I’ve been thinking more and more about religion and philosophy, of late. Wondering how serious people are about religion. I guess some are serious enough to study apologetics, and have an excuse ready for anything that looks like an inconsistency or circular argument. A single plague could have wiped Christianity off the map. The same could probably be said for Islam. Both needed to be totalitarian and a pervasive part of life for people. Heretics couldn’t be tolerated, and had to be killed. That’s pretty serious. Because they survived, they destroyed other religions. But, fundamentally, what makes one religion better than another? I would hazard a guess that the answer is: the ability to totally scare the shit out of a person. The winning religions has to offer virgins and clouds, but primarily they had to scare you so badly, that you wouldn’t leave the religion to save your life! Could the elevator ride in the previous post, sum up what most people think about “God’s Creation”? It certainly has Biblical overtones…

So, most people in the west believe in God and heaven and hell. Is that fair? I wonder how much they really believe, though. I mean, ask them fundamental questions. Ask them for details. Ask them exactly what heaven will be like. You know what they’ll answer? They will say it doesn’t matter, because you will be closer to God and feel his love. WTF??? How is that different from laying in a hospital bed, drugged up on morphine?

No, really tell me what it is like…

We will be reunited with our loved ones.

Will they have bodies? Will they look like you remember them, or like they looked when they die? Will they have wings? Will I get to hang out with my latest wife (the others aren’t so keen on me)?

It will be as God wills.

Well, that’s no bloody answer, is it? I mean, will my dog be there, Sparky? What about our baby that died in childbirth? What, no answer? Again with the “as God wills”… Then how about telling me why the religion of the Romans or Vikings was so obviously silly, and Christianity was so obviously the right religion? I mean, even in the Old Testament God speaks about other gods being weaker than him. Doesn’t that mean there are other gods?

You are foolish. Of course our religion is the one. It is obvious.

It may be obvious that you killed anyone who disagreed with you. But, let me move on. What if God were (don’t laugh) a spaceman. I mean, a really fucking powerful one? He could raise people from the dead, create new universes in his laboratory, and anything you want. How would you distinguish between a spaceman with amazing technology like time travel and everything, and your God?

Don’t you see that if you take your religion and test it, that it fails? You are worshiping something that seems awfully made up to any independent observer, and you can’t defend your belief other than to say belief requires no defense. You would laugh at primitive tribes, cowering at thunder and lightning, but your preachers blame hurricanes on gay pride parades. While logic applies to everything else we’ve ever discovered in the universe, you claim that it doesn’t apply to God. Can’t you see you’ve set up something that can’t be disproved? It is a circular argument with no evidence to back it up, and insufficient details, so that it can simultaneously frighten and please every believer.

That wasn’t a question. It’s obvious you don’t care about your everlasting soul, and you’d rather burn in Hell than live for eternity with God in heaven. I feel sorry for you.

You fucking twat! Don’t condecend to me, and don’t pity me. You’re turning the tables so this becomes about me. You’ve created an anthropomorphic god who is your sky-father, who will rescue when you’ve been good and punish you when you’ve been bad. You call him a father, but he isn’t anything like a father. What moral creature would set up a game where some are destined to lose? You tell me God knows the future, he created the universe and all of time at once. There is nothing unknown to him. He has to be sadistic if he creates a universe where innocent children die horrible deaths, and where some people are born gay and are therefore destined to go to Hell. He knew the outcome, and yet people claim that God’s will is mysterious or there to teach us a lesson. If that is the God you believe in, then he’s a sick fuck. Jesus Christ, don’t you see that rather than acting like a father that would love his children regardless of their actions, this god tells you that you are a sinner and if you don’t worship him, he sends you to burn in Hell and have your eyes poked out. Talk about someone you wouldn’t want to forget to give a Father’s Day card to. And WHY does he do this?

He wants you to have free will and learn to be more like him.

Right. He knows the entire history of the universe, before it unfolds to us, and yet “we” have free will to decide our fate. Either he created us to succeed or fail, there’s no two ways about it. No. My answer is no. I do not want to spend a split-second in this Heaven you fail to describe. Why would I want to spend any time around a super-egotistical spaceman, that lives for our worship, and locks us in the basement without food or water and beats us if we don’t worship him and call him God? You can’t have one set of ethics you apply to people and then another set of ethics you apply to gods.

I’m sorry, I just can’t get through to you. I understand that the singing and bake sales are fun, and you get some sense of community from congregating with neighbors on the weekends. But, can’t you step back for a minute and apply logic to all this?

