God?

By Eugene L. Solomon

Does God exist? Throughout history, ancient and modern civilizations have believed in some form of god. Yet, there have been over 1,100 different gods and still nobody knows why there is so much man-made evil in the word, genocides and Holocausts, brutality and violence just to mention a few - all committed by those created by God in his image. This book explores the subject from an historical and philosophical aspect and leaves the answers for the reader to ponder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781456817237

Eugene L. Solomon

Eugene Solomon is retired in sunny Florida with his wife and golden retriever. He has written five books: a novel about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising during the Holocaust; two books dealing with ancient Judaism and early Christianity, a personal memoir about his experiences with cancer stem cell transplants and experimental drug programs. His last book was entitled “Lies and Deceits” and focused on distortions in American history.

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Also By Eugene L. Solomon

The Second Coming

The Jesus Conference

The Conversion of Constantine

The Defining Moment

Lies and Deceits

GOD?

EUGENE L. SOLOMON

Copyright © 2010 by Eugene L. Solomon.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2010917013

ISBN: Softcover    978-1-4568-1722-0

ISBN: Ebook        978-1-4568-1723-7

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE—THE EARLY GODS

CHAPTER TWO—GENESIS

CHAPTER THREE—THE ESSENES

CHAPTER FOUR—JESUS

CHAPTER FIVE—PAUL

CHAPTER SIX—THE GOSPELS

CHAPTER SEVEN—CONSTANTINE

CHAPTER EIGHT—AUGUSTINE

CHAPTER NINE—MUHAMMAD

CHAPTER TEN—EASTERN RELIGIONS

CHAPTER ELEVEN—LUTHER

CHAPTER TWELVE—AMERICA

CHAPTER THIRTEEN—GALILEO

CHAPTER FOURTEEN—SPINOZA

CHAPTER FIFTEEN—DARWIN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN—NIETZSCHE

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN—THE HOLOCAUST

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN—RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM

CHAPTER NINETEEN—HUMANISM

CHAPTER TWENTY—DEATH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

For Peaches

and

My Grandchildren

If you want to find out whether or not there is a God, you must approach this inquiry without prejudice; you must come to it with a fresh mind, neither believing nor disbelieving.

Krishnamurti

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks always go to my wife for putting up with my obsessive compulsions, and to Marty Tash for all his insightful comments during his own trying ordeal.

INTRODUCTION

I can’t believe that I’m writing a book about God. At the age of seventy-three and two bouts of cancer behind me, am I tempting fate? I hope not. As a child, I had lots of conversations with God. He told me to question everything and then search for answers even if there are no real answers. That is what this book is about. Many views about God are put forth—some positive, others negative. If you are listening, God, please don’t be offended; you know that I love you—I just don’t know whether you exist!

God is the ultimate paradox. Is He really responsible for the creation of our universe, our planet, and all life, or did we just evolve from amoeba after a cosmic big bang? Is God responsible for great artists like Michelangelo and Renoir, great music from Beethoven and Mozart, and great inventions like electricity and the internet? Is He also responsible for Hitler, genocide, disease, earthquakes, floods, and weapons of mass destruction? Is God responsible for good and evil or do we only applaud Him when good things happen and then blame evil on human behavior? Is God always on the side of our country and religion, or is that just a gigantic political and religious hoax? When we win wars, is it because our enemies have a different and inferior god or no god at all? Wherein lies the truth?

Is life pure chance? Why are some people fortunately born in America rather than remote Africa where they will probably die at sixteen? Was God involved in that decision? Does He plan out everyone’s birth, future, and death, or is it all random, like the roll of the dice? Were we conceived for a purpose or merely out of lust or boredom? Were we born to exist for a relatively short time and then what happens—heaven, hell, or nothingness? Can it be that we invented God because we were so terrified about what happens after we die? And why are there so many wars where millions of innocents are slaughtered? Does God enjoy seeing all this violence, rape and mass murder?

Since there is always a beginning, middle, and an end to everything, does that apply to our planet? Does that apply to God? Where did God come from? What was He doing before we understood that He was God? Were the early Greek gods really our God in disguise? Did ancient societies all have false gods? Were they misguided in their beliefs while we are unequivocally right? The Bible says that man was created in God’s image; does that mean that we look like Him? What about all the ‘others’ that do not look like us—is He still their God? Has God grown old or is He always the same? What does He do for entertainment? How does He spend his time? Is He married or does He play the field? Does He ever have sex? I’m sorry God, was that too personal a question?

