How should we live?
Religion can't tell us, but ethics, moral philosophy, can.
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| Dumping rubbish on roadsides is similar to dumping waste gasses into
the atmosphere.
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| | We need to do what we can to make this world a better place,
in the present and for future generations.
We can pick up
rubbish from roadsides and try to
convince others that they should do what they can to stop harmful gasses
being dumped into the atmosphere.
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How often do we hear someone say that if we do not believe in a religion
(usually their religion) we have no guidance in our lives, we could not
possibly know right from wrong or how we should live?
Of course this could not be more wrong.
Ethics can tell us what is right and
wrong, how we should live, what our obligations are to our neighbours and to
the rest of the biosphere.
A large part of most religions is a record of what one or more people at some
time in the distant past decided was right or wrong.
This often evolved in time; the Christian Old Testament tells us about who
should be stoned to death, the New Testament tells us not to be so hasty
in condemning others.
I am an atheist.
Ethics tells me what I should do and how I should live.
It tells me that I should do my best to make the world a better place.
That's why I try to get
action to limit the damage due to
climate change.
Ethics tells me that I should do what I can to get the message out to others
that they should also be doing what they can.
Ethics tells us that we should do what is within our abilities to improve the
lives of other sentient beings and protect the planet from the damage that
will, without our action, be done by
less responsible
people.
Other people have other abilities and will develop other opinions about what
good they can do and how best they can do it.
But the ethics that has been built up by many brilliant philosophers over the
millennia can tell us about right and wrong far better than reading the
opinions of a few deluded people who thought they had some 'direct line' to
God and who lived in times when the problems were very
different to those of the modern world.
How could a person who lived a thousand or more years ago tell us what we
should be doing about environmental damage in the twenty-first century?
How could they tell us about how we should guide our children in the use of
the Internet?
How could they tell us about whether it is right or wrong to confine domestic
animals to factory farms?
Ethics can help us with all these questions and many others; religion is
much more likely to mislead us.
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| Christianity: the religion of tolerance and love?
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| | Does blogging constitute activism?
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Since Martin Luther started the Lutheran Church and broke away from the
Catholic Church there have been
many other people and groups forming branches of the Christian religion.
Why are there no break-away Christian groups, other than the Eastern Orthodox,
that date back from the institutionisation of Christianity by Emperor
Theodosius around 390AD to 1517 when Luther produced his 95 Theses?
This is a period of over 1100 years.
There are no surviving break-away groups because the groups that did
break-away were sooner or later ruthlessly forced back into the main-stream,
with the authorities often using torture or execution on those who resisted.
They were called heretics and were forced to believe, or at
least to pretend to believe, the dogma held by the dominant group.
The early Church eradicated many so-called heresies, including
Docetism, Montanism, Adoptionism, Sabellianism, Arianism, Pelagianism, and
Gnosticism.
Other break-away groups who have been eliminated included the
Pneumatomachians and Priscilliansts of the 4th century;
the Donatists, 5th cent; and the Albigensians, 12th and 13th centuries.
Some of the heresies and schisms
- The Montanist movement broke away in the second century, flourished in the
third, had almost died out (or been killed off) by the sixth century.
- The Ebionite movement originated in the first century.
Little information survives.
- The Donatists broke with the majority church in 312.
It seems that Islam had more to do with the extinction of the Donatist church
in the early Middle Ages than did Christianity.
- Docetism rejected the humanity of Christ; the Docetics have gone the
way of many other 'heresies'.
- Arianism began in the forth century and held that Christ was not truly
devine but was a created being.
This 'heresy' was condemned by the Council of Nicaea (325 AD) and it was
wiped out of both the Eastern and Western Roman Empires shortly after 381.
It survived among some of the Germanic tribes until the end of the seventh
century.
- The Paulicians originated in the mid-seventh century.
They held that Jesus was not truly the son of Mary.
Paulicianism was repressed by Constantine III, Justinian II, Michal I and
the empress Theodora; in spite of this it survived at least well into the
ninth century.
