1=2E Why I say religion should be discouraged
1=2E1 The pernicious tendencies of religion and the religion dividend
Beyond the history of religion as a pernicious force (e.g.,
inquisitions, holy wars, etc.) and beyond its continuing ability to
divide (e.g., President Bush's pandering for votes by calling for a
constitutional ban on same sex marriage) religion exacts a costly tax
on the development of our civilization that can be measured in lives
lost due to wasted resources and effort. How much time, money and
effort has gone into filling the coffers of the world's smarmy Jimmy
Swaggerts, the popes, and other oily religious leaders? Could not the
money for building new, ostentatious churches instead be donated to
cure cancer? Science does work. Childhood leukemias are now highly
(above 90%) curable, whereas just 50 years ago they were nearly always
fatal. (Perhaps those who advocate that intelligent design should be
taught alongside evolution might begin arguing that prayer has gotten
90% effective?) Now, in all fairness, I do realize that "some"
nominal amount of church money does go into cancer research and other
good causes, but what fraction of it? Half? I doubt it. So let's
cut out the middle man and send 100% of the cash to the good causes.
Say, how about putting some of that wasted money into bettering our
schools and increasing abysmal teacher salaries? Such questions as
these, as there are thousands of other worthy causes struggling for
cash that is otherwise squandered on religious pomp and excess, demand
answers. Perhaps someone should put up billboards correlating
squandered religious monies to human deaths. Moreover, to this end,
since time is money, people of faith, instead of fighting to keep their
eyes open during church services, should instead spend their time
helping with local community problems if not global problems. Again, I
recognize that some nominal amount of church time is spent on improving
communities, but what fraction? Half? I doubt it. So let's cut out
the middle man, and while we're at it, cut out the hypocrisy as well.
Why do good members of faith X, Y or Z do their good deeds in the
first place? Out of the goodness of their own hearts, or for the
reward of life after death for Christians and a harem for Islamic
suicide bombers? The religious, it can be argued, do good to save
their own skins and the skins of those they care about whether these
others want to be saved or not, e.g., the Christianization of American
natives by Spanish monks. Any claimed sincerity on their part is
innately questionable.
2=2E What is wrong with morality based on religion?
2=2E1 NO DOUBT there is trouble with religion
This, NO DOUBT, is what religion is predicated on. NO DOUBT equals
faith and conversely, and this is pernicious. Time and again history
has shown that under a moral philosophy of NO DOUBT entire hordes of
religiously motivated people throughout the ages, by reason of their NO
DOUBT faith, become (Teutonic) Nazis, KKK members, al Qaeda members,
witch burners, lynchers, homophobes, misogynists, child molesters, and
other numerous types of nefarious -obes, -ists and -ers in order to
raze entire civilizations, pillage, plunder, murder, maim, destroy,
burn books, imprison scholars, discriminate, rape, butcher, segregate,
and slowly eviscerate other peoples. And these religiously motivated
people committed, and continue to commit these crimes and atrocities
against humanity without a doubt in their minds for they were and are
following the will of their God, NO DOUBT.
2=2E2 Does lack of religion imply degeneracy?
If there is no religion, no faith in God, then what? Can there be no
morality as Immanuel Kant would insist? Why does religion have to
equate to morality? How many millions of atheists are there out there
following the same basic morals of the faithful? Don't kill, steal,
cheat, help others, etc., these morals need not have anything to do
with religion. These morals, which try to hem our wanton natures, make
good sense if people want to enjoy the fruits of civilization. Does
the lack of religion make the enforcement of such morals impossible?
Ask the millions of atheists who aren't busy butchering peoples in
the name of some god. These atheists know that morality is more about
self-interested actions for the net gain of both self and civilization.
3=2E Can there be alternative, less dangerous moralities?
