Prehistory: Cognition of God's Intents and Acts
The development of man's representation of God can be traced by comparing religions of prehistoric times with the religions of the East, Judaism, traditional and reformed Christianity, and Islam. The gods of primitive people were cruel creatures, the kindness of which had to be deserved by victims, sometimes even humans. The peculiarity of religions is that their dogmatics practically do not change, as various changes shake the authority of spiritual authorities, while it must remain unshakable and be supported by an old tradition. Changes in the spiritual sphere of individual human societies under the influence of God will lead to the emergence of new, more perfect, more humanistic religions.
Just as the Lord cannot leave a person without help in knowing Him, He can not disregard the religious beliefs of man. Every religion is a creation of the human spirit, it arises after the insight of an individual when he understands God in his way, but the Lord cannot completely entrust people with the ideological meaning of religions, as they affect human activity and can go against His plan. If the world was not conceived by man, then he should not develop it according to his discretion contrary to God's will but should strive to become His helper.
The influence of God on the development of beliefs is well demonstrated by Confucianism. Confucius did not know about the tendency in people's ideas of the divine essence as more and more favorable to them. Nevertheless, he based his teaching on the principle of "Rén" – humaneness, which does not seem practical. However, the humanization of beliefs occurs only when people are ready to embrace new, progressive ideas. Spiritual changes of man for millennia reflected in Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, prepared the perception of God as a loving father. However, Christianity has not become a universal religion, some people have not perceived it for centuries, or its dogma has been reinterpreted both in later religions and in Christianity itself, as evidenced by the separation of Churches and the Reformation. There can not be a universal religion at all, because today most religions lose their former authority. However, the universal category, which shapes morality in society, must exist, since the decline of mankind can not be tolerated by the Lord. Such a universal category is the human conscience. I. Kant, who largely determined the direction of development of European philosophy, described conscience as follows:
A man may use as much art as he likes to paint to himself an unlawful act (Betragen), that he remembers, as an unintentional error (Versehen), a mere oversight, such as one can never altogether avoid, and therefore as something in which he was carried away by the stream of physical necessity, and thus to make himself out innocent, yet he finds that the advocate who speaks in his favour can by no means silence the accuser within, if only he is conscious that at the time when he did this wrong (Unrecht) he was in his senses, that is, in possession of his freedom; and, nevertheless, he accounts for his error from some bad habits (Vergehen), which by gradual neglect of attention he has allowed growing upon him to such a degree that he can regard his error as its natural consequence, although this cannot protect him from the blame and reproach which he casts upon himself (KANT IMMANUEL. 2004: 110)
In the cited work "Critique of Practical Reason", devoted to questions of morality, Kant uses the word "conscience" only once, although it could become a keyword in it. He simply lacked the knowledge to understand the meaning of conscience, using only his inherent transcendental method. Later philosophers, having become acquainted with evolutionary theories, could believe that conscience is exactly what fundamentally distinguishes humans from animals. V.S. Solovyov was sure of this and considered conscience as the result of the development of a sense of shame:
Because of this feeling, the wildest and most undeveloped person is ashamed, that is he hides every physiological act and recognizes it as improper that not only satisfies his desire and needs but, moreover, is useful and necessary for the maintenance of the species. Solovyov concludes that it is this fact of moral life that distinguishes man from all animals, and this is not accidental, because the feeling of shame is an indicator of difference from the lower nature… That is, through shame, a person bifurcates his nature into material and non-material – higher; seeks to separate himself from this lower, animal nature, and therefore, to become in the true sense of man (DRUZNININ V.I, SAMARTSEVA E.I. 2009).