- The Schism of 1054, also called the East-West Schism, in which the
Eastern Christian churches broke away from the Western (Catholic) Church,
was the only successful bid for independence between 390 and 1517AD.
The reason it succeded is that each group was supported by strong
and independent geographically-based power blocs.
- The Cathari was a major break-away branch of Christianity that flourished
in western Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries; they were persecuted
into extinction over a period of several hundred years.
- Peter Waldo (or Valdo) preached around 1170-76; his followers (Waldenses)
were persecuted and executed to the point of near extinction by the end
of the 13th century.
-
Jan Hus, a 15th century Czech religious reformer in some ways anticipated
the Lutheran Reformation by a century.
However, Hus was less successful than Luther, and was burned at the stake
in 1415.
It seems that many of the 'heretical' groups rebelled against the corruption
in the Catholic hierarchy as much as against Catholic theology.
The history of the 'heresies' of the Catholic Church up to the Reformation
makes fascinating reading; but is not for the fainthearted.
After Martin Luther (1483 to 1546) there were wars in Europe between
Protestants and
Catholics for hundreds of years, each group trying to force their beliefs
onto the other. Many of those who migrated to the New World did so to
escape religious persecution.
Pope Pius V caused the
Inquisition to eliminate Protestantism from Italy during his reign (1566-72);
it is hard to imagine how much torture and killing would be involved in
such a campaign.
He was canonized (made a saint) in 1712 (an act similar in its injustice
to the nomination of George W. Bush for the Nobel Peace Prize).
Wealth has been a matter of controversy among Christians.
The recorded sayings of Jesus seem clear, "you cannot serve both God and Mammon", and Matthew 19:24, below.
Plainly, Jesus was inclined to equate money with sin and evil.
Wealthy Christians have been uncomfortable with this and have chosen to overlook it in many cases.
In April 2019, famous player for the Australian Wallabies Rugby team, Israel Folau, shared a post on Instagram which said: “Warning, Drunks, Homosexuals, Adulterers, Liars, Fornicators, Thieves, Atheists, Idolaters; Hell Awaits You. Repent! Only Jesus Saves”.
This is taken from the supposed writings of Saint Paul in Corinthians 6: 9-10: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.”
It is important to note that it was never attributed to Jesus, but to Saint Paul, who never met Jesus.
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Mr Folau, do you prefer the words of Saint Paul to those of Jesus because they suit you better on account of your personal wealth?
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One saying that is attributed to Jesus himself is Matthew 19:24: "And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
Mr Folau was contracted to the Wallabies team for a fee of $4 million dollars a year.
He must be a very rich man.
I wonder if he gives as much credence to the words of Jesus as he does to the words of Saint Paul?
Or is his Christianity more selective than that, in his own interests?
Many other Christians choose to love wealth
Calvinism and Pentecostalism have also chosen to disregard this teaching of Jesus and have tried to see wealth as a sign of God's approval.
Australia's
Prime Minister Morrison is a member of a Pentecostal church and seems to see the pursuit of wealth as being more important than protecting the world (which many would see as God's precious creation).
In the modern world most laws aim at keeping the peace and making people
treat each other fairly.
There are some laws, however, that are forced on all the people of
various nations by Christian (or other religious) lobby groups and are based on religious dogma rather than ethics.
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Enlightenment, choice, freedom
One of the milestones in the development of an intelligent species must surely be when the individuals of that species realise and accept that they can choose the time of their own death and the method for bringing it about.
The alternative, leaving one's death to 'natural causes', seems to me absurd.
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Few people would believe it ethical to keep an animal alive if it was
in great pain and suffering from an incurable disease or terribly injured.
What is the point in prolonging life in that situation?
It amounts to cruelty, and in many countries anybody keeping an animal
alive in great pain could be prosecuted for mistreating the animal.
Many people – the great majority in my country,
Australia – feel that if they were in that position they should have the
right to ask that their life be ended.
Few countries allow people the legal right to have their life ended rather
than suffer intolerable pain or mental deterioration.
There is no ethical justification for this prohibition, it is largely
due to Christian and other bigots forcing their beliefs onto the remainder
of the population.
