Steps, Faith to Reason

By William C. White

For centuries books have changed lives.
Some even improved lives.

This book provides an historical sketch of mankinds path during the past four millennia with a focus on mankinds use of faith and reason as faculties to guide life. Along this path there have been endless efforts to guide human lives; some even sought to reduce the brutishness of humans. Among the early efforts to encourage civility in human behavior were tenets, doctrines of faith-based religions. With faith, as used in this copy, one accepts without question doctrines and tenets of a religion. Later along mankinds path, reason developed as a faculty enabling one to question, to seek truths and to use integrity, ethics and morality to do what is right.
As in any path, there are increments of progress, steps, which serve as landmarks along the way. Reason, with rational thinking, got a foothold in the second millennium BCE, beginning a transfer by mankind in using reason rather than faith as a faculty to guide human life. The text describes some of the more progressive, landmark steps by 11 historical figures in the path of mankind illustrating advantages of reason as a faculty to guide ones life. Many instances could mark the beginning of this path, but the one selected for the copy is the story of Abraham. With this person, beginning in Mesopotamia, the path traverses westward to the life of Thomas Paine in Paris, London and Philadelphia.
The objective in this copy is to help the reader comprehend these progressive steps in utilizing reason rather than faith as a faculty to guide ones life and to correct intolerance, injustice and other brutishness of humanity. Relevant historical information on the notable humans taking these steps, and on their times, hopefully will provide useful illumination for the steps described.

White examines how men from Abraham and Seneca to Voltaire and Thomas Paine helped establish the use of reason rather than faith as a guide for mankind.
Steps, Faith to Reason is nothing short of the history of Western thought condensed into a single, easily understood volume.
ForeWord Clarion Review

[Steps, Faith to Reason]represents the authors sober assessment of the intellectual path humanity has taken from theocracy to secularity, from the ubiquity of religion to the use of scientific thought.
Blue Ink Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 26, 2009
• ISBN: 9781449032210

Book preview

STEPS, FAITH TO

REASON

by

William C. White

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© 2009, 2013 William C. White. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 6/26/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4490-3222-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-3221-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009910194

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1.       The Journey

Chapter 2.       Two Guides For The Path

Chapter 3.       Right And Wrong

Chapter 4.       Abraham

Chapter 5.       Socrates

Chapter 6.       Lucretius

Chapter 7.       Seneca

Chapter 8.       Maimonides

Chapter 9.       Petrarch

Chapter 10.       Montaigne

Chapter 11.       Bacon

Chapter 12.       Voltaire

Chapter 13.       David Hume

Chapter 14.       Thomas Paine

Chapter 15.       Connecting The Steps

References

About The Author

PREFACE

The path of civilized mankind is on the order of four to five millennia. Compared with an approximate age of 4.5 billion years for our planet earth, this period of civilization is very short. Though very short and recent, comparatively speaking, this period of civilization is the one most relevant to mankind.

This text provides an historical sketch of mankind’s path during the past four millennia with a focus on mankind’s use of faith and reason. Along this path there have been endless efforts to guide human lives. Some of these efforts even sought to reduce the brutishness of humans. Among the early efforts to encourage civility in human behavior were tenets, doctrines of faith-based religions. With faith, as used in this copy, one accepts without question doctrines and tenets of a religion. Somewhat later along mankind’s path, reason would develop, a faculty enabling one to question, to seek truths and to use integrity, ethics and morality to do what is right.

As with any path, there are increments of progress – steps – which serve as landmarks along the way. Reason, with rational thinking, finally got a foothold in the second millennium BCE, beginning a transfer by mankind in using reason rather than faith as a guide for human life. The text describes some of the more progressive, landmark steps in the path of mankind illustrating advantages of reason as a faculty to guide one’s life. The path begins with Abraham from Mesopotamia and traverses westward with Thomas Paine in Philadelphia, London and Paris.