On the contrary, E. Fromm saw the difference between a human and an animal in a decrease in the determinism of behavior by instincts in him and in an increase in the brain (FROMM ERICH. 2010: 148-149). These are all quantitative changes in the process of biological evolution of the animal world, while conscience is a qualitative change in the psychology of the human species. Fukuyama, on the other hand, sees the difference between humans and animals in their desire to be recognized as a creature with a certain dignity. However, self-esteem is one of the manifestations of a person's conscience, although Fukuyama considers dignity only as "the first glimpse of freedom" (FUKUYAMA FRANCIS. 2004: 16). Fukuyama does not specifically speak about conscience in his work, although he mentions shame, just as Kant does, which he follows. Since, according to him, the manifestation of dignity leads to a relationship between master and slave, which is contrary to his democratic worldview, dignity loses its significance in his reasoning, in which he follows Hegel. Conscience in this respect is more in keeping with the historical process.
It is impossible to imagine that conscience could develop in a person only under the influence of the circumstances of life and the external environment with a constant struggle for survival. Conscience as a person's ability for self-esteem was developed out of a feeling of shame, which hinders certain kinds of actions that may be considered unworthy in the eyes of others. Like conscience, animals have no shame, just as the primitive man had no shame and the fact of its appearance was recorded in the Old Testament, but as the word “conscience” does not occur in the Old Testament, this may indicate the development of this human phenomenon in later times. True, the Russian theologian P.I. Kazansky, knowing that the word conscience does not exist in the Old Testament, nevertheless claimed that the phenomena of conscience are present in it when the word heart is used in this sense (VESELOVA E.K. 2009, 132). However, he did not assume that a human conscience appears in the process of his spiritual improvement, just as his physical qualities improve in the process of evolution.
By asking himself the question "Did the ancient Greeks have a conscience?" the classical philologist, based on the analysis of the texts of ancient Greek literature, answers this question negatively, believing that the process of understanding human ability to self-esteem in ancient times stretched out for centuries (YARKHO V.N. 2010: 195-210). The first among the apostles, St. Paul begins to use the corresponding Greek word and after that, it is already quite often found in the texts of the New Testament. The understanding of the meaning of conscience probably arose in the Apostle Paul under the influence of the teachings of the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes (c. 330 – c. 230 BC), whom he quoted in his speech in Athens. Cleanthes described conscience as the ability of man’s self-preservation, and his disciple Chrysippus (ca. 280 – ca. 208 BC) described conscience as a consciousness of inner harmony. The ideas of the Stoics were developed by medieval scholastics as the law of the mind, inspired by God at the man (FROMM E. 2002: 170). Nevertheless, the growing role of conscience as a moral factor in human behavior is so inconspicuous that it gave reason to B. Russell to assert that ethics in the historical plan "has not made any definite advances, in the sense of ascertained discoveries" in the historical plan [RUSSELL BERTRAND, 1995: 163]. This becomes clear if we recall his assessment of conscience as a “very unreliable adviser” [RUSSELL BERTRAND, 2013: 85]. Obviously, he did not know that the word "conscience" is absent in the Old Testament.
Unlike Russell who was an atheist, progress can be seen in all modern religions in assessing the meaning of conscience. His deepest understanding is noted in the pastoral constitution of the Second Vatican Council "Joy and Hope", which lasted from 1962 to 1965, in which we find the following words:
In the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose upon himself, but which holds him to obedience. Always summoning him to love good and avoid evil, the voice of conscience when necessary speaks to his heart: do this, shun that. For man has in his heart a law written by God; to obey it is the very dignity of man; according to it, he will be judged (9). Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his depths (10). In a wonderful manner, conscience reveals that law which is fulfilled by the love of God and neighbor (11). (GAUDIUM ET SPES, 1965, 16).
The meaning of conscience as a Divine moral law is indicated, but common words reach hardly public consciousness. Like any law, the moral law of conscience must also be proved and the proof consists in the realization of the growing importance of conscience for the behavior of a person in the process of his spiritual development. It is generally accepted that conscience does not evolve with age, but with age, a person can learn to be more and more guided by it in his practical activity if he perceivуі it as an immutable law.
