And then.......
First there was nothing, then there was religion, then there was science, and then there was The Coin.
Lets start at the beginning........
Way, way back, here was ‘nothing’ - which basically meant nothing man-made, neither material nor imagined. There was nothing to influence early man, like religion or science for example – twin ideologies that awaited in the future.
When Homo Sapiens appeared (apparently in East Africa about 300,000 years ago) there was just instinct. The instinct to survive - to eat, sleep, to be safe. No praying to anything or anybody. They were Basic Upright Entities (BSEs) whose raison d'être was to make it through to tomorrow. Not that there would have been a plan for tomorrow because being in the moment would have taken all their concentration. If I don’t eat I will die. If I don’t eat this thing it’ll probably eat me instead. Basics of life.
In time perhaps there was superstition? I think this is probably when the first deity of any sort was conceived. Two BSEs were having a discussion in sign language and grunts, much like some of us do today. Let’s call them He and She, or H and S for short. (Health and Safety, an apt moniker for people who live in predatory times).
H: Have you noticed that every time I make a kill so we can eat, there is a Boo-Boo bird watching and singing on a nearby rock?
S: So, let’s honour the Boo-Boo bird and thank it for its protection.
So, superstition is born. Instinct becomes slightly less important now, because H & S wait till they hear a Boo-Boo bird before they go in for a kill. The Boo-Boo is trusted and relied on, a good luck charm. So, more and more, it’s thanked and worshipped as stories of its benevolence filter down through the generations.
Is it too much of a stretch to imagine the Boo-Boo creating heaven and earth? Well, at this point yes, probably. But not far into the future a cerebral pathway is explored for the first time and somebody will realize that there’s a profit to be made from a bird on a rock. This is how it progressed….
‘I will guarantee the Boo-Boo bird will protect you,’ says an enterprising BSE, wearing a crown of honeysuckle to give him gravitas, ‘if you pay me three lion’s livers and build me a shelter, I will watch over you to ensure you eat well and live long.’
Of course, if something goes wrong, like famine or drought, the BSE lays the blame at the door of the subject claiming the liver was rotten or his shelter leaked. ‘In order to avoid pestilence and plague, you must pay me more. This is the way of the Boo-Boo. This is the way to salvation.’
And later, when he had over a hundred followers, he promised to send their dead mother to a place beyond all reason where there is no hunger and lions have no teeth and you don’t need shelter because the sun shines immortal. In this manner, gradually, a basic religion was born. Not recognized as such because in the early days nobody realized just how profitable religion could be, so as yet, it had no name.
But yes, people adored and worshipped the Boo-Boo bird. Gradually, definitive religions, recognizable as such, came to be. One such early religion was Zoroastrianism (here I’m winding fact into the tale). Its name was complex so ordinary hunters couldn’t be expected to understand it properly. But it actually had quite a decent moral concept, in that good and evil existed equally – the good and the lie.
A high priest was created to be a symbol of this ‘new way’. Mortal representatives created a statue in ‘his’ name and people knelt before it. They chanted and threw livers and steaks.
That was fine for a while until things went wrong. The sheaf of corn in the arms of the statue became symbolic of the crops deprived to ordinary peasants in time of famine. And so, hatred was born. The statue and all it stood for was to blame. Gradually the pressure grew to the point where it became too much for a single sheaf-bearing entity to cope.
The concept of religion was too potentially profitable to discard so twelve BSEs, with more imagination than most, fabricated the most incredible stories. They weaved magic around tales of virgin births and miracles. But they were unable to agree completely because each fable had its own variations.\As a result, each of the twelve went their separate ways and settled in a variety of different countries. Each prophet (or profit as they became known) chose a location to suit the nature of their philosophy. The most violent chose places that were hot and sandy, such as Iraq, while the meekest settled somewhere damp and depressing, like Scotland. And so, the twelve main religions were born. Over time it all became pretty big business and today there are some 4,200 religions and offshoots.
It is easy to get wrapped up in it all, but lift the corner of the blanket and you see it’s mired with murk and uncertainty. Why, for example, did Homo Sapiens wait 298,000 years to introduce mainstream deities. Surely they would have been more convincing if they’d appeared way back, so they had a chance to get properly established. Back to a time when people weren’t quite so argumentative, but they were still gullible and compliant.
Telling unlikely stories in retrospect (like how the earth and the Boo-Boo came to be) can make it sound like the stuff of fantasy. As we slowly gravitated to a time when modern humans eat crap out of a tin rather than fresh antelope, people became savvy enough to realize that some of the fables were utter bollocks.
Our initial twelve religion-founding BSEs have become known, by this commentator at least, as the murky dozen. The most incomprehensible fact is that today, indeed throughout recent history, the followers of each man-made deity have fought horrific battles to determine which religion is the most peaceful. A moral juxtaposition that only seriously demented minds could dream up.
The underlying foundation of each religion is that the deity promises to keep their followers out of an eternal hot pit. Instead, they facilitate their entry into an eternal garden where the sun shines and people are gay and happy. Just one rule - nobody is allowed to eat apples in case it sets off a chain of events from which there is no escape. It’s a simple creed, pay with your chattels and pay with your soul and you will have life everlasting.
Don’t pay anything and get slaughtered. If you fail to keep the modern disciples in clover, you simply aren’t important enough to save. After all, who wants a debtor in an evergreen garden full of spirits who have given their all.
