Human Sacrifice and the Gods That Call for It

This post is part of the History of the Devil series from Chapter 2: Devil Worship.

"Human sacrifices are one of the principal characteristic traits of Devil-worship..." HOD, P13, Paul Carus

When Carus says this, he means not the worship of the Biblical Devil, but rather a Devil; a type of god who is worshiped and appeased out of fear.  For, as Carus proposes, from fear is the origin of all religions.

Even though Carus is not talking specifically about the Biblical Devil, he doesn't hesitate to bring up how frequently human sacrifice is mentioned in the Bible.  Usually that is in association with worship of other gods, such as Molek in Leviticus 20:2-5.

The most notable Biblical pagan human sacrifice was in 2 Kings 3:  Moab rebelled against the Israelites, but the battle went very poorly for them.  Through Elisha, God had prophesied that the Moabites would be utterly destroyed.  Just as the destruction of the Moabites was nearly guaranteed, the Moabite king sacrificed his firstborn son on the city wall.  It does not mention to which god the son was sacrificed, but it was probably Chemosh (1 Kings 11:33).  Anyway, this sacrificed worked, because afterward the "fury against Israel was great," causing the Israelites to retreat back home!

The Biblical God considered human sacrifice detestable, at least by fire (Deuteronomy 12:31, Deuteronomy 18:9-12).  However, that didn't stop Him from commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac as a burnt offering, or Jephthah from sacrificing his daughter as a burnt offering to Him as a way of saying thank you for a battle victory.  And, of course, Jesus was the ultimate human sacrifice.

Carus suggests that:

"Progress in civilisation(sic) led to a modification but not to a direct abolition of human sacrifices." HOD, P12, Paul Carus

I am not so sure.

In this model, human sacrifices come first, and then get changed as the developing society becomes more sensitive to the loss of human life.  He suggests that the modifications come in various forms, such as allowing a chance for the person to escape sacrifice (like in the "sacrifice" of the Native Americans in the previous post) and sometimes:

"... human victims were supplanted by animals, as is indicated by various religious legends. Thus a hind was substituted for Iphigenia and a ram for Isaac." HOD, P13, Paul Carus

However, I am more inclined to believe that human sacrifice was a later invention.  At least, if you don't include killing captured enemies part of human sacrifice.  It seems that sacrifice is fundamentally about, well, sacrifice.  It is giving up something you would desire for yourself: the fruits of the orchard, a ram, etc.  The more you desire it, the more powerful the sacrifice, which is why firstfruits (Exodus 23:19) and perfect livestock (Leviticus 1:3) are preferred.  Following that line of thought, sacrificing of your children would be the pinnacle of reverence for your god; an echelon of piety which would take time to recognize.

In one of the more comically overreaching statements Carus makes, he discusses how cannibalism is the "height of abomination" of Devil-worship, where the partakers gain the attributes of the slain, and then he follows that with:

"The last remnants of the idea that the wrath of the Deity must be appeased by blood, and that we acquire spiritual powers by eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the victim still linger with us to-day in the medieval interpretations of certain church dogmas, and will only disappear before the searching light of a fearless and consistent religious reformation." HOD, P13-14, Paul Carus

This is aimed right at Christianity and Jesus saying that you have to eat His flesh and drink His blood (John 6:54-56).  While there is a hint of truth in it, to tie in ritual cannibalism with Christianity, from where there is no established cannibalistic history, is too much of a reach, even for me.

So I think that Carus goes astray a little in his assessment, but he still has still a lot of good content within his book, so I hope you'll join me as we dig into the historical details of the Devil-worship within different cultures in the coming chapters.

In closing, out this chapter, I'll leave you with Carus' summary view on the evolution of religions.  Note that by evil, he is referring more to adverting natural disaster, defeat in battle, or the wrath of the deity, and may best be thought of in contrast to the good, such as love, peace, tolerance, understanding, generosity, etc.

"We must remember, however, that certain superstitions, at early stages of the religious development of mankind, are as unavoidable as the various errors which science and philosophy pass through in their natural evolution.

"Religion always begins with fear, and the religion of savages may directly be defined as "the fear of evil and the various efforts made to escape evil." Though the fear of evil in the religions of civilised(sic) nations plays no longer so prominent a part, we yet learn through historical investigations that at an early stage of their development almost all worship was paid to the powers of evil, who were regarded with special awe and reverence." HOD, P14, Paul Carus

Functional Gods of the Natives

This post is part of the History of the Devil series from Chapter 2: Devil Worship.