My mother was a young woman when she came to the United States from Poland in 1925. She left behind a large family—parents, grandparents, ten brothers and sisters, uncles and cousins, young nieces and nephews, some were still babies. All of them were barbarically ‘exterminated’ during the Holocaust—for absolutely no reason. I hope this was not your idea God. But, where were you when this was happening? Why didn’t you stop this horror?

I was born in Brooklyn, USA, in 1937 so I was spared the Nazi death camps. My mother’s courageous decision to leave everything behind and come to America gave me life. I would certainly not have survived after Germany invaded Poland in 1939; life for me would have been over at age two, or maybe I would not have been born at all. Instead of a non-being, I have lived all these years in glorious America. Was this part of your plan God, or was it pure luck? If you exist, were you involved in all the events that affected my life?

The Bible says that the Jews were God’s ‘chosen people’—one wonders what they were chosen for, or what I was chosen for. I have always been perplexed by all these questions. As I was growing up, I kept my doubts and questions tightly stored inside and went about my business of schooling, business, marriage, children, and then retirement. Now, as my own existence nears its end, I decided it was time to confront these nagging questions and maybe find some answers that would satisfy me. Even if I find no answers, the search will be cathartic.

I will not bore the reader with my personal history except during this introduction. As a young child I was always terrified. My dad died when I was two-years-old. Where did he go I wondered? Heaven or Hell? Is he watching me? A gravestone marks his burial site in some Jewish cemetery. The inscription says that he was a loving father. I often wonder whether that was true. I have my doubts. I hated the fact that all the other kids had fathers and memories, and I had none.

Mom and I survived because of New York City’s charitable welfare system. Stories about the Holocaust atrocities filled my mother’s sleepless nights. Twice, during bouts of nervous exhaustion and depression, she was hospitalized and put in a sanitarium for a ‘rest cure.’ Since there was nobody to care for me, I was placed in an orphanage until she recovered.

I never went to sleep without first having a nightly chat with God. I would close all the lights and have a serious discussion with Him, something like, Let’s make a deal! If God took care of my mother so I would not have to become an orphan, I would dedicate myself to being the kind of person that would make Him proud of me. Mom and I did survive those years, and no one will ever convince me that God was not somehow responsible.

The Holocaust was definitely the defining event in my life as I was growing up. Mom was obsessed with learning the fate of each member of her family and she dragged me along. The details were brutal. At the age of eight, it was probably too much horror for such a young impressionable mind. It is hard to remember who had more nightmares about the atrocities, my mom or me. The death camp scenes still haunt my nights. I continued to talk with God on a regular basis, but now I argued more.

I vividly remember the little orthodox synagogue just around the corner from where we lived. The long-bearded rabbi of the ‘shul’ had twin sons my age, and neither of them were sports fanatics like me. I often tempted them into trying a game of punch-ball, but they were pathetic and even worse at stick-ball. But they tried; they tried real hard. I laughed at their ineptitude because compared to them I was a superstar. But, when I entered the synagogue, into their holy world, it was a totally different matter; I was the one who was pathetic, and they were the superstars.

Once I stepped inside the sanctuary of that shul I entered into an alien world right out of ancient biblical times. The interior was dark and dingy without any ornamentation expect for the safer torah that glared out at me from its ark. The room was filled with wooden benches and the congregants were mostly old men. The few women that attended were seated behind a curtain off to the side. In the back was the rabbi’s kitchen where schnapps was drunk after the services. I remember every detail as if were yesterday.

Once a year, on the anniversary of my father’s death, I had to say a memorial prayer called Kaddish in the presence of ten men. I would sheepishly enter the shul with my prayer shawl bag tucked under my arm and slink into some innocuous seat in the darkest rear row. Invariably, an old Jew would find me and guide me to the front. There were about half-a-dozen small children always in attendance, some my age, but mostly younger. The big difference was that each boy sat next to his father, while I was guided by some old bearded stranger who could barely speak English. When services began, my mentor for the day opened my prayer book and pointed to where I should begin. I would start to sound out the strange letters and after a few lines I was finally getting into the rhythm, but that was when he quickly turned the page and pointed to where the rest of the congregation was. I could never keep up.

The really humiliating part was those little kids who I thought were mocking me. Was it because I read so slowly and needed so much help or was it because I showed up without a father? As hard as the little old Jew at my side tried, I was always hopelessly lagging behind everyone else. I put my face into the prayer book and faked reading, but my eyes darted elsewhere. I was hypnotized by the mystical aura of my surroundings; swaying Jews hidden by their long black and white prayer shawls, bobbing up and down, completely absorbed in their prayers, banging their chest with their tightly wound tefilin arm. I was certain that these holiest of holies had a direct line to God and that the Almighty was looking down from high above and was disgusted by my poor performance. Shocked by that thought, I tried to catch up with the rest of the congregation, mumbling foreign sounding words that I did not understand.

