Chapter Eight; THE BEST TEAM IN THE WORLD part thirty-two

Without a doubt Christianity is the largest team in the world. God has so blessed this religion that it can now be represented by hundreds of dogmatic denominations. Spanning from The Russian Orthodox Church to Shakers to Jehovah Witness to Episcopal to Westboro Baptist Church and all the variation in between. According to the website adherents.com Christianity makes up about 2.1 billion of the planets population.
Coming in at number two, but gaining fans fast, is the religion of Islam. They are made up of a bit more cohesive group since the only way you can really understand it is to learn a 1400 plus year old language that is suppose to be God's special way he talks to the rest of the billions of people on the planet. [ Just an aside, It seems God would have wrote this in the most commonly used language in the World. Or at least did it in multiple languages at the same time.] I am sure that what we call English did not even exist that long ago.

This in of itself brings in difficulties with the words of The Qur'an. First the mere concept of using words to transmit meaning to other humans is one of the poorer methods that can be used. The closer a person is to the person talking to them the more likely they are to understand the words that are being told to them. Face to face discussions are the best. And we all know how bad those can be. But they help to see the facial expressions of the person plus you can ask questions to make sure the message is received properly. Next would be a visual or recorded message. Again the receiver of the message would be able to see the facial expressions of the person speaking but not ask questions of them.

Other better ways of communication than text include the phone, audio messages and pictures. All of these have advantages over simple text communications. Most people have experienced the situation when reading a message and having to ask the person that wrote the note to help decipher the message. That is just a level one transmission of a message. Imagine how much more chances for errors in understanding as the distance from the person creating the message increases in both space and time to the reader. Of course this is an allegorical example but one that we know for certain is that through time words develop more and different meanings. My own language, English, would not be at all recognizable to me as not only did the words have different meanings but the characters to write the words used a different alphabet at that time. English started out using a runic alphabet. At the time Muhammad was getting his dictation lessons from the Angel Gabriel anything written in what we would call English would be mostly unreadable to Today's readers. For an example try reading Beowulf in the original form.

So this is one area that the users of Arabic have an handicap with and hence with The Qur'an itself. Common sense would indicate the passage of time would change the words and meanings of words from the original text. Even if this text was kept as accurate as possible. The passage of time would lead readers of The Qur'an to have a more modern and hence different meanings of this work of ancient literature. One could argue that if this message was so important to have accurate for all time for the salvation of humanity, the best way to do it would be in the age of modern media where much more than written text could be used to enhance and help make the message truly timeless and clear. After all, an all powerful God should be able to save people that have already died too. No need to risk getting the message wrong by the silly humans that God created. This way God could really be his own man and run the whole production of the message from start to finish.

Anyway, the Muslims have their own sects and divisions as well but due to the language thing it keeps them a bit more on track than Christianity. But even with that in mind there are more than a dozen dialects of Arabic. Some of these speakers are not able to converse with one another while speaking the same language. That would be as if talking to a person from England couldn't understand the English that a person from Texas or South Africa was speaking. But if you wondered how one becomes a Muslim all you have to do is say; “There is no god but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet.” Oh, I think you have to say it in Arabic for it to really count though.

Some of the more common division in Islam include the Shiite and Sunnis. From there you have divisions that include Al-Quada, Hamas, Sufis, Druze and other religious and political Islamic groups.

This group is indeed a go getter when they take the field. They have a special way of governing where they can get enough control to be a government. They invoke sharia law. This special law would be like Christians going back to the Old Testament and carrying out the laws of Leviticus and the rest of the Old Testament. There team believes that Allah is so worried that his faithful male followers are so unable to control their minds when it comes to women that he must have all woman that wish to avoid being raped cover up themselves from head to toe except for their eyes and hands and feet.

I don't know about how powerful Allah is but I have been reading his book and it seems to say he is pretty strong. One would think that a God that can assure 40 to 72 virgins after you die for him would have no problem having his male followers control themselves around women that are naked or any other level of clothing off or on. I wouldn't think that Allah would let that slip his mind when making his literary masterpiece in the desert with the Angel Gabriel.

But on this team uniforms are very important, one would go as far to say life and death for the women that subject to the dogma of Islam. I am not sure if there is a certain color they have to be but I have seen both light blue and black. I would think the Detroit Lions would fit in well with this color scheme. This particular religion is such a slave to fashion, or lack there of, will even hold women that are not from their religion to the same insane standards as the woman that believe in their religion. (See the section DOES ALLAH REALLY CARE? REALLY? in part twenty-seven.)

