In Neanderthal burials, dated from about 100,000 years ago, items were found placed in graves to accompany the deceased in the hereafter. This is the earliest known burial with items.
The belief in the hereafter has been a feature of every culture ever since.
Throughout history religions became more and more organized and powerful and dominated the lives of man. This was an easy evolution since while man believed in the hereafter the whole concept remained fearful, mysterious and unknowing.
Thus it was easy for organized religion to capitalize on this. Also organized religions have never embraced any form of democracy which led inevitable to the excesses of unlimited power.
The Roman Emperor Constantine around the year 350 AD decreed that Christianity would be the official religion of the Roman empire.
Fifty years prior to that you could be killed for being a Christian but only fifty years after Constantine decreed Christianity to be the religion of Rome you could be killed for not being a Christian.
We tend to think that all those terrible excesses are a thing of the past with the exception, perhaps, of some crazy religious groups. But deep down lurks the feeling that the powerful grip of organized religion is more pervasive than we care to believe.
In 1966 an Israeli psychologist, George Tamarin, decided to investigate how powerful the grip of religion is.
He presented to one thousand Israeli children (ages 8 to 14) the account of the battle of Jericho from the Book of Joshua. Joshua said to the people: ”Shout; For the Lord has given you the city. And the city and all that is within shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction….But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord ; they shall go into the treasury of the Lord”….Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women young and old, oxen sheep and asses with the edge of the sword…And they burned the city with fire, and all within it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord. (More on George Tamarin on the Internet).
Then Tamarin asked the children: “Do you think that Joshua and the Israelites acted morally righly or wrongly.” Sixty-six percent said they totally approved; 26 percent totally disapproved.
As a control Tamarin gave another group of the equivalent ages, the same text but with Joshua’s own name replace by “General Lin” and “Israel” replaced by “a Chinese kingdom 3,000 years ago.”
Only 7 percent approved and 75 percent disapproved.
In other words if loyalty to Judaism was removed from the equation the vast majority of children agreed with the moral judgment that most of us would agree with.
While there seems to be more and more groups of religious radicals I believe that this is not the case but appears so due to the immense amount of information available to us today.
In fact the availability of information may well be the reason that we are becoming more secular, that is less religious.
For example only a few years ago no one would dare to admit he was an atheist or a homosexual.
Today no problem.
Today we are much more tolerant and consequently more democratic.
Theodore Theodorsen
Manhasset