Christians do, and should, have the right to die in great and prolonged
pain if that
is what they want, but they have no right to force it onto anyone else.
John Stuart Mill argued famously in On Liberty,
"The only part of the conduct of any one, for which [a citizen] is amenable
to society, is that which concerns others.
In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right,
absolute.
Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."
... or should be!
Some are opposed to voluntary euthanasia on the basis of the 'slippery
slope' argument; that if it is allowed in cases where it is truely
voluntary, euthanasia will later come to be pressed onto those whose relatives
want to get them out of the way, or who the state considers to be socially
undesirable.
The same argument could be used to put the case that the state should
never punish anyone; on the ground that a punishment such as a fine or
a period of deprivation of liberty will eventually grow into locking up
indefinitely all those who are considered socially undesirable.
Consider voluntary euthanasia in terms of simple ethics: what harm is done,
and what good is done?
- If a person is kept alive in great pain and against his will certainly
a wrong is being committed; unnecessary suffering is being forced onto a
sentient being.
- This must be balanced against the possibility of the misuse of voluntary
euthanasia: where if the laws are taken advantage of by bad people with their
own agenda and all the safeguards that have been put in place are
circumvented, and the medical professionals involved are complicit in the
crime, a person may be killed against his will.
In the former case there is a very definite wrong, in the latter case there
is a chance of a wrong being done if the system is allowed to become badly
corrupted.
Surely we should choose the apparently small chance of a wrong, if we
do allow VE, as being much preferable to the quite definite wrong, if we
continue to ban VE!
I have written on this point in its specific application to Australia
here and
here.
The prohibition of
abortion in many cases is similarly
due to Christians forcing their beliefs onto others.
The greatest of the self deceptions, religion, is so widely accepted
that it is rarely classed as a superstition at all. In the past
religion has served two main purposes: it
provided an explanation for the way the world is, and it provided a father
figure for Man.
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One person's religion is another person's superstition
Religion is a synonym for superstition. A religious person sees the beliefs of others that he/she does not subscribe to as superstition, while not noticing that he/she is also superstitious.
Both religions and superstitions are delusional supernatural beliefs held in the absence of supporting evidence.
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It is in the nature of people to look for an explanation, to
want to understand. In the distant past one can imagine people wondering why
prey animals were easier to find one year than the next, why a usually
reliable edible root plant was in short supply some years or in some areas,
why rains were plentiful sometimes, scarce other times, excessive
occasionally. Some things they would have been able to understand: in an
excessively cold year many prey animals were found dead (it was reasonable to
suppose the cold had killed them, just as it could kill a person exposed to
the cold); in another year the wet season rains were sparse and wild wheat was
also scarce (it was easy to see that wheat needed soil water in order to
grow).
Many other observations would not come with explanations: how could a
plant come from a seed? – surely there must be some great and wonderful
process involved here; what caused diseases? – fellow humans sometimes
caused harm to
each other, could diseases be caused by humans with supernatural powers, or by
some sort of humanoid spirit? Wherever they went the Sun would be there every
day and disappear every night; it obviously must be very big, very far away,
very powerful. What could move a thing so big and powerful, or was the Sun
itself alive? The stars moved across the sky each night; what power moved
them? What caused the wind to blow and storms to come?
The concept of a god,
or a pantheon of gods, could explain a great many otherwise unexplainable
observations.
From our earliest memories we (most of us) have had authority
figures to protect us, provide for us and make the hard decisions.
In our infancies probably our
greatest insecurities involve fear of losing our parents.
It can be a shock to realise, on becoming an adult, that we have to make our
own decisions. Some of us use a god to fill the role of a father figure so
that we never have to take full responsibility for our own actions.
In at least the Judeo-Christian-Islamic group of religions
adherents are lead to believe that God will hand out justice
in the next life; we will be punished or rewarded for our
behaviour in this life after we have died.
