| MAYA-GAIA INTRODUCTION & SITEMAP Page Update 08 24 07Note:My Anthropic Trilogy web-book, evolving since 1997, is a chronicle of my passing all considered opinion through the lens of my Nirvikalpa Samadhi with both an open-mind and healthy skepticism.11,600 Years Ago Hunter-Gatherer’s Urge to Organize Worship – Sparked the Calamity of Civilization Organizing to build monumental stone temples was likely the trigger that began the Neolithic Revolution that led to agriculture, plant and animal domestication, permanent settlements and Earth’s nemesis of civilization.Contents adapted from full article – The Birth of Religion National Geographic Magazine – June, 2011 Gobekli Tepe – The Worlds First Temple: See also: Documentary Movie See video Na Geo Staff artist Fernando Baptista builds a clay model of Göbekli Tepe and explains why such a model is useful for creating the story.On a remote hilltop in southern Turkey known as Göbekli Tepe, archaelogist Klaus Schmidt discovered a paleolithic complex of monumental temples featuring massive limestone pillars – the largest 18 feet tall and weighing 16 tons. The architecture is vaguely reminiscent of Stonehenge – built in the same millennium as the Great Pyramid of Giza – except Göbekli was created 7 millennia earlier and is made not with roughly hewed blocks but from cleanly carved pillars representing sophisticated stylized anthropomorphic forms splashed with bas-reliefs of a variety of recognizable animal totems. Subsurface scans at the site reveal an assemblage of perhaps 18 unexcavated temples that were consecutively built and buried over a period of a little more than a thousand years. See detail views of Göbekli TepeAlthough primitive religious practices – burying the dead, creating cave art and figurines – had emerged tens of thousands of years earlier, the construction of massive temples by a group of foragers is evidence that organized religion could have come before the rise of agriculture and other aspects of civilization. It suggests that the human impulse to gather for sacred rituals arose as humans shifted from seeing themselves as part of the natural world to seeking mastery over it. When foragers began settling down in villages, they unavoidably created a divide between the human realm -a fixed huddle of huts with hundreds of inhabitants – and the dangerous land beyond the campfire, populated by lethal beasts. Schmidt speculates that foragers living within a hundred-mile radius of Göbekli Tepe created the temple as a holy place to gather and meet, perhaps bringing gifts and tributes to its priests and crafts-people. Some kind of inspired social organization would have been necessary not only to build it but also to deal with the crowds it attracted. One imagines chanting and drumming, the animals on the great pillars seeming to move in flickering torchlight. Schmidt says “Twenty years ago scientist believed civilization was driven by ecological forces – I think what we are learning is that civilization is a product of the human mind.” Illustration by Fernando Baptista (Map and Diagrams Lawson Parker), NGM Staff; Patricia Healy click for full-scale imageAlthough Schmidt’s words about the the product of the human mind can be taken in an inspirational and celebratory sense, the reality of the impact of organized religion on how civilization subsequently evolved is almost thoroughly negative. It is not only the historical record of how organized religion is directly implicated in oppression, warfare and bloodshed, (with culpability ongoing) but its continuing effect on the suppression and abuse of women and on overpopulation with the subsequent ecological catastrophes that are ensuing. Perhaps its most unfortunate legacy is how both by default and evangelicalism it thwarts spiritual enlightenment to reach the overwhelming majority of the world’s soon-to-be population of 7 billion. At present the most conspicuous counter to fundamentalist prophetic religion is progressive atheism which is a total denial of humankind’s instinct to embrace spirituality that Schmidt alludes to in his optimistic commentary – which leaves that existential quality of our human spirit in limbo.There is a body of non dual religious traditions that contains the seed of spiritual enlightenment but all – Zen Buddhism being the least compromised – suffer varying degrees of piling on of extrapolations of mystical experience by priestly authority that results in arbitrary disciplines like yoga and siddhis and a managerie of invented gods and demigods, symbols and rituals. There seems an inverse ratio in the human mind between imagination and gullibility that results in a perfect storm for explotation that enables charismatic priestly leaders to recruit a constituency for an infinite body of historical and evolving sub-genre of pseudo-religious and political/religious belief systems- paganism, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Shintoism, occultism, Nazism, Leninism, Maoism, new-ageism, space-alienism, etc. Thanks to the Internet, this psychological chemistry gives every invented belief voice and audience to subscribe and no Google “knowledge” category is so profusely populated