THE FALLIBILITY OF RELIGION DAVID WEAVER · similarities to the leaders of those four religions....

THEFALLIBILITYOF RELIGION

PePPed Warbeck Publishing

DAVID WEAVER

First published 2020 byPepped Warbeck Publishing

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12

Introduction

The fallibility of religion is its belief in its own infallibility. When the Pope speaks ex cathedra, his words are said to be the words of God and

therefore infallible. But are they? In our national anthem as in many other national anthems, we ask God to protect New Zealand. But what does that mean? Are we to assume that we have our very own special God, dedicated to our protection? Why? Or is He/She/It to be shared with others? If so how? What about the ‘other side’s’ God or gods?

One day many years ago, when my twin sons were six or seven years old, I had a delegation of two asking me who God was. I replied that, in my view, God was a force, whereupon one twin turned to the other and said ‘I told you so. God is a horse.’1 At the time, I and older members of my family were very involved in equestrian activities. But what this little anecdote demonstrates is that, perhaps more than we realise, an act of faith, for instance a belief in God, is a very personal matter. One descriptive does not suit everyone. It also does not make one descriptive right and another wrong; just different.

In no way do I claim to be a religious scholar, but over a long life I have both experimented with and been actively involved in several of the major world religions. More importantly, I have spent many long hours pondering the whole question of why there are so many different beliefs, many of which claim some form of exclusivity and most of which claim

13introduction

to be divinely ordered. This has led me to the firm conviction that there is an absolute imperative to separate faith from religion. The purpose of this study is to explain why this should be so and to point towards some of the possible implications.

Although I was brought up in a strictly orthodox, Anglican environment, by the time I was eleven or twelve years old I was already a religious sceptic. I can remember quite vividly challenging a divinity teacher of mine on the veracity of the miracles purported to have been performed by Jesus Christ during his ministry. I said that I did not believe in their authenticity. His reply was that I did not need to believe in the miracles themselves; was it not miraculous enough that Christianity had survived for nearly two thousand years? Now, more than seventy years on, I still do not believe in miracles, nor do I now believe that there is anything miraculous or even divine about any religion, let alone its survival.

If we could accept that faith is a personal matter with every individual free to follow their own belief on such matters without being required to conform to the beliefs of others, that would free up religions for what they really are, what their real purpose is. All religions are human constructs, invented by mankind as a method of exercising social control. As such they are necessary for the survival of social order and always will be. They are the essential building blocks in the development, cohesion and maintenance of communities. In most cases, their origins were vested in charismatic leaders at a particular time in history, when a particular series of events pertained which gave the future leaders a platform on which to develop and popularise their beliefs. For example, Jesus Christ came to prominence at a time when Judaism was under threat from Roman domination and there were serious abuses and corruption within the Jewish community. Did Christ really believe he was founding a world religion or did that association come years later, built up by ‘interested’ parties who saw value in advocating Christianity as ‘the one and only true religion’ for their own political, usually power-based reasons? Did Christ really think he was the son of God and therefore a God himself? To what extent was Christianity founded by Christ; or was it founded by his followers over subsequent decades, even centuries? Could you not say the same of Zarathustra, Gautama, Mohammed, Confucius, even Karl Marx, and many other charismatic leaders, although none of them actually claim divinity? Was man made in the image of God or was God made in the image of man? In my view all religions are man-made

14 the fallibility of religion | David Weaver

and therefore neither divinely ordained nor infallible. They are certainly not exclusive. My hypothesis is that if such a separation could be recognised, then progressive elements in all religions would be assisted in effecting changes to aid their modernisation and ultimately their survival. I am not saying that each religion should not continue to associate itself with a belief in God, only that such an association should not be mandatory or exclusive.

If religions could come to accept that they are not divine but are essential, man-made creations for communal social order, their survival in the modern world would become much more viable, as would their usefulness. As social organisations that are receptive to change, religions could more readily renew themselves to meet modern needs and perceptions. For example, general acceptance of women bishops throughout the Church of England, acceptance of birth control, women priests and married priests throughout Roman Catholicism, greater freedom and respect for women in Islam and intermarriage with other traditions amongst Zoroastrianism could all become possible. As equal, albeit different, mechanisms for the social struc-turing of communities, religions could start to respect each other without resorting to self-destructive rivalries. Change and, through change, survival of religion is an essential element for the future of world order. Currently, barriers to progress come from within religions themselves as their internal hierarchies seek to maintain their power and control through claiming their unique connection to the Divine, supported by the maintenance of outmoded traditions. In subsequent chapters I shall elaborate not only on why the fallacy of religious divinity and exclusivity has developed but how the separation of faith from religion would be both a positive step and one that is critical to the future survival of mankind.

17

CHAPTER ONE

The Genesis of Religions

In order to demonstrate the separation between iconic religious leaders and the religions that were founded by their followers in their name, I

have selected four examples: Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam (these four are not exclusive). I will also discuss two iconic ‘religious’ leaders after whom no religions have been founded and consider their similarities to the leaders of those four religions.