3=2E1 Morality based on the scientific method is less arrogant and thus
less dangerous
The scientific method is based on doubt up to reproducibility. Cold
fusion ala Fleshman and Ponds turned out to be bunk. It could not be
reproduced in other labs. But to follow a scientific based morality is
more than to regularly test theories and hypotheses old and new. It is
to doubt everything within context. Newton's law of (scalar) gravity
works well within its context, weak gravity fields namely. Experiment
(the orbit of Mercury with its exposure to a stronger region of the
sun's gravity field) indicated there was something not completely
correct with Newtonian gravity. Einstein's general theory of
relativity took care of this discrepancy between theory and
observation, and we know of no experimental violations of this
"new" theory. Yet we doubt Einstein's theory is complete. We
expect that someday, with sufficiently advanced technology, the
experiment will come that shows cracks in Einstein's general
relativity-witness the ongoing 2004-2006 Gravity B probe experiment.
This innate doubt of the scientific method, if we adopt it as the basis
of our personal belief systems, should humble us relative to belief
systems based on NO DOUBT, the insuperable height of hubris.
In a hypothetical world where people shunned NO DOUBT religious faith,
and instead searched for demonstrable, defendable, repeatable facts
both scientifically and logically, it seems likely there would be less
risk of holy war and other such crimes against humanity. These more
humble people would categorize scientific observations and theories
according to their applicability, testability, utility, and probability
over other competing models. They would realize there can be no
ultimate theory of truth, just models with certain ranges of utility.
They would, hopefully, be decent people in the conventional sense of
not stealing, cheating, killing, etc., and would, recognizing that
humans also have innate greedy, competitive and wanton tendencies, bind
themselves to secular laws designed to prevent crime and corruption for
the better good of their civilization. At the very least, such people
would limit their hypocrisy to helping each other out because it
benefits their society and hence themselves versus helping each other
out to save their souls in the name of some dangerous faith in some god
that all too often leads to holy war, murder and countless other crimes
and atrocities.
4=2E Must we believe in God?
4=2E1 Can't prove existence or non-existence of God-must have faith
Immanuel Kant proved that we humans can't prove the existence of God.
Still, he thought faith (if not proof) of God's existence made sense.
He used a design type argument. If a watch needs an intelligent watch
maker, then our complex world too, it seems, needs an intelligent
creator. He also thought that lack of faith would make it impossible
for civilization to arise-we would all be killing each other off like
godless savages, like the millions of today's atheists...errr like God
fearing warmongers do all the time. Kant did not consider the
possibility that we humans inhabit one of infinitely many universes,
with this one universe allowing for the spontaneous evolution of life
from a primordial soup of chemicals. Amino acids, which can be found
in meteors, when mixed up in a simulated primitive Earth environment
quickly form polypeptide chains after all. In this case (infinitely
many universes), we don't need an intelligent creator. This is not to
say, however, that a god cannot exist. One can no more prove such an
existence than non-existence.
4=2E2 Occam's razor-it's not a close shave
In its simplest form, Occam's razor states that explanations should
never multiply causes without necessity. When two explanations are
offered for a phenomenon, the simplest full explanation is preferable.
I would hope that the people of the hypothetical, non-religious world
would prefer, using Occam's razor, to think of their existence as
having no explanation, and of having no special purpose other than what
they made of their own existence while they lived. They would be
godless, and they would, hopefully, be driven to help each other out,
not for eternal life, but out of the goodness of their own hearts. At
least, being more realistic, I would hope that these people would help
each other out to help themselves through secular laws so that they
could enjoy the fruits of civilization over dwelling in caves. This is
both less hypocritical than and less dangerous than having people
"helping" each other out to save their souls at the peril of holy
war, mass murder and other crimes and atrocities.
4=2E3 But what about salvation? Tough-when you die to die
Until we figure out how to cure aging and disease, and perhaps
transform ourselves into more advanced types of indefinitely long lived
beings, we die, and our lives will have had no meaning other than,
perhaps, the quality of our children we raised and what we contributed
to the better good of humanity while we lived. Eventually, though, as
Marcus Aurelius noted, even this personal meaning to our lives would
fade into time immemorial.
