Michelangelo Code & Western vs. Chinese Origin Myths

EDITOR’S NOTE: Is it God who has created human beings in His own image or human beings who have created God in their own image? Are religion and science ultimately irreconcilable or rather mutually complementary? Can spirit/mind/soul and matter/the physical world be really split apart? All these questions are discussed in this interesting essay inspired by some new discovery about a world-famous and historically important piece of art. This discussion is not useless hair-splitting scholasticism having nothing to do with our practical life, as can be seen in our many other theoretical essays dealing with real social issues, essays already posted and to be posted in the future.

As was reported, “Michelangelo used the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to conceal a message the church would have found blasphemous, according to a pair of neuroanatomists. God’s oddly lumpy neck in The Separation of Light from Darkness, a detail that has long puzzled art historians, is actually a completely accurate depiction of the human brain painted by the artist, who was a highly skilled anatomist.” This ceiling painting containing the “Michelangelo code” depicts a scene from the first chapter of the Book of Genesis from the Christian Bible. This Western religious creation myth, using the same techniques of metaphor and symbolism as in the Chinese non-religious legend of Pangu separating the earth and heaven, presents a vision of the origin of cosmos and humanity quite different from that of the latter. This essay tries to trace the distinction between Western and Chinese cultural traditions back to the different worldviews as revealed in these two origin myths. But before that, we need to find out what is signified by the discovery of this “Michelangelo code” to the study of human culture.

This author has said before that it was not God who created man in His own image but rather it was man who created God in his own image. Now, this view finds support from the historically famous Renaissance artist of Italy five centuries ago, where Christianity had been converted from a religion originally giving hope to the Palestinian people under Roman oppression into the mainstream belief system for the Western world. Actually, the Michelangelo code does not only expresses the artist’s personal view but it is also a reflection of the 1000 years of history of Christianity in the minds of many more progressive thinkers of his time. This view has also been further confirmed by the following 500 years of human history. A truthful view of the “creation” picture is of crucial importance to the understanding of the Christian religion, of the intricate implications in its belief system and of its complex functions in Western history. Let us, then, have a closer look at why God was needed and how He was shaped by different groups of people and at different times of history.

At the beginning, the ancient Palestinian people could not bear the suffocating oppression by the Roman conquerors and yearned for a peaceful life. They had no other way for the realization of they desperate wish but placed their hope in the holy image of an almighty God so as to give their suffering souls a little comfort and give themselves a little courage to live on. That is to say, at the very beginning, God was meant as the symbol for the holiest and noblest virtue of love in the broad sense, i.e., love for all mankind.

As the Christian belief spread, people also propagated in the name of God ideas of equality, fraternity, and charity. The practice of such ideas on the micro-social level among the lower classes (i.e. in the purely individual relations not related to macro-social political and economic power structure) did help in a certain degree in alleviating people’s sufferings. In this sense, God is seen as the protector of the spirit of love and of a happier life for people.

But, as the Christian belief further spread and took root among the oppressed lower-class people, it began to arouse uneasiness and panic among the ruling class people in Rome, while at the same time they also saw the possibility of making the Christian God serve their purpose. For instance, if they took over the slogans of “equality”, “fraternity”, and “charity” and promote the practice of these ideas on the micro-social level in the name of God, then class oppression and exploitation, on the macro-social level, of the underprivileged by the privileged (i.e., of slaves by their owners, of the conquered by the conquerors, later of serfs by their lords, and of ordinary believers by corrupted church authorities) could be obscured, and any resentment and resistance on the part of the former against the latter dissolved.

For another example, the Christian Church, with its intolerance of other beliefs, religious or not religious, has lent the name of God as a “holy” banner to the Roman slave-owning rulers, to later feudal lords in or outside the Church all over medieval Europe, and to modern and contemporary colonists, imperialists and hegemonists in all their conquests of “alien” civilizations and peoples or so-called “evil-axis” nations. In this context, God is no symbol or protector of equality and fraternity at all.

History has again and again witnessed that it has been human beings or different groups of human beings who have been building the image of God according to their respective will. Due to the differences and even conflicts between people’s secular interests, the general image of God they have created altogether has been inevitably complex, ambivalent, and inconsistent, such as shown in the contrast between His image as the supreme symbol of equality and universal love and His endorsement of military expeditions against “pagans” etc. The inconsistency in the church doctrine and church members’ behaviors is just a reflection of the imbalance and disharmony in social reality and of the inconsistency in people’s way of thinking. The Michelangelo code is just a circuitous expression of the recognition and revelation of this secular nature of God worship in the minds of advanced thinkers of that time.

