The Neanderthal stage of human development has always fascinated me. What beings these "not quite us" types must have been. Powerful in build and physical abilities. Impervious, compared to modern Homo Sapiens, to pain and injury. When one researcher sought to find a counterpart in our culture to explain the skeletal injuries found in most Neanderthals, the American Rodeo star won. The injuries rodeo riders suffered dealing with large animals were the same as those of the Neanderthal. Massive bones and skulls, amazingly peg like teeth used as tools over a lifetime and probably the attitude to go with it all, a Cro-Magnon, modern man, had better to have outsmarted him before he was broken in two.
Neanderthals existed for several hundred thousand years as a being on this planet. Hard to believe, but it is true. They were in Europe already when modern man entered showed up in the long trek out of Africa. European Neanderthals had no other human competition until about 35,000 years ago, and when it showed up, they lost. A culture that had the same tools and the same way of being simply lost out to creative thinkers, who, while not as physically powerful, were more intelligent and forward looking. A Neanderthal lived day to day in the present and seemed to have no foresite and few insights. This finally proved to be their downfall and the last Neanderthal may have departed the planet trapped in a cave in Southern Spain where they had been driven over thousands of years of losing out to the more "enlightened" Cro-Magnon...Us.
There are no Neanderthals on the earth today, but there are Neander-thoughts. A Neander-thought is an idea, way of thinking or being, that no longer works. Just as Neanderthals seemed incapable of insight and foresight, creative solutions and critical thinking, Neander-thoughts today are holding humans back from making any real progress and actually expose us all to being consigned to some trash heap of history for not recognizing it. Let's take a look a few of the biggies. I am sure you can add many more to the list.
Neander-thoughts fall into endless categories, but for my intended purposes and from where I tend to come from in my experiences, I will deal with Religious Neander-thoughts. There are political, economic, social and pseudo scientific Neander thoughts out there causing no end to problems as well. However, at the present time, it seems that religious Neander-thoughts are the ones tearing the planet apart...again.
There are thousands of Neander-thoughts that no longer serve human beings well, and yet are pumped out day after day and year after year over lifetimes as if they worked. They don't work and aren't true. Perhaps they never did, but the certainly do no longer and it's time we recognized the main ones. Most won't of course. If it was good enough for daddy, it is good enough for me, is a far too common apologetic for why Neander-thoughts still deserve a place in our minds and practices.
Religious Neander-Thoughts that no longer work, and never did well.
1. There is the one true God that is easily found if you just look and believe. Of course with six billion diverse peoples on the planet, the One True God that you find, or finds you will be a different One True God from the one most others find or are found by.
2. Having found the One True God, be it Allah, Jesus or YHVH, there is one easily understood way this God expects you to behave and one true set of discernable beliefs and practices to be adhered to.
3. There are written texts on the planet that have literally been written by God or the gods. These texts are coherent, seamless and inerrant in their content and intent. When read, it is obvious they were not written by men.
4. Those texts that were not literally written by God or the gods, but rather inspired in the minds of chosen men are coherent, seamless and inerrant in their content and intent. There are chosen and inspired by a True God men even if you are not and cannot be one.
5. Women and texts that relate to Goddess worship and Mother Earth perspectives are never correct nor worth knowing about or practicing in fact. The sin of one woman has brought all present day problems upon us all. As a result, she shall say "yes Lord" to men and have babies painfully.
6. When a Holy Book is written over thousands of years by scores of MEN, it is coherent, seamless and inerrant in content and intent.
7. Some men and very few women are more special than the general population of humans. When God tells them build little forts of mud and burn them down, lie on their side for over a year, or cook their food with human dung, lesser called humans should pay close attention to what this man is saying. Mental illness has never been a factor in the behavior of religious men.
8. Men in religion who talk to bushes in the desert, hear voices, see bright lights and receive commands from a Deity that no one else, standing by, can hear, see or perceive, should be paid close attention to and followed in all they say after the encounter.
9. Men who can and do stop the earth from rotating, so the sun appears to stand still, because he needs more daylight to finish the killing of enemies are credible, and it's always a good idea to have more time for killing.
10. Obscure peoples, living in obscure deserts, roaming around obscure mountains in obscure parts of the world, are the chosen people of the One True Deity, always have been and always will be, and you are not.
11. All religious beliefs and practices are inspired directly by the Deity to the chosen ones and spring from the vacuum of surrounding cultures who practice similar things but do so a bit differently and worship different Deities. The True People and Chosen ones, never take their beliefs from the paganism that surrounds them and never evolve the paganism of neighbors into their own form of true paganism as given by the true Deity. In short, true religions don't evolve out of the cultures they are soaking in.
12. There is a True Deity that loves some people much more than others and really hates some with a passion as if they are in someway fundamentally more flawed than the ones he loves.
