Hallucinations can arise through sensory deprivation, drugs, illness and fever, a lack of REM sleep, changes in brain chemistry, and so on.

A Religion of Puzzlement 2

Life after Death
The Existence of a God
Revelation

Abstract

Occasionally, religious people feel the awe everyone used to feel, and, because it is now so unusual, think it is supernatural. Yet, it is the exact opposite—it is entirely natural, although it signals to us the ‘superness’ of Nature. A belief in God is not necessary for people to be religious. Are Buddhism and Confucianism religions? They are so described, but Buddha and Confucius were agnostics, and Confucianism has been faithful to its founder’s agnosticism. Was Stoicism, one of the greatest of moral systems, a religion? Stoics were indifferent to gods and were concerned only with the life of people here on earth.

Life after Death

Take the idea of immortality. The way of all life is toward death. Not so much as a pin-point of reproducible evidence in proof of any life after death has been presented. Supposed evidence is all anecdotal and invokes the most primitive ideas of superstition, ghosts and portents. If we concede for the sake of argument that this “evidence” can be weighed in the balance, it has to weigh heavily in the face of the remaining 95 percent of evidence that tells us that our personality ceases when we die. Death is the irrefragable ultimate fact.

There is no reason in nature for immortality, and indeed it becomes more unreasonable the more one reflects upon it. The wish for immortality is nothing more than the other vain wishes that men have. Can anyone figure out any form of immortality that might be plausible? The “soul” which is supposed to be immortal is itself nothing more than a myth.

Why do so many people stake their happiness on a transcendental future which might not exist instead of fulfilling the possibilities of this life which we know exists because we experience it daily?

Asked to reject future life—the idea of the extension of the personality into the future—some people find it hard to accept they will not meet again those they have loved in the present life. They assume too much and should think again. What happiness is there in the doubt that their departed lovers, children and friends—good as they seemed—might have finished up in the eternal fires of hell? Can they be happy to imagine their loved ones minute by minute burning in hell, having lapsed in the standards of the Almighty and incurred his displeasure, rather than enjoying the balmy plains of heaven where we hope to meet them again. We are entitled to wonder why, if God is good, merciful and omnipotent, he could not have made mankind incapable of sin, for, then, the necessity for a hell would not have arisen.

Why not accept that the personality dies with the body just as the original loss of the loved one when they died had to be accepted. Those who accept the belief in immortality do so simply on the word of others, who know no more about the mystery than they themselves. Should we believe in the supernatural because it gives us comfort in bereavement or because charlatans preying upon our grief assure us it is so?

The Existence of a God

By reason alone, one might find plausible arguments for the existence of a God— the need for a creator, design in nature, a legislator to decree the “laws of nature”, and the like. Anyone of a skeptical bent would still not be satisfied, however, because the creation of the god has then to be explained. Postulationg a creator only suggests a greater mystery. It is not parsimonious and it is not an explanation.

Science gives natural explanations of these things and supernatural explanations have become pointless except as moral tales. Naturally, unsolved questions remain but so far there is no need to imagine that the methods of natural investigation will not produce answers. But as we satisfy ourselves with nuggets from the goldmine of knowledge, we constantly reveal new lodes beyond, yet to be mined. Meanwhile, not one tenable argument for belief in God has yet been dug up.

If you ask a clergyman where this Almighty exists, you will get no meaningful answer, or rather you will get as many answers as people you ask. Yet we can see Nature all around us and marvel in awe at her beauty and complexity. Since the Renaissance, the growth of science has led to a new appreciation of Nature and a growing rejection of the view that a supernatural king, ensconced somewhere in a transcendent dimension can, willy-nilly alter her laws. No divine whim can change the local laws of mechanics.

Instead of wasting our time and energy in contemplating and appeasing a fictitious deity, and obeying the selfish motive of desire for future salvation in a transcendental heaven, let us dedicate our lives to the interests of this world, to the study of natural science so that we can understand how we are affecting our environment and preserve it, to social cooperation and cooperation with the other species which share the planet with us, to the development of the neglected intuitive and creative aspects of our being rather than only seeking knowledge through destruction, to the spread of knowledge of our situation that we might enjoy future happiness not misery or extinction.

We must transfer our allegiance from God to Goddess. We regard Nature as a goddess, not because we belief that she is a sentient giantess living somewhere in the sky or in another dimension, but because she gives birth and succours—her primary attributes are motherly. We can treasure her as the womb within which all living things are developing. We can resolve to preserve her for others and not neglect her as unimportant or even destroy her because she is derogated as a “Vale of Woe”, the only true life coming after death.

Only from a careful study of the Goddess in her many ramifications has a coherent, convincing picture of the universe and the evolution of life emerged. A mature, intelligible view of things has replaced theology, the infantile game of inventing whatever explanation is convenient, untramelled by having to root it in reality.