Savages.  That's what the early European explorers and settlers thought they had found in the native peoples of the Americas.  Their dress and their customs were so far removed their European counterparts that they seemed primitive and uncivilized to the white men.

Paul Carus begins his historical evaluation with cases of relatively recent, community-wide Devil-worship, working on the thesis (as discussed in the prior post) that all religions have their origin in Devil-worship.  That leads to the Devil-worship of the Native Americans.

But what exactly does Carus mean by "Devil?"  That gets tricky.  Most minds familiar with Christianity will envision the Devil as an "evil" being which actively fights against the good.  Sometimes, that is what Carus means as well, but what he is referring to here is just a demon or deity which does not claim to be perfectly moral or good.  At least, that's what I think he meant, or should have meant.

Another part of Carus' thesis is that Devil-worship is just the first stage of religion.  Given enough time, he implies that religions will eventually evolve to God-worship when "the positive power of good is recognised(sic) and man finds out by experience that the good, although its progress may be ever so slow, is always victorious in the end." HOD, P14, Paul Carus  While I can see how propitiation of "devils" could instigate all religions, I have some problems with this part of his thesis.  I don't think that, given enough time, Devil-worship absolutely will progress to God-worship, if we are defining "God" as a perfectly moral and Good.  Instead, I think that these "Devils" may instead get more complex.

Anyway, on to the natives...

In most of the chapter on "Devil Worship," Carus briefly relays accounts of the religious practices of the Native Americans from various historians.  The sum of these accounts is that, while many of the Native Americans did have a belief in a good deity, it was the devilish deity which garnered the most respect and worship.  This builds on his platform that all religions start with Devil-worship.  However, I got a slightly different vibe when I read Carus' longest quoted reference; one from Captain John Smith, one of the primary leaders in the founding of the Jamestown settlement in Virginia.

Below is Carus' quoted text from Smith's "A map of Virginia. With a description of the covntrey, etc., written by Captaine Smith, etc. Oxford. Printed by Joseph Barnes. 1612."  I have changed the text only to match up with modern English for easier reading:

"There is yet in Virginia no place discovered to bee so Savage in which the savages have not a religion, Deer, and Bow and Arrows. All things that were able to do them hurt beyond their prevention they adore with their kind of divine worship; as the fire, water, lightning, thunder, our ordinance pieces (guns), horses, etc. But their chief God they worship is the Devil. Him they call Oke, and serve him more of fear than love. They say they have conference with him and fashion themselves as near to his shape as they can imagine. In their Temples they have his image evil favoredly carved and then painted and adorned with chains, copper, and beads, and covered with a skin in such manner as the deformity may well suit with such a God." (Original ed., p. 29.)

Carus had many great insights and explorations in his book (as time will show as my series continues), but here I think he is taking Smith's words a little too literally, not accounting for Smith's limited perspective.  Smith's take on the Native American's "divine worship" of powerful items like the white mans' guns and horses should have been tempered with their appreciation for fire and water, both of which they had long known before the white man.  In all likelihood, the Native American's regarded them as gifts from the gods due to their great strength and utility.

Also, we can see that Smith's view was directly tainted by his Christianity, saying not that the natives worship some strange god, or even a demon, but rather nothing less than the Devil (in the Christian sense of the word).  Smith notes that the natives worship more out of fear than love.  Like most modern Christians, Smith seems unaware of the God of the Old Testament, and even some of the content of the New Testament, where God commanded His followers to fear Him over twice as often as He told them to love Him.

As the account continues, we find the "human sacrifice" which provides the direct association with Devil-worship.  I've added the bold emphasis...

"In some part of the Country, they have yearly a sacrifice of children. Such a one was at Quiyoughcohanock, some 10 miles from James Town, and thus performed.

"Fifteen of the properest young boys, between 10 and 15 years of age, they painted white. Having brought them forth, the people spent the [morning] in dancing and singing about them with rattles.