However, in the middle of the 20th century, among the younger generation, there was a noticeable tendency to reduce the internal need to control their behavior by moral duties. A good illustration of this process is the "sexual revolution" that began in the 1960s. It has already been outlined by the practice of shameless kisses of French students in public. Meanwhile, the significance of shame in the process of human evolution is very great:
V.S. Soloviev writes about the reflection of conscience and the ability to feel shame. Therefore, a certain preexistence of conscience is embedded in the feeling of shame, and shame is a prerequisite for a person's self-consciousness. At the same time, conscience is a reasonable, average measure of the affect of shame, which is an immanent development of the latter. The feeling of shame contains the attitude of a person to his material nature, to its lower side. Therefore, the affect of shame itself directs the moral life of a person to a valuable elevation, and allows the value consciousness to evolve, starting from animal manifestations in a person (DRUZNININ V.I, SAMARTSEVA E.I. 2009).
Loss of sense of shame in behavior led to fundamental changes in the sexual sphere due to the spreading of the ideas of existentialism-personalism with the absolutization of the priority of personal freedom over responsibilities to society. According to Baudrillard, at present, most of humanity is in the stage of an orgy, which he characterizes as "sex on the square", as the researcher of his work understands it:
Sex, as such, has ceased to be a secret. Sex is something sacred between two people, something that is never put on display. Historically, it has never been on display. But now they have sex right on the central square. And this is a clear example of the fact that the same thing happens to everything else: everything sacred has ceased to be sacred (MALTSEV OLEG. 2020: 28)
In this process, attempts to overcome hypocrisy and bigotry, which were often manifested in external chastity, can be considered positive, but sexual practice uncontrollable by morality can not only harm the health of an individual and greatly narrow the range of his interests, but also disorient society as a whole. Unlike animals, human sexuality has gone beyond the reproductive instinct and has become not only one of the means of obtaining pleasure but also a significant factor in shaping human social behavior. At the same time, the sexual relations of a man and a woman are reduced to techniques and have lost the spiritual joys of physical contact. Simplification of the view on sexuality occurred through the gradual loss of the authority of religions and the decline of moral standards produced over the centuries, which had the goal of controlling human nature inherent in a cultural person. As already mentioned, people, unlike animals, have a sense of conscience and shame, and these feelings are embedded in man by the Creator, therefore, consciously their reduction is nothing more than entering into opposition with Him.
The state of the systemic crisis in which the world resides is disturbed by philosophers, sociologists, ecologists, and public figures, but they are practically not touched on the topic of conscience if we ignore the position of the clergy, which is now considered by very few. The fundamental importance of conscience is not sufficiently reflected in the literature. The reason for this may be that people with a clear conscience do not receive visible benefits in society and rarely have success. Although a clear conscience contributes to the preservation of health, as noted in the German proverb "Ein reines Gewissen ist ein sanftes Ruhekissen" (a clear conscience is a soft pillow), it cannot be said with certainty that people with a clear conscience use God's special mercy. However, it can be assumed that conscienceless people are deprived of God's care when they neglect the gift of God and, by abusing their free will, fall under the court of society. And it is not the Lord God who punishes them; their lives are shortened or even taken away by the same conscienceless people.
On the other hand, we can say with confidence that people who are guided by their conscience live and act for the benefit of their inner circle and society as a whole. Agreeing with this, one can conclude that not a distinct person, but the community of people to which he belongs, is the primary and highest spiritual value of all mankind, which is an ascending hierarchical structure – family, clan, team, parish, confession, fraternity, nation, race. Christianity well reflects this idea in the prayer “Our Father,” in which the appeal to God is conducted not personally on behalf of the person who prays, but from many co-religionists. At the head of each of such communities of a hierarchical structure should be a person of high morality, whose duty should be to take care of the community as a whole and its members. That is, it will be the real embodiment of structured humanism based on the principle of "Rén" of Confucius and the idea of the social contract of Thomas Hobbes.
