In your piece (and in a response to another reader) you clearly said that your point was that in the beginning people saw divinity everywhere, then it became gradually hidden until it became non-existent. All thanks to the rise of critical thinking (or skepticism), science, and technology. That, in your opinion, proves that all talks about divinity are just deluded ramblings of uneducated and "unenlightened" idiots (I just paraphrase), and there is no valid (rational) core in any religion. Hence deflationary view of history, and history is by definition “timeline” even if you didn't use the word, of religion makes the most sense. It's not the first piece where you vented this sentiment, so it was not that hard to understand. Nevertheless, such reasoning is, as you say, truly simplistic. And I would add that it's just plain wrong.
I guess that we can definitely agree that first came animism. But whereas you see it as a religion (in line with mainstream “scholarship”), I see it as a way of life and an intuitive “primitive” ontology. When you look at remnants of oldest uninterrupted traditions (Piraha, Aboriginal Australians, or Pygmies) and filter out the western influence (or in the case of Pygmies also influence of neighboring semi-polytheistic tribes) you can clearly see it, too. And you don't have to filter anything out to see that animism is clearly dualistic (physical world vs. spirit world). So, animism does not mean that divinity is everywhere, only that it is an equal part of everything. In line with mainstream scholars and popular opinion, you also assume that shaman in these societies was above the rest of the tribe which was, and still is, not the case (see e.g. Puebloans). Suffice to say all members of an animistic tribe were/are “in contact” with “spirit world”. Shaman is merely a person who's best at it or has a particular drive or disposition to be a “psychonaut”, thus is a natural authority on the matter.
Animism was basically the only ontology for several tens of thousands of years, and it survived as such almost the whole first half of sedentary life. Again, we are talking about a time span of ca. 5000 years – see Mehrgarh, Catalhoyuk, Vinca-Belo Brdo, etc.(and Mehrgarh or Catalhoyuk were enormous settlements by the standards of their time). Only then, roughly around 4000-3000 BCE polytheism, hand in hand with imperialism, was born (most probably in Sumer) and slowly spread throughout the region. That is significant, because it was the birth of polytheism (which is de facto the first religion ever) that also marks the first “hiding” of divinity. It's natural, because if you want to be a sole “mediator” you have to restrict access. So it was no surprise that when around 2000 BCE non-dual ontology emerged, it was swiftly co-opted into monotheism. Somewhere it stuck (Judaism, Zoroastrianism), somewhere it was just a passing fad (Atenism in Egypt). The rest is history.
Therefore I don't disagree that polytheism (and later monotheism) are the propaganda branches of imperial hierarchies. I just say that the underlying, co-opted ontologies are not at fault. It's the same as with Nietzsche whose ideas were co-opted by German Nazis. Should we now discard Nietzsche, too? I'd rather not.
And that is the root of our disagreement. You want to throw out the baby with the bathwater as most atheist do, albeit asymmetrically (i.e. not when atheism is concerned). I guess it’s because animism as well as non-duality smells of religion to you (and yes, that is an assumption).
Yet, thankfully science came full circle and modern physics, psychology, or neuroscience confirm everything that animism and later non-duality postulated – everything, humans completely included, is but a quantum soup that we perceive indirectly as an illusory world rendered by our mind (which is a physical state of brain, whatever brain is), and no one can be certain if there is actually any “outside”. All experiences, each and every scientific experiment is taking place in a mind (heck, as far as we can tell, the whole universe is but in a mind), while our day-to-day experience of the same reality definitely appears “dual” (i.e. inside/outside, etc.).
The only thing unsolved is the “hard problem of consciousness”, which the core precepts of non-dualism claim to have solved. However, when I consider the work of truly open-minded scientists and philosophers, some of whom don't shy away from taking the inspiration from those ancient ontologies (see Kastrup or Goff, but also Chalmers), I would say that we are slowly getting there.
So, your reasoning is incorrect because people first saw divinity as equal counterpart to physical world, it was religion that hid the divinity, and without critical thinking there would be e.g. no non-dualism (as the evolutionary child of animism), but also no wheel or metallurgy. For anyone even remotely educated, science and technology didn't spring out of nowhere in 18th century, not even in ancient Greece. It was a gradual development since time immemorial, thus critical thinking, skepticism, etc. was present all along. After all, our evolution is not that fast and we are biologically almost the same as we were thousands of years ago.
Another problem with your “theory” is that I somehow missed how the secular church of unhinged consumerism (i.e. our lifestyle with all what it entails) — which is hardly a minor exception as you try to portrait it (social Darwinism is merely a cherry on the top of the cake), and which is a direct result of “Age of Enlightenment” and later “killing of God” — is different from dogmas of any and all religions. Well, and don't get me started on academia that really resembles a rigid religious organization.
Just for the record, the words divinity or God for me mean the whole of (conscious) existence, and if it was up to me, religions, including the secular ones, would be already a thing of the past. Then again, I find it fascinating that “I”, or in other words consciousness, could be really all that is. And everything clearly points in that direction. Alas, science has not even a concept that would deal with it, so the only sources and points of reference are those ancient ontologies you try to discard. Sadly, most of that knowledge is buried under various amounts of tribal and other propaganda, so I understand why for an average onlooker it might be a wall too high to climb (at least with Nietzsche we can go almost directly to the source and don’t have to rely on Nazi rendering).
But as I said above, thankfully there are open-minded scientists who are slowly pushing the boundaries of science in order to deal with it, and their conclusions are (again) eerily similar to what we already know from said ancient ontologies. Hence, it's only natural that I react to BS peddlers and the misguided, whether they are theists or atheists or whatever. Not because they are evil, but because their BS peddling and wild, easily debunked speculations have real world consequences and I'm definitely not a masochist.
As for my “relativistic assumption” that your “writings express [your] personal attitudes rather than any external fact” – the fact that you search for one correct way to feel about the universe (i.e. horror, awe, etc. – you said it many times) is clear testament that you have no clue that all reactions are simply that – personal reactions. So, when you reject peace you should reject horror; conversely, if you accept horror you should accept peace. And here I’m talking strictly only about that. There's nothing relativistic or postmodern about it, it's psychology 101, no matter in how much (below) contempt you hold it. In this case your contempt is akin to the contempt in which some specific group of people holds science in general.
Alas, we went through all of this several times, and as far as I remember you always rejected it entirely. I guess it’s because it contradicts your neat symmetric ideas which you so desperately cling to, no matter how wrong they are … but what do I know …
Anyway, open your mind, there's much more to the world than you can currently see.
