Religion, Mythology and Ancient Knowledge
Let’s go back to the Middle Ages and take a look at a powerful conditioning of human thought that contributed to a dangerous modern culture-wide amnesia and that has significantly shaped how modern people think.
In the twelfth century, Averroes, a Spanish Muslim scientist and philosopher, merged Islam with his writings on Aristotelianism.
Around the same time, Maimonides, a Sephardic Jewish philosopher and astronomer, wrote The Guide to the Perplexed, merging Judaism with Aristotelianism.
And in the thirteen century, Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican monk greatly influenced by the essentially Aristotelian geocentric astronomy of the day, wrote Summa Theologica, blending Catholicism with Aristotelianism.
Aquinas, in this blending of Catholicism and geocentric Aristotelianism, frequently included a term ( a concept) in his writings that originated in the thirteenth century and was used to describe something that was believed to exist separate from nature and above / beyond it: supernaturalis, the supernatural. He also greatly expanded the meaning and common usage of the Latin term religio, defining it within a supernatural context, with the result that the concept, emotional states, and practice of modern ‘religion’ were born.