A sharp poke in my ribs made me jump up from my seat. It was my turn to say the Kaddish prayer. I knew the prayer by heart, but it was never perfect enough for the old Jews who listened intently and corrected every word and intonation. Undaunted, I rushed through the prayer in a blazing finish that certainly must have been an Olympic record. Once I was finished, I fled this house where God dwelled, and reentered my real world of garbage lined streets and Brooklyn Dodger baseball.

I am now in my early seventies and a week does not go by without my wondering about that little shul, the rabbi with the long black beard and the twinkling eyes, the old Jews, the velvet fitted Torah, and most of all, the godliness that was in that room. Did the people in that little shul really have a direct line to God? What happened to them all? Are they still davening (praying) up in heaven or are they merely dust? And what happened to the rabbi’s twin sons? Did they grow up to be rabbis or doctors or hedge fund managers?

This book is filled with questions; the answers must come from the reader. It is not a book about whether or not there is a God; that is a personal struggle for each to make. Hopefully, this book will stimulate your thoughts so you can make that choice in peace. My goal is not to convince the reader one way or the other. I have tried to explore this subject objectively. I only hope those who read it can do likewise.

Once again I must make a disclaimer. I am a researcher. My resources provide me with my material. My indebtedness to all who have ventured before me is gratefully acknowledged.

CHAPTER ONE

THE EARLY GODS

What sane person would defiantly point up to the heavens and challenge God: I do not believe you exist. If I am wrong you can strike me dead on this very spot. Who is willing to risk it—especially if the sky suddenly darkens followed by thunder and lightening?

According to current research, there have been over 1,100 known gods throughout our history. These gods have come in every shape and color; young gods and old ones, loving gods and vengeful ones, male gods and female goddesses. Imagine—1,100 gods—and every culture has claimed that their god was the one and true god and all others were fakes!

Consider who some of these titan gods were: Thor and Odin from the Norse region, Camulus and Branwen from the Celtic lands, Belobog and Flins from the Slavic area, Amaterasu from Japan, Danu from Ireland, and let’s not forget Mithras, Marduk, Indra, Baal, Odin, and Ptah—and a thousand others. Although Zeus was king of the gods during his time, he still had to deal with a large pantheon of lesser gods, all of whom were part of his extended family—Hades, the God of the Underworld; Poseidon the God of the Sea; Athena the Goddess of Wisdom, and Ares the God of War. In this arrangement, Zeus shared or delegated some of his powers. He may not have controlled everything, but he was definitely in charge.

For the past 3,000 years, Judeo-Christian civilization has had only one all-powerful God who controls everything; there are no subordinates. We are certain that he is the one true god. Why we are so certain nobody can explain, but we are certain. We call this God by different names: Jehovah, Adonoi, Yahwah, YHWH, Elohim, HaShen, Lord, Our Father, Jesus, Allah, or the Almighty. Billions of people believe this is the real God even though nothing much has changed. There are still wars, storms and hurricanes, violence, rage and murder, terrible diseases, and bad things happening to good people.

Most people believe that the Hebrews conceived of this one God, but the truth is that during ancient times there was already a marked movement towards monotheism. Praying to the multitude of subordinate gods did not bring good crops, calm seas, and peace and tranquility. With warfare going on almost all the time, having a strong central authority was needed. One king was needed to govern the country, one father to be in charge of the family, and therefore, logically, one God to rule the cosmos and control the earthly elements. Polytheism was just not working and people were willing to try something new like one all-powerful god.

This concept of monotheism was a gradual development. In the Ancient Near East, each city already had one local patron deity. The earliest claims of global supremacy of one specific god dates to the Late Bronze Age, with Akhenaten’s Great Hymn to the Aten, and, depending on dating issues, Zoroaster’s Gathas to Ahura Mazda. Currents of monotheism emerged in Vedic India in the same period. Classical antiquity, notably with Plato, elaborated into the idea of The One in Neoplatonism.

The Hebrews started out with polytheism and many remote gods, with Yahweh as their over-all national god. The lack of cohesion among the early Hebrew people made monotheism impossible. However, around the 8th century BC, Hebrew prophets claimed that acknowledging other gods would bring down the wrath of Yahweh and align foreign powers against them.

In 589 BC, when Nebuchadnezzar II laid siege to Jerusalem, culminating in the destruction of the city and its sacred Temple in 587 BC, all those prophecies seemed to be coming true. The Hebrew people were now convinced. Another theory claims that Hebrew monotheism began with the biblical account of the Exodus, which happened in the late 6th and early 5th centuries BC.