ZoroastrianismZoroastrianism is generally regarded as the oldest salvation religion, though there are no precise dates for the life of Zarathustra, the name associated with the founding of Zoroastrianism.2 Possible dates range between the 9th and 6th centuries BCE with some suggestions that it might have been as early as between the 4th and 6th millennia BCE.3 Mary Boyce, the eminent Zoroastrian scholar, suggests that, based on all the allusive evidence, the Gathas, the holy scriptures of the Zoroastrian religion, were written c.1400 BCE.4 She adds that, if this is correct, ‘It is a pleasing thought that this allows for the possibility that he [Zarathustra] and Moses were contemporaries.’5 There are only two important scriptures relating to Zoroastrianism: the Gathas and the Vendidad. Together they form the Avesta, the texts of which:


cannot be dated accurately nor can their language be located geographically. The texts which form the canon were not all written at the same time . . . The Gatha texts are probably sev-eral centuries older than the others, although a precise date can not yet be justified . . . The earliest transmission of the Gathas must have been oral only since no Iranian people seem to have used writing in early times (defined as prior to invention of the cuneiform Old Persian, probably under Darius).6

The Gathas are a collection of seventeen hymns, said to be the words of Ahura Mazda (the Zoroastrian word for the Wise One or God) as revealed to Zarathustra, Ahura Mazda’s prophet:7

According to tradition, the five Gathas were composed by Zoroaster [Zarathustra] himself, thus being the only authentic religious heritage left by him to posterity. The overwhelming majority of stanzas of the first four Gathas is [sic] explicitly addressed to Ahura Mazda to enter into contact with him. In the numerous stanzas, that must have been entirely unintelligi-ble to his human audience, the prophet demonstrates the secret knowledge shared by him with Ahura Mazda.8

The Gathas are extremely hard to translate, as little is known about the original language, Avestan, said to be a Persian Vedic form of Sanskrit.9 The Vendidad is much more prescriptive than the Gathas and can be traced to a group of dasturs or high priests writing much later, probably between the seventh and ninth centuries CE.10 Whatever the correct dates are for both documents, such lack of clarity must raise some questions about their authorship. These doubts are given added weight by the popular theory that both were composed over a significant period of time. Indeed the prophet’s authorship has recently been questioned by Jean Kellens and Eric Pirart, who emphasise that [in the Gathas] ‘the name of the prophet is given in the third person . . . and he is even addressed in the vocative ‘O Zoroaster who is your trustful ally?’11 Referring again to Boyce, she states:

Zoroaster, it is generally agreed, was a religious genius of the highest order; and his teachings bear the imprint of a

19chapter one | The Genesis of Religion

highly original mind, which joined powerful logic to spiritual profundity.

He was moreover, it appears, born at a place and time when events impelled him to seek new theological answers to new earthly problems.12

She is referring here to a time in Persian history when the old familiar peaceful order was breaking down in the face of disruptive militarism. The newly-developed chariots aided marauding bands of lawless and greedy men to terrorise herdsmen and carry off their cattle.13

This example of a charismatic leader emerging to meet a new and destructive set of circumstances and thereby becoming the figurehead of a new religion fits perfectly with my model for the genesis of a religion. But does it provide evidence of a direct link between faith in the divinity of Ahura Mazda and Zoroastrianism? Of course it does in the minds of the faithful, but I have to question the accuracy of such links. Are the Gathas really the words of God as passed to Zarathustra? Are they even necessarily the words of Zarathustra alone? For many centuries they were passed down orally, and as such they may have been added to or subtracted from by others over time. We will never know. But one thing is sure; however its genesis occurred, the end result has been a highly successful social construct that has survived for many centuries. Zarathustra was a man, albeit a very special one, but he never claimed that he was anything more. It is his followers who credited him with being the direct conduit to Ahura Mazda.

BuddhismSiddhartha Gautama is an example of a charismatic religious founder who did not claim any form of sanctity but has nevertheless, with time, acquired sacred status. As Karen Armstrong says in her book, Buddha, ‘In their [Buddhists] view, no authority should be revered, however august . . . Throughout his life he [Gautama] fought against the cult of personality.’14 Indeed the word Buddha originally had no sacred meaning, only indicat-ing enlightenment. But that has not stopped subsequent generations of adherents to Buddhism resorting to worshipping the Buddha himself, as is clearly demonstrated through a visit to any Buddhist temple. Followers light candles and pray before an image of the Buddha as a matter of course. This practice is directly in contravention to the original concept


of Buddhism that ‘any one of his [Gautama’s] disciples could achieve the same enlightenment’, if they followed his principles, but not if they just revered Gautama.15

Few hard facts, ones which can be regarded as historically sound, are really known about Gautama’s life. The first concrete evidence of the existence of Buddhism occurred about two hundred years after his supposed existence. This was in the form of inscriptions made by the Mauryan King Ashoka who ruled in India between c. 269 and c. 232 BCE.16 There is not even any certainty about the century in which Gautama lived. Although the generally accepted dates are from 566 BCE to 483 BCE, some Chinese sources suggest he could have died as late as 368.BCE.17 Initially the traditions of the Buddha’s life and teachings were preserved orally and passed down from generation to generation by monks specially appointed for this purpose, only being consolidated into the current Therevada Pali Canon (the most complete extant texts) at the ‘Second Council’ about one hundred years after the Buddha’s death. (The first council had, according to the Pali texts, been held shortly after the Buddha died.18) The texts had still not been written down at this time and, subsequent to the council, a schism occurred which split the Buddhist movement into a number of sects or schools.19 ‘Each school took these old texts but rearranged them to fit its own teaching. In general it seems no material was discarded though there were additions and elaborations.’20 Clearly, even at this early stage in the development of Buddhism, various distortions were creeping in to suit those in positions of authority. As Armstrong says:

First . . . we know nothing about the monks who compiled and edited all these texts, nor about the scribes who later committed them to writing. Second, the Pali Canon is bound to reflect the viewpoint of the Theravada school, and may have slanted the originals for polemical purposes. Third, despite the excellence of the monk’s yoga-trained memories, this mode of transmission was inevitably flawed. Much material was proba-bly lost, some was misunderstood, and the monks’ later views were doubtless projected onto the Buddha.21

Whilst scholars debate how much if any of the Pali Canon includes words that were uttered by Gautama himself, there is certainly an absence


of any reliable provenance. Also, ‘It contains no continuous narrative of the Buddha’s life.’22 Indeed, as Armstrong says, ‘There is not a single incident in the scriptures that we can honestly affirm to be historically true. What is historical is the fact of the legend.’23 It is rather similar to the ongoing scholarly debate over who actually wrote Shakespeare’s plays. We shall never know and it does not really matter who wrote them. What is an undisputable fact is that they were written. In the same way, it does not really matter who contributed to Buddhist scripture. Gautama’s legend, or Buddhism, points towards a way of life leading to Enlightenment. There is no suggestion in Theravada Buddhism that the Buddha was divine, but there is some suggestion that, although they saw him ‘as a guide and exemplar, [they] were beginning to see him as a superman.’24 The same cannot be said of the Mahayana school of Buddhism, however. This virtually deified the Buddha.

Whilst Gautama’s revelations did not occur during a period of any dramatic political upheaval, it certainly occurred at a time when there was considerable religious discontent and fracturing of the established order:

The northeastern region of India, during the period of the Buddha (c.563–c.483 BC) was virtually alive with small religious movements, each composed of a charismatic yoga leader, a rule or set of laws predicated by the leader, and a community of adherents . . . At this time in India, many were no longer content with the external formalities of Brahmanic (Hindu high caste) sacrifice and ritual.25

As with Zoroastrianism, the origins of Buddhism and in particular the life of Buddha are legendary rather than based solely on historical facts. That in no way detracts from the importance of Buddhism both as a religion and as a way of life. Buddha never claimed to be divine and never wanted to be so regarded, but nevertheless many disciples and those religious leaders who came after him, while holding him up as supreme have also, in many cases, given him divine status for their own ‘political’ reasons:

Like Jesus, Muhammad, and Socrates, the Buddha was teach-ing men and women how to transcend the world of suffering, how to reach beyond pettiness and expediency and discover an absolute value. All were trying to make human beings


more conscious of themselves and awaken them to their full potential.26

These defining words in the Introduction to Armstrong’s book, Buddha, capture the essence of my hypothesis – that all the great religions of the world are human constructs; attempts by society, led by charismatic leaders such as Zarathustra, Jesus, Muhammad or Gautama, to provide their communities with social structures within which to lead their lives on earth. Not a divinely ordained way of life but one that has relevance to everyday communal living.

ChristianityThe early Christian church has surely been the subject of more Western scholarly research than any other prophetic religion. It would be pre-sumptuous of me to assume that, with my limited knowledge, I have any significant contribution to make in the name of new thought, particularly as I am confining my comments to a few short paragraphs. What seems quite clear to me, however, is the lack of any real clarity regarding the genesis of Christianity. Was it founded or did it evolve over several decades? The facts seem to point towards the latter alternative. Graham Stanton states: ‘Christians of all persuasions acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God. But does the historical evidence support such a claim?… Most Jews and many Christians would agree that Jesus did not intend to found a religion.’27 Is there any foolproof connection between Jesus of Nazareth’s teachings, as described in the four gospels, and what was to develop into the worldwide Christian movement? The answers are at best inconclusive. Quoting again from Stanton:

The gospels were not written until between thirty-five and sixty years after Jesus was crucified. The evangelists all wrote in Greek for urban Christians who were very different from the first Aramaic-speaking followers of Jesus in rural Galilee. According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus was very reluctant to make grandiose claims for himself . . . For these reasons there is a gap between the Jesus who lived and taught in Galilee and the Jesus portrayed by the evangelists, a gap often referred to as the difference between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.’28


Did Jesus claim to be the Messiah and if so, what did he mean? The term was normally used to mean a Jewish monarch. Jonathan Knight says: ‘Messiah is never used in the Bible as the title for a future redeemer . . . There is little direct evidence that Jesus accepted or used this title.’ 29 Stanton agrees: ‘[Jesus] rarely if ever referred to himself as Messiah.’30 Did he claim to be the Son of God and therefore divine? Almost certainly not.31 When he talked about ‘The Son of Man’ was he talking about himself or someone else? There seems to be a total lack of certainty on both these points:

Here we enter territory that is amongst the most disputed of all New Testament issues … ‘The son of Man problem’, as it has been called, lies in deciding whether Jesus himself used this form of words; if he did whether he used them as a title; and if he did whether he used them as a title for himself. The only thing which can be said with certainty is that this problem does not permit of easy resolution.32

Did Jesus believe he was a prophet? Quite probably, but then as Stanton says: ‘In first-century Galilee and Judaea there were other prophets; one of the most influential was John the Baptist. There were other healers and exorcists. There were other teachers who had disciples and some who told parables.’33 Knight concurs.34

What seems quite clear is that the crucifixion of Jesus was the catalyst for his disciples to believe in his divinity, and hence call him Christ and the Messiah, the anointed one, and the Son of God.35 He went up to Jerusalem for the Passover as the prophet Jesus and his crucifixion was the watershed after which he became Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah.36 In other words Jesus did not found or set out to found Christianity as we understand it.37 That task was performed, in his name, by those who came after him – his erstwhile disciples, in particular Peter, the four evangelists, and Paul who was not even a disciple and never met Jesus but became known as the Apostle to the Gentiles at a date after Jesus’ supposed Resurrection and Ascension.38 We have the familiar pattern of a charismatic leader being raised up by others to become the eponymous founder of a religious movement after his death. In other words, Christianity has no direct claim to be divinely inspired but is undoubtedly a very powerful social construct, founded at a time of both internal (Jewish) discord and external strife (the Roman occupation). It


was at least the middle of the second century before Christianity emerged in the form that has become its hallmark down the centuries.39 During the preceding years there were disagreements between various apostles, particularly between James, Peter and Paul, over major doctrinal matters such as whether to adhere or not to the Jewish Laws, whether or not to require Gentile converts to be circumcised, and most importantly, whether or not to accept Gentiles as converts at all.40

Most of what we are told of Jesus’ life is contained in the four gospels, all probably written between c.70 and c.100 CE; the exact dates are unknown and are much debated.41 Common sense would suggest that, inevitably, these gospels would have been subject to some form of dialectic bias by the authors.42 Furthermore, as they were dependent on oral memory and hearsay, inevitably they are all open to questions of accuracy. Paul’s Ministry, as evidenced by his many letters to various fledgling Christian communities, spread out around the Roman Empire, and while probably more accurately recorded, were the written records of someone who never met Jesus. This did not prevent him from the dynamic promotion of Jesus as his divine role model. Again, Paul was quite clearly using Jesus’ life story as a social construct, intended to progress the fledgling Christian movement amongst the Gentiles.43 Jesus was a Jew and saw his movement as being a sect within Judaism.44 Jesus did not envisage his small sect operating outside the Jewish umbrella.45 Although Peter is generally regarded as being the foundation figure for Christianity, it was Paul who created the wider membership by proselytising among the Gentiles and thus causing the schism between Christianity and Judaism.46

Jesus is quoted in the Gospel according to St Matthew as saying ‘And the second [commandment] is like unto it [the first commandment], Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’47 If this is a divine commandment, how and why has it become so distorted? How can people, who call themselves Christians, who may even hold positions of authority within the Church, remain silent and even encourage inter-religious wars, the ill-treatment of others, for whatever reasons, the tolerance of paedophilia among the Catholic clergy, the denial of the right to marry among the Catholic priesthood, and other forms of inhumane behaviour? Christian practice as it has now developed over the centuries, along with its myriad denominations, demands obedience to the Church, or rather to those in authority within those various denominational


hierarchies. In this way the Church is using its authority as a power base from which to control its communities. If you, as a practitioner, do not do as your Church requires, some catastrophic happening will ensue such as you being denied entrance to Heaven, or being consigned to eternal damnation. In other words, the original words of Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels have been usurped by the Church authorities to meet their own needs in exercising social control over their flocks.

IslamBorn in c.570 and died in 632 CE, the Prophet Muhammad is the most modern of the four iconic, eponymous religious leaders which I am using as exemplars of the separation between the leader’s original ideas and the final shape of the religion with which they are associated. With Islam having been founded in the Common Era, one might expect that the historical accounts of Muhammad’s life would have much greater accuracy than earlier accounts such as Zoroastrianism or Buddhism, and indeed this may well be the case.48 Nevertheless the pattern of uncertainty, divisions of opinion and external influences that relate to the other traditions is also clearly apparent in Islam.

There is an interesting parallel between the genesis of Islam and that of Zoroastrianism. Both Zarathustra and Muhammad revealed the word of God, the former through the Gathas, the latter through the Qur’an. Both those original scriptures were subsequently augmented by religious leaders and scholars, by the writing of the Vendidad and the hadith respectively.49 Both religions revere the original revealed words as sacrosanct while often disputing the relevance and authenticity of the subsequent augmentations. In the case of Islam, there are several versions of the hadith with consequential sectarian disputes over which version to follow.50 In both religions there are those who do not believe in the authenticity or relevance of the secondary scriptures.51

Within Arabic society with its tradition of inter-tribal feuding, Muham-mad preached peace and in so doing was subject to antagonism from the powerful.52 Islamic scholars such as Karen Armstrong and Abdullah Saeed agree that the Prophet preached justice, equity and compassion for all, peace and concord with other faiths such as Judaism and Christianity, and the universality of beliefs.53 He preached total surrender to God rather than claiming the virtue of any particular tradition as being the only way.