The objective in this copy is to help the reader to comprehend these progressive steps, contrasting faith and reason as faculties to guide one’s life and to correct intolerance, injustice and other brutishness of humanity. Relevant historical information on the notable humans taking the steps, and on their times, hopefully will provide useful illumination for the steps described.

The choice between the two faculties, faith and reason, continues to remain for the individual reader. Mankind’s path in the future very well may depend on the collective choices between these two.

Chapter 1.

THE JOURNEY

An appropriate beginning for a review of some steps from religious faith to reason by mankind is to examine our planet, that spherical mass providing both the origin and journey of mankind. The purpose of this examination is to provide a view of the scales of time and mass of the planet we call earth, and to sketch the path of mankind’s origin as a creature of nature.

By some measures, an account of the earth is a long one. By other measures, such an account is a short one. And, by some comparisons, the earth is but a speck of matter.

Using the earthly year (the 365 days the earth takes to complete an orbit around the sun), astrophysicists calculate that the earth and its companion planets in our solar system are 4.54 Ga, giga annun, or 4.54 billion years old¹. As the centerpiece of a solar system, the sun performs two key roles: through its gravitational pull it keeps the planets in order orbiting the sun; and as a giant thermonuclear fusion furnace converting hydrogen to helium, it emits light energy for the solar space.

Compared with a calculated age of 13.7 billion years for the universe², this solar system with one star and eight planets (with Pluto removed in 2006 CE) is relatively young. Likewise, in the Milky Way galaxy, (a cluster of stars, including our sun, held together by gravity), our solar system is relatively young compared with an age of 11 to 13 billion years for the Milky Way. This single galaxy is enormous, containing countless solar systems and measuring approximately 150,000 light years across. With what may be a senseless effort, we try to imagine the magnitude of the universe that contains countless galaxies consisting of ordinary matter, plus much more unseen dark matter, and lots of space-stretching dark energy.

Thus, compared with the age of other masses in our galaxy and other matter in the universe, the planet earth is a relatively young bit of mass. Yet, just very recently, it has produced mankind, a minuscule bit of thinking matter with thousands of proteins optimized over billions of years. Strikingly different from any other known matter, this human matter has the capability of understanding, ranging from the nature of stars in the sky to molecules of living matter in the sea.

Our star, the sun, compared with the earth is enormously huge. The celestial ball we call earth has a diameter of 12,740 km, 7,918 miles. The diameter of the sun, however, is on the order 1,380,000 km…108 times that of the earth. This star, approximately 93 million miles from earth, is also huge on the scale of mass. Compared with its eight twirling planets, their many moons and other solar debris (now including Pluto), approximately 98 percent of the total mass of our solar system is in a single body, the sun. As a large gravitational thermonuclear furnace, the mass of the sun is approximately 92 percent hydrogen, the most abundant chemical element in the universe.

Thus, the planet earth is just a small bit of matter compared with its sun and with other bodies in the Milky Way galaxy and in the universe. Planet earth, however, is home to mankind, Homo sapiens, Latin for wise man. This planet, with a finite mass, also has a finite lifespan dictating that it, like all creations of nature, eventually will slip into the abyss of oblivion. The lifespan of mankind’s planet is unknown, but there are somewhat sobering estimates by scientists, that the sun, the crown jewel of our solar system, will cease to exist as a star in approximately five billion years. Projections are that as the sun burns out, it will consume the earth, leaving quite a lot of time for mankind to cut some more paths.

Shifting to the scale of time for the earth’s existence, there is abundant evidence³ that of the creatures evolving on earth, mankind is a new-comer. Information on his evolution points to his existence of only several hundred thousand years, and that of his earliest ancestors to several million years. Some mileposts may help illustrate how recently mankind’s existence has been.