Some intellectuals, concerned about the systemic crisis, intuitively believe that the salvation of mankind can be provided by deep and radical psychological, and spiritual changes in man. More recently, on a historical scale, there was no threat to human survival. The diversity in their understanding of good and evil ensured the survival of those peoples whose priority values corresponded to different living conditions and historical experiences. In the era of globalization, there is a need to adopt a kind of social contract for a unified system of values for all of humanity. Moreover, it "must be objectively justified, optimal, consistent with modern reality and, in particular, with the threats posed by the global crisis" (VOIN A.M. 2016:12)
Such thoughts in general terms have long been voiced by Schweitzer, Mesarovic, Pestel, and other analysts, and more than thirty years ago, Erich Fromm wrote about this need in such a dramatic tone:
For the first time in history, the physical survival of mankind depends on the radical spiritual changes of man (FROMM ERICH, 1986, 21).
But the Lord did not create man to allow his destruction. We must think that He foresaw the possibility of crises in human society and took preventive measures. In the meantime, we must agree with the need for spiritual changes in a person, but the question arises immediately – in what direction should they take place? We have already concluded the development of mankind under the sign of increasing humanization, but the recurrences of cruelty in the world on a large scale indicate that, on the one hand, humanization should not be universal, but differentiated, and on the other, that it should be reinforced moral laws, among which conscience should not take the last place.
Spiritual changes in a person depend on a comprehensive knowledge of God and in recent decades this need for many thinkers has become more and more obvious, although, without the participation of God himself, it goes beyond the limits of human capabilities. Collingwood, for example, arguing the unknowability of the essence of God, wrote that His character as a substance is "… not only not open to the human mind without His help, but even incapable of being shown. All that we can know about God is His activity" (COLLINGWOOD R.G. 1996: 103).
In principle, science is engaged in that, it studies the activities of God, especially not emphasizing the ultimate goal of the conducted studies. Physicists, not having a real idea of the initial conditions for the evolution of the universe, are looking for them and, not finding them, are forced to ask themselves questions, the answers to which under the present state of physics can only be sophistical. For example, Einstein all his life worried about the question: Did the Lord have a choice in creating the world? Are the laws that govern the universe unique and in what situation could they be quite different? (REES MARTIN. 2008: 33). After fifty years, Lee Smolin poses the question, God created the laws of nature when he created the world, or they have a certain mathematical form fixed in some abstract principles (SMOLIN LEE 1997, 17). In fact, these thinkers, having set themselves a very difficult question, how the Lord created the world, look for an answer to it and do not find it. Meanwhile, it would be more fruitful to answer the questions what it was he who created. After getting the most obvious answers to it, you can move on to more complex and interrelated issues such as why. Of course, no one will give complete answers to them, but some products of the Lord's creation can be searched in the geological history of our planet and in the prehistory of mankind, although they can not give us relevant data on the creation of the universe, but about the creation of the Earth and its inhabitants, they can say a lot.
Asking the question of what exactly the Lord created, it is logical to look for an answer to it, as already noted above, starting with the most obvious facts, first of all taking into account the features of the earth's surface and the people that inhabit it. If we talk about the features of man as a biological species, then the most striking is the presence of three distinct anthropological races among mankind. Trying to find an answer to the question of why the Lord conceived this and picturing, in general, outlines the prehistoric ethnogenetical processes, we assume that He followed the idea of structuring the future human society. The first step in implementing this idea was just the division of the human species into three races. The white, yellow, and black races were distributed separately on the earth's space, but without insurmountable boundaries, which made possible cross-breeding, which provided additional variability and polymorphism of mankind necessary for its evolution, as is known from biology. However, the significance of this process goes beyond it:
Not only biologists but also philosophers and politicians should understand the true price of monotony: changing the environment can destroy all representatives of this species if they are identical (ROLLER ANN. 1978).