He also sought emancipation for women. So how have all these attributes become so distorted over time? Early followers of Islam never claimed that Muhammad was divine, but maintained that he was ‘the perfect man’.54 In the twenty-first century it is sacrilegious to portray the Prophet in any form, indicating that he is now regarded by the faithful as more than just a man. How and why have these changes occurred?

To answer these questions, one need hardly look further than to the time known as the Rashidun. This was the period of thirty years after Muhammad’s death, from 632 to 661 CE. At the time of his death, Islam was still in its infancy and confined to the tribes of Arabia, mainly those closely associated with Muhammad’s family.55 He had not provided for his succession so the role of declaring a leader fell to four close associates or disciples. It was during this time that Islam began to take the shape that it carries today. There was disagreement between followers of the first caliph, Abu Bakr, a close friend of Muhammad, and those who believed that the fourth caliph, his cousin and son-in-law Ali, should have been his immediate successor and thereby achieved the establishment of a dynastic succession of direct descendants. This split resulted in the creation of the Sunni sect, the followers of Abu Bakr, and the Shi’a sect, those who were pro-Ali. The bitterness of this split is at the heart of much inter-sectarian bloodshed to this day. The split was a political one associated with succession and had nothing to do with religion. The intertribal peace created during Muhammad’s life also reverted to traditional tribal feuding, but more typically involving new non-Islamic foes and was aimed at cementing internal cohesion.56 During this time, variants of the Qur’an appeared, and Shariah, the Arabic word meaning Islamic law, which has its basis rooted in the Qur’an and is therefore, according to Islamic belief, the Word of God, started to develop into an essential element of Islamic governance, although much more of it was created and consolidated during the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, 661–750 CE and 750–935 CE respectively.57 Islam became noted for its success in war rather than for its adherence to religious principles, with its political success being directly attributed by Muslims to the will of God:

Although only a small portion of the Qur’an concerns strictly legal questions, it sets forth a number of general principles regarding how Muslims are to conduct themselves. The Qur’an is replete with commands to believers to abide by God’s limits,


to obey God and his Prophet, and to judge according to what God has laid down. It contains many references to God’s laws and commands. The prevailing view among Muslims is that the Qur’an laid the underpinnings for a distinctively Islamic legal order and one that all Muslims are bound to follow as a token of their submission (‘islam’ in Arabic) to the will of God.

From this kernel the shariah grew into a vast corpus of law. One of the great, challenging issues of Islamic intellectual history has been that of defining the relationship between the text of divine revelation and subsequent legal development, an effort that has entailed the working out of a theory of resources to provide an Islamic theoretical basis for resolving legal problems not explicitly addressed in the Qur’an.58

In other words, the greatest part of Shariah has been developed subse-quent to the death of the Prophet and reflects the changing requirements of Islamic governance as the years have progressed. With time, Muhammad’s principle tenets of justice, equity, compassion, tolerance and peaceful community building have, through political expediency, become, at least for the more fundamental adherents of Islam, synonymous with the exact opposite. As such it is a good example of a religion being or becoming a social construct rather than just an expression of faith.

While Islamic scholars may and do debate the authenticity of parts of the Qur’an, there is no gainsaying the questionable authenticity of the hadith.59 ‘Questions still remain about the authenticity of many hadith. In particular, the authenticity of hadith which seem to contradict core Islamic teachings, such as those which support sectarian or misogynistic views.’60 Shi’a and Sunni each have their own collection of hadith. Also, in rather similar vein to the relationship between the Gathas and the Vendidad in Zoroastrianism:

The second most important textual source of Islam is hadith. Hadith refers to the reports of the Prophet’s contemporaries about the Prophet’s speech and conduct [his sunna] … The Qur’an itself provides relatively few explicit instructions about how to live as a Muslim, that is, in submission to God … Adherence to the sunna constitutes the practical element of what it means to be a Muslim.61


While the Qur’an is regarded throughout Islam as the immutable words of God revealed to Muhammad, hadith are a subsequent creations by close companions of the Prophet and Islamic scholars at different times in history. As such they are clearly a social construct and not part of the original divine revelations. At the same time, hadith play a very significant role in the rules and behaviour of followers of Islam.