Precambrian Era   4.54 billion years to 542 million years ago. This geologic period, the oldest and longest, covers nearly 90 percent of the earth’s history, from formation 4.54 billion years to 542 million years ago. In this Era, the oceans, continents and atmosphere formed and single-celled bacteria and multi-celled microorganisms appeared. Perhaps the most notable development in this Era was that of photosynthetic bacteria between ca.3.2 and ca.2.4 billion years ago⁴. These remarkable single-cell organisms could convert energy of sunlight into chemical energy and simultaneously oxidize water to oxygen, extracting four electrons from two molecules of water to form free oxygen, O2. (The electrons produced in photosynthesis are used to reduce CO2 to carbohydrates, beginning the process of packing energy in organic compounds. The free oxygen produced provides for our aerobic atmosphere.) How these organisms evolved with this signal achievement, including the generation of that marvelous molecule chlorophyll remains one of the great mysteries in the evolution of life as we understand it today. Such organisms long preceded terrestrial plants that did not appear until some 430 million years ago…early in the next Era.

Paleozoic Era   542 to 248 million years ago. This Era has been divided into six Periods, Cambrian being the oldest and Permian the youngest. In the Devonian Period, early plants developed, and in the following Carboniferous Period of 60 million years maximum coal formation occurred, resulting from photosynthetic fixation of carbon from the atmosphere. Large reptiles and amphibians marked the Permian Period. At the end of this Period, one of the greatest extinctions of life on earth occurred as evidenced with fossils.

Mesozoic Era   248 to 65 million years ago. The Triassic Period, the first of three in this Era, saw development of the first dinosaurs, crocodiles, turtles and mammals. In the succeeding Jurassic Period, the earliest birds developed along with early large dinosaurs. In the Cretaceous Period, the last of the Mesozoic Era, seed bearing plants likely are the development of key distinction. Another significant event close to the end of this Era was development of symbiotic fixation of atmospheric nitrogen⁵. In this symbiotic system, special bacteria enter roots of legume plants where the bacteria utilize chemical energy of the plant to convert nitrogen of the air into metabolic nitrogen for plants. This symbiotic relationship continues today, providing a major source of nitrogen in the food chain.

Cenozoic Era   65 million years to present. This Era is known as the age of mammals, those creatures with a backbone and that nourish their young with milk. It is also the Era in which mankind appeared. Some data on climatic changes in this Era are worthy of review as a beneficial lesson for mankind. Early in this Era, some 50 million years ago, there is evidence⁶ that the level of C02 in the atmosphere may have topped 1,000 ppm (or 0.1 percent) by volume. With such a level of CO2, one of the greenhouse gases, it is not surprising that global warmth fairly early in this Era resulted in sea levels approximately 50 meters higher than today. Later in this Era, however, marine organisms fixed much of the atmospheric carbon through photosynthesis burying it in the ocean basins. Four connected results of this carbon fixation were: sharply reduced levels of CO2 in the atmosphere to 0.029 percent by three to four million years ago, lower global temperatures, development of ice sheets in Antarctica, and lower sea levels. Such a record of swings of atmospheric CO2 levels in this Era provides a warning to mankind, Homo sapiens, whose existence during just the last several millennia is associated with increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, currently at 0.038 percent.

Some landmarks in the evolution of mankind and his ancestors beginning in the latter part of the Cenozoic Era are useful in visualizing the path leading to Homo sapiens.

Some Early Tracks

Weaving bits of evidence from geology and genetics, anthropologists point to the earliest ancestors of mankind appearing ca. seven million years ago in east Africa⁷. These creatures, given the anthropological name of Australopithecus anamensis, likely were bipedal great apes that walked upright on two feet. Developing this upright stance may have been the result of forest cover disappearing, forcing these creatures to survive in the savannah…perhaps one of the early examples of mankind’s ancestors complying with the principle of challenge and response. Changing from a horizontal position of movement to an upright, vertical position was one of the giant steps of our early ancestors.

This early bipedal creature had two appendages – hands – no longer needed for locomotion which provided a new, highly significant, capability. With hands, handling stones as tools and harvesting nuts, seeds, fruits and tubers propelled further significant developments. Such bipeds may have been the first hunter-gatherers resulting in more versatile and perhaps better diets that, in turn, resulted in larger brain sizes.