Anyone who has successfully raised a child or trained a dog
will be aware of the need for feedback. The child is
rewarded with a kind word when it does something we approve of
and growled at when it deserves our disapproval; the dog is
given a small food treat when it successfully understands and
obeys a command, and is admonished when it breaks the rules.
The need for this, and its purpose, is obvious – feedback.
The child or
the dog is continually reminded that when it does wrong it
meats with disapproval, whenever it does good that good is
rewarded.
Yet in religion we must believe that God doesn't ever give
us any feedback. We have to take it on faith that people
like Hitler and Stalin, who caused enormous misery and
death on earth, received their just rewards after their own
deaths, and we have to believe, without evidence, that the
good people of the past have been rewarded in Heaven.
Wouldn't God's purpose be much better served if he informed
us of the justice that was actually handed out to people
who we knew, or knew of, in the
afterlife? Wouldn't he achieve his purpose much better if he handed out
reward and punishment soon after the deeds that called for judgement?
It seems, if he exists, he doesn't know much
about human behaviour.
There are similarities between religion and a contagious disease such
as those caused by viruses.
- A virus is forced by its genes to reproduce. If a religion is to be
successful it too must reproduce (spread).
- Viruses cannot multiply except by using a host; similarly religions require hosts (believers).
- People can 'catch' a religion from those around them and then pass it
on to others; the similarity to a virus here is obvious.
A successful religion is highly contagious. Its adherents
actively try to convert others. It has a message that is
appealing and often gives hope for a better life (quite probably after
death).
- The most successful religions get a strong grip on their adherents
from several angles: fear of punishment, hope for reward, and the
provision of a father figure. Those who have long belonged to a religion
are terrified when they begin to doubt because they are threatened with
damnation (or other punishment in the afterlife or later incarnations).
The most successful viruses use various
means to avoid being overrun by the body's defences, they might
periodically change features of their outer coating so that they are
difficult to recognize, they might mutate frequently (the common cold,
for example), so that immunity to one cold doesn't stop you catching
the next version. Both viruses and religions have developed ways to
stop people from defending themselves against infection.
- The most successful religions, like the most successful diseases,
don't do their hosts a lot of harm. A disease that quickly kills
its victims is not likely to be passed on. Similarly, a religion
that required all children to be sacrificed, or universal celibacy,
could not last. The most successful religions allow most of their
adherents to live a pretty 'normal' life.
Again, the common cold is a good example of a virus that behaves similarly,
it thrives in its numerous hosts, but kills very few.
- Computer viruses are not so clever as religions. There is obviously no
advantage in having a virus in your computer. If someone created a virus
that did come with advantages, then it would be much more likely to spread.
If a virus has only disadvantages and can be recognised then we can crush it.
If a religion had only disadvantages we would not adopt it.
- Viruses must breed to be successful. Religions often encourage their
adherents to have many children and discourage abortion and family planning.
Memes are ideas, methods, or skills that we learn from each other; most of
them are useful, even valuable.
In a sense they are heritable, like genes, we discover them and pass them
on to acquaintances and to later generations.
Religion is a parasitic meme, a meme that uses the gullibility of humans
to hold onto its adherents and to spread to others.
The photos on the right show several of the animal benches at Kek Lok Si
Buddhist temple in Georgetown, Malaysia.
They show a humour that is entirely missing in the Religions of the Book
(Judaism, Christianity and Islam).
I cannot imagine benches like these outside of a Christian church, even
less a Muslim mosque.
The Religions of the Book seem obsessed with sin, punishment and fear of
God.
Humour has no place in them.
If one must believe religious clap-trap Buddhism is at least a happier
form of delusion.
The desire for a father (or mother) figure
When we are young most of us can go to our parents if we are unsure of
something, if we need advice, or if we feel inadequate for some challenge.
As we
grow up we take on more responsibility for our own welfare, we become more
independent; but I suspect that the desire to have a mentor or protector to
whom we can go to when life is hard or complex remains in most of us for a
very long time, perhaps all our lives. Similarly, we would sometimes like to
avoid having to make hard decisions on our own, we would prefer to have
someone in higher authority, someone who we know has our best interests at
heart, make the hard decisions for us – and, importantly, accept the
responsibility for those decisions. God serves these father-figure purposes
for many people.
