Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe

by Carl Safina

Zoroastrianism injected several monumental concepts into the world: that we exist in a dualistic universe of opposing good and evil forces; that a law-giving Creator of the spiritual and material world exists in a kingdom of justice; that this good Creator is opposed by an evil force; that people have free will to choose good or evil; that after death their acts will be subjected to a divine judgment; that a virgin will give birth to the savior of the world; and that this world will pass and a renewed existence will be inhabited only by goodness. Zoroaster’s views reverberated. From Zoroaster’s Persia to Egypt to the eastern Mediterranean, voyagers, traders, and travelers exchanged everything from goods to alphabets to ideas about existence, influencing Greek philosophers and eventually—most importantly—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Zoroaster gave us ideas in whose wash and waves our Westernized minds are still bobbing.