At the time of Muhammad’s life, he was by no means the only acknowl-edged prophet, but, as Saeed says: ‘Muslims believe that Muhammad was the final prophet of God.’62 Indeed, there were considerable vari-ations in belief throughout Arabia.63 ‘With the help of [Muhammad’s wife] Khadijah’s Christian cousin Waraqah, he [Muhammad] came to interpret these messages as in general identical with those sent by God through other prophets or messengers to Christians, Jews and others.’64

Other significant social movements Karen Armstrong is a staunch supporter of Karl Jasper’s controversial and much disputed concept of the Axial Age, referring to it in several of her publications, particularly in The Great Transformation.65 I do not intend to enter into the dispute but find its structure convenient for my purposes of comparison between the genesis of religions and the failure in more modern times of other significant social movements to become similarly established. In the Introduction to The Great Transformation, Armstrong states:

In our current predicament [the twenty-first century], I believe that we can find inspiration in the period that the German philosopher Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age because it was pivotal to the spiritual development of humanity. From about 900 to 200 BCE, in four distinct regions, the great world reli-gions came into being: Confucianism and Daoism in China; Hinduism and Buddhism in India; monotheism in Israel; and philosophical rationalism in Greece… Rabbinical Judaism, Christianity, and Islam… were all latter-day flowerings of the original Axial Age.66

Later in the same chapter, she says:

It is frequently assumed . . . that faith is a matter of believing


certain creedal propositions. Indeed, it is common to call religious people ‘believers,’ as though assenting to the articles of faith were their chief activity. But most of the Axial philos-ophers had no interest whatever in doctrine or metaphysics. A person’s theological beliefs were a matter of absolute indifference to somebody like the Buddha . . . Others argued that it was immature, unrealistic and perverse to look for the kind of absolute certainty that many people expect a religion to provide.

All the traditions that were developed during the Axial Age pushed forward the frontiers of human consciousness and discovered a transcendent dimension in the core of their being, but they did not necessarily regard this as supernatural, and most of them refused to discuss it. . . . If the Buddha or Confucius had been asked whether he believed in God, he would probably have winced slightly and explained – with great courtesy – that this was not an appropriate question. What mattered was not what you believed but how you behaved. Religion was about doing things that changed you at a profound level.67

These words reflect my own thoughts except that I would argue that ‘lat-ter-day flowerings of the Axial Age’ did not stop with Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but are still in evidence in the modern era, although they may not be recognised per se as religions. If we take a broad definition for religion such as: ‘Religion is the organisation of life around the depth dimensions in form, completeness, and clarity in accordance with environing cultures’, or, put more simply: ‘A pursuit or interest followed with devotion’, we can include such significant late nineteenth century socio-political movements as Marxism and Satyagraha.68 My own definition of religion is: ‘A moral and social code of conduct for communal living.’

MarxismThe genesis of Marxism, which in turn became the inspiration for Soviet Communism, bears many characteristics which are similar to those of the four religions described above. One such example was the use of Karl Marx’s name as the eponymous founder of the movement, to the virtual exclusion


of Frederick Engels who co-authored the Communist Manifesto with him.69 Unlike such leaders as Zarathustra, Gautama, Jesus and Muhammad, however, Marx was not an original thinker. Behind his communistic theories lay the influence of several earlier philosophers such as Rousseau, Feuerbach, Proudhon and especially Hegel.70 The Marxist movement, like the foundation of most religions, occurred at a time of great conflict. In this instance, there was an urge to rid society of the age-old inequalities of feudalism and serfdom along with the perceived tyrannies associate with the burgeoning modern bourgeoisie. Marx inspired an important disciple in the form of Lenin, who, unlike Marx, was neither German nor Jewish, but tried faithfully to follow the principles of Marxism in Russia, in a similar fashion to the way Paul advocated Jesus and Christian principles far from Jesus’ native Israel.71 John Gooding’s comments in this regard are particularly apposite:

Lenin has often been seen as a revolutionary first and a Marxist second. In the strictly chronological sense, this is undeniable. Lenin’s rebellion came before his Marxism. . . . His first guru in the field of revolution was not Marx but the writer his [executed] brother admired most, Nikolai Chernyshevsky . . . Though Lenin did not begin his revolutionary career as a Marxist . . . Once converted [he] never questioned the basic principles of Marxism as he had originally understood them.72

Gooding goes on to say:

The absolute truth of Marxism lay at the root of Lenin’s notorious intolerance. Marxism was the rock on which he founded his life . . . Marxism was in his eyes not merely the most preferable variant of socialism; it was the one and only true socialism. Lenin fought in the knowledge that socialism would sooner or later triumph throughout the world.73

These thoughts and actions parallel the enthusiasm with which the

apostle Paul set out to spread Christianity throughout the then known world some nineteen hundred years earlier.74

Communism failed to live up to the principles expounded by Marx


for the same reasons that religions have failed to live up to the principles expounded by their eponymous founders. Soviet Communism, as originally conceived by Lenin in the Marxist mould, was modified and debased to meet the needs and wishes of its new leadership under Stalin. Joseph Stalin was a prime example of a leader who manipulated the system for his own purposes. As Gooding says:

The autocratic state [Russia in the early 1930s] had now taken on a distinctly patriarchal form; Stalin was a father to his people, and one who interceded more vigorously against their enemies than any other tsar ever had . . . Christianity had more or less gone, but a surrogate faith had replaced it; life in the atheist Soviet state had taken on a quasi-religious character, with ornate rituals, solemn liturgical incantations and feast days, promises of a secular heaven and hell, and a morality almost Manichean in its black-and-whiteness.75