Evolutionary progress with this ancestor, however, was rather slow. This feral ancestor took approximately 2 million years to leave the tree completely and to evolve into Homo habilis (handy man, skilled person), the earliest species of the genus Homo, the first human species. A significant increase in brain size was a notable mark of Homo habilis that existed from ca. 2.2 to 1.6 million years ago in east Africa.

A successive link to mankind was Homo egaster, appearing ca. 1.9 million years ago. It represented progress in use of stone tools as axes and cleavers.

Homo heidelbergensis (nicknamed Goliath), one of the successors of Homo egaster, existed in the period of ca. 600,000 to 250,000 years ago. Sources of fossils of this creature include Germany, France and Greece. Homo heidelbergensis, and a related species, Homo erectus, are the closest relatives to Homo sapiens, the earliest forms of which appeared in Africa ca. 400,000 to 200,000 years ago.

Returning to the Precambrian Era, some comparative numbers may be useful. With a scale of one mile being equivalent to 4.5 billion years, a representative age of the earth, and a period of 300,000 years marking existence of Homo sapiens, such a period for this species is equivalent to only 4.2 inches on this time scale for the earth. And, with the same scale, a period of 8,000 years (6000 BCE) dating the beginning of city-states in the Middle East, represents approximately 0.1 of an inch on a time scale of one mile equaling 4.5 billion years, the age of the earth.

From these early tracks, the pace of developments by mankind accelerated where time is measured in thousands, and more recently in hundreds of years. Representative strides of progress by the bipedal mammal, Homo sapiens, up to the early centuries of the Common Era include:

Years Before Common Era (BCE) ⁸, ⁹, ¹⁰, ¹¹, ¹²

Of the innumerable steps by mankind since about 500,000 years ago, Will Durant has identified three critical ones that led from beast to civilization – speech, agriculture and writing¹³. Of these, speech and writing deserve special attention because of their dependence on combined mental and physical capabilities.

For speech, the vocal means of communication, we simply lack evidence of its origin. When this step occurred our ancestors were without means of recording that oral achievement. The one substantial historical fact about speech is that it came long before writing. Anthropologists consider that the origin of simple speech by mankind traces back to animal vocalization, howls, grunts, etc.¹⁴ This capability may have developed as early as 500,000 BCE, likely as a result of interpersonal contacts such as mothers with their infants. Simultaneously, development of vocal cords, the larynx and other structures of our throats, plus the sense of perceiving various sounds, were necessary for speech as we know it today.

After developing speech, hundreds of millennia passed before mankind developed writing as a means of communicating. In this pre-literate period, mankind developed painting, domesticated crops for food and fiber, invented the wheel, developed city-states and created a plethora of gods and goddesses. As Diamond¹⁵ has cited, this period of illiteracy represents 99.9 percent of the five-million year history of the human species and its ancestors.

Clay tablets, bits of pottery and papyrus are the key historical messengers for the origins of literacy, writing and reading, a major development augmenting reliance on memory. In its beginnings, writing likely was a form of drawing, an art, as it still is in languages of Japan and China¹⁶.

A preponderance of evidence points to the Sumerians in lower Mesopotamia being the first to develop writing. It was cuneiform (Latin, cuneus, wedge), a form of picture writing using a stylus or wedge to mark symbols in moist clay. From this, the Sumerians developed linear script ca. 3200 BCE, writing right-to-left in tablets of clay. With their commercial interests, rooted in the bureaucracy of their large city-states, the Sumerians first used cuneiform writing as a tool of commerce to record and transmit records of goods traded.

Developing symbols for ideas and concepts came a few centuries later. On clay tablets the Sumerians recorded notes on their gods and stories of Creation and the Flood¹⁷. By ca. 1800 BCE, the Semitic Akkadians (from the city to the north that became Babylon) had overrun the Sumerians, taking the Sumerian cuneiform language and changing it to read left-to-right. One other note on the Sumerians – one of their famous cities was Ur, located (at that time) on the Euphrates just north of the confluence with the Tigris River. That was the city from which Abraham, reportedly, came, ca. 1750 BCE. More details on him will come later.