The defenders of Christianity have had to rely upon glaring falsifications of Pagan beliefs, and hold up their hands in sanctimonious horror at the worship of natural objects. But it is no more foolish to adore the glorious and beneficent sun than to adore a being who exists only in the human imagination. Is it more foolish to worship a tyrant of a father consciously judging and punishing, or Nature personified as a mother because she constantly gives birth to the beauty of our world and rewards us with all the joys of it?

To this day in familiar Christian rhetoric the term “Pagan” connotes immorality, impiety and a low, unblessed state of being. This false picture is innocently or, more truthfully, ignorantly stressed by some preachers but there is also a lot of deliberate misrepresentation.

Even a moderately intelligent priest must learn enough about the Classical and Hellenistic periods to briefly glimpse their art, philosophy, culture and orderly social life. Why then do they insist on libelling Paganism. Two of the loftiest ethical systems in history—the Stoic and the Epicurean—were Pagan. Morals were far higher in the Greek-Roman world than they were in Christian Europe for centuries after the fall of ancient civilization—as high as morals are today.

As for culture, and all the fine and interesting and orderly things that make a civilization, the Pagan world was brilliantly superior to Christian times throughout the weary, wretched rule of faith. By the middle of the nineteenth century the world had only reached once more the level of civilization at which the Pagan world stood when Christianity came, bringing not light but darkness.

Revelation

We want a comprehensible, realistic picture of the religious past, a knowledge of the genuine character and influence of institutions, an understanding of the way men lived and what their ideas meant to them. We want complete living history (as nearly complete as scholarship can make it) and not an imperfect skeleton made up partly of invisible bones called “spiritual”. We want the truth, even if it exposes Christianity in a bad light, shows it to have been an influence hostile to civilized aims and contradicts the false history with which Christianity has sought to justify itself. It does!

The simple idea of the average Christian is that Jesus gave the gospel truth to the world, that with speedy and singular unanimity the world accepted this truth, that it burst suddenly as a brilliant, beautiful light upon a world all in darkness, and that Christianity, as a system of doctrine, stems directly in an unbroken and uncorrupted line from these divinely inspired, self-evident and undisputed teachings of Jesus.

Is there any truth in Christian revelation? And, further, has any revelation of a supernatural character ever taken place? On examining the alleged revelation, we find that the Christian myth is based on no valid evidence. It rests only on the inspiration of the bible—a collection of Jewish legends. The divinity worshipped by the churches is an imaginary figure, an invisible fetish established for the benefit of the Jewish clerical caste returning from bondage in Babylon, and subsequently maintained by the Christian priesthood for the same ends—subtle control of people and the wealth it brings.

If a revelation had been made to the human race by a divine and almighty being, would it be expecting too much that it should be done in a sufficiently clear and unmistakable way that it would seriously challenge our disbelief? That has not happened. Instead of being furnished with proofs, we are required to accept whatever the priests say, however much it is opposed to reason, Nature, and science. We are bid to ask no questions because doubt is sin and so we must believe to be saved.

It is time to cast off the bondage so long imposed upon us, and snap the rod of hell so long laid across our backs. Faiths and dogma is not inspired. Nothing has been supernaturally revealed to Christian bishops. Miracles add as much to the wonder of nature as a plastic doll does to motherhood. No bad spirits make anyone ill or wicked and no pious appeals to good ones will make the least difference. Christianity was the work of men, and it was worked into something quite different from the Jewish message of Jesus. Moral ideas which Christians suppose to have been revealed through Jesus are of far greater antiquity than they suppose.

Some people fear lest, if the Christian myth were discarded, people would choose to do as they liked giving way to debauchery. But this fear suggests improper motives for goodness—people’s fear of offending a god who is cruel, vindictive, jealous and liable to cast them into the pains of hell, and their dread of losing heaven and life everlasting. Such purely selfish motives to right conduct ignores the welfare of our fellow creatures, the desire to please our fellow-men and make others happy, and the preservation of the beauty and diversity of our world.

The doctrines and practices of the old religions of the Roman world, in the first few centuries AD, were suppressed by law after the Christian victory in the time of Constantine. Christian writers do not tell us much about them except for Firmicus Maternus, a Father of the Church, who wrote down all he knew about the pagan religions in The Errors of the Profane Religions.

Christians would be upset if they read Firmicus’s book. Many of the pagan religions of the Roman world had saviours or redeemers, whose birth was celebrated every year, often in mid-winter, and every year, often about the time of our Easter, the death and resurrection of the gods were celebrated. “The devil has his Christs!” Fermicus pronounced.

In some of these religions, bread and wine were used at the altar, and candles, incense and sacred water were part of the ritual. Like other Christians, Firmicus concluded that the devil had inspired these things to pagans before Christ was born to show that Christianity was not unique, not revealed by God.