4=2E4 The other side
The alternative to believing we are nothing special via Occam's razor,
is to believe we are something special in the eyes of some higher being
or beings, and this pretty much requires throwing logic out the window.
If the higher being is simply a more scientifically and
technologically developed being, then this is the least of the
illogical alternatives to believing we are nothing special. Hey!
Humanity is little BloGorg's 1st grade biology experiment. Maybe this
is why, given little BloGorg's inexperience, that vast portions of
humanity's history has and continues to suck. If, on the other hand,
we choose to have faith in a perfect, eternal, omniscient, and
omnipotent god, then our logic dies.
Can an omnipotent god make a burrito so hot and spicy that even it
can't eat it? In Judeo-Christian-Muslim type religions we are asked to
believe that God, who knew an eternity before creating us exactly what
would happen after he created us, namely, that we would screw things
up, will punish the wicked and reward the good. Given his omniscience,
I say the wicked were condemned an eternity before they ever saw the
light of day-I believe this unoriginal idea falls under
predetermination. We then must conclude that the supposedly perfect
creator of ALL things is the screw up. How dare it punish (typically
by roasting the wicked in hell) a single human being, and demand from
the rest of us that we worship it lest we suffer the same fate as the
wicked? Doesn't the buck stop with IT? If so, then IT is a masochist.
Given just this first step into an infinite regression of illogical
absurdities, how is one supposed to reconcile a perfect creator with an
imperfect system that is predetermined by ITS omniscience without just
giving up basic logic and selling our souls to some sham, faith-based
scheme? Then I must ask myself just why would a perfect, omnipotent,
omniscient, eternal being need the worship of lowly humans? To satisfy
an infinitely weak ego? In fact, a perfect, omniscient, omnipotent,
eternal being is a dead lump of nothing that would have zero motivation
for doing anything. Create, or do anything-but what for? IT knows
the outcome, hence IT would have zero motivation. (Have you seen the
old TV commercial, "been there, done that"?) Someone, countering this
line, once asked me, why should I procreate? You know what the kid
will do he stated in his defense of his god. The kid will breath,
drink water, learn to read, etc. I procreate because I am not perfect,
eternal, omnipotent nor omniscient, because sex feels good, and because
it is in my genes to procreate. Moreover, as opposed to a omniscient
god, I simply don't know whether my kids will become mass murderers or
land on Mars. Their world will constantly change. Science will reveal
whole new domains for exploration. Lacking omniscience allows for the
possibility, if not the guarantee of motivation.
I know that some of you who read these arguments for dropping God will
cite the "father analogy" when I will point out the misery of the
human condition. When you were a kid, they will say to me, and your
father denied you ice cream as a punishment, he was doing it for your
own good, to protect you, to teach a lesson, and so forth. As a child,
you could not have understood his logic, and you probably thought he
was being a bad guy for no good reason they will droll on. "He is
our Father and we are His children." In response to this sloppy
logic, I reply that my own, human father was not a perfect, omniscient,
omnipotent, eternal being. The god being foisted on me supposedly is.
This is a FUNDAMENTAL distinction people never seem to realize. My
father didn't go around, from time to time, killing off-the
ultimate punishment-some of his children for straying from the
"true way." And, counter to those who, using the "father
analogy," claim we are too pea-brained to understand God, I claim
that we humans are sufficiently intelligent to question God along the
lines in the paragraph above. If you are perfect, eternal, omnipotent
and omniscient, then why genocide, pestilence, natural disasters and so
on? I'm not arrogantly claiming we have the ability to understand this
kind of god's mastery of science and mathematics. I'm asking basic
questions and pointing out self-evident contradictions-like how can
you condemn Hitler when YOU created him? Finally, if I'm too
pea-brained to ask God questions, wouldn't I be too pea-brained to
properly worship Him?