In every society since the beginning of time the concept of some form of god has arisen. Does this therefore prove that god must exist, or is there some other explanation? What do all these diverse civilizations have in common that would lead everyone to believe in some form of supernatural controlling god? The answer for many scholars is that in each of these societies, including our own, have one common factor; everyone dies and nobody knows what happens afterwards. Belief in some god transfers these fears to some higher power that understands the purpose behind life and controls the process.

However, this concept of believing in god has never prevented civilizations from dividing up the human race into competitive factions, and then killing those that did not agree. Instead of unity, people in every age continue to hate and kill, all too often in the name of their god. When warfare breaks out, leaders on both sides of the conflict convince their warriors that God is on our side. Each side prays to their god for victory, but death takes the pious believer, as well as the enemy. Luck or chance brings the warrior safely home—not prayer. Even if there was a god, why should he care about something as insignificant as one mortal human being? Do we think that he weeps when he sees one part of his creation killing another part, or is he completely bored and disgusted by the whole thing?

If we are so sure that an all-powerful God exists, why not let him handle things in his own way? Why should we stone people to death, burn them alive at the stake, torture them beyond belief, excommunicate them from the community, commit genocide and ethnic cleansing, just for not believing in the majority version? Where has God said that you either believe in me or you must be slaughtered? Of course, if God does not exist then all these questions are irrelevant.

The Oxford Companion to World Mythology lists a detailed account of the gods or semi-gods by culture. Africa has 52 such gods; Anglo-Saxons (4); Australia (16); Babylonia (18); Buddhists (48); the Chinese (68); Christianity (60); Egypt (51); Germans (11); the Greeks had an astounding 302 gods; the Hebrews (55); Indians and Hindus (227); Iranians (44); the Irish (75); Islam (28); Japan (68); the Romans (62); and there are thousands of smaller cultures, all with their own gods.

In order to have a god you need some sort of a religion to determine the god’s mind pertaining to prayer, sacrifices, rituals, and conduct. Why there isn’t one religion if there is one god is a mystery. Currently, Christianity has 38 different offshoot religions; Judaism (8); Islam (11); Zoroastrianism (3); India has 31; East Asia has 34; Indigenous and Pagans have another 16; New Age religions account for 33; and modern Western cultures have another 24. Lots of religions; lots of differences!

The following demographic list shows the worldwide populations that worship one form of god or another. In addition to this list, there are 394 million Chinese and 100 million Africans that worship various folk religions and gods.

There are over six billion people in the world with hundreds of different gods and each culture is certain that their god is the true god! Someone is wrong—or maybe everyone is wrong. Christianity, for example, is certain that Jesus was the Son of God, born to a virgin mother, ascended to heaven after his death, was resurrected and returned to earth and then ascended once more back to heaven where he now sits at the right hand of the Father God. The Christian tale is merely one among hundreds of similar myths. Throughout history we find countless stories of virgin births, resurrections, holy trinities, sons of god, heaven and hell, and explanations for good and evil.

We poke fun at mythological rituals that honor what we consider to be false gods. Yet, we have baptism, circumcision, virgin birth and resurrection. We kiss the pope’s ring and the Torah scrolls and the mezuzah that consecrates the Jewish home. We wear crosses and stars of David around our necks, fondle worry beads and place miniature statutes of Jesus on automobile dashboards to ward off accidents and evil spirits. Children kneel at bedtime to say prayers to their god, and we blow kisses to God after a home run or touchdown. Is this progressive rationalism or more paganism?

Christians pray to paintings and statutes. They believe in holy ghosts and holy water, heaven, hell and purgatory, demons, devils, and the evil eye. They celebrate Christmas and Easter, which were both pagan festivals. The Jews still have their Passover Seder, Day of Atonement, kosher food, dybbuks (evil spirits), tefilin (thin leather straps worn on the arm and head as a sign of reverence), head coverings and prayer shawls. We continue the pagan rites of passage of confirmation and bar mitzvah. At weddings, Jews break a glass for good luck; and let’s not forget about Santa Claus squeezing down that chimney at Christmas time.

Ritual baths are still prevalent in Japanese as well as Jewish cultures. Chinese astrology continues to thrive. More than two million Muslims participate in the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Hindus celebrate Diwali each year to commemorate enlightenment and the triumph of good over evil. The Buddha’s birth and enlightenment are also celebrated annually in various festivals, and meditation continues to be widely practiced. With all these religious practices and rituals, the world still lacks compassion and loving kindness.

Religious believers and non-believers can be broken into several categories. The theist asserts that there is definitely one God that rules over all and can be encountered only by faith. The atheist asserts that there is no proof that God exists and refuses to believe in anything that is not based on availing scientific evidence. He considers religion a hoax and the concept of god as offensive to our intellect. The agnostic is somewhere between the theist and the atheist. He does not know whether God exists or not, so he neither believes nor rejects the concept. According to the agnostic, we are the masters of our own fate until proven otherwise.

