Many religions have professed, at least at some point, to promote some concept of “love.”Christianity, for example, exposited a metaphysical idea of agape, something of transcendent value that allows. Regardless of whether or not this is their founding principle, religions have, by and large,become focused on doctrines, law, or other parts that are not consistent with this idea.
Curiously, this follows a similar principle to life itself. As we have discussed in past essays, life often defies entropy by coherence at the quantum level. This principle of coherence is likely to be the scientific basis what we call love. So long as it remains, life can expand and become more lively. When it evaporates, the structure rigidifies and becomes stale and ultimately dies.
Religions, even if many of them have started as expositions of this central principle, are equally subject to this same process. Absent the beating heart of their own poetic principles they become mere collections of laws and dogma.
Many of the great myths of humanity started with myths of colliding masculine and feminine beings. For example, masculine sky god pierces a feminine dragon and worlds are born. Whether or not the gendering carries over to physical forms, there is both an inherent violence and, in short, reconciliation that happens in these epic exchanges.
Love songs are a staple of many religious traditions, from David to Rumi to Halevi to Rilke and it often bridges, as it were, the carnal and physical, with divine and transcendent. The cadence of the song might even be described as a quantum principle, that which brings us all together.
Martin Buber discusses something similar in his concept of the I and Thou. At moments, our separation is a useful tool for interacting with our physical reality. At others, our merger takes us back to what might be justly described as the meta-principle for coherence of all physicality which defies entropy.
The dragon herself is entropic and yet, when the sky god descends, worlds are born. Perhaps we find him on his knees in a Cathedral. Perhaps we find him on the peak of a summit. Perhaps we find him in a manger in a forgotten corner of the empire. What matters most, if we value love, is that we find him.