To those who defend some god along the line that without bad there
can't be good, that we must have bad so that we learn and appreciate
things, I ask what good comes of genocide? What lesson did the
annihilated peoples, the children, mothers and fathers, learn? What
benefit is conferred when a five year old dies of cancer? God had to
create a child to teach his parents a lesson? Or to pay for an
oncologist's shiny sports car? Or God, the omnipotent, as some say,
needed the kid's help in heaven? Really? The variations of the
illogical contradictions of an omnipotent, eternal, perfect, omniscient
god of love are countless.
5=2E Why religion and faith in God should perish
5=2E1 Religion should end because of bullets 2 thru 3, and faith in God
should die because of bullet number 4.
6=2E Does killing religion and God save humanity?
6=2E1 Watch out for that meteor
A non-religious humanity following a doubt-based morality is not
guaranteed survival. A humongous comet may yet squash us like the bugs
we are-splat! We humans, because we are innately competitive, and
have difficulties with basic morality (e.g., we kill, steal, cheat,
often in the name of some god) may yet treat ourselves to nuclear
winter or death by advanced viral weapons. Yet, given that a
scientific method based morality can be equated with DOUBT, and that
religious practice can be equated with NO DOUBT, it seems reasonable to
believe that a non-religious world would be a bit more stable and
likely to survive than a religious world. After all, a herd mentality
requires a threshold number of similarly minded initiators, if there
are less such initiators there is a reduced likelihood to herd. Who do
you see as more likely to cause trouble, a group of like-minded
fanatics with a NO DOUBT belief system, or a tough looking group of
rowdy doubting Thomases?
7=2E Is science Lily white?
7=2E1 Since I seem to be advocating scientific, doubt based morality over
religious based morality, I'm certain people will point out the dark
ways of science. Does science bring us evil? A-bombs? H-bombs? Hey,
when was the last time we had a full-blown world war? Nuclear weapons
have, so far, brought stability to world with regard to world war. We
are, however, constantly having religious conflicts-witness our war
against Islamic nuts replete with beautiful beheadings in the name of
Allah. But back to the A-bomb, was President Truman an agent of Satan
set out to deliver the handiwork of demonic scientists? History will
show that fifty-nine A-bomb scientists signed a petition to President
Truman asking him to instead demonstrate the bomb's power to the
Japanese on a remote island. In the end, given the stiffening Japanese
resistance as American forces neared Japan, many American and Japanese
lives were spared thanks to Fat Man and Little Boy.
Are there and have there been evil scientists? Yes. Are there and
have there been arrogant scientists? Yes. Have (and do) some
scientists get tempted to play God? Yes. Are there and have there
been evil priests? Yes. Are there and have there been arrogant popes?
Yes. Have (and do) some people of religious faith get tempted to play
God? Yes. These points, picking out individuals from a population,
are not THE POINT. Scientists do not make the scientific method any
more than religious leaders make up religion and its well documented
malpractice. Our various societies as a whole can destroy humanity
through scientific means: nuclear weapons, bio weapons, or with just
plain stupidity en masse. We are actually doing a nice job of
destroying our world already. Do we non-scientists drive economical
cars? NO WAY! We want our bigger SUVs. We waste and pollute energy
with no regard to our ecosystem beyond lip service. We're okay with
kissing the rainforests good-bye to fill them methane farting cows so
long as beef stays cheap. We as a whole, excepting a few deranged
do-gooders, generally don't push for more reasonable uses or our
resources, until we are hit in our pocket books. The bottom line is
that if we're going to make it, it's going to take all of us. See my
article on "Some thoughts concerning law...in a post-Darwinian world of
conflict, crime, social inequality at:
http://www.convergingtechnologies.org/forum/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=3D39
8=2E But modern religion is truly enlightened and tolerant
Some might argue that modern religions are now more enlightened. Which
religions? Those practiced in Bosnia? Africa? Iraq? Or by our own
homophobic president? Did President Bush, while he was pandering to
homophobic voters, conclude the American constitution needs to be
modified via an intellectual path, or out of religious conviction,
tantamount to NO DOUBT? I saw him claim on TV that the base of great
civilizations has been the union of man and woman. If my history
serves, America's government is modeled after Greek and Roman states.