How does anyone really know what he or she believes since we have been brainwashed since birth by our parents, church, and society, to accept a theology not of our choosing? Ask yourself: why do I consider myself a Christian, Jew, or Islamic? The odds are overwhelming that you have been programmed since infancy and never had the opportunity to make an independent rational choice.

Myths, for the most part, are religious narratives. Even though we commonly use the word myth to mean a tale that is merely fanciful, that does not mean that these stories were not true for those who grew up believing and loving them. These myths dealt with the same vexing issues that we grapple with in our lives and modern societies today; the existence and nature of god, creation and evolution, good and evil, sickness, aging, death, and whether there is an afterlife.

One of the reasons that these tales were so popular and revered was because people could not provide an explanation for the world around them. Natural events could only be understood through tales of gods, goddesses, and super-heroes. Thunder, earthquakes, eclipses, the changing seasons, rain, the success of crops, and human behavior, had to be due to the intervention of powerful gods. It seemed like the only logical explanation.

We now have lots of scientific answers to explain our world and the universe that we are a part of. We know why the sun rises and sets, why rain falls in some seasons and not in others, and what makes crops grow. We have a much better understanding of birth, illness and death, but the source of evil in the world, and why bad things happen to good people, is still a great mystery.

To believe that God exists is not the same as believing in him. Some believers think of God as an oversized white male with a long beard sitting on a throne somewhere up in the sky. Others consider him to be the sum total of the physical laws that describe the universe. For most people, believing in God is a matter of faith rather than certainty. Consciously or unconsciously they are believers because they are afraid of what might happen to them if they did not believe.

The existence or non-existence of God is the most important question we humans are called upon to decide. If God exists, a momentous set of consequences follows that affects every moment of our earthly existence. Our life then becomes a preparation for eternity. We live the moral life that we believe God expects of us. If, on the other hand, there is no God and this life is the only one we have, another momentous set of consequences governs our behavior. We then have no duties or obligations except to ourselves, and we need weigh no other considerations except those imposed upon us by law and society. In a godless society the rule of self-interest prevails. The question becomes, can there be morality without God?

Primitive humans existed only in communities. They were moral because of the experience of membership in a community that was their society. They understood that there was something greater out there and they called this something god. It was to this god (or gods) that they prayed and sacrificed in order to get favorable treatment. Rituals to honor this god were meticulously performed in minute detail so as not to be disrespectful, for nobody wanted to be subject to the wrath of this powerful god that often created havoc. This god was revealed only to those who obeyed him, as defined by the local shaman or priest. If disaster continued, the shaman was replaced, and the new shaman was expected to bring more favorable treatment from the gods.

God in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition is not like that. Our modern God is eternal with everlasting duration. God lives forever; he always was and he always will be; there was never a time when he was not God, and there never will be a time when there is no God. We believe that our concept of God is the only true and final interpretation.

Religion articulates our most deeply held beliefs that are not subject to verification. Each religion is valid for those who have faith in it, but that does not mean that it is true or that other people’s beliefs are false. The question that haunts history is whether religion is a force for good or has it used its power to destroy thousands of indigenous cultures and killed millions of innocent people who refused to believe in their god. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg observed: With or without religion, you will have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things—but for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Throughout the ages people have asked, if God is good, why is there so much suffering and evil in the world? Is it fair to punish the innocent? Would a just God allow all the human misery that has taken place? Religious believers answer that God’s reasons are beyond our comprehension. We must just deal with life as we find it and remain faithful. Others are not comfortable with this explanation and move away from the concept of a loving god.

Why is the concept of God so essential in our lives? If God suddenly appeared and told everyone that his creation was merely a whim, an experiment to see what would happen, that there was no real purpose to it, that he was not involved in anything that happened here on earth, that there really was no afterlife, heaven or hell, and that we were all on our own—why should that make a difference in the way we conduct our lives?

What is the point of prayer since God already knows all our needs, desires, and problems? Must we spell it out to him? Can he be so insecure that he needs us to worship him? Intellectually, we know that God does not exist, but then we look around and see an endless planet filled with untold variety and diversity. Could this world have happened by chance and developed out of nothing? Scientific explanations do not seem satisfactory.

Isaac Bashevis Singer, upon receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978, spoke about his contradictory belief system: Although I came to doubt all revelation, I can never accept the idea that the universe is a physical or chemical accident, a result of blind evolution. While I shun organized prayer and religion, I would call myself a religious man.