Things changed drastically when a few people, mainly those who considered the fables to be utter dross, created science. Not created as such, because science was always there, it just wasn’t recognized as such. The sun shone and flowers grew – because of science. Animals ate smaller animals and got bigger, they didn’t eat and they died – because of science. It rained and, well, would you believe it, water flowed down hill towards a big pond that was, for scientific reasons, salty. Yes, science was happening all around but uncategorized as science. Things just happened. So, this new breed tried to explain the why of things. Tried to explain why whatever happened, happened - if you can follow that. Admittedly, like some science that explanation seems barely comprehensible, unless you are scientifically minded of course, for which you probably need a non-religious brain, aka ‘spiritually vacuous’ according to one cleric. He was one of many desperate preachers trying to hang on to their congregation.
But develop it did, and gradually a new group of leaders emerged. And lo, they were proclaimed Scientists. They soon dropped the ‘lo’ because it wasn’t a proper word, plus it was associated with religion which in turn was associated with a collection of imaginary fairystories.
Scientists branched into many specialities, disappearing in random directions, much like the hair of one of the scientific overlords. Most branches had names with peculiar suffixes, such as ologist who specialized in subjects ending in ology. These ologies (tech, bio, ornith for example) have been likened to the twelve main branches of religion, only with less nonsense.
Scientists tried to explain early ‘nothing’ and undermine the madness of ‘religion’ with experiments and equations to replace the fabricated with fact. In some areas their new ideas proved popular – increasingly so as time progressed. Logical stuff that solved conundrums. For example, did animals developed fur over many millennia to keep themselves warm in winter, or merely so they could provide a coat for a hunter. Of course, it was to provide a coat. No, hang on, better do that experiment again. (Joke there – another new phenomenon).
First there's science (animal temperature regulation), then the pay-off (fur coat). Science leads. Science explains.
As we stand now, some religions, those that want a peaceful existence, have a few elderly members who visit vast, empty buildings, that are badly heated and notoriously uncomfortable. It is thought they are kept purposefully uninviting so worshippers won’t linger and they can turn the heating off, which is incredibly expensive due to a disastrous programme called nut zero. Churchgoers are forced to listen to an unconvincing godly representative in ceremonial dress telling the same stories over and over – all because the orator is trying to earn enough in collections to change his car every four years. Conversely, the more militant religious branches have multi-coloured, multi-towered monstrosities (that wouldn’t get planning permission in the normal course of events) that are packed to the rafters and where people listen manic preachings while they sit on the floor and learn how to make IEDs.
Wrapped within and woven around each other, religion and science lived in an uncertain matrix of truth and non-truth. But slowly, science was winning the war, it was stronger, more palatable and more believable. Science spread it’s cloak and we were all warmed and informed. Until, that is, a new power emerged.
The power of the coin.
Now science itself is under threat by something that cannot be explained by science. In fact, science is being manipulated by the unstoppable power of monetary control. The results of experiments and research are skewed at the behest of those who commission and fund the research. The Coin wants and needs a certain outcome, so the reward offered is so great that many scientists simply cannot refuse. And if they did, they would be removed, replaced by a sympathiser willing to conform. Someone who is prepared to sell their scientific soul to the highest bidder.
In this manner, The Coin creates and owns a new truth. THE new truth. A truth trumpeted from pulpits across the globe. Pulpits that sit below the steeples and minarets of the new corporate world. Compliant disciples (The Owned) preach the creed of The Coin. They manipulate, obfuscate, promise, fib and bully. Even the most basic ideology, namely the principle that science is ever evolving, is denied and brushed aside. By its very nature, science can never be settled, there is always room for amendment, addendum, even reversal. New ideas emerge, new methods employed, new experiments conceived. But these principles have been throttled and we are now brainwashed into believing that the science is settled to the satisfaction of The Coin. Never to be questioned.
The Coin says so, so it is true. If anyone is heard to advocate the old ways (nothing, religion, science), thus denying the new, settled gospel, they are tossed on the scrap heap and ridiculed as a heretic. They would be burned at the steak (!) if we hadn’t forgone meat in favour of minced up locust. The populous is kept in line by an endless series of homilies, soundbites, warnings and terrifying predictions – all unchallengeable, usually wrong and all facilitated by well-rewarded automatons delivering truth into your upper arm. No jab, no job. No jab, no nothing (as they say up north). So, its….
Bye bye ‘Nothing’.
So long Religion.
Au revoir Science,
Hello to The Coin.
Hell is in Hello and it looks to be here to stay.
Footnote:
The name for the ‘New Power’ in my tale was a toss-up between The Coin and The Boggart. Tough choice, particularly if you know what a Boggart is.
Well, he is a mythical creature about whom I have previously written, enshrined in folklore in the satanic north. He’s a malign spirit, one who inhabits dark corners of your mind. He has the ability to appear at will and he’s a shapeshifter who manifests at will as the things you fear the most. There's a link below to that article...
The Boggart in my story wanders our local park. By night he lurks in the bushes or flits through the trees like a malevolent shadow. By day he inhabits a memorial statue created to honour a dead monkey called Mephisto (that last bit is true!). If you look closely into the monkey’s eyes by day, you can see The Boggart watching and waiting. He is a sinister creature, nasty at times and can be frightening. But in my story he has a mischievous side, bordering on humorous – if you’re a bit warped.
Overall, though not at all nice, The Boggart is tolerable and I never imagined a situation where I would discount him for being too pleasant, but here it is.
The Coin, and all it represents, is evil. It is intolerable through and through.