Religion's Place In The Perfect World

Essay

Or should I be more interesting and re-title this post:

Ridiculigion, Because The Other One Was Taken...

In either case, it's a very heated topic. I'd like to keep it simple and also insult as few people as possible simultaneously. I don't know why I care... I guess I'm just nice that way.

-•-

Perfect World Theory has, at its core, an important assertion:

Believe In Facts

Fact should drive society. That is a Perfect World premise. There is no place for fiction, or even undocumented fact, when laying down World Family structure. Belief systems which are restrictive, undermine freedom and lead to discontent in the name of an unprovable theory (namely, the idea of a supreme being or a universal fate) are counterproductive to a society which prides itself on true individual rights.

For example, two religions are completely different, but both claim that their supreme being is the only one in the universe-- obviously they can't both be right. How does that contribute to clarity of purpose?

Also, some religious leaders have claimed they've had two-way spoken communication with their gods, but they can provide no evidence of such an occurrence-- no eyewitnesses, no video recordings... only their word, and yet they ask their followers to make great sacrifice based on their say-so alone. Neither experience builds any kind of trust-- for religion, or for its representatives.

On the other hand, there is ample evidence of leaders lying in order to glean obedience. A recent example would be the Bush administration using fear to sway people into giving up many of their inalienable rights granted by the Constitution, by convincing them to accept an illegal and dangerous document called the Patriot Act, which gives law enforcement the discretion to ignore human rights in the name of 'public safety'. A document which, at this writing, still stands.

It is not a great leap for me to use a political example while citing religious persecution. Even to this day religious leaders are the only governing body in many countries, and their laws date back thousands of years, and stand as written in their religious texts. These are the same ancient texts which call for brutal punishments for their citizens because they are gay, or have been raped, or for some other 'heinous crime'.

We see how fruitless, in confrontations between religions, attempts to pick one group's philosophy over the other. Stubbornness reigns supreme. That's not a religious affectation however, but a human one-- how many of us believe our sports team is the best? We can't all be right. Who among us does not feel that the country they live in is the best? Guess what... people in other countries feel exactly the same way. Once again, who's right?

At the end of each season one team is determined to be best, but does that stop the other teams' fans from cheering their own team anyway? It does not. Fans call that loyalty. We call that obstinate. It stands to reason, therefore, that we will not be converting any people soon.

What is so wrong about believing your team is better than their team, anyway? Because stuff like this happens when you do...

This behavior is not a direct result of opposing convictions, though-- there's a convoluted process going on in one's head. In essence, our current society is set up so that people must compete in order to survive. This response is a natural survival instinct, but it is not an absolute necessity-- undisciplined children in large families compete for food at the dinner table unless punished by their parents for behaving that way, for example, while polite children wait their turn, share, and be sure there is enough for everyone before beginning to eat. Welcome to the well-mannered Nuclear Family... a microcosm of the World Family I'd like to see come to pass.

Loving your religion, your sports team, or your political party are not unrelated-- they are all part of the same emotional trigger as protecting your family. While defending your loved ones from danger is an innate response, the others have been piggybacked onto that using societal pressure-- you hear repeatedly that is is okay to do so by your family, your religious and political leaders and by the biggest brainwasher of them all-- advertising.

So long as society tolerates selfish and violent responses like the one pictured above, individuals will see no reason to change. But change doesn't have to be difficult, or even painful. We are currently experiencing public pressure to clean up the environment-- pressure which comes in the form of public service announcements, commercials and even script changes written into popular television shows. That didn't happen accidently; deliberate decisions were made and large sums of money spent to make that change. Traditionally, these precursors fall on the heels of ever more forceful public programs-- in this case, water and power conservation requirements, laws cleaning up emissions and dirty energy sources, and even more campaigns to change the way people feel about their home, Mother Earth.

In this manner we can attempt to sublimate human desire for guidance; from religion, to World Family.

Terms Defined

This would be a good time to explain myself. I use the terms Perfect World Theory and World Family interchangeably, and I do that because they are two sides of the same coin. If we adopt the Perfect World ideals into our society, the end outcome is a World Family, the place which applies those ideals. To live within the constraints of a World Family IS to live in the Perfect World.

And I've said before, the Perfect World has been given that name because it has been designed to closely operate within human needs and desires, while eliminating as much stress and sorrow as can be attained. In other words, it is the Perfect World for US.

World Family represents all human interaction in the Perfect World. Each person you speak with, nod to or caress is treated as a member of your extended family, and you of theirs.