So belief in, and submission to, a god can be a way of
'passing the buck', of being able to say, "It was not my decision, I followed
God's dictates". What then, if there is no god, or if your god happens to be
the wrong one (only one faith, at most, can be correct)? Then the believer is
trying to pass responsibility for critically important decisions onto ideas
written centuries ago by people who were fundamentally in error in their main
premise!
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A related subject; Why didn't God write his own holy book?, Why doesn't God talk to us?
Some claim it is "God's Word"
One need only look at the names of some of the books of the Bible to
see that it doesn't even pretend to be written by God: The Gospel According
to St Matthew, etc.; The Epistles of St Paul; The Song of Solomon etc.
Even the word 'testament' (as in Old and New Testaments) is defined
as a 'profession of belief', which requires a believer to record his belief.
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There is a long history of arguments about what writings should be accepted
as Christian scripture.
People involved include Melito (2nd century), Origen
(2nd and 3rd century), Athanasius (4th century), Jerome and Augustine (4th &
5th century).
The subject seems to have gone quiet during the Dark Ages, but
then re-emerged in the renaissance and reformation especially among the newly
emerged Protestant faiths.
Curiously, the great majority of twentieth century
Christians seem willing to accept the bible that their particular
branch of the faith provides them with, as it stands, without question.
It is accepted as true, or even "God's Word", because someone, they don't know
whom, has passed it on to them as such.
A remarkable demonstration of apathy and/or naiveté!
I think this point is worth repeating; the Bible is accepted by the
great majority of Christians as coming from God because someone,
or many people, have told them that it did!
"If a thousand people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
Chinese proverb
Questions that are
rarely asked by Christians, and yet are fundamental, are:
- Who decided what writings went into the Bible?
- On what grounds were some writings accepted and others rejected?
- When were these decisions made?
- Should they ever be reviewed?
- Why doesn't God talk to people any more?
How can intelligent human beings accept the Bible as the Word of
God – and base their lives on it – without asking, and finding
adequate answers to, these questions?
The undeniable fact is that the Bible was written by people.
Some Christians may well claim that these people had divine guidance, but still, the Bible was written by people.
Did other people decide which writers were guided by God, and which weren't; and include or exclude writings accordingly?
Did they too have divine guidance?
In what form did this divine guidance come?
How can we know that it was divine?
Did God provide more and surer guidance in ancient times than he does now?
Why?
The fact is that 'divine revelation' has never happened, no god or gods ever revealed anything to people. All knowledge has come from humans pursuing the evidence.
A few modern Christians have asked probing questions. Ian Wilson discusses
the evidence for the existence and 'divinity' of Jesus in an objective way in
his interesting and well written book, 'Jesus: The Evidence'.
Also see Atheism Central.
Creation 'science'
(Intelligent design by another name)
Science is the application of the scientific method.
A definition of the scientific method goes something like this:
- An observation, or more likely a series of observations,
are made;
- An hypothesis is produced, that, supposing it to be true,
would explain the observation(s);
- Experiments are devised to test the hypothesis;
- If the experiments fail to disprove the hypothesis then it can
become a scientific theory.
Note that the theory need not be proven (usually it cannot be proven),
but every test that it passes increases its standing. A hypothesis that
cannot be tested is considered to be of dubious value.
Creation 'science' is different. Its adherents hold the
belief that biblical creation happened. From there they
look for evidence that seems to support their belief and
ignore evidence that tends to contradict their dogma.
The term 'creation science' is an oxymoron.
Either one believes in creation
as described in the Bible, or one believes that the scientific
method can be used to inform us about how the world came to be
the way it is and how it works. One cannot accept,
unquestioningly, Biblical creation, and believe that
the world is amenable to scientific investigation.
Either the universe can be understood by using observation
and reasoning or God is running it and it is intrinsically
incapable of being explained by reason. Either there are
causes and effects that we can understand by learning rules
and laws, or not. It seems to me that science has
explained an enormous amount of how the universe works; I
see no reason to believe that the theory of evolution should
be discarded in favour of 'creation science'.
