Even More on Religion
Stronger Words for Religious Fools
Stronger Words for Religious Fools
If you refuse to consider the possibility that the authors of the Torah, the Bible, the Koran, and other religious texts were either delusional or cynically promoting a self-serving agenda, then you are a fool. If you believe any of these men were infallible, you are a fool.
Belief in one's own infallibility is the definition of mental illness. If you believe that you are infallible in any of your religious beliefs, you are not capable of building a meaningful philosophy.
If you are sane, you know that it would be unethical to impose possibly false beliefs on any other person.
Those who would impose their traditions about dress, sexuality, and any other form of non-violent consensual personal behavior are the problem, not the solution. The only question as to whether a person of faith is right or wrong is whether or not they feel they have a right to impose their beliefs on others. If they don't, their beliefs are their business and no one else's, and don't really matter to the rest of us. If they do, they are the enemy who further alienate the world's populations from each other and who must be overcome.
Instead of thinking of humanity as a single tribe that is on its own in this vast, cold universe, with nothing to rely on but each other, religion has made six-and-a-half billion people believe that nearly everyone else on the planet is practicing the wrong religion. We fail to apply the simplest reasoning: Of all the hundreds of religions and thousands of sects who believe that they are somehow more enlightened than all the others, logically all but one of them must be wrong, and (here's the hard part for fools to get) reasonably they are all wrong.
We fail to rise above our pitiful neurotic addiction to the childhood delusion that an all-powerful infallible parent-substitute must exist. Wallowing in self-pity and spiritual cowardice we turn our back on life and become mired in religion, the culture of death, where a desperate belief in an afterlife increases our willingness to send children off to kill and be killed by other people's children.
Young people who see through their elders' delusions are left with no guidance. In despair of their elders' follies, they become separated from their natural sense of a greater good for all of humanity and the chance to break the cycles of religious repression, and find themselves left unaware of any choices other than hedonism or radicalism.
Historically, traditions fostered social stability within tribes, but in the modern world mindless adherence to religious traditions has turned stability into stagnation, oppression, and death. The view of religion as a resource for reflection rather than as ideology to be imposed is the reason the West has greater freedom and economic success that the East.
The childishness of religion is understandable. It is natural for children to begin their life with the delusion that their parents are omnipotent and infallible. This delusion provides powerful false comfort and security, and becomes the child's first neurotic addiction. As their inevitable disillusionment progresses, they are offered, readily accept, and become addicted to a substitute delusion, that of an omnipotent and infallible god. Most people fail to overcome this addiction their entire lives, because it is reinforced by the other addicts in their lives, as well as by the parasites who profit from proselytization of religious addiction. Of those who try to overcome this addiction, many find themselves with no foundation to build a new belief system.
If your belief system is based on any of the following, it is a house of cards ready to collapse:
- Acceptance of the natural human prejudice that the group you happen to have been born into or have joined is somehow more enlightened or otherwise superior to any other group. This attitude is fostered within most groups, even though it is logically impossible for more than one group to be right, and reasonably impossible for any of them to be right. The enlightened alternative is to recognize that every group and every person has room for improvement, and can learn valuable things from others.
- Belief in a divine preference for one group over others. This belief is also fostered by most religious groups, even though it is inherently provincial and near-sighted, and no one, and certainly no religious leader, is so wise.
How much better might our lives be if Copernicus and da Vinci had not withheld their finest work for fear of the Church?
Muslim Shmuslim & Islam Shislam
Can you trust a Muslim? That depends on whether the Muslim is a Shmuslim - my term for a Muslim that believes that worldwide enforcement of Sharia law is inevitable (and the sooner the better).
Sharia Muslim = Shmuslim
Sharia Islam = Shislam
When the next Shmuslim attack occurs in the US, every Muslim in America who refuses to publicly denounce Shislam and turn in every Shmuslim they know will be charged with treason, and, if not directly involved in the attack, deported to the country of their choice.
Instead of fostering the enemy in our midst, we should enforce the existing laws against plotting to overthrow our government (which is what the promotion in the mosques and elsewhere of Sharia law actually is). The advocacy of Sharia law is not Free Speech, it is shouting fire in the theater. We should start now with deporting every naturalized Shmuslim, since in order to obtain US citizenship they by definition falsely swore 'without mental reservation' to defend the Constitution; they should all be stripped of their citizenship and deported, rather than being allowed to prepare for and carry out their objectives with our clueless assistance.
The message that is needed today is that religious dogma is not necessary for, and in fact gets in the way of, staying in touch with our natural desire to foster the greater good.
The next World War will be about the separation of church and state. In case you haven't noticed, it has already begun. And, in case you haven't noticed, we already lost the White House during the Bush administration; it remains unclear whether we actually have got it back.
If I were evil incarnate, I would thoroughly enjoy the status quo, where nearly every person on earth is programmed by their parents to believe that the religion that they happened to have been born into is in someway more enlightened than other religions, and that even their particular sect of their religion is in someway more enlightened than other sects. The result is that nearly everyone on earth thinks that nearly everyone else is practicing the wrong religion, and that everyone else is doomed to never enjoy the eternal reward that they expect for themselves.
I believe it was Peter Drucker who suggested that after thoroughly analyzing a hypothesis, it is prudent to then apply the 'dumb test'; that is, does the conclusion standing alone make sense? The idea that nearly everyone is practicing the wrong religion does not pass the dumb test, but it remains the main reason for people to kill each other in large numbers.
If I were evil incarnate, I would seek out the poor societies plagued with the starvation, disease, and hopelessness caused by overpopulation, and teach them that family planning is a sin. Who needs the Devil when you have the Pope?