Religions were strict, totalitarian regimes that gave cohesiveness to society at a time when it would otherwise have fractured and fallen apart. It pulled society out of the dark ages, at the price of many lives and with the residual harm that it has let us believe we can live with a cult mentality. You can scrutinize any other aspect of your life, but you are not allowed to question religion. You have to accept authoritative answers from religious leaders, and accept their vague answers. Why? Because of a 2000 year old collection of stories, that you believe are better than all the other collections of stories that your religion burned when you killed off its followers?

I’ll pray for your soul.

As an outsider, I seriously feel like I am on Candid Camera. We are told stories as children, and then told the stories are just made up. We are told to grow up, and not believe in fairy tales. Well, we’re told not to believe in any except the One. That story is true. Virgin birth. Resurrection. A psychotic god, who started taking his meds and calmed down by the sequel. Yes, all the other religions were damned silly, except this one. After all, this god did magical things. This god claimed to be the true god.

I mean, if you take the long-view and observe history, you can’t help but see how religion is used as a tool to subjugate people. The only liberation that people got from religion in most of the past 2000 years, was promised for after they died. It is much more organized, with lots of fancy vestments, documents and processes, but fundamentally, it is not much different than primitive tribes who anthropomorphized and made up stories about things they couldn’t understand.

If you went to sleep, under a tree (because that is where people tend to sleep in this sorts of stories), and you wake up 1000 years later and people worship a magical pink unicorn, wouldn’t you feel you are still dreaming? I observe tribal rituals over the past 30,000 years, and I see such strong commonalities that most people in society are brainwashed to think their Santa Claus story is real. They continue to believe, in the face of logic, because they justify the good acts they do or the way it makes them feel. This mass-hypnotic, mutual-masturbatory act of self-gratification is ultimately going to be seen as NOT needed, and NOT beneficial to society. We may not be to that point yet. We may not have any framework of ethics and social interaction that can replace religion, with its silly tribal rituals and threats of damnation, but perhaps someday we will. If we continue to advance and evolve, I can’t think that we won’t someday be past this embarrassing phase of our history. Right now, these “clubs” have power and they make people feel special. That’s a hard act to outdo, in a world with over six billion people.

For now, we live in a world that is strange to us. Every day we see people who believe in “Santa Claus”. We are somewhat afraid to claim that the jolly old elf isn’t there. We rationalize that most people WE know are pretty cool, and they aren’t really the “dangerous kind” of believer. But, meanwhile, the dangerous kinds do congregate and plan for Armageddon. We can be thankful that society has progressed as far as it has. I can admit in a public forum that I think God is silly, and I don’t get lynched. But, I still get kept out of the public square and I am ridiculed and not taken seriously. I live in Iowa, where gays can marry and where skeptics aren’t strung up in a cornfield anymore. But, perhaps a majority of the world still lives in the kind of oppression that I can’t imagine. There are some places where Christianity is not an option, and even more places where Islam is not an option.

I wish I would wake up one day and find the world changed, but it won’t happen in my lifetime. It won’t happen until the power of organized religion is reduced to something you choose to opt-in on, when you reach the age of consent. We have to stop giving tax breaks and special concessions to religious organizations. We need to stop allowing child abuse, in the name of religion. We need to encourage democracy and secular governments around the world. To those of us who make the comparison, and look at the evolution of religion over the millennia, we see just how entrenched it has become, and how resistant to reason. Some of us need to make the case that religion and superstition no longer serve us, and should be retired to the dustbin of history, alongside belief in fairies and unicorns, Zeus, Gilgamesh and Thor. (I kind of think that comics have helped to free us of the idea that unfailing gods exist, especially in light of the very human superheroes featured in recent movies. Our amazing technology also makes us more skeptical of amazing claims.)

Society is either ready to handle the truth of reality, or not. If we think we are mature enough as a society, to replace superstition with reason, then the answer isn’t to be quiet and respectful, and erode slowly at the Pew study numbers. I think the plan needs to be that we have pitbulls like Dawkins, who bring some people to face reality. We need scientists who take the “non-overlapping magisteria” approach. We need individuals, politicians and celebrities to stand up bravely and admit they are non-believers. We need to stop playing word games, because either you believe in Zeus or you don’t, you aren’t holding out for Zeus to appear any more than you are for Santa Claus – so, we need to stop hedging and admit that we don’t buy all that organized religion is selling. We need to educate more people, globally; raise their standard of living, feed them, empower them. We need to fight for secular government. We need to make it cool for the kids to “come out of the closet” and admit they don’t believe all that junk their parents did. Ultimately, I think we need to embrace technology (communication/social media) to provide support and make those who “loose their faith” feel like they are not alone. There are others out there who are nice, ethical, caring and live a purposeful life, just without all the “woo woo” and “mumbo-jumbo”.

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