'Intelligent design' is a similar belief to Creation science. It also
looks for and considers only the evidence that is favourable to the
preconceptions of its adherents. See also the third and equally valid
alternative to science,
Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.
A thousand years ago people assumed that God and Heaven were
somewhere up above us, hence the use of the term 'the heavens' for the
realm of astronomy.
They also imagined that Hell was down in 'the bowels of the Earth'
somewhere.
Astronomy has shown no trace of Heaven or some home for God in the heavens
– all is stars, gas, dust, galaxies, etc;
and geology has shown us that there is no Hell down beneath our feet –
there is the rocky crust, the denser rocky mantle, then the metallic core
of the Earth.
So where is God?
Where are we to believe that our
souls
go after we die?
Some sort of fairyland?
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Please explain
Some Christians claim that the Earth is only about 6000 years old.
There is a huge amount of evidence (geology, plate tectonics, geomorphology, palaeontology, genetics, taxonomy, botany, zoology, nuclear physics, etc. etc.) that the Earth is about four and a half billion years old and that the Universe is about 13 billion years old (astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, stelar evolution, nuclear physics again, etc.).
Let's suppose that the Christians are right and the Earth is 6000 years old.
Then we have the question: why did God create all that evidence making it look much older?
Is he malicious?
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Those who attempt to uphold a literal interpretation of the Bible would
have us believe that the earth is about six thousand years old.
One need have only a very basic knowledge of geology to look at a landscape
and see that it could not have become the way it is by the action of
natural forces in six thousand years.
It takes too long for:
- streams to cut out valleys;
- for sediments to be deposited in lakes or lagoons;
- for ice ages to develop, to produce glaciers that cut out 'U' shaped valleys and for the glaciers to melt and go;
- for granites to crystallise from a magma;
- for mountain ranges to form and be worn away;
- for the continents to move to their present positions;
and for many other geological processes to take place.
Similarly, sciences as disparate as genetics, nuclear physics and astronomy show us that the Universe is billions of years old.
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Age of the Earth 10 minutes?
We could have all been created ten minutes ago, together with a
Universe made to look like it is billions of years old and with our
memories appropriately filled with false recollections;
but why would you believe that?
Is it any less rational than believing the Universe is six thousand years old?
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So, if God created the world six thousand years ago he must have made a
conscious decision to make it look like it was much more than six thousand
years old.
Why would he do that?
To deliberately confuse us?
Yet we are to believe he is a good god?
Ever since William of Ockham stated his principle,
Ockham's Razor, in the
early fourteenth century, philosophers and scientists have found that, as
a general rule, a simpler explanation is to be preferred to a complex one
if both are equally successful in other ways.
The earth could be the way it is now due to the natural processes that we
can observe around us, or it could be that a God (who cannot be shown to
exist) created it much as it is today six thousand years ago, and took a
great deal of trouble to make it look as if it is billions of years old.
The same can be said for the Universe.
I've written more on this in
Is it hubris?, also on this page.
In the twenty-first century you don't need to follow one of the long
established religions, you can make up your own religion.
You can select any combination from a smorgasbord of old gods and beliefs,
or you can start entirely from scratch.
Do your own thing.
It is no more stupid than following any other belief that has no
evidentiary backing.
You won't be burned at the stake or hung as a witch; at least not until
some single religion again reaches supremacy and its adherents, as
religious people are wont to do if they are able, start forcing their
beliefs on their neighbours.
Humane societies electrically stun animals before they are killed by having their throats cut and bleeding out.
Judaism and Islam, by Kosher and Halal food handling rules respectively, require that animals be killed by having their throats cut.
Halal killing can, in at least some countries, allow for the animal to be reversibly stunned (that is, to be rendered unconscious, but not killed by the electric shock) before having its throat cut.
Kosher killing, in Australia at least, does not allow the humane stunning first.
For more information see the RSPCA page on What is Kosher and Halal slaughter in Australia?
