religion depends on authority

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Lately I've been thinking a lot about a lot of things (started doing that before I learned to talk and never stopped). I've been thinking about religions and I've realized something about them - people base their religious beliefs on their authority figures.

Let's start with Judaism. The early Jews spent most of there time in a society ruled by a male leader. It only makes sense that they would imagine the whole of reality to be be ruled by a male leader - they couldn't imagine any sort of controlling force beyond a male leader who has a set of rules and harsh punishments. They lived in a society ruled by an alpha male with a strict set of rules so they imagined the whole universe as ruled be an alpha male with a strict set of rules.

From what I know about the ancient Greece, it consisted of many city-states and the greeks saw themselves as one people despite the fact that the city-states were themselves independant from one another. It seems sensible to me that they worshipped many gods since ancient Greece had many small governments. I'm not sure how other polythesitic societies fit in with this. Sometime I ought to read further.

Then there was the enlightenment, when people stated questioning the legitimacy and importance of the kings and queens. A lot of the enightenment philosphers were Deists or Atheists. When people started questioning their own authorities on Earth they started questioning supernatural authorities too.

Nowadays we live in a world where we trust the politicians somewhat but we have a healthy skepticism of them and are quite jokey about them. Likewise most of the people of the developed world believe in god but the people who take every word of the bibile literaly have become a minority. People joke about god all the time too, I'm not sure if that's a modern phenomenon. Also, a lot of people humor the idea of the Judeo-christian god being female ever since feminism did its part in changing society. I personally wonder why anyone thinks god needs sex organs. What would he/she do with them?

It seems to me like people have a tendancy to model god after the system of government they live under. It's like we think our authority figures should have power over all of reality. Maybe Laozi (the creator of Taoism) saw nature itself as an authority and decided to deify it.

I'm not sure if any of this makes sense because when I drift off into thought it often becomes a bit like an acid trip. I'll never need to take psychedelic drugs.

Yes, and even to the point of people believing man is his own authority actually having the authority to declare there is no authority beyond his own.



I do not know whether that is true about people living prior to the time of Moshe, but there is a key element missing there for everyone after:

“And Mosheh went up to Elohim, and יהוה called to him from the mountain, saying, ‘This is what you are to say to the house of Yaʽaqoḇ, and declare to the children of Yisra’ĕl:
“‘You have seen ... how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself. And now ... you shall be My treasured possession above all the peoples ... and you shall be to Me a reign of priests and a set-apart nation. Those are the words which you are to speak to the children of Yisra’ĕl.’
“And Mosheh came and called for the elders of the people, and set before them all these words which יהוה commanded him. And all the people answered together and said, ‘All that יהוה has spoken we shall do.’” (Exodus 19:3-8)

So then, it does *not* make sense for anyone to “imagine the whole of reality [being] ruled by a male leader ... who has a set of rules and harsh punishments.” That would be a wrong conclusion drawn after having not seen the entire picture. Rather, then, the “early Jews” lived in a society where all had initially agreed to live as commanded in return for promised blessing – they had accepted an authority over themselves for reasons that did *not* include being forced to do so under the point of any lightening bolt.



When we were young, many of us thought/assumed our biological/adoptive/surrogate fathers had “power over all reality”, and many of us ultimately imagined “God” as being like our imperfect (we now know) earthly fathers. To now see things clearly, I have had to go back to my own time of bondage (as it was for the Hebrews in Egypt) and make my own decision here:

“And all the people answered together and said, ‘All that יהוה has spoken we shall do.’”

Religion was instituted specifically as a means to exercise authority over the people. And it's still used that way to this day.

I think I understand why things like that are said about certain sectarian religions, but Torah was certainly not written for that purpose. "God" has no need or use for religion.

Religion is a political institution created by man, that is used as a means of control by the ruling class to maintain control of the populace.
It can be explicitly theocratic - like the medieval Catholic church or the control over most of the Middle East by Islamic clerics. It can also be more subtle - religion used to unify the populace, to distinguish a group of unfavoured, to override facts and popular opinion, to make people forget about their day-to-day problems in order to manipulate them into doing something that the leaders want, to convince people that rulers are just because they are properly religious, etc.

Religion tends to mirror the society where it is created - Western religions have monarchies that reflect the political systems of the era they were created in, while Chinese religious beliefs have an elaborate Heavenly bureaucracy that mirrors Confucian bureaucracy (although presumably more efficient). A setup that is radically different is unlikely to be accepted in that society - but if people are used to having a male king with absolute power, they can easily picture an idealised Heavenly version. In China, you have the City God who is the religious version of the district magistrate who files your religious paperwork and sends it up the bureaucratic chain.

We also tend to anthromorphise our religious figures so they resemble idealised versions of ourselves - that's why Jesus in a white Protestant church will have a good chance of being blonde and blue eyed, and will be black in an AME church and Hispanic in a Latin American Catholic church. With ancient civilisation being very patriarchal - it is natural that a central and all-powerful God would be male - even though, the idea that a single God, with the ability to create entire universes asexually and that does not have a sex partner, would need to have a gender, doesn't really make much sense.

I think you are putting the cart before the horse.

Where government coopts religion to give itself a "mandate of heaven" or to assert the "divine right of kings" then it is going to focus on those elements of the religion that most closely align with it.

But is this religion being modelled on government, or is it government forcing religion into a framework that it (government) can work with? I think that it is the latter.

Consider religious traditions that have not been established within sophisticated governments: Shamanism, Bhuddism, Taoism, Wicca. None of these demonstrate a correspondence with your thesis.

Shamanism, Bhuddism, Taoism and Wicca all seem to deify nature in some way - as if the adherants see nature itself as an authority.