13. Special humans, mostly men, are very capable of discerning the mind of the True Deity to form the True Synagogue, Mosque or Church, and are easily found and perceived by those that the True Deity calls to do so.
14. There is only one True Synagogue, Mosque or Church that the Deity will accept membership in for humans to receive their true spiritual rewards, both now and in the time after death.
15. The True Deity requires at least ten percent of your gross income to do His work on earth, which will be done through special humans that know the mind of God more than you ever could. They will always spend the money as if the Deity himself were spending it, for things the Deity would himself spend it for.
16. There is a place of eternal damnation, separation or annihilation for the vast majority who just don't get it and refuse the obvious call of the Deity through special men. This damnation, separation or annihilation is done in love and those who go on to some form of glorification would not notice or care that their children were missing from the equation.
17. Women are not to speak in the True Church because the Holy Text says the first woman sinned and not the man. Women in the True Church are also not to have any authority over a man because, in fact, women come from men and men do not come from women. While science would question this conclusion, most non-Christain science is easy dismissed as "science so called."
18. Because, not counting male lions and male bird plummage, nature tells us it a shame for a man to have long hair, the men of the true religion and Deity, will have short hair. Aside from all contemporary pictures of Jesus, the Sioux and the Visigoths, men with long hair are weak, gay and soft.
19. Because long hair is a covering for women, short hair is always out for women. Everyone knows that short haired women are from the Isle of Lesbos.
20. Real women don't wear pants.
21. True Religions need to be inflicted upon the disinterested by force, threat and compliance. Those who do not freely come to the True Deity as defined by the true men of the Deity, shall be driven out, mocked, beaten, threatened or killed if need be. God knows those that are his and can sort them out later.
22. There is one true day of the week where the true Deity is in town and can be worshipped best. Those who miss these true worship days are in big trouble. While Wednesday night is not a favorite of the Deity, it is of His chosen male representative, and salvation also depends a bit on one being in the Temple, Mosque or Church at that time as well, thinking what you are told to think.
23. Matthew actually wrote Matthew. Mark actually wrote Mark. Luke actually wrote Luke and John actually wrote John. And when all of these books give conflicting accounts of the god/man's birth, life and death, the story is still inerrant and true. If you can understand that three persons are one GOD, you can understand that Four Gospels make up one true and harmonious story.
24. There is a harmony of and in the Gospel accounts of Jesus life. They are eyewitness accounts.
25. It should not be a problem that Paul never quotes Jesus, even when it would be to his advantage to do so, but still gets to write most of the New Testament, explain the mind of God and inform the Church of the wishes of the Deity.
26. Paul knew Jesus personally...not.
27. Even though Paul said that Peter, James and John were "so called pillars" in the Church, and that he learned nothing from them, nor cared to, the early True Apostles all got along very well and loved each other, for Jesus sake, all teaching the True Church the same things.
28. The story in Acts of Peter, (who said one thing to Jesus about defending him, but actually did another and denied him), killing two church members (for saying one thing but doing another), is not really meant to make fun of Peter. Just because Paul and John felt Peter was disqualified to lead because he denied Jesus, we know they would never make fun of him. It really is OK to kill church members if they change their minds about giving money and their families won't ask why they did not come home from church.
29. The only way the Deity can get humans to trust and obey, because there is no other way to be happy in Jesus, Allah or YHVH, is to reign death and ecological destruction upon the planet in the form of plagues, fire, boils and having ones eyes melt out of their sockets as various Trumpets blow and vials of wrath are poured out upon humans by the Deity or the Sons of the Deity. Humans respond well to this kind of expression of love and concern and will easily switch from their desire to be authentically themselves and become compliant, obedient, trustful and squishy lovey from henseforth, lo, even unto the end of time. It is the ONLY way a Deity can help humans be all they can be.
30. More religion is what people need to be at peace. More chosen men are what we need to be told what the true Deity wants us to do and believe so we can be happy. There are no lunatics, mentally ill leaders or narcissists running the show. What you see in pushy leadership is always the leading of the Holy Spirit.
These are Neander-thoughts for sure and there are thousands if not millions of others that misguide our every step at times. There was a time for Neanderthals and they served their purpose over a very very long time as we count time. The Neanderthal "failed" when more evolved humans came along, who, while not stronger, were smarter, quicker and more resilient and forward thinking. They were creative and more conscious in some way that the Neanderthal was not and they overcame the stronger, yet weak of options Neanderthals. With some thought, we can also overcome the Neander-thoughts that are keeping good people, who do not wish to be driven like bison over the cliff, from making the personal progress we all crave. We can more freely pursue our meaning without having to comply to the meanings others assign to us to believe based on their own Neander-thoughts and ignorance. We can live in a society and on a planet that is not so freaking scary and not be led by Neander-thinkers.