Less than twenty years after its great Marxist revolution, Russia had virtually reverted to its traditional autocratic, almost feudal, system of governance but with its masters no longer from the aristocracy but from state appointed sycophants. In other words, it was a case of ‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’ (The more things change, the more they stay the same). The main tenets of Marxism, as called for in Marx and Engel’s Communist Manifesto, were rapidly being eroded by those now in charge of the newly formed USSR in order to maintain their personal power base and to ensure total social control over the masses, just like world religions had been doing for centuries. ‘Stalin had turned the Soviet Union into a mighty industrial and military power; he had entrenched a highly privileged ruling class with unlimited authority, under himself, to carry out whatever policies he deemed necessary. Yet communism remained remote.’76 For example, the so-called ‘Stalin Revolution’ of 1929 saw ‘an assault on the peasants by communist militants, backed up by the Red Army and the secret police and the forced collectivization of agriculture, with a consequential collapse in the traditional way of peasant farming’.77 ‘The peasants had lost almost everything that mattered to them: the commune (abolished 1930), the church, their independent way of life.’78


Lenin’s aim of genuine mass support and a real bonding between people and rulers was thus achieved by means that had nothing whatever to do with socialism or the Bolshevik’s original ambitions . . . He [Stalin] had led them back, amidst conditions of utter insecurity, to a culture . . . which the Bolsheviks themselves, as democrats and enlighteners, had once intended to liquidate.79

Under Stalin, this was revolution by state diktat not by the wishes of the masses as envisaged by Marx and Lenin.

In similar fashion to the founders of many religions, in the initial stages of his social experiment, Marx encountered serious setbacks and disappointments. For example, when he and Engels first published the Communist Manifesto, along with many other revolutionary thinkers Marx was convinced that ‘A general crisis of capitalism was imminent. This was to create a situation in which the proletariat, taking the lead . . . would establish a radical democracy which would lead, in short order, to the abolition of classes and to communism.’80 It did not happen and the revolutions of 1948 all failed, causing Marx to abandon ‘The notion of “permanent revolution” ’ and ‘The idea of an imminent transition from class to classless society and also the corresponding political programme of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” (as opposed to the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”).’81 Indeed, as Balibar states: ‘Others have contended that, strictly speaking, Marxist philosophy is not to be found in Marx’s writings, but emerged retrospectively, as a more general and more abstract reflection on the meaning, principles and universal significance of his work.’82 It seems to me that this chronology compares closely with the development of the Christian Gospels and the Islamic hadith.

SatyagrahaThe second of my examples of a social movement, although it never matured into a full-blown religion, nevertheless exhibited many similar characteristics. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born into a reasonably affluent Vaisya83 family in Gujarat in 1869. It was not until 1908, thirteen years after his initial arrival in South Africa that he started to expound his theories of Satyagraha, a word coined by him to mean Truth-force. In Gandhi’s own words:

Satyagraha is literally holding onto Truth and it means,


therefore, Truth-force. Truth is soul or spirit. It is therefore, known as soul-force. It excludes the use of violence because man is not capable of knowing the absolute truth and, therefore, not competent to punish. . . . The term Satyagraha was coined by me in South Africa to express the force that the Indians there used for full eight years and it was coined in order to distinguish it from the movement then going on in the United Kingdom under the name of Passive Resistance.84

At this stage in his life, there was certainly no sign that Gandhi would emerge as a world figure, revered by many as Mahatma, Saint, Messiah or Avatar, reviled by others as a political trouble maker. It has been said that he is the most written about person in history and one of, if not the most, controversial. It is not the object of this paper to enter that debate, but merely to demonstrate how similar in many ways the genesis of the Satyagraha movement was to other great social and religious movements.

Like the founders of religious movements, Christ and Muhammad for example, Gandhi was a man of peace but also not afraid to meet violence against his own person head-on, as was frequently exemplified in South Africa and later in India.85 Good examples of this were the confrontations at the Satyagraha marches in the Transvaal in 1913 and later at the Salt march from Sabarmati to Dandi in India in 1930.86 Indeed a word much used by Gandhi alongside Satyagraha was ahimsa, meaning peace or non-violence: ‘Truth [Satyagraha] is as narrow as it is straight. Even so is that of ahimsa. One can realise Truth and ahimsa only by ceaseless striving.’87 And a little later in the same chapter: ‘Ahimsa and Truth are so intertwined that it is practically impossible to disentangle and separate them . . . Nevertheless ahimsa is the means; Truth is the end.’88

Although he had a quiet, reedy voice and was not a great public speaker, like Christ he attracted vast crowds during his various progressions through India, where people were drawn to him through his charisma. He generally spoke without the aid of any modern sound systems, so his words could not possibly have been heard by the majority of his adoring followers. But to receive darshan from him (to have his blessing by simply seeing him), was reward enough, many having walked for hours or even days just to catch a glimpse of him.89

Like Christ, Gandhi died a martyr to his beliefs, in particular his belief


in the relevance of all religious traditions.90 He was shot on 30 January 1938, whilst walking to his evening prayer meeting in New Delhi, by a Hindu fanatic who believed that, in his fierce determination to gain swaraj, independence for all India, all the different religious communities in India should come together to achieve that aim. His assassin, Nathram Godse maintained that Gandhi had sold out to the Muslims. It is true that, in a final effort to avoid partition, he offered to support an Islamic led government if that would achieve independence for a united India.91 While there can be no doubt about his sincerity as a devout Hindu, Gandhi also had a deep belief in a universal transcendental God:

The word Satya (Truth) is derived from Sat, which means ‘being’.

