Adelphiasophism
Adelphiasophism in Short Sentences
Abstract
© 1998 The Adelphiasophists and AskWhy! Publications. Freely distribute as long as it is unaltered and properly attributed
Contents Updated: Tuesday, 02 April 2002
Basics
Adelphiasophism has no sacraments or vows of obedience, denies that any entity external to ourselves responds to prayer and sacrifice, knows no soul, discounts belief in immortality, and knows no God, but asks people to find their whole purpose in life in Nature personified—the Goddess—and to use their efforts through their purpose in life, by serving the Goddess on behalf of the rest of existence.
Adelphiasophism is not a system of faith and worship of a supernatural being. There is no unseen Almighty God over humanity arbitrarily controlling their destinies, and to which humans are subservient. Adelphiasophists revere Nature as Goddess of birth and death, but do not imagine her to be listening to any prayers or even conscious in the way we are. Adelphiasophism does not demand blind faith or obedience from its followers, but a sense of enquiry and purpose. Mere belief is abhored as ignorant superstition, and is replaced by knowledge and the assurance that it brings.
It is instead up to humans to use their own exertions without depending on an external God or mediating priests to strive to make the world better. Any intelligent animal must want to make its own world better not worse. For Adelphiasophists self-reliance and individual striving are the ways to fulfilment in life. Nothing is nobler than a life of service and good intent towards the Goddess Nature. That is the life of the Adelphiasophist. It proclaims to the world the latent sustaining and creative power of humanity.
No one should depend on others for salvation, or even believe what they say without sound evidence. To depend upon others is to cease to strive for oneself, but others can be guides and teachers, as long as what they say corresponds with reality and is not fantasy or empty unfounded promises. Experience shows that this is valid advice. It is superficial and futile to propitiate or offer sacrifices to figmentary fathers, to seek salvation through supernatural saviors and to desire an illusory happiness in eternal life after death. Prayer does not address God but the inner self.
The world is not wicked but is deluded by ignorance, often deliberately induced. Adelphiasophism sees humanity as potentially the consciousness and the intelligence of the meta-organism that is life in Nature. Only stupid organisms would destroy what sustains them. In this way selfless service becomes self-serving in that we set up a virtuous symbiosis with the rest of Nature and benefit as a species from it.
The gates of fulfilment are open to all in every condition of life, so long as they aspire to symbiosis and not parasitism in the world. Everyone has freedom of thought but must appreciate that they can contribute to future good or to future ill. Sorrow and happiness for others are the natural outcome of anyone’s bad and good actions. It is their own voluntary choice, and no supernatural devils influence them. They are influenced only by their own will and other human beings.
Adelphiasophism demands no blind faith, expounds no dogmatic creeds, encourages no superstitious rites and ceremonies, but guides people through correct living and correct thinking to wisdom and the prospect of a better world for Nature’s whole kinunity. The bible of Adelphiasophism is the shortest one in the world:
Do not offend the earth whether directly or indirectly.
But the bible of Adelphiasophism could be the longest in the world, because it consists of all that is known that is true. Whatever corresponds with the real world of Nature is true, and so the whole wisdom of the Goddess as it stands in any state of knowledge is the Adelphiasophist bible. The Adelphiasophist bible in this sense is corrigible, subject to the fundamental principle above.
Theologians of all religions claim to deal with knowledge that science cannot handle—moral and spiritual truths. Some like Buddhism even claim to be in accord with science, but to extend it by teaching the parallel truths of morality. Adelphiasophism accepts no such distinction. Morality should be examined with the same criteria of truth as material affairs. Humanity has a lot of social experience and has a good idea of what is morally true based on this experience and Nature itself as guides.
Practice
Simply being an Adelphiasophist without trying to practice it in life achieves no salvation in a supernatural way like Christianity. Adelphiasophism is a practical outlook. It is not something like an overcoat to be left on a hook except when one goes to church, but something to be worn always even if sometimes it is worn lightly. Marx might have said that the function of philosophers is to interpret the world but the function of the Marxist is to change it, but the function of the Adelphiasophist is both—it is to interpret the world carefully to see how to change it organically for the better. The criterion of “better” is to have greater variety and more inter-species interactions, so that our own life is more secure. As long as we are doing the opposite, as we have done for two million years, we are failing, eroding our own world and preparing for our own extinction.