However, the cross-breeding of races for a long time could gradually lead to a largely homogeneous anthropological characteristic of the population of the Earth, and this could harm the development of man, if there was no structuring of the human community on other grounds. Simultaneously with its anthropological structuring, social structuring began along the vertical and horizontal lines. The smallest structural elements were tribal communities, among which the generic nobility stood out. The competition between individual communities in the struggle for survival led to their integration into larger associations connected by a common language, which provided such a process due to their communicative capabilities. The formation of individual languages occurred in geographical areas with natural boundaries, which limited contact between individual groups of people and accordingly prevented the spread of new linguistic forms created in different places.
These areas were called ethno-producing, because the formation of different ethnos or ethnic groups occurred on them repeatedly. It is important to note that the emerging nations with their languages were initially tied to the land, i.e. to a certain territory in the future, this attachment in most cases took place. Violation of this principle has always led to conflicts sometimes with tragic consequences. An example of this was the events in Bosnia at the end of the 20th century.
The aggregate of such areas occupies a space that is several times larger than the area of each of them. The corresponding places on the earth's surface are several – in the basin of the Upper and Middle Dnieper, in the basin of the right tributaries of the Volga, in the interfluve of the Dnieper and Don, in the Amur basin, and Transcaucasia among the lakes of Van, Sevan, Urmia. The features of the relief of these territories are such that it is difficult to assume their contingent origin, without the will of the Heavenly Architect. The ethno-producing areas were the result of geological controlled processes, during which mountain chains and a river network appeared, which eventually became the boundaries of these areas. Similarly, God's actions aimed at ensuring ethnic diversity on the principle of polymorphism, by it is necessary to explain the configuration and features of the landscape of Europe, which resulted in the formation and development of numerous peoples from ancient times. Nowhere in the world, there are so many small mountain massifs of complex folding, such as the Ardennes, the Vosges, the Harz, the Rhine shale mountains, the Ore Mountains, the Sudeten, Towtry, Schwarzwald, etc. Europe also has the most dismembered coastline as compared to other continents.
The liberal ideology prevailing in our time proclaims the highest values of the rights and freedom of the individual. However, an individual may be indifferent to the collective interests of people united based on a wide variety of attributes and ideas shared by them, the more he is indifferent to the problems of humanity as a whole as a disordered collection of various individuals. Such an ideology poses a threat to human civilization and, having provided for such a possibility, the Creator purposefully shaped the surface of the Earth using geological processes to shape human society as a collection of ethnic units. This shows the idea of structuring, which is laid down in the design of any complex system.
The population of the ethno-producing area naturally develops endogamy, that is, the practice of marriage within the tribe, but cases of exogamy are not excluded, and sometimes are even welcomed. However, in the overwhelming majority of cases, a girl from another tribe must be a virgin, which has a physiological sign in the form of a hymen. The biological role of this element of the genital organ is not known, but its specificity suggests that this role is special and could not have arisen naturally. The chastity of a girl from another tribe indicates that she has not had sexual intercourse and therefore cannot be pregnant. One might think that such a custom is aimed at preserving the characteristic features of the tribe, which is provided by the Y chromosome, which the girl does not have. However, it could be in a male embryo if the girl was already pregnant. This leads to two conclusions. Firstly, the tribe consciously preserves its identity, which is ensured by a certain set of Y chromosomes, and secondly, it knows how to do this. Such knowledge can only be innate without a clear understanding of its meaning and again indicates that the Lord saw the human race structured according to anthropological characteristics and endowed people with certain innate knowledge. The hymen are genetically determined and cannot disappear in the process of historical development of a woman’s body, but the prevailing attitude towards chastity in the further history of mankind was regulated by the laws of existing morality to preserve the characteristics of a certain social or ethnic group. Clan membership was determined on a patrilineal basis. Exceptions to non-compliance with this rule, when kinship is determined by the principle of matrilineality, complicate the formation of an ethnic group.
Genetics also provides evidence in another way of God's design for structuring human society. As you know, genes are of two types – recessive and dominant. Recessive ones exhibit their effect only when they are paired on the chromosome, while dominant ones inhibit the action of the recessive one and act regardless of which gene they are paired with.
