12: The Law of Religion
From Harari — Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
As the title suggested, this chapter presents a brief version of the history religions in human society. It went through the development of various types of religions, monotheism, dualism and polytheism. Author points loophole of each type of religion, and the need of such religion type in particular human social context. It is a brief account of human religion development, not necessarily go deep enough for readers to understand that particular religion and how that religion spread in the world, of course it is author ‘s aim to do so. Religion and the concept superpower, or gods or God definitely play a important role in the homo sapiens’ history. This is of course the reason why author wrote about this topic in this book. I hope the author will write more about how religion interact with other human activities in later chapters. This give a multi-perspective understanding of how religions affect various human activities and also on the other hand how they are affected and evolve along human history.
Then the author discusses “The Law of Nature”, which means that it is natural laws that govern the world, rather than the divine wills and whims. Before the chapter concludes, the author goes through some “-ism” and asserts that those “-ism” are no less a religion than Christianity, Buddhism or Islam. Finally, humanistic religions are introduced.
After reading this chapter, we would wonder why human need religion? This is a question frequently asked, and definitely has a long history. Thousands and thousands of scholars have provided an answer to it. To write down all those answers and publish in the form book, perhaps it takes a library to hold all the books. Yes… a library just for one topic or one question. It is such a difficult question, and I believe we would never find the true answer or a satisfactory answer to this question. Besides, there are some other questions or reflections. According to communism, religion is an opium to people and toxic to people. They promote no belief in any superpower. Is it ironical that any “ism” is indeed another religion? Besides, does any religion, in the end, serve the political power at that time and in particular context, not matter in the Western or Oriental world? Or reciprocally, do religions exploit political power in order to spread its influence over the nations and people?