The patriarchal ideas of Christians, Jews and Moslems are false and self-serving for castes of priests, rabbis, mullahs and ministers, and for no one else. No one should imagine that any human being has a mysterious power to dole out salvation on behalf of some supernatural Lord. No one can absolve others of their errors in life. People must atone for themselves. The starting points of Adelphiasophism are observing, reasoning and understanding, not belief or submission to fantasies inflated daily by rogues.
Ancient scriptures are merely rumour, tradition and authority. No one should accept anything on rumour or tradition or authority. Do not accept anything because it seems plausible, or because the utterer seems trustworthy. The most wicked men are skilled in using human weaknesses. Always satisfy yourselves by finding the evidence for everything before it is accepted, and evidence for rejection must be equally considered. To hear only evidence from one side is folly. Judge on the basis of the balance of the evidence, being prepared to think otherwise if new evidence arises.
Adelphiasophists do not worship expecting worldly or spiritual favors, but pay their reverence to the Goddess Nature through whatever is chosen for the moment to represent her. If an Adelphiasophist offers flowers to a pool or wine a rock, they do not imagine that the pool or the rock is a god, but that the pool or the rock is a manifestation of the Goddess, and therefore the whole of Nature. Adelphiasophism is not animist but is pantheist. Symbols of the Goddess allow us to concentrate our attention on her, and her absolute importance to our existence, to think of her profound wonders and to bond with others in our determination to see her unharmed. Others might prefer to meditate on their personal impression of the world, or some aspect of it. What is meant to come out of it is greater reverence for Nature and respect for the Goddess. Then the Adelphiasophist will want to guard against the despoiling of Nature and aim to make the world fuller, more natural yet more beautiful for the next generation of the Goddess’s kinunity.
There are no petitional or intercessory prayers in Adelphiasophism. The Goddess does not hear them. People pray for help in seeking to undertake their Adelphiasophistic purpose in life. The prayer is for strength and it is answered from within by the reserves of power human beings have. Prayer activates what is there but untapped. It does not give supernatural power from some outside superbeing. Meditation is another way of finding the same strengths. These are psychological acts of strengthening the will.
Adelphiasophism understands Nature as a Goddess but she is not a cosmic potentate, omniscient and omnipresent. She is not conscious and so cannot send revelations, or angels with messages. She can be arbitrary in her actions, but she does not arbitrarily reward and punish. She does not decide to send a flood. The flood is generated by her laws and whatever went before such as human greed and stupidity.
Change
The characteristic of Nature and evolution, above all, is change. Life is constantly changing and all things, organic or inorganic, are transient. As Bergson said, in a different context, it cannot endure without changing. “It is a change without ceasing, when change ceases it ceases. It is itself nothing but change.” Yet, nothing can change Nature except Nature itself. To imagine we can is to make ourselves into gods and those who imagine they are gods are already insane. The local appearance of Nature can be changed but not her fundamental laws. Whatever we do is subject to the laws of nature. The human aim is to use her laws—which are knowable—sensibly.
Since Adelphiasophists believe in what is natural, they reject the supernatural, and so they reject revelations of any divine being. Any religion that claims such revelations is fraudulent. The world is in need of the attention of humanity and that is how humanity is saved. Our salvation is literal—from species death—from extinction. All of the mad and dishonest religions that teach of some form of existence beyond life ought to welcome the utter destruction of the world and humanity with it so that the Good can reign in heaven. Plainly some Christians believe precisely this. Adelphiasophists do not. No divine being can prevent humanity’s extinction. Only humanity can.
Scholar of religions, Huston Smith, notes that “religions are worldviews or meta-narratives—inclusive posits concerning the ultimate nature of things.” Adelphiasophism is a religion because it offers people a world outlook by which they can understand the world and find a purpose in it. It does not prescribe any forms of worship, because worship only makes sense to what can appreciate it, usually a king or conscious god. We revere and admire Nature, and appreciate it because without it we would not exist. We do not worship it. The ceremonies and services that Adelphiasophists participate in are intended to unite us in our purpose of conserving what we have and preserving it in the same or preferably a better state for our children.
