The Genesis of A Sun God Date Friday, April 26, 2024 - 03:52 AM PST Topic Religion How did people come to worship a sun god? One day someone, probably a farmer, got scared of the dark and their "weakness" when it is dark. They wanted walls to shut out the night, not just the rain and the snow and the wind. They wanted something to protect them that wasn't fallible and human. They wanted their fields to grow. That is when they decided that the night was bad and day was good. They decided that good things happen in the day, flowers open, they can see what is coming; they can see where they walk. They decided bad things happen in the night, people die, it is cold, and flowers close. They decided that, like people, if you give sun lots of attention, it would give you lots of attention back. They started worshipping the sun. When they decided that there was such a thing as good and bad, they had to side with one of them, and of course they chose good. So they were against the night and all the things of the night, sex, sleep, rest, death, cold, dark, peace. All things that they feared, disliked, or didn't fit with being a farmer with lots of food, they consigned to the night. If you follow the logic, you see that if the sun is the most important, then you can ignore all the other aspects of life that you like. You don't need to worship the grain because it only grows by the grace of the sun. You don't need to worship the earth because it is just something the sun makes real when you can see it with the sun's light. Now they have only one god and that god is a searing god that comes and goes, and is changeable in mood. It is easy to see how things became bad. If the sun is all that you need, the rains that hide the sun are bad, the night that lacks the sun is bad, the clouds that mask the sun are bad. Suddenly lots of things are bad. And they have to be against those things that besiege their god. They don't want a besieged god so they decide that the sun god created these things to test them, taking the blame to themselves because their god is good and to be good is to be perfect. so it must be something else that isn't perfect and if all that matters is the people and the one god, then it must be the people that are bad and making the god turn away. With this ritualization of fear, this institutionalization of ignorance, came evil. They created inequality and it soon imbued their whole culture. They decided that some things were with god (made their grains grow well) and some were against god (didn't make their grains grow). It is an easy step to the idea that people who don't help the grain grow are bad, more importantly, people that don't help them grow their grain are bad and are against the one god (the one that helps their grain). So now, we have a divided idea of the world, night and day, good and bad, man and woman, us and them. Well it's easy enough to see the next steps. Each person that is part of the people who grows that grain is a good person and all those that don't are bad. Growing more grain is good and growing less is bad. People that don't grow lots of grain are bad people. This makes the jump to women being bad since most women at some time, cant be in the fields because they are giving birth. And its nice to rest for a few days after having a kid. And the kid doesn't grow grain for years and years. So women and children are bad and weak and in darkness. Well children grow up, but before they do, they spent a lot of time keeping their mothers from growing grain and all that time not growing grain themselves. So they were bad and now have to atone for that badness. So they throw themselves into just growing grain and hate and vilify all that keeps them from growing more grain to make it up to their god. And he will reward their devotion, when they are done growing his grain. So these farmers now hate to take time from the fields. They don't teach their children anything but how to tend the fields because that would take time from the grain/god. They don't play and have parties that aren't at least about grain/god. They reject sex because that takes their energy and time and keeps them out of the fields and out from under god/grains' eyes. But sex is still necessary or there wont be more children to grow to adulthood to tend the grain. The village gets bigger and bigger. Its children marry away to other villages where they aren't considered bad for not being born big enough to tend the grain and where it is a good thing to have sex. The village doesn't trust its neighbors because they don't grow the grain the same way, god's way. The other villages are tempting their children away from god/the grain. They must save their children so that the sun god can also reward them when they die. They decide to kill their neighbors. After all, they will never have to see them in the after life. They neighbors aren't going to be rewarded by the sun god. The neighbors will go somewhere else. Somewhere bad, somewhere away from the sun/grain/god. Now they have the idea of hell and that is it where non-grain growers/followers go when they die. They attach their neighbors, but because they want the fields to grow so that their god will be happy, they offer to let the neighbors live if they grow the grain/follow the god. Many people when faced with a insane armed fanatic will agree to almost anything. So the neighbors agree to grow the grain. And so they gain converts and make rituals that make the converts the same as the original group. And so we get proselytizing. And generations go by with the first little village growing by absorption and birthrate. They need someone to travel from village to village to talk about and teach how to tend the grain so that everyone does it the same way and so other ways don’t creep into the right way. They choose one of their own, one that is old and is tired, and who thinks only of the grain and they make him go around and tell the teaching stories about what happens when you don't grow the grain. But he is old and needs help. He can't be everywhere at once. So they pick more people to talk about growing the grain. They choose kids that can be trained to talk about growing the grain. This way they wont have to keep taking time from the grain to choose new people. But these children never grow the grain with their own hands. These children have to have a special status with the grain/sun/god so that they too will go to the reward when they die. They have to be as important as the growers, they have to be forgiven their lack of grain growing. They have to find a way to make it ok to not do the fundamental act of worship and still be good worshipers. Now they have priesthood, people dedicated to the grain that never tend it with their own hands, just tell other people that they must tend the grain. We have a priesthood that is fed and is allowed to live only as long as they keep telling others to grow the grain. They must find more people to tell about the growing of the grain to prove their dedication to the grain/god. They must also eat the grain grown by others. So we get evangelists. They have time to think, this priesthood. They have leisure time not spent cleaning tools to grow the grain. They have time to find ways to prove that all things are dependant on the grain/sun/god. They like to eat so they find more ways that this one god is the only good god. So they get theology. And time goes on. 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