Part One: Faith

Chapter Two:  Deity

2.3

Medicine Men (The intermediaries for healing of the injured or sick - see also 3.2 Miracles, 7.2 Biology)  First may have been women.

Shamans

Priests:

Father, Chief, and Medicine Man = roles fulfilled by religious institutions/congregations.

When an individual within a group is held together by the cohesive effects of peer pressure, a limitation is placed on perception and action, and of course thought.  This peer pressure is what makes so many of human kind weak in spirit.  It makes them sheep.  Sheep that go off to war on command.  Sheep that need other sheep in order to feel safe and warm inside the group of peers, very much like pack animals would.

 A particularly talented individual learns ways in which to manipulate peer pressure to his or her benefit.  And if that soul is inclined towards evil and mean self-serving creation, then his power to create such will manifest in the most horride way.  I think of Jim Jones here.  Hitler.  Any great and charismatic individual that learned to lead the herd in the directions he or she chose in order to gain power or wealth – and the pleasures those can buy.  

 Well, now, take the banished man.  He did something against the belief system of the group that he had lived with.  Whatever the infraction, minor or murder, that man is now an outcast.  Cut off from every person and way of life he had ever known.  I should suppose that given an adequate period of adjustment, and a talent for self determination, our man would soon recover himself and find a spiritual freedom that he could never know as a member of the group that has so justly, or unjustly, cast him aside, or whatever. 

Without the constraints of the former group mind in action, and free from the sheep herd exclusivity of thought forged by peer pressure psychology, a man can perceive the world in a very different way.  If the man is inclined towards attacking the world, then he will perceive ways of manipulation that the more limited group mind would allow.  This is not to say that all outcasts, past or present, will all become criminals.  Not at all!  None the less, a free spirit will see with eyes that are not filtered through the group mind consensus, and like the first Native Americans that did not see the ships at sea (because their mind had no concept for it – See Chapter ??, ??), not have the mental “map” of what is right in front of them to see.  What the outcast can now see, and use for retribution or restitution, depending upon his disposition, and perhaps some genetics and social conditioning – how benevolent or ruthless was the society that cast him out.

So let’s suppose that someone who was a social outcast (as most early priests or shaman were, or chose to became after becoming a priest or shaman) learned to start “think outside the box”, so to speak, and realized just how conforming people can be with the appropriate guidance, through either peer pressure thought (Political or Religious dictates), or the dangling carrot of reward, and used that knowledge for his or her’s own purposes.  This scenario, though for the moment utterly atheistic for the moment, can be integrated with paranormal phenomena of the religious nature in some very interesting ways.  I hope to present those observations later.

So the Evil Man, so disposed and free to think independently, understands and learns to manipulate the herd characteristics of humanity.  Today there is a wide range of con’s that are perpetrated against society that is a direct result of developing the skills of manipulation.

The same man inclined toward the creation of positive and selfless realities, will equally learn to, for want of a better word at the moment, manipulate those around him with a net loss of pain and suffering and an increase in goodness.  Goodness as measured by the standard human model of either it hurts or is pleases.

*****

            Many people today, particularly in regards to alternative medicine, have taken comfort in the Old World views without appreciating the harmful consequences on our advancement as a culture.  People seek out Alternative medicine in part (discover august 1999 - Andrew Weil) because it is easier than “hard” science.  They fail to recognize that the nature of God and the mysteries of the Other World was, until modern times, considered to “hard” for the common (uneducated) man (usually a farmer of simple craftsman) and was therefore relegated to the elite class of the priesthood.  When we abdicated our power of knowledge for religious based medicine (for whatever merit it may or may not have in healing) we unwittingly elevate the scientists to the priesthood class!  And by denouncing them and their teachings we proclaim our atheistic intentions.  We deny the knowledge of, and the “gift” of insight into, the miraculous nature of God’s creation in exchange for easy answers, ego bolstering, and charlatan trickery; thereby, in a very amusing way, do we come to represent the “pagan” heathen that our most devout ancestors would have so self righteously tormented.  God and His Majesty could only be fully comprehended by those who spent their lives in the service of Him: the priests.  So while many would profess, in the early years, to be Christian, many continued to practice their traditional religious prayers and practices as well.  They were more familiar.  This was similar to the early days of the Jews.  It was expected, and even encouraged by the Jewish faith, that one should honor the ways of a host town or nation.  That you should worship the local gods out of respect.  But in the quiet of one’s own home, acknowledge the one true God: Yahweh.   So, as some eastern philosophies might say, the snake bites it’s tail once again (the snake biting it‘s tail is symbolic of the repeating cycles of life, like the seasons, that keep going around and around in a circle.)  The circle is complete.  What comes around goes around.  It’s the mobius strip that goes on forever, yet repeats the same path each time.

Modern Ministers of the Faith

Far too often it seems that religion has become inadequate to the task of addressing the concerns of an increasingly complex culture.  A society based on high technology demands more from religious counsel than it's pre-industrial counterpart.  Technology, based on the findings of Science, has delivered a world of sophistication that our ancestors could never have conceived of.  Is it possible for religion to adapt in kind, or is the very nature of religious truths incompatible with the sort of rapid change taking place in the world today?  (See also: 

Certainly, as we shall see, the church (which I will use to refer to all Christian Faiths: Catholic, Protestant, Lutheran, etc.) has often changed it's policies in accord with changing social values.  But in today's world, this rate of change has become exponential.  Can the church adapt as quickly and still maintain credibility as the holder of truth?  Many would feel that truth by it's very nature is unchangeable.  But even this, when considering certain aspects of physics, such as quantum effects, may be an incorrect assumption.