Why believe in invisible gods?

When people say, "I believe in God" or "I believe in a power higher than myself," the first thing that comes to mind is: Why? Why do people--people in the Twenty-first century, mind you--still persist in believing in invisible, anthropomorphic beings that evolved from primitive minds grappling with natural phenomena tens of thousands of years ago?

Why do people believe, many of them with such fervor, that they are willing to kill or die in the name of invisible beings like Allah and Jehovah? Why are people more willing to believe that either one of these invisible beings is capable of creating life rather than believe that life evolved naturally as a consequence of some mundane causation? Have those who profess a belief in these beings really examined their beliefs objectively, instead of subjectively?

I doubt it. I seriously doubt that the great majority of those who are willing to blow themselves up in the name of Allah, or encourage others to do so, really believe that their God created all human beings equally. Neither do all Christians believe that their God created a world where disease-ridden black Africans can share equal space with well-scrubbed Europeans.

Is it any wonder, then, why it is not only a prerequisite to have a belief in a God, but also to profess a belief in the rituals or "holy" words passed down from generation to generation before one can receive the reward of Paradise? It begs the question: Do modern-day believers care more about time-honored traditions than they do about what these invisible gods really stood for in their heydays? Do Jews and Christians, for example, really believe that a white Jehovah spoke solely to a white Moses and commanded him to lead 40,000 white Israelites out of a land peopled by millions of white Egyptians?

If they do believe that myth, then why do they think their God went through all of the trouble to create Africans, Chinese, Japanese, and other people? What did the latter groups do that was so evil, so wrong, that they were ignored by history, by the "Holy" men who created the Torah, the Qur'an, and the Bible? Why are most, if not all, of the saints white and speak European languages? For that matter, why do most of the people who are favored by Allah are Arabic or speak the Arabic language?

Why don't white people and Arabs practice African religions? Why is it important for Christians and Muslims to dominate the earth in the name of their gods? Why don't many of the holier-than-thou people who profess a belief in Allah or Jehovah practice what they preach, like respect and tolerance for those who are different from them?

I'll tell you why: Because for those who believe in traditional, invisible Middle Eastern "Gods" and who also want to control the lives of others, it has always been about power -- power to control others, using their so-called holy books, which are nothing more than rationales for slaughtering and enslavement. Nothing else matters to these charlatans, these professors of gods Almighty.

When Akhenaten, in his "Hymn to the Aten," first articulated and praised the natural, unnamed force of nature that created all things, he in effect created the prototypical God. His imitators either misunderstood or deliberately destroyed the concept, creating instead jealous, narcissitic gods demanding obedience and sacrifices. Where the Atenist's works were tangible and inclusive of all mankind, the imitators' gods were dark and mysterious and divided mankind into believers and non-believers, the chosen few and the hated infidels. And mankind has suffered ever since.

Who is the Atenist?

In simple terms, it is the ghost of the fourteenth century B.C. Pharaoh Akhenaten, who is widely believed to be the first individualist, the first monotheist, the first pharaoh who truely sought truth and beauty in everything -- and found it. He loved life and new ideas and boldly pursued both with fervor and conviction. He wasn't ashamed of being who he was, flaunting what others called grotesque as unique and worthy of note. He wasn't so much a sun worshipper as he was a worshipper of the power behind the sun. He rightly called himself "the son of God," as all of us are sons and daughters of nature -- that is, if we believe that nothing on earth exists without the power of the sun, the power of nature. Akhenaten eloquently elaborated on that idea in his "Hymn to the Aten." Although other pharaohs alluded to the phenomenon of the power of nature, Akhenaten was the first to articulate what later was described as the indestructibility of nature, of the life force, the transmigration of energy. In that sense, he was the first physicist, the philosopher king that Plato glorified.

But the world was not ready for him. And neither was the world ready for another Atenist, Jesus Christ, who proclaimed, as Akhenaten did thirteen hundred years earlier, "The Kingdom of God is within."

Even though historians and Egyptologists vilified him and gave more respect and appreciation to his consort, his wife, Nefertti, it was Akhenaten, the one they called "The Heretic," who has endured.

I do not dare put myself in the same league as Akhenaten or Jesus, but I do believe fervently in what they stood for: peace, love, justice, honesty, decency, and a clarity of vision that left no doubt as to who they were and where they came from.