The Creation Myth （From Genesis 1, New International Version）		Superficial Reading		Deep-Structure Reading
”In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” ↓ ↓		The Super Mind creates the macro physical world (without stating from where comes this Super Mind)		Human mind (deified) begins to perceive what, of the formless cosmic chaos, the human physical-mental structure allows it to.
God → “the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”	the cosmic world “…the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep.”	The Super Mind being extrinsic to the material world He creates		Mind and matter not integrated with but extrinsic to each other
God → “’Let there be light…’	light …and there was light.”	The Super Mind creates light		Dawning of human consciousness
God → “God said, ‘Let…’”	all things on earth […and there were sky, land, vegetation, seasons, stars, creatures…]	The Super Mind creates all things on earth	Human mind (deified) perceives further in detail what, of the formless cosmic chaos, the human physical-mental structure allows it to.
God → human beings “Then God created man in his own image.” “God said, ‘…let [man] rule over the fish… the birds… the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground’." "’Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it…’”		Isomorphism between God and man; man as master of everything on earth by God’s order		Man creates God and then “subdues” the world in God’s name – Sanctification of anthropocentrism and hegemonism of all forms.

From the above one can see that this worldview mechanically splits what is originally an inseparable unity into a “spirit” and a world of material things, two kinds of entities, one “hovering over” the other, unable to be integrated. This divorce between mind and matter actually symbolizes the incompatibility between Christian moralism about soul purification and the cold-blooded savagery on the macro level of the secular material society. The only thing unambiguous in this myth is the sanctification of human-mind-centrism. This sanctification, however, cannot be valid, as the human existence is just a spindrift in the infinite cosmic ocean, infinite in terms of both space and time. How could man be the center of all existence? How could he elevate himself to that divine loftiness?

The ancient Palestinians and later the slaves and other down-trodden peoples in a much wider area, under the suffocating physical and spiritual oppression by foreign conquerors and/or native privileged rulers, had no resources whatsoever for logically flawless intellectual enquiries into the unjust social situations they were in but to pin their hope for freedom, equality and universal love on an imagined supernatural being so as to get some psychological relief. This was almost the last resort for self help out of despair, with no trace of self-importance at all (but, on the contrary, with self-sacrifice as embodied by Jesus Christ) and, so, totally understandable and beyond reproach.

Still later, the corruption of the church triggered the Reformation, which advocated interpreting the Bible by the believers themselves, each in his/her own way, bypassing the corrupted church authorities. In spite of its positive significance in a sense at that time, it still failed to connect the spirit/soul/mind with the real world in its worldview and thinking pattern. So long as the soul remains divorced from reality, it could always be twisted by the social forces with hegemonic power at their will to suit their purpose. That was how the idea of equality was twisted to justify and cover up the exploitation of workers by capitalists, and the atrocities committed by colonialists and imperialists.

According to the same report, neurosurgeon R. Thomas Fields of Maryland University writes in Scientific American: What Michelangelo meant could well have been a comment on "the enduring clash between science and religion". There might be truth in this interpretation. Because of the church’s persecution of scientists and practice of obscurantism, the enduring conflicts between religion and science has been a major topic in the history of Western thought. It is well known that Western science has given a different account of the origin of the universe and that of the human species. What this author wants to emphasize is that the dualistic way of looking at the relation between religion and science cannot reveal to the full their respective nature and socio-historical role. There are two reasons:

Science has its positive function in helping understand the physical features of the material world and properly remaking natural conditions for human life improvement, but this remaking should not be done anthropocentrically – it should be done in a restrained manner, that is, to follow the principle of maintaining a balanced relationship between man and nature, instead of being driven by the greedy impulses of a few people whose possessiveness knows no limit.

Science regards religion as superstition, but science itself is not necessarily opposed to superstition, nor is it immune from becoming superstition itself. If not guided and disciplined by a proper world outlook and moral sense contained in religious as well as secular metaphysical philosophy but instead posing itself as the king of all branches of human thought deserving unconditional worship by all people, in that case, science itself IS a kind of superstition and will cause disasters to mankind. Such is actually the case with the wide spreading trend of scientism today.

On the other side, religion, for many people, has been a major avenue to spiritual sustenance in the long past and will continue to be so for a long time in the future, though it cannot help people get to know about the physical world, as science does, for material gains. The Christian religion, with its God as the symbol for freedom, equality and universal love and as the ultimate source of comfort for the oppressed or otherwise unhappy peoples, has a long-term positive role to play in history, just like all other major world religions that have survived for thousands of years. This role should not be denied or underestimated.