Patriarchal gods demand obedience, service, and honour. Obedience is the prime one and in practice means obedience to the controllers of the religion, usually kings and priests, not god. Adelphiasophists offer obedience, service and honour to the Goddess Nature, but the obedience is to her own laws that are independent of the laws of kings and priests, as king Cnut proved. Adelphiasophism faces life and the laws of Nature including death with fortitude and serenity, and does not try to gull people into believing impossibilities for the nefarious purpose of taking a secular power over those who follow the religion.
The principle of Adelphiasophist morality is that the earth should not be offended whether directly or indirectly. Adelphiasophists therefore think not only of themselves but also consider all of Nature’s kinunity. Other forms of life are merely other forms of the meta-organism of which humanity is a part, even if it is the most intelligent and practical part. The brain is useless without the arms, legs, liver and intestines.
We might be closest in relationships with chimpanzees but we are related to every other organism on the earth, and quite probably beyond it. It is one thing to wipe the table clean using a disinfected cloth before you prepare food, but quite another thing to pour disinfectants everywhere that seems unpleasant, or where the kids play, without a proper consideration of what we are doing. The world is a natural equilibrium that has been balanced for millions of years. The equilibrium includes micro-organisms, and to murder them willy-nilly might have serious consequences.
Morality in Adelphiasophism is a rational and practical code based on verifiable facts and our joint experience. We are rewarded or punished by what we do—not immediately and not in an impossible after life but in this life, even if it is not ours. Our sons and daughters will have to cope with our sins, and to leave it up to our children to clear up our mess and rectify our wrongs is wrong, even if they can be cleared up or rectified. They might already be fatal to our species.
An Adelphiasophist is aware of future consequences, and these are what impel people to Adelphiasophist action and purpose. If we chose to do ill to the earth as a species then we shall be punished by the Goddess by extinction. If we chose to do ill to the earth individually then it is up to others to show that these actions are wrong and why, and punish any persisting perpetrator appropriately and proportionately. Those who do good to the earth are good, and those who harm the earth are evil.
To seek the truth, Adelphiasophism is sceptical, and, to save ourselves from extinction, it is pessimistic. Uncritical belief leads to acceptance of lies, and unjustified hope leads to inaction. Adelphiasophism is the doctrine of reality. It is not pessimistic in the sense of being without hope at all, but in believing that optimism generates inaction, and hope can only be born when problems are being properly addressed. Such pessimism can deliver us and other life on earth from unnecessary suffering, and therefore ultimately offers hope, but optimism leaves us depending on good fortune. Hope, springs out of human action, not out of merely wishful thinking.
The cause of suffering in society is greed. No one today need suffer if no one was greedy. Greed steals the earth for the exclusive use of a few and destroys it. Enough is sufficient.
A Threefold Path
Buddhism has an eightfold path that Adelphiasophists agree is worthy, but think it simplifies into the threefold way of the Zoroastrians:
- right thought,
- right words
- right deeds.
“Right thought” means seeing things as they are naturally, and not in some fantastic way controlled by something supernatural. It has the dual aspect of eliminating harmful thoughts and developing good and useful thoughts that will assist Nature. Right thought consist of thinking selflessly, or if that is too difficult in itself, realizing that what is good for all is necessarily best for the self too. Selfless thought reduces desire for pointless possessions, and for power—the desire to possess what should never be owned. Right thought includes respect for everything living and whatever living things need to support their life—in practice, all of Nature. Respect leads to goodwill, benevolence and loving-kindness, and these virtues will suppress harmful vices like ill-will and hatred which can only lead to destruction. Right thought includes compassion, which is the emotional aspect of symbiosis. Absence of compassion and empathy yields harshness, cruelty or even merely indifference, and, because indifference does not seem particularly wrong, it can be worst of all. Right thought demands that we be concerned about the rest of life. Not to be concerned about life is to be indifferent to our own fate. Thinking correctly will condition right words and then right deeds, through correct purpose. With practice and proper teaching of the method the Goddess permits us to know her—science—ultimately right thought matures into Praxis—the proper application of knowledge—Wisdom!