The Egyptians were not far behind, perhaps only several centuries, in developing another form of picture writing, hieroglyphics, using a local commodity, papyrus, as a writing surface. From these thought-pictures reading left-to-right came syllabaries, a collection of signs representing syllables¹⁸. Finally, signs, we now know as letters, came to represent the sounds of syllables. These signs became the first letter alphabet ca. 1800 – 1600 BCE.

Some of the earliest records, ca. 1400 BCE, of alphabetical writing, left-to-right, are from Ugarit, a Canaanite port city that later became part of Phoenicia, now a part of northern Syria. However, history records that although the Phoenicians did not invent the alphabet, they were the primary agents transferring it to the Greek and other cultures of the eastern Mediterranean during the ninth and ten centuries BCE. The date of 1500 BCE appears to be the landmark when alphabetical writing, left to right, was underway in the western part of the Fertile Crescent¹⁹.

Adoption of the alphabet by the Greeks from the Phoenicians often is cited between 1200 and 900 BCE. As Durant²⁰ expressed, the development of writing marks the ever-receding point at which history begins. Incidentally, these dates from 1500 to 900 BCE would include the period of King David who may have been one of the early rulers to use a scribe to write records of that time.

The purpose of the preceding sketch is to present a general order and sequence of key steps leading to the origin of mankind, as a creature of nature, and to cite some of the notable developments of his civilization that marked the beginning of its path. The general order of these historical markers is the important point in this sketch.

This outline of mankind’s background also presents compelling evidence that mankind, indeed, is a creature of nature, a creature resulting from a long trail of evolution, just as other creatures of nature. Whether such evidence is convincing, depends upon the reader.

Unlike the laws of states, the laws of nature are inviolate. Evidence cited above strongly supports the principle that the laws of nature apply as fully to a thinking human as they do to a flowering rose or to a bird in flight. Not comprehending this principle or by sidestepping it, early mankind, with a sense of consciousness, curiosity and contemplation, developed concepts of and beliefs in supernatural beings that were above the laws of nature. Results of this mental creativity, and the ability to communicate orally, were to bring into being gods who directed movement of the sun, clouds in the sky, volcanic activity, etc.

At this juncture, a critical question using the singular form is appropriate:

Was mankind the creation of God, or was God the creation of mankind?

How mankind answers this question results in two very different views. If one considers that the available facts fully support the later option, then the question follows, Why and when did mankind create gods?

Why Gods

Perhaps an assessment expressed by Lucretius, a Roman poet and philosopher in the last century BCE, best answers this question. Will Durant cites Lucretius in writing that fear was the first mother of the gods. Fear, above all, of death.²¹ Fear of the mysterious, the unknown, likely resulted in mankind including the celestial bodies, sun and moon, among the early gods. As contradictory as it may appear, the gods mankind created out of fear became sources, themselves, of fear – second to death – for many of mankind.

Associated with this sense of fear was a natural desire for security, mankind’s first motive for action, according to Stewart²². This desire for security, still a dominant part of current living, translates for early mankind as protection from both real and imagined fears including predators, adversaries, vagaries of weather, etc. Paramount among the desires of mankind for protection are means for avoiding death and oblivion. These desires were so dear to mankind that humans empowered their gods to provide alternatives to such a fate, i.e. immortality in paradise (heaven), and also, immortality in misery (hell). With these beliefs, mankind could mentally dodge finality.

Once gods were created, some individuals took upon themselves the right to promote the gods and to explain them to their brethren. These individuals, posing as magicians, priests, prophets, rabbis, and others with special gifts, simply were exercising another motive possessed by mankind…special recognition and power. Steward cites this as another natural motive in life driving mankind to create gods. Possession of unique powers for linking mankind to the gods became a privileged position for a select few, providing even a ruling status for some of these specially gifted individuals who also sought to explain mysteries of nature to mankind. As Steward has written, Priests and preachers are still at it… This motive for recognition, for special status, is still alive today evidenced by special robes, decorations, rings, etc., used by those seeking to justify their personal roles in representing their gods.