If we consider the successes of different peoples in the process of development of human civilization, it will immediately become noticeable that their contributions to this process are different. Those people who have the most significant contributions achieved success in certain branches of science and culture, and only a few of them did this in several fields. One of the main creators of the Singapore "economic miracle" Lee Kuan Yew argued that human intelligence is 80% genetics and 20% upbringing. So far, no special genes that provide intelligence have been found. But if you listen to the words of Lee Kuan Woo, who successfully pursued the policy of eugenics in Singapore, we can assume that intelligence can be ensured by a set of mutually related genes. Although one of them should be the most important, to simplify the narration, let’s call it the talent gene. Since the children of brilliant parents do not always shine with intelligence, there is even a proverb “nature rests on children,” the talent gene must be recessive. For it to manifest itself in children, both father and mother must have it.
The talent gene does not always manifest itself clearly for various reasons. However, there are known recessive genes that behave very well. These are the genes that are responsible for light hair and eye color. Blonde and light-eyed children are born to spouses in whom both parents have such characteristics. If one of the parents does not have this gene, then the children will have signs of a dominant gene that provides the characteristics of a brunette or brown-haired person. Thus, the number of blondes in any human society depends on how often blondes marry among themselves. If there is no such preference, then the number of blondes in society decreases uniformly and is correlated with the probability with which blondes in society marry each other.
The same thing will happen in a society in which the policy of supporting the number of intellectuals with a targeted combination of men and women tangibly demonstrating their intellectual abilities is absent. However, such a possibility is inherent in a class state where marriages are mainly concluded within a class consisting of people of approximately the same mental development. The English doctor, an adherent of eugenics, Havelock Ellis, in one of his works, cited statistics on the social origin of brilliant people in Britain, in which at his time the class structure of society was clearly expressed (ELLIS HAVELOCK. 1904). He distributed 829 selected geniuses into several social groups. According to his data, more than 40% of geniuses came from the Upper Class group, the yeomen, and farmers. The smallest group of geniuses were children of parents engaged in some unskilled work, that is, belonging to the lowest social class. It consisted of only 21 members (2.5%), although there were several notable persons among them (IBID: 77-85), origin. However, there are more geniuses in the upper classes as a consequence of greater opportunities for gifted persons to marry. This is an example of positive feedback, that is, in a class in which there are more geniuses, there will be more of them. In the absence of classes in a liberal society, this possibility is reduced due to the scattering of gifted people in a large mass, which makes it difficult to meet together. Such a society becomes more homogeneous with uncertain prospects. In a certain period, the homogeneity of a society can provide it with short-term success, but in the long term, such a society will face internal problems, the solution of which can only be achieved at the intellectual level. Therefore, to support a certain number of intellectuals, it should pursue a policy of encouraging marriages between gifted people. Such a policy can only be carried out at the state level when there is control over the composition of educational institutions and its regulation.
Thus, the existence of dominant and recessive genes is intended only for a limited number of people of a certain class, intelligence, etc., while the majority of society must use the knowledge acquired by the minority and carry out its will. Of course, this harms the democratization of society, but the liberal humanism spreading throughout the world must be limited to a certain extent. Liberal ideology proclaims the highest values of law and individual freedom. However, an individual may be indifferent to the collective interests of people united based on a wide variety of characteristics and ideas, even more so he is indifferent to the problems of humanity as a whole as a disordered accumulation of various individuals. Such ideology poses a threat to human civilization, and in anticipation of this possibility, the Creator purposefully shaped the surface of the Earth through geological processes to form human society as a collection of ethnic units. This demonstrates the idea of structuring, which is embedded in the design of any complex system.
One of the founders of the theory of social stratification, P. Sorokin, introduced the expression “social space” into scientific circulation, but could not give it a clear definition and systematize the relevant concepts (SOROKIN P. 1992, 297). The existence of ethno-prodicing areas suggests that the idea of social space was laid down by God at the beginning of the formation of the human community.
Sequel