“Right words” is speaking truthfully but with kindness and good intent, and not lying, slandering, and being harsh. Words can stimulate action, and wrong words will stimulate wrong deeds, and they will do harm to the Goddess. Truth is what corresponds with the Goddess, and she is unitary and therefore not deceitful.
“Right deeds” is trying to prevent any gratuitous harm to anything that is part of Nature and to promote symbiosis and co-operation as they way to keep Nature’s kinunity vigorous and thriving in variety. No one can do as they like irrespective of other people and the rest of Nature, if humanity is to survive the short term. Humanity should be kind and compassionate towards all of life, even to invisible microbes that are not all harmful to us but often protect us from more dangerous ones. Killing any living thing is killing a part of the meta-organism that we are part of, and can only be done with the utmost regard for the overall benefit—like pruning a fruit tree. Stealing is a symptom of greed and causes unnecessary exploitation of the earth’s resources—sharing is symbiotic. Uprightness and honesty therefore has a purpose in being less harmful to Nature.
Adelphiasophism rejects all speculation about post-mortem progress of the soul, karma or whatever these figments might be called. The Patriarchal religions and even Buddhism are equally dishonest in persuading people of heaven or Nirvana as some sort of personal or impersonal state of bliss. The state of bliss is simply death itself, but there is no bliss in it because there are no feelings at all in it. Death is part of life. It is the end of it. There is nothing to fear in death because it is the ultimate of anaesthetics. Nothing is felt at all, even in dream form, because all consciousness and feeling has ceased.
We can approach death best when we know that our own lives have been purposeful, and we can feel that when we know we have done a little to try to make the world a better place for our descendents and the animals and plants that share the world with us. Then we can willingly pass into death knowing our matter is recycled into further life, and our actions on earth have been beneficial to Nature. No one is personally reincarnated, but all of us are materially reincarnated. Indeed, we are in part, even while we live.
Enjoying Life
So life is to be enjoyed in the ways Nature has given us to enjoy ourselves, but the excesses of enjoyment have to be tempered by the direct and indirect effects it has on the world as a whole. Our own enjoyment must not harm others in the world. Enjoyment is the fulfilment of immediate desires, but there is a deeper happeiness that comes from our longer term realisation that we have lived to some purpose. Obviously there is nothing exclusive about these types of happiness. Fame is not happiness unless it is for selfless devotion to the Goddess. Fame in our society implies excesses of one kind or another. Wealth is not happiness because wealth implies the unnecessary exploitation of the earth through greed. Having many children is not happiness because too many children use up the world’s resources, so it ends up being a type of greed, and selfishness while children are born unwanted.
Adelphiasophism can be verified. It is not based on fear of the unknown, but on facts which can be tested and verified by our human experience. Where there is no blind faith there cannot be any coercion or persecution or fanaticism.
Adelphiasophism appeals to both the intellect and the emotion. It is an outlook based on wisdom, that is, ascertainable and verifiable knowledge and reason, but it has the immense emotional appeal of Nature and her wonders, so people can be attracted to Adelphiasophism for emotional reasons, but it has its roots in reason, and those who wish to accept it must look at it thoroughly to satisfy themselves it does. The spirit of Adelphiasophism is the spirit of free enquiry, and confirmation in reality. It is tolerant of all other views that are themselves tolerant, and it is intolerant of intolerance.
Adelphiasophism is the practice of empathy, compassion and sympathy for all of Nature’s kinunity. It might be reasonable to kill a mad bull to save a human being, but it is even better to save the human and the bull. It serves no one’s justice to kill a crocodile because it ate a tourist swimming in its pool. Human beings have responsibilities, and one of them is a responsibility of care for their own person. Ultimately, we are all swimming in the same ocean and if we have insufficient regard for our own wellbeing some other creature cannot be blamed for demonstrating it. We all become noble only through our actions and taking revenge on some other animal is not a noble action. It is not ignoble for a hungry man to catch a fish to eat, but it is ignoble to catch ten fish, choose one to eat and throw the other nine back into the water dead. That is a crime against the Goddess, and therefore self.