Development of Christianity ca. 2,000 years ago involved another motive for creating a god, removal of guilt and redemption. Mental values of good and bad are the precursors of guilt, a plague to introspective reflective thought. Christianity brought to mankind a benevolent, forgiving god whom mankind could ask to cleanse the conscience of perceived wrongdoing. Following a religious ritual, including confession corners, for such cleansing has been and still is much easier for most humans than facing another to admit forthrightly a wrongdoing.

When Gods Appeared

We have no conclusive evidence of when mankind created the first gods. One can only guess that this creation was millennia ago as mankind sought protection from death and oblivion, and from the vagaries of nature threatening food supplies. Security against such fates simply was beyond the grasp of early mankind, hence the creation of supernatural beings²³. These creations also were linked with development of effective use of speech, desire for answers, and the ability to observe some of the cyclic phenomena of nature, e.g., day and night with the apparent coming and going of the sun, phases on the moon, and succession of the seasons. Such reasoning supports the conclusion that creation of the gods began sometime after development of speech, but long before writing.

This reasoning provides a bracket to estimate when mankind first created gods…sometime between development of speech and development of writing, i.e., between 500,000 and 5,000 years ago. Assuming that creation of the first gods was subsequent to domestication of crops (10,000 years BCE), and probably subsequent to development of city-states (6000 BCE), shortens the former bracket considerably.

There is some justification for using, at least as a reference point, some time close to 5,000 years ago, ca. 3000 BCE, for the first existence of gods in the minds of mankind. Some bits of evidence supporting this date come from the ziggurats (translated as rising building) from lower Mesopotamia and Iran. These terraced-like structures, built of baked clay bricks, had a square base with each story smaller than the one below. A temple typically was at the top, the crowning structure. The earliest ziggurats are dated close to the end of the 3rd millennium (ca. 2300-2000 BCE), and the latest in the Sixth Century BCE. The ziggurat at Ur has been a prime source of information on these temple towers.

The purpose for citing the ziggurats is that historians believe that temples at the summit of these terraced-like structures were the earliest known structures by mankind to provide dwelling places for the gods. Such a purpose for these temples illustrates the persistent trait of mankind enduing to his gods many of his own attributes…the need for shelter, sustenance, etc. The height of ziggurats can be associated with two possible motives. One is the early association of heaven with the sky, hence, the desire to increase height of temples to lessen the distance from earth to heaven. Another possible motive was to give the priests dry lodging during floods that were prevalent in Mesopotamia.

These temples, the first for which we have evidence, however, were not places of public worship. They were off-limits to all but special persons, equivalent to priests. With such privileged positions, priests were responsible for caring for the anthropomorphic gods on top of the ziggurats and became powerful leaders competing with kings of the city-state societies. Relics of these powerful priestly roles continue in the Middle East.

With this evidence, one can conclude that Mesopotamia served as one of the earliest cradles for gods, very probably prior to the temple as the crowning feature on the ziggurat, or possibly close to the time of building the ziggurats.

History indicates that gods came a bit later to western civilizations, with the trail running through the Levant (countries bordering the Mediterranean on the east) with limited adoption from Mesopotamia. The Canaanites served as an important transfer agent of gods from the east through the successive Phoenicians, who exchanged goods and concepts with the Egyptians.

One could suspect a connection in purpose, as well as in architecture, of the Egyptians for building the pyramids (ca. 2700-2400 BCE) with the ziggurats in Assyria, Babylon and Sumer. This is not the case, however, as the pyramids (built of stone rather than clay bricks) were not structures on which, or in which, to worship gods. They primarily were tombs to provide care for the pharaohs and their wives in their post-death existence. By the time of the pharaohs, the Egyptian society and economy had provided such luxuries and abundant pleasures for the elite that these rulers may have sought means to perpetuate existence following death, perhaps one of the early seeds for the concept of immortality.