by invention, controversy and conspiracy theory than “religion” all with the potential to evolve from proselytizing via social and information networks into virtual cults.Postmodern Paradigms – I examine a sampling of emergent, super and meta paradigms and find some analogy in the process by which some scientific pseudo paradigms can evolve into consensus reality much as heretical cults arose out of established culture to become mainstream religion.If the level of controversy over the present effort for Claremont Lincoln University to establish a broad ecumenical curriculum that features dialogue between the major prophetic religions (with tentative plans to admit Hindus and Buddhists) is any indication of the challenge for finding common ground within the theistic community – much less with the scientism and atheistic communities – the age of universal enlightenment (the spiritual singularity) seems far distant in the future of humanity’s collective conscious evolution.Theosophical Synthesis Presenting resources to explore issues in the tension between science/spirituality and evolution/creation and to examine possibilities for finding common ground and synthesis.Belief Knowledge Knowing Notes on evaluating credibility of Epistemology, Empericism, Phenomenology, Heuristics, Samadhi.Psychedelics, Consciousness & the Birth of Civilization by Graham Hancock, editor The Divine Spark , 2015. By 196,000 years ago, and on some accounts considerably earlier, humans had achieved “full anatomical modernity.” This means that they were in every way physically indistinguishable from the people of today and, crucially, that they possessed the same large, complex brains as we do. The most striking mystery, however, is that their behavior continued to lag behind their acquisition of modern neurology and appearance. They showed no sign of possessing a culture, or spiritual beliefs, or self-consciousness, or any interest in symbols which would mean 150,000 years of Homo sapiens without cultural stuff. The problem posed by this gap may be the greatest riddle of palaeoanthropology – how we became human and in the process began to make art and to practice what we call religion.(MG Comment: In support of an anthropic perspective is – Why/how had our brains, by 190,000 years ago, already evolved all the anatomical/neurological properties for intellectual civilized abilities – far beyond what was necessary to sustain a hunter-gather life style in perpetuity? See next link for obsevations by E. O. Wilson regarding the same enigma.Contrasted with the endless, unimaginative cultural desert extending from 7 million years ago down to just 40,000 years ago, the appearance of the first great, fully representative symbolic art in caves and rock shelters between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago represents a spectacular enigma. Accompanied by other significant changes in human behavior – including but not limited to better and more sophisticated stone and bone tools, better hunting strategies, and the first evidence for spiritual beliefs? it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that whatever divine spark led our ancestors to start creating art caused all the other changes as well. A theory originally elaborated by Lewis-Williams and now supported by a majority of archaeologists and anthropologists proposes that the reason for the eerie similarities and universal themes linking all these different systems of art is that in every case – both ancient and modern and wherever in the world they are found – the shaman-artists responsible for them had previously experienced altered states of consciousness in which they had seen vivid hallucinations, and in every case their endeavour in making the art was to memorialise on the walls of rock shelters and caves the ephemeral images that they had seen in their visions.Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson – 1999 – Page 52 – Google Books Result. Evolutionary biology offers a simple answer. Natural selection, defined as the differential survival and reproduction of different genetic forms, prepares organisms only for necessities. Biological capacity evolves until it maximizes the fitness of organisms for the niches they fill, and not a squiggle more. Every species, every kind of butterfly, bat, fish and primate, including Homo sapiens occupies a distinctive niche. It follows that each species lives in its own sensory world. In shaping that world, natural selection is solely guided by the conditions of past history and by events occurring moment by moment then and now. Because moths are too small and indigestible to be energetically efficient food for large primates, Homo sapiens never evolved echolocation to catch them. And since we do not live in dark water, an electrical sense was never an option for our species. Natural selection, in short, does not anticipate future needs but this principle, while explaing so much so well, presents a difficulty. If the prnciple is universally true, how did natural selection prepare the mind for civilization before civilization existed? That is the great mystery of human evolution: how to account for caculus and Mozart. Later