Until evolution was discovered in the nineteenth century, creation was divided between God and the devil. All good things, especially all true religion, came from God. All evil things, especially false beliefs, came from the devil. Firmicus gives us evidence otherwise destroyed by Christians, that creeds, religious myth and rituals evolved just as species, and indeed the whole cosmos, evolved.

There is a science of religion. Science is the accurate and critical study of anything that exists. Religion has for so many years commanded such a part of human life that it is a valid subject for scientific study, and some experts, like Frazer, have devoted their life to studying the origin and development of religion. Unfortunately Christian “scholars” all too often enter the field to create as much fog and obfuscation as they can in an attempt to preserve an illusion that evolution is mistaken and revelation is a fact.

Most writers on the science of religion, or comparative religion, are too timid. They apologize for applying the scientific spirit to so sacred a thing as religion! They beg us to understand that they have no opinion on the truth or value of religious beliefs, but merely study it dispassionately. They bend over backwards to placte the mullahs of the world whether they are Moslem or Christian.

It is ridiculous to say discoveries in religious history have no bearing on the truth of religion. Why should beliefs be considered independent of the reasons that they arose? If we discover that a belief is based on an error or a fraud, why should those, who continue, despite this knowledge, to propagate the error or fraud, command our respect? Our beliefs are worth no more than our reasons for believing them.

Christians will tell us that the scientist knows no more about God than a believer, but that is not true and shows that the believer hasn’t the least idea about science! Science happily begins with ignorance and demands proof. Priests and their acolytes begin with knowledge and demand that it should be falsified. It is the priest that is on firm ground to the ignorant observer, because a general philosophical principle is that it is impossible to prove a negative. Proofs have to be positive. Thus science can build up an edifice of knowledge but it is impossible to demolish a mirage or illusion.

Dealing with facts, the scientist can show that they are or are not consistent with certain beliefs, but if the reprobate is happy to believe despite the facts then science can do nothing more. Anyone coming freah to religion should be aware of these simplicities. though they might find emotional satisfaction on the thought that they have been saved by Jesus, or whatever, it is merely a form of hypnosis and the real benefactors are the evangelical sellers of this salvation, who always get rich faster than anyone else, despite their salvation.

Tens of thousands of years ago people began to carve figures, in ivory and stone, often of pregnant females, and these might have been religious in purpose. They buried their dead, sometimes with stone implements and ornaments round the body, suggesting that their friends and relatives thought they would have need of them or would appreciate them after death. The implication is that these people believed in an after life.

Evolution does not mean that every living thing continues to evolve. Animals or plants need to change only when their conditions change. That is true too of human beings. However, animals can change their own environment just by being there and that is what humans have done. Small numbers moving around large land masses hunting and gathering, lived in a stable and essentially unchanging environment. The hunter-gatherers also changed little. However, as populations slowly grew and seasonal patterns of living evolved, humans began to change the world in which they lived and they had to respond to that. Ultimately they had to respond to each other and history as opposed to natural history began.

it is not a question of intelligence because there is little or no evidence that the intelligence of humans has altered significantly in the few thousand years of history, or even in the few tens of thousands of years of pre-history. Physical evolution is not that fast. Knowledge was the key. Successive waves of conquerors were not superior human beings, in general, but were human beings with superior weaponry or better organisation. It often seems that conquered pwople are inferior because they finish up abject. But that is the psychological result of the conquest, not its cause. The South American Inca people seem abject today, yet 500 years ago they were a noble race of conquerors themselves.

And, it seems that this breed of Indians that entered America from Asia, pushed an earlier breed into marginal lands. It is common to call each conquering people superior because, we are the outcome and so we must be the top of the tree. We are flattering ourselves, but it is safe to say that we are superior only in technology not in mental power, and that simply because we are later and evolved in circumstances favourable to developing an aggressive and highly co-ordinated culture.

We can play games at categorising people according to the degree of development of their culture, but all we are doing really is arranging human cultures in relation to ourselves, presumed to be the best, and not on any objective grounds. The study of the evolution of moral ideas shows no particular progress. The development of weapons, from stone to bronze and iron, of art, of clothing, of houses, and so on is not particularly accompanied by any better practicing of rules forbidding murder, for example. Moralists freely condemn tribal cultures for being cruel and warlike, quite ignoring the scale, severity and barbarism of the wars that we wage.

Page Tags: Religion, Criticizing Christianity, Life after Death, The Existence of a God, Revelation, Christian History, Religious Instinct, Holy Book, Truth and Dogma, Christian, Christianity, Christians, Church, God, Gods, History, Human, Knowledge, Life, Nature, Pagan, Religion, Religious, Science

Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.