In Egypt, mysteries and myths of the River Nile were dominant among the gods there. For many ancient Egyptians, the pharaohs were gods as well as many gods associated with animals. Also included in Egyptian mythology were the goddesses, dating back to 2500 – 2300 BCE. Egyptian gods and goddesses personified a wide range of aspects of nature. As might be expected, many of these were associated with the Nile River. Notable among the Egyptian deities was Isis, a goddess that served also as a wife and as a mother. She ranks among the oldest of Egyptian deities.

In the following millennium, the Greeks and Romans to the west continued creating a variety of gods for an expanding range of purposes. The epic poem, Iliad, reportedly by Homer in the Ninth Century BCE, is one of the earliest records of gods in Greece, especially those for celestial objects and key earthly features. The Greeks were masters with myths, and likewise in creating gods for their myths. Writings of the Greek bards and philosophers reflect little religious dogma attached to their gods as worship by the Greeks to their gods was heavily weighted with ritual. The Greeks, rather distinctively, typically saw no need for intermediaries between themselves and their gods.

The Romans were equally prolific in creating gods for nearly everything imaginable. This productivity of the Romans may have been rooted in the highly superstitious ancestors of Latium, the area in which Rome developed. Many of the Roman religions required some form of sacrifice. Associated with this ritual were the Vestal Virgins who had to guard the sacred fire for sacrifices in the temples, and Vesta, goddess of the hearth.

Both of these civilizations built temples honoring the entire collection of their gods and goddesses, which remain today as classic monuments to the architectural skills of these civilizations. In Athens, the Greeks built their Parthenon in 447-438 BCE, and the Romans built in Rome their Pantheon 27 BCE.

Now, for another step eastward. With the account of Abraham, Hebrew history began ca. 2000 BCE with its monotheistic religion, Judaism²⁴. In a world of polytheistic peoples, the Hebrews sharply broke ranks with their neighbors by worshiping a single, invisible god, Jehovah.

Two millennia later, this same Semitic people created Christianity, a religion that worships a person they claimed was the son of their god Jehovah. Even the intellectual Jews extended to their god, Jehovah, reproduction capabilities much like their fellow pagans. The life of Jesus Christ, however, was so significant that his birth marked the beginning of the Common Era, CE.

Some 600 years later the Arabs (who claim to be descendants of Ishmael, a son of Abraham by his Egyptian slave, Hagar) had a prophet, Mohammed (570 – 632 CE.), who reportedly received visits from the Angel Gabriel in a cave near Mecca during a period of 20-some years. From these visits, Mohammed developed the Koran, the religious text of Islam for the god Allah, considered by Muslims to be the supreme deity.

To date, the early part of the Seventh Century CE marked the last creation of a god associated with religious worship.

Creating religions, however, would continue. In 1830, Joseph Smith, Jr. published the Book of Mormon leading to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. This Book, with many aspects common to Christianity, reportedly was the result of Smith translating gold plates he claimed had been left in North America by some prophet in the Fourth Century CE. Smith later headed west with his followers. After a mob in a Carthage, Illinois, jail killed him in 1844, Brigham Young became the Mormon leader who took his members to the Salt Lake Valley. Today, this world-wide religion claims a membership of 12.7 million²⁵.

Linking Gods and Religious Faith

After creation of the gods there typically came religions, modes of worshiping gods, supernatural beings. In turn, beliefs in gods led to religious faiths. Will Durant attributes religions, somewhat like gods, arising from the persistent wonder, fear, insecurity, hopefulness, and loneliness of mankind²⁶. Not surprisingly, the early religions were polytheistic, worshiping many gods.

Many of the early gods were personifications of earthy wonders and mysteries, i.e. Helios for the sun, Selene for the moon, Poseidon for the sea, Moloch for fire, etc. Many of their characteristics, especially among the Greek gods, were anthropomorphic, that is, resembling humans²⁷. In Judaism (beginning with Abraham) came monotheism, worship of a single god,