Faith: Humanity’s Biggest Invention

Lecture and writer, Yuval Noah Harari, has a singular tackle life. Humanity’s best invention, he believes, was not the wheel nor the printing press nor even the harnessing of the atom—however quite faith. Faith is what distinguishes us from all different animals and places us a step or extra above them.

 

The flexibility to speak about issues you may neither see nor contact however can solely conceive as ideas or concepts is uniquely and solely human. “All different animals use their communication system to explain actuality,” Harari says. “We use our communication system to create new realities.”

A canine pricks up his ears at an odd noise. A rabbit stamps its foot to sign hazard. However solely a human can focus on the works of Marcel Proust or the political way forward for Europe or whether or not the Dodgers will go all the best way subsequent yr. Faith—regardless of your most well-liked definition—has been round so long as the query, “Why?” and never practically so long as the questions, “What?” or “The place?” or “When?” That makes faith a newcomer on the planet. How new?

When you have been to take the historical past of Earth from its inception to the moment you’re studying this, and shrank it right down to a 24-hour day, man would seem within the remaining moments of that day—11:58 p.m., to be precise. Simply two minutes earlier than midnight. So, in the entire grand scheme of issues, faith—our most cherished possession, our best invention, and the one factor that units us above all different life kinds—has actually solely been round a few minutes.

Probably we’re nonetheless getting used to it, nonetheless breaking it in like a brand new pair of footwear; and presumably that’s why in our too-brief historical past, faith has generally had a tough time of it. Minority religions, newer religions, religions which can be too “completely different” from the mainstream faith of a nation get mistreated by majorities, their individuals excluded and discriminated in opposition to; and generally even tortured and killed.

Faith represents an evolutionary step for homo sapiens that can’t conclusively be attributed to a genetic mutation or an adaptive fluke in response to an environmental risk. It’s, extra doubtless, a man-made step—artifical—in humankind’s growth, doubtless the primary such growth in historical past. And, assuming that—and to make certain, that’s fairly the belief—can one other synthetic evolutionary step be far behind? Probably it’s already right here. Probably it’s merely tolerance and cooperation—we’ve already demonstrated a level of willingness and talent in each of these topics. The previous has allowed us to reside collectively within the thousands and thousands and the tens of thousands and thousands, usually in peace; and the latter has enabled us to harness the energies of wind, water, lightning and solar. With no matter mutation of the soul it takes, when that does occur, after we can each tolerate and cooperate—all of us, all the time—we can have overthrown bigotry, greed and hate, and can have actually conquered the celebs.

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From its beginnings, the Church of Scientology has acknowledged that freedom of faith is a elementary human proper. In a world the place conflicts are sometimes traceable to intolerance of others’ spiritual beliefs and practices, the Church has, for greater than 50 years, made the preservation of non secular liberty an overriding concern.

The Church publishes this weblog to assist create a greater understanding of the liberty of faith and perception and supply information on spiritual freedom and points affecting this freedom world wide.

The Founding father of the Scientology faith is L. Ron Hubbard and Mr. David Miscavige is the faith’s ecclesiastical chief.

For extra data go to the Scientology web site or Scientology Community.