of the numinous which leads to expression. Religious experience for Wach must first be a response to what is experienced as Ultimate Reality. Secondly, it must be one that involves the total individual and awakens a total response. The experience also involves elements of humanness and more. It also involves all aspects of human existence from society, to economics and ethics. It must be the most intense and profound experience of which man is capable. It should be marked by the utmost degree of thrill, zeal and enthusiasm. The fourth criterion is that the experience issues in action. An action that drives the experiencer to communicate his intense feelings. These feelings give rise to beliefs about - how man must orient his life and how he must act towards Ultimate Reality and other humans.

Wach feels that the expression in thought attempts to answer three questions:

(i) What is the nature of the Ultimate Reality that has been so intensely experienced and what is its relationship to man and the universe?

(ii) Why was the world created by Ultimate Reality and what are His plans for the earth?

(iii) What is the meaning of life? Was I placed on earth to do a task?

These questions must be answered in view of the religious experience. The religious experience also gives rise to expression in action. Action takes two primary modes in Wach's scheme:

(i) Patterns of worship, which service, respect and adore the Ultimate Reality

(ii) Actions that involve ethics, or service to God.

Wilfred Cantwell Smith's theory is based on the contention that religiosity springs from the experience of God or the Transcendent, and that it is man's faith in this God - which is the essence of religion. Smith judges that Christians and Muslims have too often come to believe in and to defend their traditional systems instead of placing their faith in God. In other words, a limited and human conceptualization has been substituted for a deeply personal and vivid faith. Smith endeavors to replace the term religion with what he calls 'faith' and 'cumulative tradition.' The former refers to active personal experience of and commitment to God while the latter means rites and doctrines specific to a particular religion.

Act of Revelation And Monotheism

"Generally, we can define revelation as a direct manifestation of God by word, command, action, or event, at a different time and place."[4] "The word revelation (removing the veil) has been used traditionally to mean the manifestation of something hidden, which cannot be approached through ordinary ways of gaining knowledge."[5] "Revelation is the manifestation of what concerns us Ultimately. The mystery which is revealed is of Ultimate concern to us because it is ground of our being."[6]

The Ultimate, according to Paul Tillich, is God Himself. According to Rajinder Kaur[7], Revelation is self-manifestation or self-communication of God to rational beings; it is knowledge about His reality and purpose. God , personally, never appears before man, but He chooses someone as His medium who propagate His revealed word to fellow human beings.

Revelation occurs in human history, either through the medium of 'a word', 'an event,' or 'intuition'. But,

"revelation is not only, the word of God which is communicated through the word of Prophets, but it is at the same time an action of God in history, an act of God, which cannot be ranged under the heading of the 'word' or the speech of God."[8]

God enters into human history through some specially produced events. Something extraordinary occurs indicating the will of God to reveal, and every such event always has some purpose to reveal. It is held that whenever and wherever, He realizes that people are worshipping gods or other natural phenomenon, He sends His message, for the people to bring them out of darkness and lead them towards the way of one God worship.

God first revealed to Abraham near 1700 BC. The tradition preserved in Joshua (24:3) admits that Abraham's ancestors were polytheists. Abraham's vacation however marked a sharp cleavage with the past.[9] And with the help of revealed idea of God, he rejected the gods of his fathers. God of Abraham was the only deity worshipped by the Patriarchs. They called this God by the name Yahweh.

Later, God revealed to Moses, who told his people:

"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord."[10]

Out of His Ten Commandments which He gave to Moses on the Mount Sinai, the first was:

"I am the Lord thy God...thou shall not have any strange gods before me."[11]

In the Christian faith, Christ is the revelation of God on earth. Christians believe that God Has revealed His ultimate purpose for the world in a real human life, which lived within the realm of history under conditions of time and space.[12] Christ, to Christians, is the incarnation of God and God's final intervention in history is done through Christ, His son. Christ is thought to be the word of God, because his sole existence is thought to be the revelation of God. Here too, through Christ God rejected the existence of gods and affirm His monotheistic existence.

"This is the first, listen, O Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart."[13] In the same gospel, Jesus says, "He is one, there is no other."[14]

When people in Arabia were worshipping many gods, natural objects and forces, God revealed to Mohammmad. Out of the basic Islamic doctrines, Iman, the belief in one God is the main and the first one. It is believed that when Mohammad received the first verse of revelation from God, through an angel Gabriel, he went into the jungle, "from all the sides whereof he heard the voice crying out loud, Mohammad thou art the apostle of God, the most high and I am the angel Gabriel." Qur'an says, "there is no god but He, there is no god but thou, there is no god but I."[15]

Before Guru Nanak (1569 AD) people in India were worshipping many gods and other forces of nature. God chose Guru Nanak as the Prophet, in his time and place. Guru Nanak himself says,

"I speak what I'm commanded to say."[16]

And,

"These words have been spoken by Him, who created the world."[17]

The revelation which Guru Nanak received was an intuitive revelation.

