PART I:
in which the author repudiates the need for religious belief
The fact is, nearly all religious thought on earth since earliest times is wrong. Think about it! Man cannot create God any more than God can create man. Man cannot create a secret, silent, sacred, spiritual invisible being. Man can only create the myth.
No amount of religious double talk can deny the biological evolution of mankind. There could not have been a sudden, magical “poof!” creation of the human race. The fact is, all religious thought has been wrong from the very beginning and remains so to this day.
There is nothing in it that can be thought of as rational or valid; there is nothing in it that can be proved by even the simplest standards of scientific evidence and reasoning.
Early men and women were curious about the world around them. In a pre-historic era when they did not yet have the knowledge to advance fuller scientific explanations they did the next best thing: they made up “explanations.”
The question of the origin of life and the universe overwhelmed them until they postulated that a Creator that made everything.
It’s simple, it’s neat, it’s quick . . . but it is nothing more than that: mankind entering a stage of myth construction to explain what they could not understand.
This socio-historical viewpoint does not depend on supernatural phenomenon.
All the counter-arguments that dodge this viewpoint lack a solid foundation in reality. It doesn’t matter that people sometimes fall for erroneous ways of thinking. It doesn’t matter that people throughout the ages have created superstitions that are completely unfounded; it doesn’t matter that people “want to believe” this or that idea and will do so even if it is false. It doesn’t matter that people assert something is true because they believe it is true: that is a fallacious piece of reasoning that begs description.
A SIMPLE HYPOTHESIS
The simplest hypothesis demolishes it. Make up any proposition—all planets and mountains are made out of cardboard—and ask, is this “true” if someone says he/she believes it is true?
The validity of a proposition must always be tested by means that do not rely exclusively on persons who affirm they believe it. White racists believed Blacks were inferior but that did not make it true; German Nazis believed Jews were inferior but that did not make it true. Such beliefs, no matter how fervent, do not become true simply because there are misguided racists who ruin their lives believing in such nonsense.
If tens of thousands of people claim there is an ancient civilization on the moon or Mars, that matters little if actual space exploration demonstrates that there is no evidence of any ancient civilizations on either astronomical body.
The fact that there may be people who believe there are little green Martians does not make it true; only scientific investigation with facts and evidence can prove or disprove such a hypothesis.
There was an old notion once upon a time that “the Earth is flat”: was it true if it can be shown there were people who believed it? Many people believed that the Earth was the center of the solar system and of the universe: was this ever true?
No, the Earth is not the center of the solar system; astronomers have demonstrated that the Earth is a planet in orbit around the sun. The sun–and not the earth–is the center of the solar system.
Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo—among many other scientists—pursued their investigations with rigor and determination; their work has been validated a thousandfold.
The Earth is one of a number of planets following its own orbit around the sun and not vice versa. Is this not so? The older notion is completely false; what’s more, it was never true no matter how many people once believed it.
BELIEF, REASON, AND SCIENCE
Is there anything particularly complicated about such reasoning? The validity of a belief cannot be predicated on the belief itself since that is a circular tautology with no entrance or exit. If two persons believed opposite notions, can both be true?
Such an approach is a merry-go-round in dimensionless tomfoolery with no reference points in reality. “I know something is true because I believe it is true” has a nice sing-song rhythm to it but to educated people and independent thinkers, it is of course incredibly naïve to trust such fallacious reasoning.
Even if this theological approach is advanced as “psychologically reassuring”, it is not doing humankind any favors when people are encouraged to follow false leads, mindless detours, and tedious tangents in seeking a comprehensive understanding of their natural world. Such “feel good” (but illogical) reasoning robs the human race of much of its potential for making greater contributions for the greater good.
RELIGION SHACKLES SCIENCE
It isn’t merely for the sake of theological niceties that so many religious people recoil when non-religious scientific notions are advanced; they must deny the findings of science to keep intact the protective wall around their superstitions.
The original development of religious thought millennia ago inevitably did whatever it could to avoid being tested through reason and science . . . but even so, problems remain.
Thus, God is “invisible” and “not real” in the ordinary sense. There has been a slight divergence of opinion here among the religious whether God is a spirit that can be thought of as real (the spirit or “ether”, however slight, somewhere existing) or whether God is so entirely non-material that there is nothing “real” that can be measured at all.
“That God is real” but does not exist within our normal understanding of reality is a curious paradox but one that religious people happily find convenient and unanswerable; they have their faith and no one can prove to them that such faith is false or misplaced.
That a person can assert they believe in something that has no physical presence (shape, size, weight) or other discernible manifestation is itself remarkable but so it is—they have been indoctrinated to accept such thoughts as bonafide since childhood and seldom have the curiosity or opportunity to examine such ideas freely after reaching the age of reason.
DEATH AFTER LIFE
Likewise, religious people do not accept death as final; most must offer such inane prattle as “nobody knows” what happens when a person dies. That, of course, means to them that heaven, hell, and God are all quite possible!