It seems that the God of the Torah and the Koran didn't know that electrical
stunning would be more humane, what a surprise!
As mentioned elsewhere on this site, divine revelation hasn't ever revealed anything that was of any use to anyone.
Muslims and Jews don't eat pigs, Hindus don't generally kill cows.
There is no rational reason for any of these taboos in the modern world, but then we are discussing religion, it doesn't have to make any sense.
The Conversation discusses 'Hinduism and its complicated history with cows (and people who eat them).'
I have wondered whether Hindus might be able to eat beaf, so long as someone else did the slaughtering. The Conversation article states that "vigilante Hindu groups in India are lynching people for eating beef", so apparently not.
One has to wonder, what happens to a cow (or bull) that becomes very sick; is it left to die rather than being humanely killed? Are cattle allowed to starve if they can't find enough food?
A number of
sciences indicate that the Earth and the Universe look like they are 13.6 billion years old.
Some Christians tell us that actually it was created only about six thousand years ago.
So, accepting for the moment that the Universe was created by God, we have two possibilities; either
- The Universe is 13.6 billion years old, or
- God has done a very convincing job of making it look like it is 13.6 billion years old while it is really much younger.
If God has gone to the trouble of designing the Universe in such a way that any rational, intelligent, educated person would believe that it is 13.6 billion years old, even though it's not really, isn't it disrespectful of these Christians to say something like:
"You can't fool me God, you might have created the Universe in such a way that all the evidence available to me makes it look like it is 13.6 billion years old, but I know better; it's really only six thousand years old."
Surely this indicates huge conceit and would be insulting to God.
Religions are anachronistic,
They were created in an age that has very little in common with the modern world.
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This section added 2019/05/09
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Australian Rugby star Israel Folau posted on Instagram in April 2019 that hell awaits "drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolaters".
I am not interested here in whether or not he should have done this, I am interested in who he neglected to include in his list of the damnable.
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Who should go to Hell?
In Israel Folau's dream-world drunks, homosexuals, atheists and idolaters, who don't necessarily harm anybody, would suffer eternal torment in Hell.
In the same fantasy-land people like Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, Tony Abbott and Gina Rinehart, who by their war against action on climate change are helping to cause the future deaths of millions of people, the extinction of thousands if not millions of species and great damage to the entire planet will go to Heaven, so long as they 'accept Jesus'.
How can any thinking person accept this as being right?
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I have argued
elsewhere that, due to the dire consequences that we can expect from uncontrolled anthropogenic climate change the greatest crime in the history of humanity has to be for a person in a position of power to knowingly lie in order to slow or stop action to combat climate change.
This being so, surely if there was a just God, he would damn such people, yet they are not listed in Mr Folau's posting, nor are these terrible crimes mentioned in any holy books.
Of course while people like Mr Folau would probably claim that the Bible is God's word it was in fact written by people who lived in a time when there was no concept of anthropogenic climate change, so the Bible can tell us nothing relating to it.
The Bible is hopelessly out of touch with the modern world, it is anachronistic.
The recent Australian Royal Commission into the financial industries has disclosed unconscionable behaviour from those who run the nations banks, yet the Bible is silent on criminal behaviour in the banking industry.
Also, to start a war that results in millions of people becoming refugees and hundreds of thousands of deaths, without justification, such as the 2003 invasion of
Iraq, has to be a terrible sin, yet this doesn't seem to concern people like Mr Folau, nor does it seem to be condemned in the Bible.
(I have discussed terrible crimes such as these in a page on
criminal leaders.)
I've written more on
who should be considered good or bad people and some of those who will be on the
right side of history elsewhere on this site.
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This section added 2019/05/25
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Humanity is one of several million species that call Earth home.
We have speculated about God, or gods, for about one millionth of the time that the Earth has existed.
We have had some significant understanding of the Universe for about one ten-millionth of the time that the Earth has existed.
The Earth is a small planet among eight that orbit a star that is 100 times the diameter of the Earth, but very ordinary among the stars of the Milky Way Galaxy.
