{"id":869,"date":"2011-05-24T10:03:51","date_gmt":"2011-05-24T14:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/windowsanddoors\/?p=869"},"modified":"2011-05-25T11:41:13","modified_gmt":"2011-05-25T15:41:13","slug":"did-god-create-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2011\/05\/did-god-create-the-world.html","title":{"rendered":"Did God Create The World?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, to be fair, that is a somewhat hyperbolic question, and one which nobody can claim to have proof or even scientific evidence for.\u00a0 Of course, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.\u00a0 It simply means that the endless debates about that question being answerable through science are really a waste of time.\u00a0 Not a waste of time however, is new evidence that the yearning to connect with God or gods may very well have created civilization as we know it.<\/p>\n

For years, historians, archeologists, anthropologists, and pretty much all of the other “ologists” have agreed that agriculture created civilization, including religion, as we have known it for the past 12-15 thousand years.\u00a0 The assumption was that settling down to lives of farming, people built cities, created art, and made up organized religions to suit the new needs they faced in the transition from hunter-gathers to farmers.\u00a0 Or not.\u00a0<\/p>\n

New evidence suggests that it was not agriculture which created civilization, but religion.\u00a0 The June issue of National Geographic<\/a> offers a brief and provocative story from a place in Turkey known as G\u00f6bekli Tepe, site of the world’s oldest example of monumental architecture i.e. a temple.<\/p>\n

While the interpretation of archeological remains is often as much art as it is science, there is plenty of reason to believe that in Gobekli Tepe, we have strong evidence that people’s need\/desire to gather for worship is what created civilization, not the reverse, as was previously assumed.\u00a0 The Temple existed without a city.
\n\u00a0
\nAs article author Charles C. Mann observes:
\nAt the time of G\u00f6bekli Tepe<\/a>‘s construction much of the human race lived in small nomadic bands that survived by foraging for plants and hunting wild animals. Construction of the site would have required more people coming together in one place than had likely occurred before. Amazingly, the temple’s builders were able to cut, shape, and transport 16-ton stones hundreds of feet despite having no wheels or beasts of burden. The pilgrims who came to G\u00f6bekli Tepe lived in a world without writing, metal, or pottery; to those approaching the temple from below, its pillars must have loomed overhead like rigid giants, the animals on the stones shivering in the firelight–emissaries from a spiritual world that the human mind may have only begun to envision.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That human minds, at least some of them, envision things ahead of what is physically possible and respond to impulses which are driven by more than physical needs is not only wonderful, it demonstrates that religion is more than what typical utilitarians suggest.\u00a0 It also does so without having to buy into theologies which many people reject.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The choice is not necessarily to view religion as a low level response to changed physical circumstances on the one hand, or as the gift of supernatural beings who live in the skies above or in the depths below, on the other.\u00a0 That dichotomy, like most dichotomies, is false.\u00a0 At least that is the evidence suggested by the remains at Gobekli Tepe.<\/p>\n

The evidence from Turkey suggests that the pilgrimage impulse, the collective worship impulse, the sacred space impulse, are all supra-natural, if not super-natural.\u00a0 There is something within us, not necessarily from outside us, which compels the building of Gobekli Tepe and places like it. That “something” is not simply accounted for by the usual explanations which seek to explain, or, too often, explain away, people’s attachment to religious expression.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The evidence from Gobekli Tepe suggests that religion is both more real, and more human, than is often admitted.\u00a0 The ultra-orthodox in both camps in the ongoing debate about what religion “really is”, where it came from and what purposes it serves may find this difficult to accept.
\n\u00a0
\nOf course, the assumption that something cannot be both deeply religious and deeply rooted in human impulse and capacity, may be one of the idols which need to be smashed in this debate.\u00a0 Gobekli Tepe may be just the hammer for which we have been waiting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, to be fair, that is a somewhat hyperbolic question, and one which nobody can claim to have proof or even scientific evidence for.\u00a0 Of course, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.\u00a0 It simply means that the endless debates about that question being answerable through science are really a waste of time.\u00a0 Not a waste…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4,6],"tags":[67,88,87,90,89,93,91,92],"class_list":["post-869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-pop-culture","category-religion","category-spirituality","tag-bible","tag-creationism","tag-gobekli-tepe","tag-god","tag-intelligent-design","tag-jewish-views-of-creation","tag-national-geographic","tag-the-origins-of-civilzation"],"yoast_head":"\nDid God Create The World? - Windows and Doors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2011\/05\/did-god-create-the-world.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Did God Create The World? 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