Chapter 1012: The Story of Religion

Humans will feel "fear" when facing unknown things. This state of "beyond one's conscious understanding" actually means "danger".

If everything in the world is unresolved, if there is nothing that can guarantee that one will not lose breath tomorrow, if there is something that can make one's next hunt lose everything...

Humans who have just gained the ability to think begin to be afraid of this kind of thing.

The brain circuits that were originally used to identify the information of the same kind of communication will try to identify the "emotions" of the vast "unknown" under this drive.

Of course, they will not be able to identify successfully. This is essentially just a bug at the genetic level.

However, just as humans will use imagination to make up for the lack of vision, they will imagine a supernatural being that does not exist and thinks like a human to explain all this, to make illusory guarantees to them, to reassure them.

Humans imagined "God".

Then, just as there will be "agreements" between people, humans will try to make "agreements" with "God". People live according to the "promise" and offer sacrifices to gods, and gods also follow the "promise" to relieve humans of their fear of the unknown.

This is also inseparable from the role of substances such as tetrahydrocannabinol.

The smoke of natural hallucinogens rises and merges with human imagination. Gods are born in it.

Yuki combined the cognitive science knowledge he learned while practicing internal skills and Xiangshan's casual teachings to understand the content of the book. This work, which was written in 1999, is indeed subject to some limitations of the times. At that time, humans had not yet completed the human genome project, optogenetics had not yet been born, and the brain was equivalent to a black box with only a corner opened for humans. Evolutionary psychology had just sprouted, and many concepts that later scholars easily accepted were still "unknown" to the writer of this book.

However, combined with some subsequent discoveries, the content of this book can be better understood.

"In other words, primitive religion was born by humans to explain the world..."

Yuki nodded, then shook his head.

This should not be the Six Dragons Cult.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, "science" has become the only powerful witchcraft.

The world explained by science may not necessarily be the most acceptable to people, but it is definitely the most powerful.

Humans no longer need other means to explain the world.

Besides, these Six Dragons believers did not show any particularly strange worldviews. The world they know is still scientific.

Whether it is the information obtained by the master from reading the memories of the Six Dragons believers or the information obtained through communication, it is expressed in this way.

Yuki continued to read.

"Another feature of primitive religion is that it conforms to the most intuitive and instinctive values ​​of human beings... Well, that's it..."

Primitive religions often have one tribe believing in one god. This "god" is the guarantee of the scale of the tribe. Primitive humans imagined such a supernatural existence to guarantee the agreement between each other, and people were willing to believe that the people around the tribe were on "their" side.

In primitive times, people in a tribe usually had natural blood ties.

"Love" is the foundation of everything. "Love" first refers to the love between relatives with blood relations, and then it can be extended to others. Due to the instinct of social animals, people will naturally love their blood relatives.

The same is true for the religion used as an example in the book.

Since this book was written "at the turn of the millennium, at the invitation of the bookseller", it is mainly analyzed based on the religious leader at the origin of the calendar.

Before that religious leader, the sect he believed in was like this. At the beginning, that sect was "the patron saint of a nomadic tribe", and the military culture represented by "the Lord of Hosts" also permeated the most primitive belief of this god.

As the "patron saint of the tribe", the belief of this god advocates "love between members of the tribe".

"Love", the love of a group of people held together by blood ties and family relationships, is the foundation of this belief.

That god is a "jealous god" - "a jealous and evil god". Although "jealousy" that destroys love is a sin within this belief, God's jealousy is different. God loves believers with exclusive desire, just like a husband loves his wife. If believers believe in other things, that is, "evil", he will be "jealous".

And this belief also naturally advocates "love of neighbors" - because for nomadic tribes, "neighbors" are family members and relatives who are slightly distant.

This nomadic tribe named "Hebrew" was determined to live in the same community with the same tribe even in the later civilized era, living in the city, and only being "neighbors" with the same tribe.

This family love similar to "clan" is so deeply rooted.

This belief is firmly "not to be spread to foreigners". For this ethnic group, this belief is their unique spiritual wealth, their private treasure, and cannot be given to outsiders.

Although some people without Hebrew blood are also attracted by this doctrine of "love", they cannot really integrate.

Until the religious leader who "serves as the origin of the calendar" appears.

Here, the author of this book writes: "There have always been many different opinions about Jesus Christ in the academic community. Excluding those absurd and supernatural views, the academic community can be mainly divided into two camps. One camp believes that there was indeed a prophet in the first century AD who carried out religious reforms. The other camp believes that this is a virtual image that has been gathered from hundreds of years of collective creation since the first century AD. Jesus Christ does not exist. He should essentially be a geometric figure of a group of first-century theologians. Here, in order to reduce the cost of understanding, we will assume that such a prophet did exist in the first century AD..."

This prophet redefined the doctrine.

He made additional annotations for "neighbors". When a believer asked him, "What is a neighbor?", he answered, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. By chance a priest was coming down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite, who came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, who was traveling, came where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He put him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him, and I will repay you for anything you spend beyond that when I return.' Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

The believer said, "The one who showed mercy on him."

The religious leader said, "Go and do likewise."

Under this comment, "neighbor" is a religious metaphor. It no longer means "someone who lives close to you in space", but "someone who will have sympathy for you".

The concept of neighbor is precisely the love for distant people that transcends the "circle". The Samaritans were considered by the Jews to be an unclean group with blood pollution, and they discriminated against each other.

There is no doubt that he distorted the doctrine and replaced the thousand-year tradition with his own will.

The so-called "I annotate the Six Classics, and the Six Classics annotate me" is nothing more than this.

Within the religious belief, this leader fulfilled the ancient prophecy, updated the original covenant between the ancient prophets and God, and re-innovated the belief. From then on, the rule of "not preaching to foreigners" was also broken.

The descendants of the nomadic people who originally believed in this god also hated this religious leader. In their view, this religious leader was a traitor who smashed their treasures and gave his family property to outsiders.

Therefore, as a nation ruled by the Roman Empire, they reported to the empire that this religious leader claimed to be the "King of the Jews" and wanted to lead their nation to rebel.

The Roman governor had no ill feelings towards this leader and even gave this leader a fair opportunity.

But this religious leader may be disappointed with his own people, or he may also have the idea of ​​"bloodshed from myself".

This is the demystified version of the famous religious story.

After that, the faith improved by this religious leader became the basis for the lower-class civilians of the empire to unite.

People with no one to rely on organized their strength according to this faith.

Even though the empire once wielded knives against these believers from the lower class, and even used extremely cruel punishments, it did not scare those lower-class people.

Because the rule of the empire...

was already cruel enough.