The Milky Way Galaxy contains about two hundred billion stars (that's 200,000,000,000).
There are more than two trillion galaxies (that's 2,000,000,000,000) in the observable Universe.
As a part of the known Universe the Earth is totally insignificant, yet most religious people believe that one species on this insignificant speck dominated the attention of the God who supposedly created it all.
This seems to me to be a mind-blowing level of hubris.
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This section added
2021/02/28
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As Buddhism does not include a God or gods and does not come with a set of rigid moral precepts it seems more acceptable to many people than many other religions, but it seems to me to fail on at least two points:
- It supposes reincarnation;
- It supposes that good and bad karma are built up following good and bad deeds.
Reincarnation
This seems to me to be the greatest failing of Buddhism.
I have read in 'A Gift of Peace and Happiness', which is a free booklet on Buddhism, the below:
"Because there is no permanent unchanging self, Buddhism denies the existence of an unvarying immortal soul passing from one life to the next. According to Buddhism, the mind or consciousness moves from one life to the next."
The emphasis above is mine. It seems to me irrelevant whether one claims that a soul survives death or a 'mind or consciousness' survives death. Either way the claim can be shown to be absurd, as I have done in
another page on this site.
It is simply nonsensical to claim that either a soul, a mind, or consciousness can survive the death of the body and pass on to some other life or some other organism.
In addition, in the specific case of Buddhism, how are we to believe that a human mind could pass on to, say, a cockroach; or a cockroach's mind to a human?
There is also, of course, the unanswered question of 'If my mind or my consciousness came to me from a previous life, why do I have no memory of that life?'
Karma
One of the primary precepts of Buddhism is that good deeds in life result in good karma being 'recorded' for the person, and bad deeds result in bad karma going onto the 'record'. Buddhism then claims that the bad karma will result in something bad happening to the person in the future, whether in this life or another. Similarly a 'record' of good karma will result in an improvement in the person's future.
If there is no supreme being or similar, who keeps the record? It seems that we are expected to believe that the record is 'out there' somewhere without any intelligence or record keeper. I find this impossible to accept.
Apart from music being considered sinful by some religions at some times consider the great differences between the traditional music of (predominately Christian) Europe and (predominately Muslim) North Africa and the Middle-East.
Middle eastern music has much more in common with North African music than it has with European music. The religions kept the European culture apart from that of North Africa and the Middle East while the sharing of the islamic religion allowed the latter two to mix.
Of course there was much more unnecessary hatred, mistrust, killing and mistreatment between the Christian and Muslim camps than recorded in their differing styles of music.
The thing that prompted me to write this section was an
article in The Conversation by Renae Barker dated 2022/06/28 titled "‘No religion’ is Australia’s second-largest religious group – and it’s having a profound effect on our laws".
The first two paragraphs of the article read:
"The latest census results are out and the number of Australians who selected “no religion” has risen again to 38.9%, up from 30.1% in 2016.
This makes them the second-largest “religious group” after Christians, who make up 43.9% of the population, down from 52.1% in 2016."
The
Australian Bureau of Statistics recorded that people reporting Christianity as their religion fell from 86% to 44% between 1971 and 2021, those reporting 'no religion' rose from 7% to 39% and the number of those reporting adherence to 'other religions' rose from 1% to 10%.
The proportion of Australians reporting 'no religion' has increased at every census since 1971 and the rate of increase has been rising since 2001. Censuses are held every five years. (If the trend of the past twenty years continues to the next census 'no religion' will be bigger than Christianity in the 2026 census.)
While the great rise in the number of those reporting 'no religion' is certainly indicative of progress toward a rational society freed from the bonds of superstition and delusion we, in Australia, still have a very long way to go. I suspect that there would be some move toward 'no religion' worldwide too but don't have figures on it.
Unfortunately at the same time there seems to be a rise in what might be called 'weird religions" such as Pentecostalism.
So, the answer I would give to the question that heads this section is: no, we will probably never see an end to the religion delusion, but we can hope that the proportion of people suffering under the delusion will continue to decline.
