Remember the Titans

Anonymous

"Humans -- like the gods of old -- living in the sky."

-- Sagan

Courtesy of an overzealous 6th grade history teacher and Disney's Hercules, I am rather fond of Ancient Greek mythology. I love how colorful and intricate the stories are, and how they always seem to weave even more elaborately the more you dig into them. I love the flawed, humanoid gods and goddesses, and enjoy pondering whether the ancients believed these stories literally or deliberately wrote them as metaphors?

A popular saying among the secular camps is, "we are all atheists regarding most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in -- some of us just go one god further." I've seen people laugh at ancient mythology, offering comments like, "how could they believe this stuff?? It's ludicrous!" before dressing up and listening to someone tell them about a man who came back from the dead and flew away.*

I often wonder what a new religion would look like. If we had no history of religion, what would a mainstream tradition formed in the 21st-century encourage? Would it acknowledge a divinity at all? Would it embrace a more universal outlook towards the end of creating a widespread peace? Or would it be scientology?

Studying the evolution of humanity's perception of the Divine, there seems to be a gradual shift towards universalism. The ancient Greeks believed in gods that were, for all intents and purposes, human with superpowers. The God of Genesis (ok, one of the "God"s) is a god that physically walks in the garden, and who regrets actions that he took, or who did not seem to be omniscient. Subsequently, that God morphs into a much more abstract concept that gains omnipotence, omniscience, and the other omni-s. It becomes less jealous and more loving, and less vengeful and more forgiving. More recently, New Age philosophy has had an influence on some churches, and communities like the Unitarian Universalists are thriving in its wake.
I'm daring to hope, therefore, that as our understanding of our place in the cosmos expands, humanity will grow into an idea of the Divine that does not exist merely to fill gaps in our knowledge and address our existential insecurities, but instead one that is understood as an intrinsic part of existence -- impersonal, not sentient, and not deliberately influencing earthly affairs, but instead one that holds them all together.

*Heaven's in the sky? I heard once that even if Jesus has been traveling at the speed of light ever since then, he would not even be out of the Milky Way Galaxy by now. But now I'm wondering what that would mean for someone traveling at the speed of light, considering that time is relative. Psh. Ludicrous.