Elie Wiesel writes in his Auschwitz memoir, Why do I pray? That is a strange question. Why do I live? Why do I breathe? Religion has stood the test of time. People may no longer believe the biblical stories, but they still feel a need for religion. It is the glue that keeps people together and gives them the guidelines for living.

Some people believe that God set the universe in motion and then stepped back and watched it all evolve. Stephen Hawking, the world’s leading scientist on the universe and outer space, says, Although science may solve the problem of how the universe began, it cannot answer the question: why does the universe bother to exist? Maybe only God can answer that puzzling question.

In most traditions since the beginning of civilization, the term god was reserved for supernatural beings that could perform miracles and control events. Given the dependence of early agrarian societies on the weather, it comes as little surprise that the greatest of the gods were those associated with the elements and the changing seasons. Rain deities like the Mayan Chac and the Aztec Tlaloc were undoubtedly important figures, but the paramount gods tended to be linked directly to storms, drawing much of their authority from the terror inspired by thunder and lightning.

Several traditions proposed rival families of deities that came into conflict and fought for preeminence like the Titans and Olympians of Greece, or the Aesir and Vanir in the Norse lands. Ancient Egyptian myth spoke of the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut. In the Maori version the roles were reversed, with the male Rangi as lord of the skies and his consort as earth mother. Japanese myth preserved the memory of seven successive generations of twin deities, culminating in Izanarni and Izanagi, who between them gave birth to the islands of Japan.

Another common feature was a tripartite division of the universe, with a heaven in the sky, the human world occupying the earth, and a subterranean underworld often seen as a land of the dead. The Norse realms of Asgard (the home of the gods), Midgard (where humans lived), and icy Niflheim followed this pattern, as did the Japanese vision of a High Plain of Heaven raised above the Central Land of the Reed Plain, with the shadowy realm of Yomi beneath. The three levels of the Norse universe were linked by the World Tree, a concept also found in Mongolian, Siberian and some Mesoamerican traditions.

Goddess’ had many different names—for the Sumerians she was Inana, in Anatolia she was Cybele, in Syria and Lebanon it was Astarte. Some traditions emphasized feminine tenderness and compassion, like the Egyptian Isis or China’s Guan Yin; and such qualities would later transfer over into Christianity’s Virgin Mary. Elsewhere, however, the goddess was fiercely sexual, like the Babylonian Goddess Ishtar. The Norse Goddess Freyja would temporarily disappear, a disastrous event that brought barrenness and sterility in its wake. Her subsequent rescue from the Underworld signaled the return of fertility and by implication, the coming of spring

Mythology represents the world’s original database of primitive literature. Yet, ironically, as soon as the word myth is invoked, these narratives lose some of their primordial power. From the time the term was first introduced in Greece in the fourth or fifth century BC, it carried the implication that the accounts were untrue, or at the very least not objectively verifiable. The audience that originally listened to these tales accepted them uncritically as descriptions of real. Now we classify them as fiction on a par with fairy tales. However, our modern society still accepts its own biblical myths as true.

One of the most basic issues in all eras concerned how the universe was created. One motif appeared in lands as far apart as India, China, Finland and Tibet—a cosmic egg was split in two to create the earth and the heavens. Egyptian tradition saw land emerging from the primeval waters of the Nile following the ebbing of the river’s annual flood. In Norse mythology, the world was born from the union of fire and ice, a combination familiar to Viking settlers in volcanic Iceland.

In German mythology, Ymir is the primeval giant from whose parts the world was shaped. In certain African myths, there is a god who goes down to earth and brings everything into existence. In the Samoan creation myth, the supreme God Tangaloa creates the world by throwing down a rock upon the waters; this rock becomes covered with vegetative life and certain holy plants, and within the decaying mass of these plants certain worms came into existence from which human beings finally evolved. The North American Indians have hundreds of creation myths.

The most important area of wonderment after the creation of the world was where did all these people come from? Answers were essentially grouped into several basic types. First there was the sexual union of a primal male and female emerging from the cosmic egg. The Hindu Upanishad scriptures and early Buddhist texts tell of the emergence of humans from a primal substance or the ordering of chaos into creation.

A Polynesian myth places the various layers of human emergence in a coconut shell. In Africa, China, India, the South Pacific, Greece, and Japan, human creation is symbolized by the breaking forth from the fertile egg. One recurrent theme, such as the Egyptian Khnum and the Mesopotamian Nammu, believed that people had been fashioned from clay by the divine potter. In Aztec and Inca societies they believed that humans simply emerged from caves. In Eskimo legends, the first humans pushed their way out of a pea pod. The Quiche Maya of Guatemala had a deity named Maker, who tried to fashion human beings out of mud and wood. When these attempts went astray, he successfully created humans from yellow and white corn, and added a little water to make fat. If you lived in China around 600 BC, you accepted on faith that we all began as fleas infesting the pelt of the Great Creator, Phan Ku.