Does President Bush not know that those toga wearing peoples had no
problem with homosexuality? Does President Bush not know that as much
as 10% of humanity is genetically predisposed to homosexuality
according to an increasingly growing body of scientific evidence?
Apparently he does not. If we are to believe in President Bush's faith
in God, and not his need to pander for political support and votes,
President Bush has NO god given doubt that homosexuals, as aberrant
people with sinning ways, do not deserve the same legal rights as
heterosexuals-never mind the point that his all-creating,
all-powerful, all-knowing god created those very sinning gays.
Religion, even today in a so-called "enlightened" western power, is
just as vile as it ever was, and still preaching holy war. How many
times has President Bush stated it is America's duty to spread freedom,
which is God's gift to humanity?
9=2E Putting logic aside, can religion ever really be expected to die?
9=2E1 Religion will die
Should humanity survive to evolve into post-corporeal beings, then I do
believe religion will die, but I don't expect it to do so in the near
future. Not until humanity-should it survive-has transformed
itself into beings with indefinitely long lives will the need for
religion die. So long as we live but a handful of years, the need for
religion and faith in some god or other will continue to exist.
Moreover, there really could be a "god gene" which we will drop when we
drop our carbon-based bodies. According to Dean H. Hamer, the "god
gene" could be a real, built-in engine driving our religiosity. See
the book review below summarizing Hammer's ideas.
10. A call for atheist preaching
In the mean time, given that religion will be with us for some time to
come, we godless people must accept and tolerate those religious people
among us as they accept and tolerate us. I'm not being facetious.
Throughout large chunks of the world, atheists and the faithful live
their lives in peace, and just as religious people have a need and a
duty to save the heathens so that all may enjoy some kind of holy
paradise, we godless people too must do our best to "unsave" people
so that we may all enjoy a more real (Occam's razor based) reality in a
safer, more stable world. We have to preach unGod and unSaving
logically, as I have tried to do in this document, as well as push to
get rid of religious tax exemptions, especially when priests illegally
meddle in vote pandering.
11. Conclusion
If we want to improve the lot of humanity, religion must fade away.
Some can point to all the humanitarian good religion has done and
continues to do. Though I can't prove it, I suspect that the net harm
done in the name of religion far outweighs the net good it has done. A
body count of saved versus killed off in the name of human gods past
and present could serve as one metric among others. But how would one
count those who died of cancer because decades worth of charity and
time has gone to building opulent churches, making rococo clothes for
popes, etc. over funding basic research?
HAMER'S BOOK REVIEW
From Publishers Weekly
This book's title is more rhetorical effect than factual accuracy:
Hamer, who discovered the controversial "gay gene" in the 1990s,
reports that he has now found a gene that may correlate in some people
with their level of spirituality-not with belief in a being we would
call God or with the performance of traditional religious practices,
but with what psychiatrist Robert Cloninger called
"self-transcendence." This trait is a capacity to feel at one with all
life and with the universe as a whole, and Cloninger measured it with
personality testing. The so-called "God gene" is a particular location
in the human genome known as VMAT2, which affects the brain's
neurotransmitters. Hamer admits that the gene probably accounts for
less than 1% of the total variance in human spirituality. The book's
later chapters become still more speculative, as Hamer, a molecular
biologist at the National Cancer Institute, considers the scanty
evidence of health benefits of spirituality, which would make faith an
adaptive evolutionary trait. Hamer emphasizes that the existence of a
"God gene" would neither prove nor disprove the reality of God.
However, this gracefully written book may intrigue people of all
faiths-or no faith-who wonder about the ultimate connection between
science and religion.
Copyright =A9 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier
Inc. All rights reserved.
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