"In the afternoon, they put those children to the root of a tree. By them, all the men stood in a guard, every one having a Bastinado (a stick or club)  in his hand, made of reeds bound together. [These men] made a lane between them all along, through which there were appointed 5 young men to fetch these children. So every one of the five went through the guard, to fetch a child, each after other by turns: the guard fearlessly beating them with their Bastinadoes, and they patiently enduring and receiving all; defending the children with their naked bodies from the unmerciful blows they pay them soundly, though the children escape. All this while,the women weep and cry out very passionately; providing mats, skins, moss, and dry wood, as things fitting their children's funerals.

"After the children were thus passed the guard, the guard tore down the tree, branches and boughs, with such violence, that they rent the body and made wreathes for their heads, or bedecked their hair with the leaves. What else was done with the children was not seen; but they were all cast on a heap in a valley, as dead: where they made a great feast for all the company.

"The Werowance (the chief) being demanded the meaning of this sacrifice, answered that the children were not all dead, but [only] that the Oke or Devil did suck the blood from their left breast [of those], who chanced to be his by lot, till they were dead. But the rest were kept in the wilderness by the young men till nine months were expired, during which time they must not converse with any: and of these, were made their Priests and Conjurers.

"This sacrifice they held to be so necessary, that if they should omit it, their Oke or Devil and all their other Quiyoughcosughes (which are their other Gods) would let them have no Deer, Turkeys, Corn, nor fish: and yet besides, he would make great slaughter amongst them.

"To divert them from this blind idolatry, many used their best endeavors, chiefly with the Werowances of Quiyoughcohanock; whose devotion, apprehension, and good disposition much exceeded any in those Countries: who though we could not as yet prevail with them to forsake [their] false Gods, yet this he did believe, that our God as much exceeded theirs, as our Guns did their Bows and Arrows; and many times did send to the President, at James Town, men with presents, entreating them to pray to his God for rain, for his Gods would not send him any.

"And in this lamentable ignorance do these poor souls sacrifice themselves to the Devil, not knowing their Creator." (Original ed., pp. 32, 33, 34.)

Now, I'm no anthropologist, but I play one on the internet.  What I see here in Smith's account looks to me more like a type of coming-of-age transformation ceremony than a human sacrifice.  Young boys (not yet men)...painted white (like bones)...young men protect the boys (building bonding and group cohesion, but also symbolizing a transitional agent from the underworld of death)...women weeping as though the boys have died (morning the loss of the child' childhood)...boys thrown on a heap (symbolizing death)...nine months later, the come back to the tribe (the symbolic deaths followed by symbolic rebirth via nine months).

As for the "sacrifice," it doesn't appear that the ceremony is really a sacrificial ceremony.  The Werowance explained that the children were not actually killed, although sometimes ("by lot") some boy or boys did die.  He explained that this was Oke's doing, but such a perspective on the loss is similar to what we find in Job 1:21 "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised." NIV

As for the sentiment that this ceremony was necessary to satisfy their gods, or else they risk having no "Deer, Turkeys, Corn, nor fish: and yet besides, [Oke] would make great slaughter amongst them," this is also in line with the type of worship we find in the Old Testament, where God would curse the Israelites with much worse than Oke's threat if they failed to obey all of His Law, which included ceremonies.

Of  course, maybe these similarities are just evidence that Jehovah at one time in distant history was more of a "Devil" than a God.  Carus would later make that case with other verses...

On a final note, we see more of Smith's tainted perspective in calling the native religion "blind idolatry."  Clearly he is unable to see the parallels between their religion and his own.  But even beyond that, he does not understand their religion.  It is more complex and more functional than the monotheism he is used to.  This can be seen as he observes that the natives thought that "[the Biblical] God as much exceeded theirs, as our Guns did their Bows and Arrows."

What Smith didn't realize was that they were speaking functionally.  The natives had different gods with different spheres of influence.  They would have thought the white man's God superior only because the God of the Bible allegedly created and controls everything.  So Smith and company didn't make many converts of the natives because their gods already fulfilled the necessary functional roles.  The Biblical God, while more grand in scope, was superfluous to the natives.

When you have a functioning system, there is little impetus for change, and so I think that it is unlikely that all religions would ultimately yield a purely "good" God on a long enough timeline.  A capricious, human-like god, showing both good and bad qualities, could persist on indefinitely, especially given that such behavior mimics the realities of life often all too well.