This would be laughable were it not such a common misconception. When people cannot fathom that “death is death” but must postulate a continuation of some sort of life or consciousness beyond death, they are unlikely to be able to contribute to the advancement of truth for humankind.
They have abdicated their responsibility to honestly measure ideas and facts objectively and thoroughly. They cannot accept that all ideas, emotions, and beliefs are part of a living human being—and that when a human being dies so too will those ideas, emotions, and beliefs cease to exist.
Yes, that’s coldly put, I know, but it is a simple statement of fact. And those unable to handle it have no business trying to conjure up grander supernatural theories about the universe or anything else.
They have not exhibited the ability to grasp the simplest facts of reality before them: inescapable conclusions, really, but ones which they nevertheless insist on repudiating.
For them, it is the always the atheist who is wrong to believe that death is final! It is too much of a shock to their system, apparently, to consider that human beings (despite all the higher attributes) are still animals that die natural deaths.
Since “thought” and “emotion” are invisible and non-material in their world, everything superstitious and supernatural is allowed in the door.
Of course, it is relatively easy, with only a modicum of study, to learn that the brain is the organ of higher cognitive functions and how such processes work—and why when the person comes to the end of life, all such brain activity stops.
If my theory is correct–that narrow-minded ignorance and obstinate dogmatism keep religious belief alive and thriving–then we have to be shocked by the colossal waste of human intellect this involves!
These are circumscribed minds limiting themselves by settling for antiquated dogma.
Historically, think of the creative potential destroyed in thousands of other human beings because they had to endure the wrath of organized religion’s mean-spirited persecutions time and time again!
How many heretics, free-thinkers, “witches”, and non-conformists have been persecuted, arrested and imprisoned, tortured and murdered in the name of this dogmatic zealous devotion to protecting the false assumptions of theology?
Galileo’s name must do for the thousands of others who endured torture and death because they had the audacity to think for themselves.
How many thousands of human beings were forcibly converted at the point of a sword, the muzzle of a gun, or the knots of the garroting cord and lynch rope? How many lives were lost to protect these falsehoods and superstitions?
PART 2:
in which the author considers “reasons” behind religious belief
A list of reasons why religious people believe as they do can vary but such thought usually includes one or more of the following:
- Religious faith can explain the existence and creation of the universe;
2) It explains conscious thought (humans can think and then self-consciously reflect on their own thoughts and emotions, can ponder the past and the future)
3) It validates ego-centrism or the need to believe human beings are unique which can provide a refuge in times of personal crisis;
- It provides reassurance that when people die they aren’t dead; it provides a place after death where good people are rewarded and bad people are punished;
- It can explain the unusual and the extraordinary (earthquakes, volcanoes, storms) and anything not yet understood by the usual methods of knowledge and reason;
- It can explain anything and everything without need of distinguishing chaff from grain, whim from purpose, science from fantasy, and imagination from reality.
Yes, some people may argue that these needs are very great and therefore it was necessary to create such theology (and maintain such beliefs) but the author would argue there is an even greater need for human beings to pledge themselves to pursuing scientific truths no matter where they might lead.
Truth defeats falsehood; facts outlast superstitions; evidence circumscribes myths; knowledge spanks ignorance; reason surpasses guesswork.
UNABLE TO LET GO OF THE PAST
Obviously, some religious people will have an extremely hard time understanding any of the above—their minds are not trained to be flexible enough to allow them to consider such notions.
I write not for the old but for the young. There are always new generations coming up, as well as a few independent free-thinkers who somehow manage to escape their shackles of religious nonsense.
They deserve to have a chance to read the thoughts of another human being who is willing to say outright: all religious thought from the beginning to the present is wishful thinking.
There can hardly be any other logical conclusion for a fact-based and logic-based thinker!
It doesn’t matter how many people believe in an idea which in essence is false, nor does it matter to what degree of fervor or hysteria they cling to that false notion.
It doesn’t matter how many times someone argues such religious concepts are “psychologically reassuring”; it doesn’t matter how many times someone asserts a concept is “true” because he or she happens to “believe it” to be true.
Human beings were not created instantaneously in a Garden of Eden. Human beings appeared through the normal workings of biological evolution over time.
Human beings die at the end of their existence as all animals and life forms do.
Human beings developed the capacity for thought but retain the evidence of their animal birthright in a thousand ways.
A SIMPLE ANSWER
Can it be that simple? To say that religion has always been wrong and all belief today is built upon a set of assumptions that themselves were and are factually and logically indefensible?
Yes, it is that simple.
In time, all great humanity must come to see the truth of such a viewpoint. The human race risks perishing if too many people insist on maintaining a narrow, doctrinaire, and unreasoning belief in all the old falsehoods of superstitions and all the old myths and dogmas of theology.
The fate of humankind hangs in the balance: self-destruction through zealotry and fanaticism . . . or progress and freedom through the liberating effects of science and truth.
We will either choose to destroy ourselves through our own complacency, ignorance, and arrogance . . . or we will advance to a new future where all human beings will be free to think for themselves as independent, intelligent, and creative human beings.
The answer is in your hands!