Intuition is having a direct experience of God through the direct communion with God.[18] Whatever was received and propagated by Guru Nanak was the outcome of his communion with God. The very first parable of Sikh faith tells about God's monotheistic existence. Mul Mantra which is the crux of Sikhism starts with Ek Oankar. From then onward, whatever Guru Nanak proclaimed was the revealed truth from God, rejecting the worship of other gods and forces.

The collection of verses written by Guru Nanak and other successor Gurus and some like-minded saints is the Sikh Scripture, Guru Granth Sahib. Guru Granth Sahib has the singular distinction of being a Scripture written by the Prophets themselves. This step was a logical necessity for the Sikh Prophets compiled God's Word in its truest and purest form.

Thus, even though, God makes use of man's reasoning or wisdom, to receive and propagate - the message to the people, it is not the human mind or wisdom but God who is the source of bestowing to the people the knowledge about Himself. Whatever the Prophets or messengers told us was delivered by God Himself, as Karl Jaspers, says:

"If they thought about it, the depth of their words unmatched to this day, and at times of an eternal validity that no one can ignore was probably beyond their comprehension. It could not be their invention, nor the work of men. They bowed to something greater, something encompassing that made them feel like tools."[19]

According to Jabir Singh Ahluwalia[20], to distinguish eternity from its createdness, 'aad' refers to logical beginning and 'jugad' refers to temporal, historical beginning. With its holistic integral vision Sikhism postulates that God qua Spirit descends in time, in history, in historical time. The Self manifesting Spirit is revealed from time to time. Hence, no religion can claim to be full and final revelation. Guru Nanak stresses, in the Japji, the inexhaustibility of the attributes of the Divine and relativity of the human modes of perception, and figuratively expresses this idea in this way: The brave see God in the form of Might; the intellectual comprehends Him in the form of Light (of knowledge); the aesthete perceives the Divine in His aspect of Beauty; the moralist envisions Him as Goodness, etc.

Different revelations of the Spirit are like the variety of different seasons which refer back to the same Sun. Says Guru Nanak:

Numerous are the seasons emanating from the one Sun Numerous are the guises in which the Creator appears

For Sikh religion, all revelations of God are equally co-valid, having been given to man relative to the variables of time and place. This rules out any rule for dogmatic assertion of fullness and finality of any single religious revelation as well as for religious totalitarianism which is not accepted in Sikhism. All revelations being relatively co-valid, no "ism" - religious or secular - can claim to be the sole way to God, the exclusive path to salvation. Says Guru Amar Das:

The world is ablaze O Lord, shower your benediction. Through whichever door it can be delivered Save it that way.

This accounts for the basis and significance of religious pluralism in Sikhism. From here it follows that unity of different religions - or the global ethic - need not be artificially conceptualized on the basis of the lowest denominator common to all religions; it can rather be realized spontaneously on the basis that different religions are different stages of the revelation of the one and the same Divine Spirit manifest in different forms in different faiths. The descent of the Divine Spirit in time is, in a sense, the ascent of man in his spiritual development.

Down Philosophers Lane

For Pythagoras,[21] the visible world is false and illusionary, a hazy medium in which heavenly light is obscured by the mist and darkness of the world. He was other-worldly and ascetic in his methods. However, he was also scientific in his outlook. He accepted the reality of only the mystic and the spiritual world. On the other hand, to Socrates the supernatural world was more real than the world of senses, and that the soul was immortal. He too, was other-worldly and strongly ascetic. The idea of other-worldliness and consequent deliverance from this bad world, was so strong in him that he asked his companion, Crito, to give a cock to Asclepius which was an offering or sacrifice made at the time of one's death in token of one's deliverance from this mundane world. He was a man of free thought who sought justice and truth. For him, no one commits a wrong knowingly, and therefore, imparting knowledge of the good was the way to bring justice to society.

For Plato, there is a God and the eternal world of ideas which is the archetype of the created world. God did not create the world, but only arranged it and He alone can undo it. The soul is immortal, but the present world is illusory and cannot be compared to the supernatural world of ideas which alone is real and eternal. For Plato there is a dualism between the soul and body; reality and appearance. The soul is, thus, unhappy and confused in the sensible world. It can be happy only while in contemplation of eternal things; and in this state gains real wisdom. The body is doubly evil, since it hinders true knowledge of the eternal or spiritual world of Absolute Good and Absolute Beauty, gained only through spiritual or mystic experience. Full knowledge of things eternal can be only had after death.

Both Socrates and Plato, though other-worldly felt it necessary for society to have a philosopher who would play the role of a guide. Plato believed that if a virtuous man did not become a philosopher he would become a bee in his next birth. He believed in transmigration and thought that those who lived a bad life in this world would become women at the time of their next birth. Despite the dichotomy of his thought and its other-worldliness he shows interest in the physical world. To some extent his Utopia is modeled on the practices that existed in Sparta. Plato too divides men into four classes, namely, guardians, soldiers, common people and the slaves. Human equality was missing and it was the duty of the Government to decide for which category a person was fit. Notwithstanding all this, it is true that no other person has so profoundly influenced, Greek, Christian and Western thought, as has Plato.

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