The Origin of Religion

This post is part of the History of the Devil series from Chapter 2: Devil Worship.

How did religions get started?  That's a challenging question to answer.  I've had thoughts of its answer along the lines of this:

1. Errant pattern recognition led to superstition.  (When I do X, then Y occurs sometime thereafter.)
2. Superstition led to errant agent detection.  (Some controlling force or some invisible being makes Y happen when I do X.)
3. Agent detection led to empathetic reasoning.  (If Y is a good result, the controlling power likes it when I do X.  If Y is a bad result, the controlling power doesn't like it when I do X.)
4. Empathetic reasoning led to attempts to manipulate or influence the controlling power.  (The controlling power likes when I do X, so I will do it again.  Or, the controlling power doesn't like when I do X, so I will try doing Z instead.)
5. The techniques used to influence the controlling power get formalized/systematized, and a new religion is born.

This is a simplistic model, and there are many other factors to consider in order to broaden the religion from being that of just one person or one family to being the common practice of an entire community, but it seems like the basic mechanics are sound.  I could see religion going either positive (a "good" controlling power) or negative (a "evil" controlling power), or both.

Carus presented a different theory, one which was challenging for me to accept:

"Demonolatry, or Devil-worship, is the first stage in the evolution of religion, for we fear the bad, not the good.... 

....Devil-worship naturally precedes the worship of a benign and morally good Deity. There are at least many instances in which we can observe a transition from the lower stage of Devil-worship to the higher stage of God-worship, and there seems to be no exception to the rule that fear is always the first incentive to religious worship." HOD, P6, Paul Carus

Does religion always begin with fear?  We'll take a closer look at that theory as we dive into the History of the Devil.

The Superpersonal God

This post is part of the History of the Devil series from Chapter 1: Good and Evil as Religious Ideas.

The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power. - Nikola Tesla

Tesla had some interesting religious views.  I haven't done an exhaustive study on his beliefs, by any measure, but it appears to me that he was a Monist.  Tesla's Monism seemed to be a hybrid between a monkey religion and a cat religion (see Sabio's great post on these religion types).  Tesla's upbringing was Christian, but he was a voracious reader who came to appreciate other religions as well, like Buddhism.  Possibly due to that Christian influence, while Tesla's monkey god just lumbered around doing what it pleased, it would also be just as happy to carry and guide us if we were willing to "concentrate our minds on that truth."

When we left off in the last post, Carus had made the conjecture that the God of the future would be superpersonal, and he would go on to say how we could tap into that knowledge of God...

But how shall we reach this knowledge of the superpersonal God? Our answer is, with the help of science. Let us pursue in religion the same path that science travels, and the narrowness of sectarianism will develop into a broad cosmical religion which shall be as wide and truly catholic as is science itself.  HOD, P3, Paul Carus

What Carus suggested here is developing an empirically based religion!  Instead of relying on unique revelations made to specific people in divine scriptures, he posited that the powers of objective observation would reveal the real God.  However, Carus was not ready to trash scriptures completely...

Symbols are not lies; symbols contain truth. Allegories and parables are not falsehoods; they convey information: moreover, they can be understood by those who are not as yet prepared to receive the plain truth. Thus, when in the progress of science religious symbols are recognized and known in their symbolical nature, this knowledge will not destroy religion but will purify it and will cleanse it from mythology.  HOD, P3, Paul Carus

In some ways, Carus' prophesy has come true.  For example, while there are some serious moral blunders God's Law (the Torah) in the Old Testament, such as complacency to slavery, conceptually there are some truths which can be skimmed from the myth:

A dietary restriction on eating pork would have been effective at preventing trichinosis parasite ingestion (Leviticus 11:7).  Isolating people with skin infections would help prevent the spread of contagious varieties (Leviticus 13:45-46).  Destroying a house which had an untreatable case of spreading mildew would prevent respiratory issues of the occupants (Leviticus 14:43-45).

In abstraction, the Torah was a system of repentance, thankfulness, obedience to a moral and legal code, and the love (and fear) of God.  The rewards for adherence were said to be happiness, prosperity, peace, health, and long life.  Recent scientific studies on gratefulness show an increase in the subjective feeling of happiness associated with the regular practice of being grateful.  A society where people obey the laws sets the stage for stability and security, which in turn can help lead to prosperity.  Peace, on an individual level, can be a product of obeying the law, as you have less to worry about if you are doing what you should be doing, and when everybody else does the same.  Finally, as far as health and long life, well, there is some evidence suggesting that a practicing belief in God will extend your life and promote health as well.