God Created The Big Bang

I wanted to try to create an easily viewable concept of the Big Bang. Naturally, I thought about fireworks, but I decided to settle on grinding sparks because they were easier to attain and observe. Welders, when grinding metal, make sparks. When you observe a spark pattern, you see it begins and ends quickly, and there are thousands of sparks all shooting away from the contact point. I began to formulate an idea.

WHAT IF, with each touch of the metal, the welder creates a super-miniaturized Big Bang? An entire universe which comes into existence, lives out its life traveling outwards from the source, and when the heat ends, the spark (i.e. the universe) dies. It passes by too quickly and too tiny for us to observe, but WHAT IF there are revolving particles traveling around each of the sparks? WHAT IF they revolve around each spark billions of times in the span of each spark's life?

And WHAT IF there is life on some of those revolving bodies? Or water? Or atmosphere? In short, all the things we have here on Earth, only happening in a blazingly short time and on a ridiculously small scale? To all life on that particle, time would be passing normally... for them. They'd have children, who would also have children and so on for thousands and millions of their years before their spark, or SUN, fades away. All which would occur in the blink of our eye.

Here's the kicker... get ready for it...

WHAT IF that little particle is Earth? And the spark is the SUN? And the life is US!?

I'll tell you what if! That means our God is a welder!

Oh, my!

Not only that, he's creating hundreds, or thousands of universes daily! He and all his welder buddies all over his world, creating universes, day in, day out.

God has welder buddies?!

On his world, which revolves around a star. A star which could be a spark, made by an enormous welder much larger than the universe.

Oh. MY!

And conversely, here on Earth we have welders...

OHMYOHMYOHMY!! Holey moley, We're GOD!

That's what I've been trying to say! And how egotistical is it, to venerate OURSELVES?

Evolving God

I think there is enough evidence so that I feel confident with the concept of evolution, but I hate when people say that man was descended from apes. This is simply ridiculous. I mean, if we are constantly evolving, then so are the apes, right? Back when this gradual change in humans was occurring, the change was happening to apes as well, as they were evolving from simpler into more complex apes. Humans were just evolving from simpler into more complex humans.

If you think early man LOOKED like apes, well, I can't argue with you there. But what does beauty have to do with it? They know what they know from finding evidence and analyzing it; and for ancient organisms the evidence is bones. Bones can only tell you so much about a creature-- it can't for example, tell you the organism's eye color. Scientists can infer only a certain amount until better proof is found. Which means that until we find a perfectly preserved cave man, we just won't know exactly what they look like. But with the polar ice caps melting, now's the time to check the slush for a perfectly preserved Urg. Continuing on...

At some point, traveling backward, we didn't look like man at all, but rather, some kind of crawly thing with legs. And before that, a sea creature. And before that, one celled organisms. And before that, glurp. And before that, piles of the building blocks of life, serendipitously blended exactly right and through coincidence given a shot of lightning, the juice of life.

There is no 'before that' for life.

Evolution happens gradually, and it is simply a living organism's response to changing outside stimulus. People haven't changed much in the last few thousand years, but before that, before we were smart enough to figure out clothing, I'm certain we were much hairier. Hirsute even.

If we want to observe evolution in order to prove that it exists, go to organisms that breed quickly. You may be thinking bunnies. That's cute. But we need a faster breed time to watch the changes happening from mega-generation (one million generations) to mega-generation. To observe that, we need tiny creatures which reproduce in minutes; amoebas, or some other organism.

We start with a colony of them, living in an ideal environment; the right temperature, water alkalinity, the works. We then dissect and analyze a sample creature at the beginning of the experiment. Now we change one factor which makes the environment less ideal-- let's say we make it hotter. Hot enough to kill many of them, but not all. When we've found the right sample temperature, the colony continues to survive, and at some point begins to thrive.

Now we analyze another creature. GUARANTEED there will be physiological changes between the first generations and the last. The change will be the ability to endure high temperature. We, over time, may adapt into that very ability, as the Earth slowly gets warmer. That's all we mean by evolution... little changes taking place over vast periods of time.

I can see the theological perspective... even if it were observed to occur, how is the decision made inside the organism so that it creates one type of heat-proofing over the other? Otherwise, will one organism develop ethylene glycol blood and the other, asbestos hair? Doesn't there have to be some guiding hand to 'invent' working models-- an 'intelligent designer', as it were? How can a simple creature like an amoeba come up with a re-design of their own bodies?