The vast majority of people, especially the down-trodden lower classes, have to work hard for survival and do not have much resource for education or training in abstract thinking to find out the truth about life, while those few at the top of society are mostly addicted to struggles for power and position and fame and gain and, so, not interested in acquiring a truthful understanding about the metaphysical world in abstract terms though they have the resources for doing so. That is why, for most of the people, a directly visualizable idol image for worshipping is their ideal source for spiritual sustenance and comfort. Therefore, so long as there is the division between the privileged and underprivileged in the world, that is, there is universal oppression and exploitation and people feel unhappy and helpless about it, worshipping for God or other god-like images will always be needed. In this sense, religion with a somewhat positive function will necessarily survive for long, not to be totally replaced by any non-religious metaphysical philosophy, still less by science.

Secondly, the science-vs.-religion antithesis represents the mind-vs.-matter or materialism-vs.-idealism dualist thinking that runs through the whole Western history of philosophical thought. In the traditional Chinese monistic-holistic perspective, as represented by Daoism, the universe as can be perceived by human beings is not rooted in mind, e.g., the spirit of God, nor built of some tangible matter such as certain “elementary particles” but a unity of mind and matter. Therefore, which is primary and which secondary is not an issue.

As a matter of fact, the dualism pitting mind and matter or science and religion against each other might just have originated in Christian creationism. Both idealism and materialism are anthropocentric: The “mind” as the primary factor in idealist discourse is in the final analysis the mind or consciousness of human beings, e.g., the spirit of man sanctified as that of God, while the “matter” in materialist discourse is just the specific manifestation of the primarily formless cosmic chaos as appears through the specific mental “lens” of the human species, that is to say, still hinged on human consciousness, not the truly “objective” cosmic formlessness as independent of the human mind.

So, materialism and idealism are but two one-sided extremities, not truth vs. falsity. As is seen above, in the creation myth, the spirit of God is extrinsic to and “hovers” above, i.e., not integrated with, what it creates, or belonging to nowhere. In the world created by God, man is ordained by Him as the master of the world, dominating over and pitting himself against everything between heaven and earth. While in appearance God is the super master, in actuality Man places his own will in the center. In a word, mind and matter, or man and nature, are alien to each other, never unified as one. This shows that the religious belief in God’s creation is the shared origin of both extremities of materialism and idealism, not the true opposite of science. What is opposite to both extremities is the monistic mind-matter unity worldview represented by Eastern philosophy. In the realm of mythology, one typical presentation of this worldview is the Pangu legend of ancient China.

The Pangu Legend

Philosophical Interpretation

The universe was originally a formless chaos like a cosmic egg.

Separating earth and heaven--

Pangu —

Lying dormant in the cosmic egg for about 18000 years

His body parts became the sun, the moon, and the stars; the lands, mountains and rivers; and bushes and forests; his breath the wind; his voice the thunder; etc., and his soul transformed into the mankind -- the soul of all things.

The original universe shows no formal distinction but a dynamic force (like that in an “egg”), which was already there by itself, not created by anybody.

As primitive man came gradually to stand up straight and walk on two legs, he began to distinguish between earth and sky, seeing higher and higher above and wider and wider in all directions on earth while himself kept growing physically and intellectually.

Representing the earliest human species (being the name of a tribe in some versions of the legend),

as an inseparable part of the dynamic universe, not an alien entity.

Mankind as represented by Pangu and the world of Nature is one organic whole like body and soul (not one “subduing” the other).

The bold-faced parts in the interpretation have well summarized the core thoughts conveyed by this legend. Only one more point needs to be made: In traditional Chinese culture, the distinction between Heaven and Earth symbolizes the opposites of Yin and Yang, the dynamic interaction between which constitutes the driving force for all changes in the universe. With the emergence and development of human beings’ distinguishing power, “From the Dao emerges One. From One emerge Two. From Two emerge Three. From Three emerge all things. All carry the opposites Yin and Yang, approaching harmony through moderation.”(Dao De Jing, Chap. 42)Hence the multi-dimensional dynamically-balanced whole of the universe.

Just as the mechanistic worldview represented by the Christian myth and mainstream secular European philosophy has penetrated Western intellectuals’ and common people’s daily thinking, the holistic view of the world embodied in the Pangu legend and Daoist philosophy has been the habitual thinking pattern of the majority of scholars and people, even if not well educated, for thousands of years in China. The long zigzag history of the human world has come to a point where the holistic belief promises a better prospect, than the dualistic one, for mankind to get out of the present predicament. In the historical process for the human community to reach such a consensus, the Michelangelo code has a unique role to play, as discussed above.