In the creation story of the Krachi people of Togo in Africa, the creator god Wulbari lived in close contact with man. But the smoke from the cooking fires kept getting into Wulbari’s eyes and annoyed him, so in disgust, he decided to ascended to his present place in heaven where humans could admire him, but not annoy him. Other African tales are very similar; only the reason for god’s ascension differs.

These may seem like amusing legends—a god that now resides in heaven because smoke gets in his eyes. Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? Yet, what about a god who is so angry because a woman eats a piece of fruit that he makes childbirth eternally painful for all women, or a God whose body and blood is consumed each week at a religious ritual. The tales today may be different, but are we really dealing with major differences?

Related to creation, but at the other extreme, are myths describing the end of the world, or the coming of death into the world. Myths about the end of the world usually presuppose a divine being that in the end destroys what he created. In these myths, human beings are judged and prepared for either a paradise existence or one of eternal torment. In German mythology, after the Gotterdammerung (the dawn of the gods), an enormous final fight ensues between the gods of heaven and the demons of hell in which both sides are destroyed and a new world suddenly blossoms out of the depths. The German concept points to a cyclic process, namely that there is a constant rhythm of successive creation and destruction. Not much will really be changed; the beginning is always wonderful and towards the end the world of decadence slowly prevails until the final catastrophe destroys everything—and then the world begins once again.

Science debunks religion as pure superstition and creation myths as irrational. They claim that 13 billion years ago there was a big bang in the universe that explains the general evolution of the universe. But, their claim is only a theory and not a provable fact, and many in the science community still believe that God exists.

In 1973, distinguished professor and expert on DNA, Francis Crick published a paper that evolved into in a book entitled Life Itself. In his well-researched theory, micro-organisms traveled in the head of an unmanned spaceship and were sent to earth by a higher civilization that had developed elsewhere some billions of years ago. Life started on earth when these organisms were dropped into the ocean and began to multiply. Which is more credible—the big bang, spaceships from outer space, or an invisible God—take your pick.

It is astonishing to note the number of biblical stories that were predated by mythological tales. The most widely publicized example involved Noah’s Flood, which was eerily paralleled by tales of similar deluges from Sumerian and Babylonian sources. These tales also portrayed the catastrophe as divine retribution on all of humankind, and described how one individual, ordained by the gods, built a boat that he filled with animals to ensure that life would continue after the disaster.

Some of the oldest flood myths in the world come from the Middle East, where the Tigris and Euphrates taught people much about flooding. One of these is the Sumerian Atrahasis, which we know from a Babylonian version. In this myth, Enlil, god of the earth, decides to destroy humans with a flood. But Ea, god of waters, warns King Atrahasis of Ennlil’s plan. Atrahasis builds an ark, survives the flood, and is later rewarded with eternal life.

The Genesis flood story about Noah is likely derived from Mesopotamian accounts, memories of which the Hebrews would have brought with them when they emigrated. As most of us know, God decides that humankind has become wicked and must be destroyed. However, there is more to the story. It seems that the sons of God were fornicating with earthly women, producing semi-divine humans. God is angry that over time these semi-divine humans will mate and their offspring will become even more divine. This was not what God intended when he created the world.

The first thing God does is limit the human life span to 120 years, which is not enough time to gain enough divine knowledge to threaten God’s position. God then sends the flood to punish humankind, but he chooses to save Noah and his family, along with pairs of other living creatures.

Noah builds an ark according to God’s specifications, and he and his living cargo ride out the flood. Having survived, Noah offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and God makes a series of concessions: He will no longer expect perfection from humans; he gives Noah the right to kill animals for food; he promises never to send another such flood; and he removes some of the curse from the ground, presumably making agriculture a bit easier.

In India, the flood story is part of the alternating cycle of creation and destruction. In this myth, people destroyed in the flood will either achieve liberation from the cycle of birth and death or will be reborn in the next age to continue to work toward liberation. The Chinese have many versions of the flood myths. In one, a fight between Kung Kung and Chuan Hsu knocks down one of the four mountains that hold up the sky, causing a flood and other cosmic consequences. In another version, all four mountain pillars collapse. A goddess, Nu Kua, smelts stones to repair the sky and builds dams to stem the floods. Her actions usher in a golden age in China. Interestingly, this flood, like others in Chinese stories, is not sent as punishment for wickedness; rather, it records the ways in which the world was perfected for human habitation.

