Religion
The phrase, homo religiosus, refers to the idea that human existence is inherently religious.
Ancient Mesopotamian Religion
Near Eastern religions wikipedia/en/Religions_of_the_ancient_Near_East
Polytheistic: Mesopotamian religion centered around a pantheon of gods and goddesses, with deities associated with various aspects of nature, human emotions, and the underworld.
Key Deities: Examples include Anu (sky god), Enlil (god of air and storm), Ishtar (goddess of love and war), and Shamash (sun god).
Influence: While Mesopotamian religion largely faded with the rise of Christianity, it influenced later religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, particularly through shared myths and stories.
Major Gods and Goddesses:
- Anu: The sky god, often considered the king of the gods.
- Enlil: The god of air, storms, and agriculture, sometimes considered the most powerful god.
- Enki/Ea: The god of wisdom, magic, and freshwater.
- Inanna/Ishtar: The goddess of love, war, and fertility.
- Shamash: The sun god and god of justice.
- Sin: The moon god.
- Marduk: The patron god of Babylon.
Ishtar is primarily known as a goddess of love, sensuality, and procreation. She is often depicted as a beautiful and desirable figure, and her role as a fertility goddess is closely linked to her association with love and sexuality. Ishtar is also a powerful warrior goddess, embodying strength, courage, and the capacity for violence. She is associated with both the protection of cities and the devastation of war. She is known by different names across various cultures, including Inanna in Sumerian and Astarte in some Semitic traditions. Ishtar is a complex figure, embodying both nurturing and destructive aspects, and her worship was widespread in the ancient Near East. In her astral aspect, Ishtar is linked to the planet Venus, both the morning and evening star. Her symbols include the eight-pointed star (representing Venus) and the lion. Ishtar is often referred to as the “Queen of Heaven,” signifying her importance and influence within the Mesopotamian pantheon.
Epic of Gilgamesh: Ishtar plays a significant role in the Epic of Gilgamesh, where she is depicted as falling in love with Gilgamesh and later demanding revenge after being rejected.
While Ishtar’s worship eventually declined with the rise of Christianity and Islam, she is sometimes linked to other deities in different cultures, such as Aphrodite in Greek mythology.
Mesopotamian religion developed over millennia, with Sumerian traditions influencing later Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian beliefs. It had a lasting impact on other cultures, including the Hebrews, and influenced the development of Western religious thought.
Ancient Egyptian Religion:
Like Mesopotamian religion, ancient Egyptian religion was polytheistic and nature-based, with gods like Ra (sun god), Osiris (god of the underworld), and Isis (goddess of magic).
Ancient Canaanite Religion:
This religion, practiced in the Levant, also involved a pantheon of gods, including El, Asherah, and Baal.
Ancient Iranian Religions:
Zoroastrianism, Mazdakism, and Manichaeism are examples of ancient Iranian religions that featured diverse spiritual beliefs and practices.
Ancient Greek and Roman Religions:
These religions, with their pantheons of Olympian gods like Zeus, Hera, and Apollo (Greek), and Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva (Roman), also shared polytheistic characteristics with Mesopotamian religion.
Quotes
- “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.” - Richard Dawkins
- “To be an atheist is to hold that the universe is a natural, not a supernatural, phenomenon and that our existence can be explained without reference to a divine being.” - Bertrand Russell
- “Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious.” - Sam Harris
- “The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” - Charles Darwin
- “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.” - George Bernard Shaw
- “Atheism is not a denial of gods; it is a denial of the idea of god.” - Stephen Roberts
- “Atheism is a lack of belief in any gods. It is not a lack of respect for religion or belief in general.” - Hemant Mehta
- “To be an atheist is a rare and courageous act of defiance against the mass insanity that is religion.” - David G. McAfee
- “God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
- “Religion is a primitive way of coping with the unknown. Atheism is a more evolved way of coping with the unknown.” - Michael Shermer
- “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.” - Steven Weinberg
- “I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
- “Atheism is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a ‘non-astrologer’ or a ‘non-alchemist.’ We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle.” - Sam Harris
- “The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.” - Albert Einstein
- “The cultural technique of deep attention emerged precisely out of ritual and religious practices. It is no accident that ‘religion’ is derived from relegere: to take note. Every religious practice is an exercise in attention. A temple is a place of the highest degree of attention. According to Malebranche, attention is the natural prayer of the soul. Today, the soul does not pray. It is permanently producing itself.” ― Byung-Chul Han
- “What angers us in another person is more often than not an unhealed aspect of ourselves. If we had already resolved that particular issue, we would not be irritated by its reflection back to us.” ― Simon Fuller
- “religion is a system of symbols that, when enacted by human beings, establishes powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations that make sense in terms of an idea of a general order of existence.” ― Robert N. Bellah, [Religion in Human Evolution]