The Double Refuge 🌎 Many Tribes
Overview
Section - Chapter
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In Part 2: Currents of Religion I explore the relation between doubt and belief in terms of 1) history, comparative religion, & Assyriology, 2) fictional scenarios set in Babylon & Paris, 3) writing which mixes doubt and belief in various ways (Zhuangzi’s Daoism, Whitman’s Transcendentalism, & Rushdie’s mysticism), and 4) a positive attitude toward death.
🌎 Many Tribes is the introductory chapter to Part 2. It provides an outline of global religions as well as an argument against religious exclusivity. In ♒️ The Currents of Sumer I then go back to the religion of early Mesopotamia. I use Peter Enns and Jean Botteró to explore exclusive biblical viewpoints in terms of Mesopotamian history, language, narrative, religion, math, astronomy, and culture. ⏯ Systems and ✝︎ St. Francis continue this exploration of Western belief by arguing that Christianity should separate itself from its exclusionary origins. I suggest an inclusive and open belief system, where Jesus is a historical figure and a mystical option, but not the only truth.
🍎 The Apple-Merchant of Babylon picks up on the Mesopotamian theme of ♒️ The Currents of Sumer by depicting a comic fictional take on the Bible’s origins: Moe, frustrated by the inability of his fellow merchants to stand up to foreign competition, devises a new religion. This is followed by a more serious chapter, 🇫🇷 The Priest’s Dilemma, which is an internal monologue dramatizing a contemporary priest’s struggle with 1) Mesopotamian civilizational roots (which was the focus of ♒️ The Currents of Sumer), and 2) the challenge of evolution, which was central to my earlier look at Dickens and Forster in 🦖 At the Wild & Fog.
The next two chapters explore the relation between belief and doubt in four different writers: 💫 Believing in the Mystery examines how Whitman, Laozi, and Zhuangzi allow doubt to operate within their belief systems; 🇮🇳 The Fiction of Doubt examines the way Rushdie uses doubt to criticize dogma and to suggest a secular version of mysticism.
Finally, as a coda to The Double Refuge, ☠️ Ars Moriendi is a personal look at agnosticism & death.
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Chapter
This chapter looks at religion from a historical and global perspective. I start with Six Versions of Infinity, which outlines the six major world religions in terms of their degrees of exclusivity. The Creation of Outcasts & A Specific Version of Infinity then argues that the particular type of exclusivity we find in Christianity is both divisive and unnecessary. I argue that Christianity should 1) become more accessible by blurring the line between religion & doubt, and 2) become more ecumenical by discarding the old Jewish antagonism between the One True Religion and all the other pagan delusions.
I then create a fictional scenario in which Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism interact with each other in the Middle East: in Nothing in Damascus math, theology, and love intersect, which allows for a collapse of religious categories as well as a mystical union of categories.
In Myth & Religion, East & West, One God, and Anti-Definitions I look at the historic shift from polytheistic uncertainty to monotheistic certainty in Western religion (Judaism, Christianity, & Islam). I contrast Eastern continuity with Western change, and I argue against the innate superiority of monotheism. This will be helpful background to the next chapters — ♒️ The Currents of Sumer, ⏯ Systems, and ✝︎ St. Francis — in which I take a positive look at the Mesopotamian roots of Judaeo-Christianity, and suggest ways in which Christianity might become more open and inclusive.
Finally, All Those Things the Wise Men Say contains poems that emphasize differences and similarities in global religions.
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Next: Six Versions of Infinity