So the Muslin world has about 1.1 billion to 1.5 billion adherents around the world. Most, of course, are in the Middle East. They also have a large number of adherents in southwest Asia and growing across Europe also. Islam adherents want to have the entire world either become adherents or die. At least their goals are clear enough. Of course this comes at different levels of fortitude of the adherents themselves. But The Qur'an teaches that the eventual position of the infidel is to convert or submit to Islam. The unbeliever is not highly regarded in the religion of Islam. 

Coming Next Time:

BELIEVE WHAT? part thirty-three

 

Chapter Seven; HUMANS IN THE MIST part twenty-five

When paleontologists, archaeologists, anthropologist and other professionals who research the history of Earth through geology, fossils, and ancient sites of man and animals, a picture begins to develop. Like all primates, humans are very social and territorial animals. Similar characteristics are common to the varieties of primate species. But when the dawn of man came, modern man arrived on the planet pretty much the same as we are now but the Earth was a much different place than it is now. There were many other animals that have long since been extinct. While there are several ideas as to what lead to Homo sapiens to become what they are now. Several are worth touching on.

The consensus is that humans first appeared in the sub-Saharan Africa. From this rise, mankind quickly migrates to the Middle East, Europe, Asia, across the land bridge to the Americas and across the seas and oceans to Australia and other islands of human civilization. One idea to keep in mind is that over the 200,000 years of human existence the access to parts of the planet have came and gone with successive warming and cooling periods of the planet. Based upon archeology, human tools found indicate the level of technology that we had at different parts of the planet, so an idea of the paths and times we migrated and advanced around the globe can be made. Of course Homo sapiens are not the only species to use tools. The use of tools by man's ancestors has been around since at least Homo erectus, about 1.4 to 1.7 million years ago. So the advancement in tool development can not only indicate a time period but also a species of humans.

Some of these artifacts include the presence of animals hides, sticks and stones, and pottery and stone items used for holding water or food. The presence of domesticated animals, namely dog's bones present in close proximity to human artifacts and remains are indication of the progression of of the evolution of the human species. Also domesticated animals such as horses, bovine, swine and other modern domesticated animals are indicators of the advancement of mankind's dominance over his environment. These reflect a early time of human history and development of basic tools. The details of this period of time is almost completely unknown. [That's why we call it prehistoric.] But most of mankind's history is spent during this prehistoric era. Depending on the view of when mankind came into its own that period began about 200,000 years ago.

While prehistoric man would be not much different from us Today, except for his height, he really didn't begin to develop his intellectual skills until he was much further along the path. I have heard that if you were able to take a prehistoric man and raise him in Today's world that he would fit in perfectly. This is of course in sharp contrast to a recent video I saw on You Tube by "Ozmoroid" creationist geometry lesson.xxxiv It talks about how the height of mankind has gotten shorter since the time of Adam.

Archeology and physical evidence doesn't support this assertion. We have clothing and outfits that were worn by person more than 3500 years ago and these show that people were actually a bit shorter instead of taller. Structures built in those ancient times often have smaller door openings and ceilings when they are intact or reassembled. These are just a few inches not the drastic increase that Ozmorid put forth in his video but it does show the point that humans in general are more likely to get taller than shorter.xxxv I found it humorous that the idea postulates that Adam lived 6000 years ago and that due the the rate of decreasing height, humans should simply disappear in about another 4000 years. [I'll keep that day open on my calender.] While the future of humanity is uncertain for sure, it is uncertain because we simply cannot see into the future not because a silly hypothesis is laden with misinformation and ignorance. But the prediction of the end of the world is the specialty of the devout of many faiths and views.

As man advanced with simple tools and observations of the natural world. He began to form a cause and effect view of the world. Things like the weather patterns, seasons, migrations, stars, planting seeds, accidents, communication, and mutual protection become more clear. So man begins to work on using this knowledge to his benefit and the benefit for the clan or tribe. So begins the basis of science, deduction and observation. Not all these cause and effect relationships are accurate in the view of modern man. Just because the last time a meteorite was in the sky a king died or a enemy was defeated doesn't mean that every time a meteorite appears in the sky the same event will happen again. The failure of mankind to recognize that the same celestial event that they see is the same that there enemies or other nations or kingdoms would see seems to be like a foreign concepts to the writings of most ancient texts. After all there is only one sky, in spite of how often the broadcasts meteorologist insist on calling the space above us the “skies.” The ancients didn't understand as we do Today the concept of a shared experience.