Nothing is or exists in reality except Truth. That is why Sat or Truth is perhaps the most important name of God. In fact it is more correct to say that Truth is God than to say God is Truth . . . On deeper thinking, however, it will be realised, that Sat or Satya is the only correct and fully significant name for God.

And where there is Truth, there also is knowledge which is true. Where there is no Truth, there can be no true knowl-edge . . . Hence we know God as Sat-chit-ananda, One who combines in Himself Truth, Knowledge and Bliss.92

Gandhi was much admired by world leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. According to Arne Naess, Albert Einstein said of him: ‘Generations to come would scarcely believe that such a man actually walked this earth. In a collection of essays that appeared in 1949 under the title, Gandhi Memorial Peace Number, a large number of eminent persons accord Gandhi the highest of praise as a moral being.’93 In spite of this praise by world leaders, his mass appeal was largely confined to India. His basic concepts of Satyagraha and Ahimsa never gained traction on the world stage and therefore failed to develop into a major social movement. Since his death in 1948, even in India his influence has largely ebbed away. Within twenty years of his death, his concept of the use of non-violent protest was being seriously abused, politically, in the way the use of what are called hartals, non-violent mass protests, was being applied. Modern-day hartals


are extremely intimidating; gangs of politically sanctioned gundas, thugs, roam the streets armed with staves to ensure total cessation of work or indeed any movement at all either on a national or a regional basis. Similar is the practice of gherao, during a labour dispute. A group of workers will surround a manager with whom they are in dispute and forbid him freedom to move for hours on end in a ‘peaceful’ or non-violent show of force to persuade the manager to accede to their demands. Such intimidation is, of course, totally at variance with Gandhi’s concepts of non-violent protest. Indeed, Gandhi would have been appalled.

Although Satyagraha was too narrow a concept ever to become a recognised religion in the true sense of the word, it did contain many of the attributes of one. It had a charismatic founder who came to prominence at a time of great social upheaval – global agitation for independence from colonial rule. It attracted multitudes of adoring followers, albeit many of whom had little understanding of what the movement was really about. Many believed Gandhi to be a saint and some even a god who could perform miracles.94 Following his martyrdom, there was a massive, national outpouring of grief from all religious persuasions.95 As Jawaharlal Nehru said: ‘The light has gone out of our lives, our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him . . . is no more.’96 Both in life and in death he became an inspiration to many foreign leaders who sought to achieve freedom from oppression for their people.97 Anyone who has visited Raj Ghat, the site of his cremation on the banks of the river Jumna and now a memorial garden, cannot fail to be impressed by the very special aura of peace and tranquillity which pervades the spot to this very day. The concept of Satyagraha started small in South Africa but emerged as a major social movement when Gandhi returned to India in January 2015 determined to gain swaraj, self-rule for his people.98 His success was to lead directly to the dismantlement of colonialism across the world.

ConclusionIn this chapter, I have traced the origins of four major religions and two major non-religious social movements. I have demonstrated that all of them have followed a similar path in their genesis: the appearance of a charismatic leader who very often had a simple, unique and significant social message to make within their local community, but no intention to found a religion. By chance circumstances, their message has been taken up by dedicated


followers and converted into a major movement with sufficient appeal to encourage wide-spread interest and membership. Along the way, the original message has been extended and modified to meet changing social circumstances. Sooner or later, in all examples, the original unity of purpose has become fractured causing major schisms such as between Rome-based Catholicism and the Orthodox churches, Shi’a and Sunni Islam, Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism, Iranian and Indian based Zoroastrianism. Marxist and Maoist Communism, Satyagraha and hartals. All these schisms have come about through the exigencies of exercising social control within their respective communities and the desire to maintain dominance on the part of their internal leadership. If religions were divinely inspired, as is claimed by their adherents, how do they justify internal schisms?

I have attempted to demonstrate two major points. Firstly, that there are remarkable similarities in the genesis of major world religions. Secondly, that there are equally compelling similarities between the genesis of those religions and the genesis of two major late-nineteenth century social move-ments, neither of which have developed into world religions, but either of which could have done so. To me this confirms without doubt my hypothesis that all religions are a social construct not a divine inspiration. In each case the concepts of a charismatic and exceptional leader were built on, changed and utilised to exercise control over communities. Their claims to being divinely inspired are merely devices for establishing and maintaining social control, and to assist those who are in a position of power to continue to be so. Sadly, there is one other common denominator between all six examples of these major social developments; in each and every case, the person associated with its genesis – Zarathustra, Gautama, Christ, Muhammad, Marx and Gandhi – would have been bitterly disillusioned by how many of their cherished ideas have been abused and misused over the following centuries or decades by the leaders among their followers, ostensibly in their name but in fact as a means of controlling the masses and thereby ensuring their personal survival at any cost.

In the next chapter, I shall journey back to pre-religious times to show how early primitive societies had no need of organised religion or any other form of social control; and why.

THE FALLIBILITY OF RELIGION DAVID WEAVER · similarities to the leaders of those four religions....

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