However, the God that Carus is suggesting is not wholly defined in any religious tome...

We define God as "that authoritative presence in the All, which enforces a definite moral conduct." God is that something which constitutes the harmony of the awe of nature; God is the intrinsic necessity of mathematics and logic; God above all is what experience teaches us to be the inalienable features of righteousness, justice, morality. This presence is both immanent and transcendent: it is immanent as the constituent characteristic of the law that pervades the universe; it is transcendent, for it is the condition of any possible cosmic order; and in this sense it is supercosmic and supernatural.  HOD, P3-4, Paul Carus

So this is not quite Tesla's Monist God here. Rather, this is similar to the God Albert Einstein was referring to when he said:

"I want to know how God created this world... I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details."

Although, instead of Carus, Einstein followed the earlier writings of Baruch Spinoza, as can be seen in Einstein's lesser-known quote:

"I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."

By contrast, Carus expanded beyond scientific laws, and into the foundations of our selves...

We do not say that God is impersonal...  ...God, although not an individual being, is the prototype of personality; although not a person, thinking thoughts as we do, deliberating, weighing arguments, and coming to a decision, he is yet that which conditions personality; he possesses all those qualities which, when reflected in animated creatures, adds unto their souls the nobility of God's image, called personality. Therefore we say, God is not impersonal, but superpersonal.  HOD, P4-5, Paul Carus

Thus, Carus' God is at the heart of our understanding and our motivation. Not to say that we all understand this God, or that we are all motivated to the same course of action. There will be many differences as surely as there are different personalities. However, through reflecting on the universe, our own daily lives, and the lives of others, we can comprehend who we really are and why we do the silly, horrible, and wonderful things we do. With that comprehension comes the fully realized ability to change for the better... at least I would like to think so.

That is enough about God for now. This book is about the History of the Devil and evil, for good reason...

While the idea of God has received much attention from philosophers and progressive theologians, its counterpart, the dark figure of the Evil One, has been much neglected. And yet the Devil is, after all, a very interesting personality, grotesque, romantic, humorous, pathetic, nay, even grand and tragic. And if we have to declare that the idea of God is a symbol signifying an actual presence in the world of facts, should we not expect that the idea of the Devil also represents a reality?  HOD, P5, Paul Carus

Just as many people today portray God in their own likeness, how the Devil is portrayed also provides revelations of the inner workings of a mind and/or culture. If you know a person's Devil, you know their fears and insecurities, and maybe even their repressed desires.

I hope you will enjoy the coming studies as I blog the rest of the book, and dig into the cold, black heart of evil.

A Vision of the Future

This post is part of the History of the Devil series from Chapter 1: Good and Evil as Religious Ideas.

Now, over one hundred and ten years since Paul Carus wrote his book, with advancements in linguistics, archeology, genetics, cosmology, etc., it seems that we have metaphorically eaten the forbidden fruit of knowledge, and our eternal expulsion from the Garden of Eden of naivety, with its selfish love affair of personal deities, is only a matter of time.  What will remain?  Carus' vision still saw a place for religion:

"...there are freethinkers who declare that Atheism will supersede all the different conceptions of God. But this is not probable.  The Monistic tendencies of the age will not destroy, but purify and elevate religion. ... the religious ideas of the present time are symbols.  Taken in their literal meaning, they are untenable, but understood in their symbolical nature they are seeds from which a purer conception of the truth will grow."  HOD, P2, Paul Carus

Carus prophesied the emergence of a new type of religion, a better religion, which would grow out of the body of faith, once it had shed the chaff of its dogmatic, literal constraints.  To him, wide scale Atheism was not feasible, as he explained:

A state of irreligion in which mankind would adopt and publicly teach a doctrine of Atheism is an impossibility.  Atheism is a negation, and negations cannot stand, for they have sense only as confronted with the positive issues which they reject.  HOD, P3, Paul Carus

In a sense, Carus' words are right.  Atheism is really just a negation.  However, there are definitely anecdotes of public teaching of an Atheist doctrine, if you can use the term "Atheist doctrine" in any kind of meaningful way.  For example, I had a physics professor who wouldn't hesitate to mock the concept of God in front of the whole class if she was given a cue.

