How Did God Get Started? COLIN WELLS the usual suspects a e day in theMiddle East about four thou sand years ago, an elderly but still rather astonishingly spry gentleman took his son for a walk up a hill. The young man carried on his back some wood that his father had told him theywould use at the top tomake an altar, upon which they would then perform the ritual sacrifice of a burnt offering. Unbeknownst to the son, however, the father had another sort of sacrifice inmind altogether. Abraham, the father,had been commanded, by the God he worshipped as supreme above all others, to sacrifice the young man himself, his beloved and only legitimate son, Isaac. We all know how things turned out, of course. An angel appeared, together with a ram, lettingAbraham know that God didn't really want him to kill his son, that he should sacrifice the ram instead, and that the whole thing had merely been a test. And to modern observers, at least, it's abundantly clear what exactly was being tested. Should we pose the question tomost people familiar with one of the three "Abrahamic" religious traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), all of which trace their origins to thismisty figure, and which to gether claim half theworld's population, the answer would come without hesitation. God was testingAbraham's faith. Ifwe could ask someone from a much earlier time, how ever, a time closer to that of Abraham himself, the answer might be different. The usual storywe tell ourselves about faith and reason says that faithwas invented by the ancient Jews, whose monotheistic tradition goes back to Abraham. In the fullness of time, or?depending on perspective?in a ARION l8.2 FALL 20I0 2 HOW DID GOD GET STARTED? misguided departure, the newer faiths of Christianity and Is lam split off from their Jewish roots and grew to become world religions in their own right.Meanwhile, in a com pletely unrelated series of events, the rationalistic paragons we know as the ancient Greeks invented reason and science. The Greek tradition of pure reason has always clashed with the monotheistic tradition of pure faith, though numerous thinkers have tried to "reconcile" them through the ages. It's a tidy tale of two pristinely distinct entities that do fine, per haps, when kept apart, but which hiss and bubble like fire and water when brought together. A tidy tale, to be sure, but nearly all wrong. Historians have been struggling to correct it formore than a century. What they haven't done, however, iswork out the implica tions of their findings in a way that gives us a new narrative explanation to take its place. This failure of synthesis may have something to do with why the old, discredited story has hung on for so long inpopular imagination. Because we sep arate faith and reason psychologically, thinking of them as epistemological opposites, we tend rather uncritically to as sume that theymust have separate historical origins as well. A moment's reflection says "it ain't necessarily so"?and is even unlikely to be so. It's time for a new narrative about the origins of monotheistic faith, one that's indebted to recent scholarship, but that puts it together in a coherent pattern consistent with both history and psychology. Surprisingly, the pattern that fits best with the historical evidence locates the origins of faith in the rise of reason it self, and despite itsnovelty itdoes so in a way that I suspect will strikemany readers as sensible and intuitive. This new synthesis in turn yields psychological insights into the issues of faith and reason that continue to bedevil us today?from public confrontations over evolution, abortion, and gay rights, to suicide bombings, West Bank settlements, and fly ing lessons inwhich students ominously disdain instruction in landing. Colin Wells 3 it wasn't the jews of course, faith isnotoriously hard to define, but "belief in God" presents a common-sense starting point. It's true that we sometimes use the word "faith" to describe non monotheistic religious traditions such as Buddhism or Hin duism. But even if we acknowledge themarginal presence of something we'd...
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Sep 30, 2023
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