Finally….. the National Geographic, June 2011 issue, has an interesting article entitled, The Birth of Religion, in which the author suggests that religion was the force behind the Neolithic Revolution in the Fertile Crescent (present-day Turkey and Iraq) and thus the reason for the development of what is now modern civilization.
It has been the long-held assumption that it was development of agriculture which allowed migrating bands of humans to settle in a place and establish larger communities and the beginnings of modern civilization. The discovery of a very ancient temple area named Gobekli Tepe on the border of Turkey and Syria seems to be calling into question this understanding and purports that it was the human desire to gather to worship that formed the basis for modern civilization.
Imagine that.
It has always been the understanding among Jews and Christians that it was God, his revealing himself more and more in the course of human history and humanity’s response to God’s self-revelation, that both humanized and divinized humankind. In other words, it is God who brought men and women together as a people, with an identity and a culture, so they might more and more perfectly worship him and live together as a people.
What science has so long attributed to more base reasons (the need for food and shelter and security) our faith tradition has taught is actually attributable to God’s influence.
Shouldn’t surprise us, should it?