So unlike Carus, I do think that an Atheist doctrine could be part of the standardized school curriculum, but I would never endorse it, because if that were to happen, Atheism would truly become just like the religions it was denying validity.

In some sense, I think protagonists/antagonists, like my professor, play their little roles in changing the culture, but this kind of challenge and change should not be done on a mandate basis.  For starters, such a mandate would be unconstitutional, akin to the government sponsoring a national religion, even if it is more of an anti-religion.  Beyond that, I feel that spirituality is something to be worked out on a personal level, and any spoon-fed source of it, be it the classroom or the clergy, should be highly scrutinized.  Rather, the job of educators in that arena should be to enhance critical thinking skills, to present the facts, and to present the unknowns.

Besides, we shouldn't have to teach Atheism, any more than we have to teach that there is not a magical, pink, glittery, rocket-propelled hedgehog in orbit around Neptune.  Atheism comes from our understanding and perception of the world.  As such, in our modern era with our level of scientific understanding, some people will naturally choose Atheism.

At the same time, other people will understand or perceive some invisible agent, and will choose religion and/or spirituality, regardless of what is taught in our classrooms.  Spirituality will persist, even when all formal, doctrinized religions are proven wrong, or proven to be valid only metaphorically.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, if we can harness our spiritual side for creativity, mutual understanding, and a greater moral impetus.

As opposed to indoctrinating the negation of Atheism, Carus had a different concept of where our spirituality would turn...

Yet our present anthropomorphic view of God, briefly called Anthropotheism, which as a rule conceives him as an infinitely big individual being, will have to yield to a higher view in which we shall understand that the idea of a personal God is a mere simile.  God is much more than a person.  When we speak of God as a person, we ought to be conscious of the fact that we use an allegory which, if it were taken literally, can only belittle him.  The God of the future will not be personal, but superpersonal.  HOD, P3, Paul Carus

A superpersonal God?  What does that even mean?  We'll explore that next time...

Where We Were, and Are

This post is part of the History of the Devil series from Chapter 1: Good and Evil as Religious Ideas.

Reading an old book is often like being an archeologist; digging into a layer of time buried by the sediment of past eras, and discovering a little about the way people lived back then.  While real archeology offers mainly views of where people lived, what they ate, and other factors which are inferred from the physical remains, old books offer an explicit peek at what people actually thought in the days gone by.  Those ideas can be peculiar to that era based on the culture, or they can be transcendent of that era based on the common experiences which are replicated today in one form or another.  The theology/philosophy of Paul Carus has both of these aspects.

Will Monism eliminate the idea of the Devil in order to make God the One and All? Or will it abolish both God and the Devil, to leave room only for a world of matter in motion? Will the future of mankind be, as M. Guyau prophesies, a period in which religion will disappear and give way to irreligion?  HOD, P2, Paul Carus

It is easy to imagine how someone today could be asking the same questions, but Carus was writing back 1900 C.E., in a time which is considered to be the "Golden Age of Freethought."  By then, Bible and comparative religion studies had rendered Christianity to be of questionable veracity, the theory of evolution had presented a conceptually feasible origin of our species, and astronomy was revealing our true place in the universe.  While most of the public was still religious, there was a buzz, a growing excitement among those bold enough to ponder the ramifications of this relatively new information, and they figured that the world was on the cusp of developing a new paradigm; but exactly what that would be was still unknown.

Now, over a hundred and ten years later, I think we are where Carus thought we would be within a few decades of the questions he had posed.  Our theological future is still unknown, but there is an accelerating decay from the Biblical dualism of the old era.

Atheism is gaining momentum.  Many decades ago, atheists were largely "unnatural," because faith was still so ubiquitous among the population that it took individual reasoning to overcome the mass cultural perspective of religion.  Now, atheism is a sizable enough minority that there are many atheists who were brought up without the trappings of faith, or who found that Christianity simply did not "work" for them and so they have dropped it for what seemed to be another viable option: no faith at all.

Others who are disenfranchised with divine duality delve into different formats of spirituality. Some define their own paths.  Some have become enchanted with Eastern-influenced versions Monism; either that there is but one God (who is more of the deist persuasion) or, more usually, that God is in everything and/or is everything.

