Needing God

Zeus Ruled Ancient
Greece for 800 Years

Posted on December 28, 2011

God: Somebody will have to explain to me how they are better off without a belief in God. I listen to the prattle of the Atheist about the "imaginary Being", or as expressed by George Carlin, "Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do."

Yes, there are many clever quotes that express a disbelief in the existence of God and an incredulity of how the faithful can believe in their imaginary friend. But with all of this cleverness as expressed by Atheists, their view never explores why we need God. Even if God is an invention of man, those who believe and are faithful live a much less chaotic life.

It is the frailty and failings of mankind that create our need for a supreme authority. Every bygone civilization has failed due to the undermining of their god(s). Societies are never without the clever few that figure out that having faith in a supreme being or multiple gods is invalid. Once such arguments are made and accepted, that society fails from the inside. It fails because it becomes impossible to maintain cohesion if the citizens lose their faith. Cultural death is the only term that describes a society that has lost their faith. Barring the takeover by another religion, the clever ones (or doubters) generally opt for a form of Humanism. Humanism is a philosophy that rejects the notion of the divine and anything supernatural.

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From Wikipedia ... Humanism: Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In other words it is an outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters.
Secular humanism is a secular ideology which espouses reason, ethics, and justice, whilst specifically rejecting supernatural and religious dogma as a basis of morality and decision-making.

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The disintegration of Ancient Greece is an example of cultural death when the traditional religions are superseded with other philosophies/religions. The full account of Pisistratus, the Last Tyrant, can be read here.

The Last Tyrant

The following text is only a summary from that website depicting the Last Tyrant of the ancient Greek culture ...

After his death in 527 BCE, the rule of Athens fell into the indulgent and incompetent hands of his two sons, Hippias and Hipparkhus (Hipparchus). This web site is entitled From the Iliad to the Fall of the Last Tyrant because the Immortal gods and goddesses of Mount Olympos (Olympus) held absolute power over the Greeks until the death of Pisistratus. After the death of Pisistratus, the government and people of Greece became more tolerant of foreign religions and opened their doors to alien cultural concepts. The new, democratic Greeks embraced these corrosive ideas and the Immortals lost their eight hundred year old grip on the minds and imaginations of the rulers and ruled alike. The decline of religion in ancient Greece led to the eventual end of the Greek domination of the ancient world and set the stage for the rise of the Roman Empire and its subjugation of the Greek people and their institutions.
The death of the last tyrant of Greece transformed the moral precepts of the ancient Greek religion into a hodge-podge of mythological fables and ineffectual stories. If Pisistratus had been followed by a series of equally effective and charismatic leaders, the glory and splendor of ancient Greece might have endured and flowered into a world culture of refinement and sophistication that would have precluded the Roman Empire and evolved into a society of unimaginable possibilities.

This Article: The argument I want to frame in this article is one that stridently opposes the de-Christianization of our culture. My plea is for those who see religion as being a false premise to accept the idea that humans are not disciplined enough for a secular humanistic type of rule. As faulty as public morality being held together by mythical imagines may seem to the clever ones, it works. Human logic and oscillations of their ideas in ethics and morality do not allow for stability. The necessary stability for a culture can only come from an unwavering, bedrock type of truism that is dependable. Because a deity is nebulous and unfathomable; it creates a perfect solution to the ever-changing and emotional machinations of humanity. A god provides the necessary rail and training wheels for mankind.

One of the viewpoints I espouse is that until people become self-disciplined and can maintain a reliable, united, and trustworthy culture without the 'leaning post' of faith, we will have to continue relying on faith. And please understand; faith isn’t a fair weather friend. Only by being fully immersed and traditionally versed in that faith will our culture endure.

Culture death was experienced by Rome, Asia, Indonesia, Peru, Mexico, and North America. (Not a complete list) All of the old resident cultures were destroyed because of either by willingly accepting or forced into Christianity or Islam. Cultural traditions die hard but they have no choice but to eventually submit to a new dogma that infiltrates and diminishes the old ways. Some would call these outcomes progress, while others see these changes as destructive.

Regardless of how we got to this point, if we continue to allow our culture to be undermined by the latest whiz-bang theory or religion, our epitaph will read - America, a great culture died from the corrosion of their faith. So here we stand at the precipice of losing our cultural identity after only 235 years. Almost all of the great past cultures lasted longer than that. For instance the Greeks held on for 800 years.

Cheers, and Happy New Year!
-Robert-

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