I will attempt an answer by expanding the evolutionary explanation to embrace culture and technological innovation. (Wilson later makes an effort to get around the anthropic principle.)Some References to Ecumenical Programs, Projects and Inter and Multi-Faith DialogueEcumenism Wikipedia – as relating to bringing together Christian denominations (but on this page it is used in its broadest sense to include all religions). St. Marys Mission to develop ecumenical tolerance between Christian and Jewish faiths. Wesley Seminary This doctor of ministry program will equip church leaders (1) to appreciate the Spirit’s manifold gifts for ministry across denominational lines; (2) to initiate and sustain timely conversations with leaders of other world religions; and (3) to mobilize the resources of ecumenical and interreligious partners to address the common threats to humankind and the earth. Ecumenical & Interfaith News Network – Presbyterian Church U.S.A. PCUSA – Linking People, News, Information, and Resources – Specific Interfaith Resources – General Resources: Presbyterian-related – Relation-specifc Resources: Christian-Jewish relations; Christian-Muslim relations; Latter-day Saints relations; Buddhist-Christian relations; Hindu-Christian relations; Other relations. The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia – Three interrelated objectives mark the Institute’s work. An academic objective seeks to educate concerning the history, theology and current developments of ecumenical and interreligious movements. A professional objective seeks to equip professional leaders in congregations to minister in challenging, multi-religious,multi-denominational contexts. The third objective — dialogue — encourages and facilitates conversation and communication among persons of different traditions in order to promote understanding. Paul F. Knitter Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions and Culture is a leading theologian of religious pluralism. Published Work- books, articles, translations. The Dialogue Institute works to transform the world into a global community by fostering interreligious and intercultural scholarship, understanding and cooperation. A nonprofit organization founded at Temple University (Philadelphia, PA) in 1978, the Dialogue Institute trains religious, civic and academic leaders in the skills of critical thinking and respectful dialogue so that they can build sustained relationships across lines of religious and cultural difference. Parliament of Religion Educating Religious Leaders for a Multi-Religious World. The Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions has developed an initiative to explore the importance of interfaith understanding for the curriculum and priorities of our schools. To this end, the Council created a Task Force of US Seminaries to highlight the importance of interfaith understanding at the seminary level.The following is an example of what I would view as posing to bring tolerance in an interfaith or multifaith dialogue but in effect would reinforce illusions about the proprietary truths in the orthodoxies of each particular faith. I cannot see how the practical results of this approach would do anything but exacerbate hostility between fundamentalist factions and specifically in regards to Islamists, simply strengthen a sense of justification for waging their worldwide jihadi war of terrorism against all those who oppose sharia law.Auburn Seminary Auburn’s Center for Multifaith Education equips people of all faiths, from senior religious leaders to teens in conflict-torn countries, to reach across lines of religious difference and build a more just and peaceful world. How can we help you lead in a religiously diverse world? What’s the difference between interfaith and multifaith? At Auburn, the two words are often used interchangeably. Both are adjectives that mean “involving persons of different religious faiths,” but their connotations can be different. The word interfaith is used to mean “between faith communities or between individuals of different faiths,” as in the phrases “interfaith dialogue” and “interfaith marriage”. Auburn uses the word multifaith to mean “many faiths.” Multifaith education means education about different faiths – which might take place in an interfaith environment or among people of the same faith. Auburn does not use the term multifaith to suggest any form of syncretic spirituality – what Auburn’s board member Gustav Niebuhr called “spiritual Esperanto” in his book Beyond Tolerance: Searching for Interfaith Understanding in America (Viking 2008). Auburn’s multifaith work does encourage people of faith – and no faith – to learn from each other. It does not encourage individuals to change or abandon their faith tradition. On the contrary, Auburn multifaith programs show time and again how learning about other religions can strengthen one’s own faith. (mg comment: I fail to see how strenghening Muslims’ faith in the Koran will advance their religious tolerance. End comment)EVOLUTION-INVOLUTION SLIDESHOWBACK to MYSTICAL EXPERIENCEMAYA-GAIA INTRODUCTION & SITEMAP |
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