Today, within some mainstream denominations of Christianity, while God persists, Satan has become a figurative or metaphorical character representing our reprobate desires within (as is possibly suggested in Peter's episode of rejecting Jesus' plans in Matthew 16:22-23 and Mark 8:32-33).  In some denominations, while Heaven persists, Hell is no longer a physical place with perpetually burning fires of torture, but has morphed into either a place of eternal separation from God or a state of annihilation.  O divine wrath, where is thy sting? (Matthew 3:7-10, Luke 3:7-9)

Of course, any time traditional ideas are challenged, there will be a faction which digs in, conservatively clinging to the past, willfully oblivious of the evidence against them.  We see this in the resurgence of Christian Fundamentalism.  I wager that we still have about a decade, maybe even two, before Fundy-lunacy reaches its peak and begins its painfully slow decline.  The shift will come primarily from the younger generations, who will be less willing to take such hard line stances against reality, or will be lured by more-tolerant, more-metaphorical denominations of the faith, or by the charismatic mega-churches with better religi-tainment, if they remain "Christian" at all.

Restriction of knowledge and cultural isolation are the strongest forces to abate the inclination toward Christian apostasy.  These strategies are increasingly difficult to execute in our modern world.  That is why I predict that within three decades, Christian Fundamentalism in the United States will become highly regional; down to specific smaller cities and towns, like Decatur, Alabama, as well as certain rural swaths, like the Appalachian Mountains.

I'll go into some of Carus' answers to those questions next time...

A Dance with Duality

This post is part of the History of the Devil series from Chapter 1: Good and Evil as Religious Ideas.

Carus begins with this:

THIS WORLD OF OURS is a world of opposites. There is light and shade, there is heat and cold, there is good and evil, there is God and the Devil.

The dualistic conception of nature has been a necessary phase in the evolution of human thought.  HOD, P1, Paul Carus

Dualism, in a nutshell, is the concept of a world of opposites, and usually implies or explicitly states that when you have one option, there will be opposite option.  A Christian trite and weak explanation for the evil in this world is the dualist concept that freewill requires both the ability to do good and to do evil.  Don't worry.  Carus is no believer of dualism

Upon close inspection, it is clear that the concept of Dualism does not actually line up reality, at least not most of it.  Physicists will tell you that there is not light and dark, but light and the absence of light, and there is not heat and cold, but heat and the absence of heat.

What is the opposite of green?  You may think back to the color wheel for a conceptual understanding, but "green" is really nothing more than electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths of around 520–570 nanometers.  So what is the opposite of 520–570 nanometers?

What is the opposite of God?  Certainly, one could say that Satan opposes God, at least in the way that Christianity often frames the relationship, but Satan is far from being God's opposite.  For example, let's take God's alleged characteristic of omnipresence and consider its true opposite.  The opposite being present everywhere is being present nowhere.  While I don't believe Satan to be present anywhere, the common Christian thought is that there is nowhere where Satan isn't trying to ensnare souls.  Christianity has an omnipresent concept of Satan, at least for the realm of earth.

Dualism fails in our reality of continuous, and sometimes discontinuous (quantum), spectrums of manifested matter and energy.  Not every relationship is polar.  In fact, very few are.  Dualism only works as a metaphor, an extremely simplified model.  That said, even primitive models can be useful, as long as we never forget that they are just tools.

Unfortunately, when religions get to the stage of conceptualizing dualism, it is not considered a model, but rather an actuality.  Carus goes on to explain the "necessary phase" in our development coming to be like so:

But the principle of unity dominates the development of thought. Man tries to unify his conceptions in a consistent and harmonious Monism. Accordingly, while the belief in good spirits tended towards the formation of the doctrine of Monotheism, the belief in evil spirits led naturally to the acceptance of a single supreme evil deity, conceived as embodying all that is bad, destructive, and immoral.  HOD, P1, Paul Carus

Interestingly enough, the Judeo-Christian faith is an example where we can see this evolution to dualism in action.  The God of the Old Testament originally wielded the forces of both good and evil, ultimately for His conception of the greater good, but the New Testament largely purges God of those evil roles, making Satan their supreme owner instead.