Scientists may already postulate an answer; I'm not a scientist so won't waste your time with maybe-so's or what-if's. Suffice to say, evolving as an organism's needs or environment changes is natural (we call it survival of the fittest), it's logical, and it very most probably is the way things actually work, not through an omnicient god manipulating some celestial chemistry set.

Humans As Gods

We as a race are in the infancy of space travel. We know a little about how the universe works, but not a lot.

Assume that we continue on our path of learning and discovery. At some point we will be able to travel among the stars the way it is pictured in today's science fiction. We will be able to exert influence on an entire planet. Put your world conquest dreams on hold there, Caesar... I'm talking about scientific influence.

Imagine that we arrive at a planet which is in a nearby solar system, but lacks some of the ingredients that would make it a habitable world. Now we can use our scientific influence to make it spin like Earth, or remove a toxic pollutant, or add an essential ingredient. We seed it with plant and animal life when it is ready. Then we arrive to colonize, and spread humanity through the stars.

Now imagine the same scenario, but instead, we seed it with the building blocks of life, and give it a few million years to 'take'. Our scientific descendants return to see what has happened on the planet, and they find, to their dismay, that intelligent life has not only occurred on their experimental planet, but is also deeply embroiled in a conflict over creation: One side believes that they developed naturally; and the other side believes that they were created by a god!

Imagination is a wonderful, terrible thing.

Lastly, visualize a third sequence, the same as the second but with one addition: We place, all over the planet, a series of permanent monoliths that will teach a universal language to the inhabitants (when they are ready). Additionally, they will teach the facts of their planet's emergence, and our role in it. They will lay the seeds of learning, emphasize discovery and science, respect for life, and a deep quest for the truth. Finally, they will warn of the danger which comes from believing the unprovable.

What do you think we will find when we return to observe their progress? To answer that, imagine first: What would our own progress have been like if the monoliths had been on our world? Would there be religion? War? Santa Claus? I'm guessing we would live in a very different world. For one-- the pressing question, 'Where did we come from?' would be known, which would end a tremendous amount of speculation, the kind of guesswork I suspect the Bible was founded upon. By learning and following the guidelines found on the monoliths, we would be a much more thoughtful race, and much kinder as well. In fact, I would not be surprised if this entire series of Perfect World posts would have never needed to exist.

A Quick Aside

Running a modern society from the teachings of a book that is 2000 years old makes about as much sense as referring to a 1950's electronics manual to learn about modern computer design. The information in both books is stale and is in sore need of updating. I might not make any friends with this comparison but it is important for people who have put their faith and trust in a document to know that the comparison is, in fact, accurate.

For Example: We have great faith in the Constitution of our nation, but that does not mean that it will never need to change. Constitutional Amendments exist and are utilized when it becomes obvious that society has changed in a way not considered in the original text. Slavery and women's rights are two good examples. A bad example (which was corrected) was the Prohibition Amendment in the early 1900's-- overzealous teetotalers convinced a concerned public that banning alcoholic drinks was a good idea. It wasn't. Although I agree that alcohol is a risky substance, living in a free society guarantees our right to choose for ourselves whether we want to take the risk or not. We are facing a similar situation now with marijuana. Although pot is not without its problems, scientific study has produced evidence of beneficial effects. Many millions of people partake of it illegally, facing prosecution, much as the Prohibition society did with alcohol, which is evidence that the citizenry finds the law unjust. The laws will probably be changed at some point in the future under public pressure.

Any antiquated beliefs found in the Bible can be modified in much the same way, and those people who rage against change are simply Luddites resisting progress. Perhaps that's why evolution is such an object of fear and loathing among traditionalists-- evolution is proof of change, and change is something an arch-conservative denounces.

Back To The Perfect World

Religion, for all the reasons mentioned above, is responsible for holding society back. Fortunately, we have many religious people who, through their own intellect, have recognized this fact and have proposed a few relatively painless measures for correcting religion's influence on the greater whole.

1) Ban religious influence in politics. To repeat, society must be based in fact. Religion is based on faith, making the two theories mutually exclusive.

2) Prevent political proselytizing in the pulpit. Worshippers have the right to vote their conscience, not to be coerced to vote as others see fit.

3) Treat religion as a guide, not as an immutable trajectory. Use the principles to raise your families in moral and decent ways. Allow those beliefs to work within society's desire for freedom by reserving judgement or action on the lives of others.

The teachings of JC in the New Testament are often quoted but rarely followed-- try to live by those wise words. I'll close out this post with a few of the more universal thoughts:

If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.

When you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret.

Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.

In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

Smart fella, huh?

Copyright 2009 Bruce Ian Friedman