The very idea that the sun comes up in East and sets in the West day after day is something that was important to ancient man to know. The knowledge of the progression of the sun in the sky over the year was important for crop management, animal tracking and hunting, when to travel to avoid coming cold weather, how to manage the domesticated animals for breeding. These are all ideas that took many generation to discover, yet are essential to how mankind lives in the world Today.

To have a festival for a better harvest as a cause and effect relationship Today seems archaic but that is how people lived in the past. A “meaningful” sacrifice had to be made according to the rules of the society.

The one or ones with the knowledge of the the seasons had the power to command respect. In a way they almost would seem like gods or at least demi-gods to the common uneducated person. So with basic knowledge of time a person could again be empowered to force their will upon their own people. If a violent storm came it was because the people sinned. If the crops failed it was a sin and a sacrifice had to be made. If the livestock got sick it was because evil was in the tribe and the evil had to be purged. So with the knowledge of time, a whole system of society could be created and called religion.

As man learned to master fire the use of this gave man the power to light the night and use it to keep away predators from his home. Oral language soon included its visual counter part in writing. Now a person could get the words of a person not even with them. They could even have words from people that had died. A great advancement to mankind. The idea of carrying knowledge forward help mankind avoid having to “reinvent the wheel” over and over again. During this period man was able to make more advance tools of stone and use the knowledge of those not with them in writing to help advance their tribes and clans.

However with the advent of written language, what can only be hypothesis at this point as the tribal stories began to take on the written form and past on from generation to generation. While the idea of a way to move a block of stone more easy is a very useful piece of information for stone age man to have. The story that this was handed down by the great stone god of the East is not really a helpful concept. But man was making more time available for himself so instead of following our naturally evolved natural to be nomadic, man began to build town and settlements. The best places were near were there was water for crops, drinking and so on.

I know most of this is a rehash of the stories told for the past few decades but sometime it is good to restate it to remind us of were we came from and where we are now. So please bear with me as I finish with the section.

So now man has a few cities and the populations grow as the ease to have the necessities of life begins to make living in larger groups more desirable. Cities in the Mid-East grow as do cities in Asia and Europe. One wonders at this point if trade for mutual benefit was the next step in human development of was the advent of war? Or was it something different all together?

Was it the idea that you have what I want so I am going to take it from you? Or was it the idea that your stories are different than ours so we must kill you and your ideas? Or was it simply a matter of a misunderstanding of whose animals got to the watering hole first that started the first war? Regardless the first war did begin and sadly we have not found a solution to that yet. But a more effective way to conduct those wars has never been a problem for mankind.

Man develops a more advance way of making items. These are made from bronze and have a much higher degree of strength then the stone tools of the past. Plus bronze was much lighter and could be used for many purposes. A leader of a city could adorn his soldiers in it to make them harder to kill and injure in a battle. Plus the spears with bronzed tips surely gave the army an advantage of a stone equipped enemy. So the armies advance and the victor has his will pushed upon the defeated. So their stories of history and the world are the ones that are passed down. So science and technology builds its tenuous relationship with warfare.

So, not only are the stories of the victory passed down the stories of power and glory grow as victories grow. Sometimes parts of the lore of the vanquish would be integrated or accepted into the prevailing mores some of these would benefit the society some would benefit the ruling class. One such idea is men are given the power to have women subjected to them. Maybe a conquering army might give the woman of that nation to the men as a “prize” and then the children born would be raised in that society increasing the city and country and society even more.

Once religion was created by man the power to motivate and control the population could be done with little intimidation as long as there were enough regular examples used to serve to keep the people suitably terrorized. Killing all the people in a conquered city or making an fatal example of a sexual deviant in the view of their gods. 

xxxiv http://www.youtube.com/user/ozmoroid#p/u/12/rOV9lI_yNyk

xxxv http://www.macleans.ca/science/technology/article.jsp?content=20050404_103140_103140 

Coming Next time: 

RELIGION SHINES ITS LIGHT part twenty-six