If I were evil incarnate, I would seek out societies whose children have been failed by their parents, friends, schools, communities, and churches; children who have been lead to perceive the future as being without hope, and who turn to drugs for solace. I would sentence these children to death from AIDS by fostering legislation that outlaws clean needle exchanges for addicts, on the pretense that anyone so 'immoral' as to fall into the trap of drug use, deserves whatever happens to them. Who needs the Devil when you have Jerry Falwell?
If I were evil incarnate, I would teach hate. Who needs the Devil when you have the weapons industry, the Saudi royal family, the ayatollahs and mullahs, the Ku Klux Klan, and 'fundamentalists' of every stripe?
If I were evil incarnate, I would keep the masses just healthy and wealthy enough to serve my own interests, exploit them as much as possible, and discard them when they are of no further use. I would suppress any innovations that threatened my power or that limited my ability to squeeze the last bit of profit out of a business even where the business is detrimental to the environment or other aspects of quality of life. I would support 'free trade' globalization agreements that force industrialized workers to directly compete with societies having abysmal standards of living and human rights and environmental policies. Who needs the Devil when you have the powerful: the old, rich families, the religious 'leaders', the politicians, and the soulless corporations?
Political and religious leaders keep bandying about the term "sanctity" of marriage. Boy, are these guys out of touch.
Now that a parent can break up their children's family just by standing up in front of a judge and claiming "irreconcilable differences", there no longer is anything sacred about marriage vows.
There was a time that it was not so easy to end a marriage and turn everyone's life upside down. It was considered one's duty to try to work things out for the sake of the children, even if the effort took years. The best interests of the children were given full consideration and priority over either parent's preferences and failings of the moment.
The failure of the legal system, then and now, to protect women and children from abusive situations led to the liberalization of divorce laws. The legal system has been and continues to be resistant to enforcing existing laws which prohibit abusive behavior. This resistance comes from male-domination of the legal system, including legislators, judges, and police, and their unevolved, often religion-and-culture-based dogma regarding "a man's rights". This failure has resulted in a culture of knee-jerk reactionary pro-female anti-male attitude in the courts, as well as in the schools.
The pendulum needs to swing back to the middle. Existing criminal laws need to be enforced regardless of the relationship of the parties. In cases where no abuse is involved, parents should be held accountable to the highest standards for keeping their children's family together.
Political and religious leaders keep bandying about the term sanctity of marriage, particularly when bemoaning same sex marriage.
The first step of the solution is to invoke the principle of separation of church and state, and recognize marriage licenses for what they are - a default pre-nuptial agreement creating a contract which invokes certain legal rights and responsibilities as well as covering issues that are not definitized by existing laws. The contract becomes effective upon agreement of the parties and authorization by a person licensed by the state. This contract is separate from the personal and religious vows made at the ceremony.
No change in the law should be required to allow any couple (or group) to enter into an unlicensed marriage with or without a ceremony; any such prohibitions should be eliminated. It should be law that a marriage ceremony does not invoke any legal rights until and unless a legal license has been filed. (This should also apply to cohabitation, palimony precedents notwithstanding.)
Marriage license applications should spell out the legal rights and responsibilities that will be invoked at the time of marriage, and provide for standard pre-nuptial language and choices. (This would have the added benefit of preventing some hasty marriages.)
This reduces the issues to whether or not the license invokes spousal benefits from employers and government, and whether or not any party has new rights such as adoption, visitation, etc.
If people want to hold hands, have a ceremony, and call themselves married, it's nobody's business. If they want spousal benefits, it's up to the legislators to see if they can find the funding. If they want parental rights, that's another story. I'm a long way from agreeing that there's no negative impact on children raised in non-traditional households. I've seen glowing testimonials from kids with gay parents, who are desperate to defend the parents they love, but have no way of knowing what they have missed by not having a heterosexual father or mother raising them. It is not hard to imagine that children raised by same-sex parents will be exposed to anti-heterosexual prejudice, and particulary anti-heterosexual male prejudice. The issue of homosexuality and pedophilia, particularly among middle-aged and older homosexuals, needs to be separated out from the others, studied, and dealt with by the lawmakers.
How foolish can the religious get with their obsessions about what people wear or do in private? What mature people do in private is simply no one else's business. A mature person is one who has been taught how, and is able, to avoid the common regrets: unwanted pregnancy, disease, traumatization of the vulnerable, sharing intimacies that one might later wish to have reserved for a soul mate. Beyond this, sex is just nature's way of reminding us that we are just pretentious animals. Is the administration so foolish as to think we really need a marriage protection amendment? Sadly, it is certainly possible that they really are that foolish, but it is also likely they just need a distraction from their other failures.
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The Tenets of Gostoism
The human mind is incapable of distinguishing between epiphany and delusion, therefore I must take my own epiphanies with a grain of salt, those of others with a spoonful of salt, and those of anyone involved with an organized religion with a ton of salt.
Every individual must be allowed to independently develop their own beliefs, and be held responsible for their own behavior. Political and social institutions which deny freedom of non-violent expression must be eliminated.
Existing political and social structures are now sustained by the need to compete for physical resources. Humans will develop the technology to transmute matter, making such structures anachronistic.
For all practical purposes, we must assume that the human mind is incapable of comprehending the origin of the Universe or any purpose for the Universe or for Humanity. Each person is responsible for determining their own individual purpose.
Either we are alone in the universe or we are not. If we are alone, our greater purpose is to fill the universe with life. If we are not, our greater purpose is to contribute to the experience of life.