Christianity usually holds that the Serpent in the Garden of Eden was Satan, despite the obvious clues to the contrary.  With that perspective, they miss the evolution completely, even though the Scripture is often explicitly contrary to a dualist interpretation.

There are several incidents which come to mind to support this evolution to Christian dualism, but for the sake of brevity, I'll leave you with one potent example.  In Deuteronomy 13:1-3, we find:

If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder spoken of takes place, and the prophet says, “Let us follow other gods” (gods you have not known) “and let us worship them,” you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul. NIV

Right there, in black and white (wink), in the Old Testament God tells us that He will send false prophets to lure the Israelites away from worshiping Him; tempting them to sin and testing their faithfulness to Him.

Now, in the New Testament, in James 1:13-14 we find:

When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. NIV

So instead of God tempting people in the New Testament, Satan gets that job, as we see in 1 Corinthians 7:5:

Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. NIV

The History of the Devil - Post Index

This is the index post for the History of the Devil series. I'll put my posts under the appropriate chapter headings.


The History of the Devil
and the Idea of Evil
from the Earliest Times to the Present Day

By Paul Carus
1900 C.E.

About the author.

Chapter 1: Good and Evil as Religious Ideas

• A Dance with Duality
• Where We Were, and Are
• A Vision of the Future
• The Superpersonal God

Chapter 2: Devil Worship

• The Origin of Religion
• Functional Gods of the Natives
• Human Sacrifice and the Gods That Call for It

Chapter 3: Ancient Egypt

Chapter 4: Accad and the Early Semites

Chapter 5: Persian Dualism

Chapter 6: Israel

Chapter 7: Brahmanism and Hinduism

Chapter 8: Buddhism

Chapter 9: The Dawn of a New Era

Chapter 10: Early Christianity

Chapter 11: The Idea of Salvation in Greece and Italy

Chapter 12: The Demonology of Northern Europe

Chapter 13: The Devil's Prime

Chapter 14: The Inquisition

Chapter 15: The Age of the Reformation

Chapter 16: The Abolition of Witch-Prosecution

Chapter 17: In Verse and Fable

Chapter 18: The Philosophical Problem of Good and Evil

Paul Carus - Cool Dude

So I started reading a book by a fellow who is long dead, a guy I had never heard of before; Paul Carus.  Obviously, it wasn't his name which attracted me to this book, but, the more I know of him, the more that his name should have been a factor.

Basic Bio:

• Born in Germany in 1852.
• Raised as a piously orthodox Protestant.
• Prolific and diverse author, writing 75 books and 1500 articles on history, politics, philosophy, religion, logic, mathematics, anthropology, science, and social issues of his day.
• A student, theologian, and philosopher in the field of comparative religion.
• Immigrated to the United States in 1882 "because of his liberal views."
• Described himself as "an atheist who loved God."

Carus was one of the pioneers of interfaith dialog, where as early as 1893 he was working to introduce the West to the Eastern religious traditions, and visa versa.  He played a key role in bringing Buddhism to Western minds.

Oh, and he was also pen pals with some of the greatest minds of his time, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton (leader in the early woman's rights movement), Booker T. Washington (prominent figure in bridging the old racial divide in the time of Jim Crow segregation), Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace, anyone?), Ernst Mach (ever wonder how "Mach" related to the speed of sound?), Thomas Edison (made the incandescent light bulb and a little company now known as GE), and Nichola Tesla (made Edison look like an idiot, both figuratively and literally when Edison went for DC instead of Tesla's preferred AC power), among many others.

Joseph Campbell would have been jealous of this guy, and/or they would have been good friends.

In a slightly similar fashion to The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Carus took a look across various religious traditions with a focus on the "evil" side, and followed some of their evolutions in time, to compile an impressive work in 1900 known as The History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil from the Earliest Times to the Present Day.  (That was back when book titles were more descriptions than tag lines.)  I'll call it The History of the Devil for short.

While not as entertaining as Campbell can be, I found Carus' book to be excellent.  His writing helped to coalesce many thoughts I'd previously had, persuaded me to more-strongly consider some different viewpoints, and challenged me to confront ideas which were foreign to me.  That's my kind of book!

I'll be re-reading this book, and blogging about it along the way.  It's not really going to be a formal book review, or a summary.  It'll be a highlight of interesting facts, and a discussion of the many thought provoking conjectures and points he made.  I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did.