No one has the right to destroy the life of another as life is precious to all. Full Adelphiasophists would exercise this loving-kindness towards every living being and identify themselves with all, but for many a lesser degree of commitment is acceptable, providing that nothing is killed gratuitously. Anything killed must be out of necessity, and the consequences of the killing must be negligible. Killing millions of migrating songbirds merely for tasty snacks because greedy people are sated with less exotic food is not acceptable to Adelphiasophists. We want songbirds to sing, not to be served up four and twenty at a time to selfish guzzlers.
Adelphiasophism exhalts women, but not on the basis that they should be ersatz men. The Adelphiasophist woman is proud to be a woman with the qualities that characterize women. Both men and women are equal but masculine qualities under patriarchy have been exaggerrated out of all natural proportions. The aim of matriarchy is not women’s domination but the proper respect of women and the qualities that she has and men do not have sufficiently well developed. This might require a phase of women’s domination, but it is not the goal. Some men have feminine qualities and adopt a feminine lifestyle. Adelphiasophism does not condemn this. Some men are happy to accept female domination in some matters, such as in sexuality. Adelphiasophism does not condemn this either. What consenting adults do in private is their own affair. Adelphiasophism does not recommend permanently separated orders for males and females unless they prefer it themselves. There is little virtue in it, because it is more natural for the sexes to mingle and not to be separated. Separate classes for males and females, and other short term separation of the sexes for perticular purposes is quite natural.
Adelphiasophism does not demand universal love but it demands universal respect. All life must be properly respected and it stands to reason that human beings must therefore respect other human beings. The Adelphiasophist is a citizen of the world. The whole of humanity is a brotherhood, and the whole of living Nature a kinunity.
It follows that there is only one race of human beings and no race or nation can claim superiority, even if such superiority might seem to be the case, and therefore even natural. In the course of history different races and nations have dominated and it is plainly a historical accident who dominates at any particular time. So, those who are of a dominant nation and are Adelphiasophists must recognize that national domination cannot be allowed to over-rule the natural principles of Adelphiasophism. My nation right or wrong is wrong. All human actions have to be judged on the coherence of Adelphiasophist principles and supported or not on these principles. Nature is universal and to claim a dominance over the world is to claim to be above Nature. It is to claim to be a nation of gods. Dominant people have all the more reason to be humble before Nature. It is the duty of the strong to help the weak not to add to their misery. Western leaders need to consider these truths.
Many people are religious because they want an explanation of human inequalities and particularly injustice. One answer is that justice is granted by a god after death or even much later at a final judgement. Others think that justice balances out from life to life. Both require absurd and untrue theories of after-death survival of the personality. Both are therefore untenable. What people will have to understand, like it or not, is that death is final and so there is no supernatural way that injustices and inequalities in natural life can be evened out. One might as well argue that differences in height or weight will be rectified somehow after death. They are rectified by death because such differences no longer matter to dead people.
Whenever more than one thing is born into the world, they will differ quite naturally according to the law of normal distribution. Some will be tall, some short, some bright, some dim, some will die early and some will live long, and so on. It is this variability that allows evolution to work. Variations that have an advantage from generation to generation will propagate, and those that do not will not. It might seem unjust to us, who are privileged to be able to think about our circumstances, that some people are ugly or some are unintelligent, but until consciousness and intelligence of a general nature had evolved in us, the differences between individual animals did not impinge on any sense of injustice. They had none. So, we can think about this problem and those like it precisely because we are privileged with intelligence.
The question is what are we to do with it? Find ways of exploiting the earth and killing others, or doing something useful. Our sense of injustice comes with intelligence so it has a purpose in nature. We have to use it to ease the distress and discomfort of inequality and injustice in those aware of them. Complaining about them means we have to invent figmentary fathers to complain to and figmentary solutions. It is pointless except as a subtle drug to inure us to reality. There is one way, though, in which justice does arise naturally. If we choose to destroy our environment, then we can be sure that we shall suffer retribution. We cannot live without a healthy environment and so it follows clearly that we shall die when we destroy it. That is Nature’s justice, but it does not serve individuals. It gets us all.
It is our nature to be selfish because it is an aspect of evolution. But selfishness is ultimately our destruction because through it we shall have no regard for the rest of the world and will destroy it. Then we too will be destroyed. It is our obsessive selfishness that conventional religions call evil.
