{"id":14247,"date":"2017-10-12T13:31:36","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T20:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=14247"},"modified":"2017-10-12T13:54:42","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T20:54:42","slug":"religion-politics-and-sapiens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/religion-politics-and-sapiens\/","title":{"rendered":"Religion, Politics and Sapiens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are three discussion topics that will surely invoke a lively conversation at your next family dinner: religion, politics and the book <em>Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind <\/em>by Yuval Noah Harari. Over the course of our learning in this program we have read other authors who have graveled with the most known historical narratives and tried to provide a new account of how faith and life came into existence. Thomas C.\u00a0 Oden in <em>How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity<\/em> emphasizes that &#8221; <em>[t]he thesis of this book can be stated simply: Africa played a decisive role in the formation of Christian culture. Decisive intellectual achievements of Christianity were explored and understood first in Africa before they were recognized in Europe, and a millennium before they found their way to North America<\/em>.&#8221;<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a> \u00a0Peter Frankopan in <em>The Silk Roads: A New History of the World <\/em>discussed the importance of the east and not the west in history. The Silk Roads were key in the shaping of civilization, economics, politics and religion. He prefaces his book by establishing his intended outcome for seeking out this information \u00a0\u201c<em>My hope is that I can embolden others to study peoples and places that have been ignored by scholars for generations by opening up new questions and new areas of research. I hope to prompt new questions to be asked about the past, and for truisms to be challenged and scrutinised. Above all,\u00a0I hope to inspire those who read this book to look at history in a different\u00a0way<\/em>.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a> Both authors were motivated by their curiosity of the world around them. They sought out answers to questions and were not afraid to challenge scholars, theologians and historians to see beyond the Eurocentric \/ western narrative in order to discover something new and different.<\/p>\n<p>Yuval Harari is attempting to also push the envelope. Not quite in the same way as Oden and Frankopan (*<em>insert awkward smirk<\/em>*) but in a way that does cause any reader to think, react and want to engage in discussion. His book takes us from what is historically described as the evolution of humankind to today. This is a lot to put into 400+ pages. \u00a0[<em>Side Note: It became apparent to me from the beginning that Harari has some contention with systematic structures and cultural constructs i.e. legal systems, politics and religion. He slides in occasional jabs \u00a0throughout his book<\/em>.] I will not summarize his entire book but I will highlight two things that struck me in his book.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Survival of the Fittest<\/strong>&#8211; This is not a new concept. When discussing evolution this Darwinian ideal is at the core. In the beginning of his book, he writes \u201c<em>[t]he most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were insignificant animals with no more impact on their environment than gorillas, fireflies or jellyfish<\/em>.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a> This is clearly not the creation narrative many Christians have adopted from the book of Genesis but it helps to set up his historical account of evolution. He also, disturbingly notes the occurrence of bestiality in early sapiens have sex with animals and producing children. He goes on to discusses how early Sapiens evolved into \u00a0what we know as the human species. Many of the prehistoric sapiens (Neantherdals and Denisovans) died or were killed. \u00a0He posed a series of questions aimed at religious ideals on life, salvation and life after death, in regards to the tolerance of other sapiens had they survived like the homo sapiens did. \u201c<em>Would the book of Genesis have declared that Neanderthals descend from Adam and Eve, would Jesus have died for the sins of the Denisovans, and would the Qur\u2019an have reserved seats in heaven for all righteous humans, whatever their species<\/em>?\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a> Even I chuckled at the thought of what he was saying. However, on a serious note it was alarming to think that in this historical account humans have been killing each other since the very beginning because of differences. If I were to go along with his narrative, it would beg the imaginative question of what the world be like if the Neantherdals and Denisovans had survived?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Imagined Reality<\/strong>&#8211; He asserts that our ability to survive as Human beings has much to do with our cognitive ability to believe in fiction. The ideas of gods, money, laws etc. are all fictional cognitive concepts that derive from communal beliefs accepted and agreed upon by everyone. He writes \u201c<em>Unlike lying, an imagined reality is something that everyone believes in, and as long as this communal belief persists, the imagined reality exerts force in the world<\/em>.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn5\" name=\"_ftnref5\">[5]<\/a> While I do not agree with this as it relates to my understanding of the God of my faith, I can understand his point when it comes to money. Over time, what we have defined as money has changed. It is all about what value we place on something in order to use it to exchange it for something else of value. He states that \u201c<em>money isn\u2019t a material reality \u2013 it is a psychological construct\u2026 Money is accordingly a system of mutual trust, and not just any system of mutual trust: money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised<\/em>.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn6\" name=\"_ftnref6\">[6]<\/a> He further asserts \u201c<em>Take a dollar bill and look at it carefully. You will see that it is simply a colourful piece of paper with the signature of the US secretary of the treasury on one side, and the slogan \u2018In God We Trust\u2019 on the other. We accept the dollar in payment, because we trust in God and the US secretary of the treasury<\/em>.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn7\" name=\"_ftnref7\">[7]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> Thomas C. Oden, <em>How africa shaped the christian mind: rediscovering the african seedbed of western christianity<\/em> (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2010), Location, 42.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: a new history of the world (New York: Vintage Books, 2017), Preface.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref3\" name=\"_ftn3\">[3]<\/a> Yuval N. Harari, John Purcell, and Haim Watzman, <em>Sapiens: a brief history of mankind<\/em> (London: Vintage Books, 2015), 4.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref4\" name=\"_ftn4\">[4]<\/a> Ibid, 18.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref5\" name=\"_ftn5\">[5]<\/a> Ibid, 32.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref6\" name=\"_ftn6\">[6]<\/a> Ibid, 179.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref7\" name=\"_ftn7\">[7]<\/a> Ibid, 180.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are three discussion topics that will surely invoke a lively conversation at your next family dinner: religion, politics and the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. Over the course of our learning in this program we have read other authors who have graveled with the most known historical narratives [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[760],"class_list":["post-14247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-harari","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14247"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14369,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14247\/revisions\/14369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}