One of the chief gods in Egyptian mythology is Osiris. A mysterious voice proclaimed him the coming of the Universal Lord, and heir to the Egyptian throne. When Osiris became king, he took his sister Isis as queen. Not only did Osiris civilize Egypt, but he traveled the whole earth and spread civilization everywhere. Soon he became victim of a plot by his brother Set, who was jealous of his power. Osiris was assassinated by Set, but due to the sorcery of Isis, Osiris was resurrected. He could have regained his throne, but he preferred to depart from this earth and retire to the heavens where he warmly welcomed the souls of the just and reigned over the dead. It was as god of the dead that Osiris enjoyed his greatest popularity, for he gave his devotees the hope of an eternally happy life in another world ruled by a just and good king. He was worshipped throughout Egypt, along with his wife posthumous son Horus. Together, the three formed a trinity of gods.

In Greek mythology we meet all the gods that shaped the times and morality of that ancient era; the Titans, Prometheus, Europa, Cyclops, Narcissus, Hyacinth, Adonis, the Twelve Olympians, and the gods that ruled the waters and the underworld. There were also gods of earth, love, and adventure that included Cupid and Psyche, Orpheus and Eurydice, Ceyz and Alcyone, Pygmalion and Galatea, Baucis and Philemon, Endymion and Daphne, and Apleus and Arethusa. Great heroes were loved, but they were not quite divine: Perseus, Theseus, Hercules, Odysseus, Aeneas, Oedipus and Antigone.

The Greeks were the first people to make their gods in their own image. Until then, gods had no semblance of reality and were unlike all living things. For the first time man became the center of the universe. This was a revolution in thought since human beings counted for little before this. The Greek gods in their human form now made heaven a pleasant place for when life was over. The people knew what the divine inhabitants in heaven ate and drank and how they amused themselves. Of course these powerful gods were still feared because they could become very dangerous when angry. Still, by showing the proper respect, a man could be quite fairly at ease with them.

Zeus, trying to hide his love affairs from his wife and invariably failing, was a capital figure of fun. The Greeks enjoyed Zeus for his human qualities. Hera, his wife, was a stock character of comedy, the typical jealous wife. Her ingenious tricks to discomfort her husband and punish her rivals, far from displeasing the Greeks, entertained them as much as Zeus’ sexual exploits. On earth too, the deities were exceedingly human and attractive. In the form of handsome youths and lovely maidens they romped in the woodlands, rivers and sea, completely in harmony with the earth. That is the miracle of Greek mythology—a humanized world where men were freed from the paralyzing fear of an omnipotent unknown god.

All these tales had nothing to do with religion. Greek mythology was an attempt to explain what happens in nature. Thunder and lightening were caused when Zeus was angry and hurled his thunderbolts. A volcano erupted because a terrible creature was imprisoned in the mountain and every now and then struggled to get free. These stories were attempts to explain what people saw around them. But many of these myths explained nothing at all, and were for pure entertainment, the sort of stories people would tell each other on a long winter’s evening.

Of all the great Greek writers, the blind Homer heads the list. The Illiad and the Odyssey contains the oldest Greek writing we have. There is no way to accurately date any part of them, but it appears that the Illiad, the older of the two poems, was written around 1000 BC. The leading characters in the Iliad are heroes of a past age; their goodness, excellence, and virtue was unequaled in Homer’s time. But what Homer counts as goodness is not the sort of thing that we might most readily think of as such. According to Homer, a good person was someone born into a good family and was rich and strong. The hereditary, social, and material components of a person’s goodness were so important that if he had them he remained a good person even if he behaved badly. Some aspects were in his control; he was expected to display his excellence in his actions, ideally the actions of a warrior and leader. A good man excelled in battle, and his characteristic virtues were strength, skill, and courage.

Once Homer makes the gods human, surrounding events become intelligible. Natural forces did not strike at random; they were a result of the steady purposes and intentions of the gods. Though the gods are fairly constant, they are also fickle and variable in the same way that human heroes are and for similar reasons. Moreover, their control over the natural order is not complete. Homer suggests that every earthquake or storm, for instance, reflects some steady and intelligible long-term purpose of the god Poseidon who is often responsible for them. But Homer makes no such logical general assumption about all events and calamities. Some things happen in the Homeric universe by chance, at random, and for no particular reason.

One story the Greeks loved to tell was similar to the later biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac. Phrixus was the first born of the royal house of Athamas. His people wished to sacrifice Phrixus in a year of drought, but the Greek gods sent a ram that carried Phrixus away from the place of sacrifice. After he was rescued, Phrixus took the ram and sacrificed it as a thanksgiving offering to the gods.

Our current religions have been founded on the offshoots of