just got a telex from God. It says:
"I refuse to prove that I exist, for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing."
happy new year!
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
Monday, 29 December 2008
Oneness
Departing from the last post, I want to continue a bit further about the idea of 'oneness' .
There is a concept of oneness in philosophy, which is an initial condition that is lost as you grow up: A feeling of serenity, of being at peace with oneself and the world around you. A mental equilibrium so to say. A bit like the acquired concept of shame for nakedness: it is not something we are born with, it is acquired in life while the concept of oneness is lost. That is not to say that these are exchangeable for any others than dedicated nudists ;)
A simple and fast method to find this serenity is to turn to a religion of some sort, although this is by no means a guarantee. A lot of people that are religious never attain serenity or any state of oneness. Such people ought to throw their religion overboard, or at least try and find this oneness some place else.
So you may not want to go the religious route to find this oneness, either because you tried and failed, or don't want to try. You may be one of the people who doesn't have this 'spiritual emotion' I talked about earlier, but which to satisfy can also create a mental equilibrium. However, like a castrate not feeling lust, an absent spiritual emotion can not be satisfied. In that case one must go another way to find this oneness, or invent some framework by them self that provides it.
What happens if one doesn't find this oneness can be seen both in history and in the world around us. Look at Hitler for example, who tried to solve the problems inside him not by looking inside but by projecting his problems onto the world around him and then trying to re-arrange it in order to achieve this serenity. The results, as they say, are history.
In present life we can see this in all kinds of ways: the school bully, the all-knowing, all-seeing neighbour that complains about everything, skinheads, religious extremists etc. And without knowing their personalities, I think we can see symptoms of this in people like Marc Dutroux, Wolfgang Priklopil or Josef Fritzl. Google those names if they don't sound familiar, although they should if you haven't lived under a rock for the past 10 years or so :)
In that aspect we could talk about a duty to one self and others around us to find this serenity, but in a self-conscious, personalised way. One can become a nuisance to others when not finding it, as illustrated by example above. This also includes, but is not limited to, a solid ethical framework on which to base one's actions and judge its results.
If religion is not a vehicle on which one wants to travel towards this goal, another vehicle has to be either found or created. This is of course more complicated because it involves reasoning and thinking as opposed to just accepting what one hears in the church, mosque or other religious institutions. It can, however, also be more rewarding. Think about a world where every single person is at one with themselves and feels this serenity. Not only would all crimes committed out of frustration (which are more numerous than one would think) be erased, people would be less prone to insult: our vanity is easiest to be hurt when, just beforehand, our pride was hurt!
It is often heard that 'one lives his life like a good christian' but never 'one lives his life like a good atheist'. What I like to do in this blog is to give some ideas on this, some food for thought, maybe provide some sort of framework and to stir in some contrasting ideas for good measure. That is not to say that I'll tell people how to live a good life: whatever that may be is a very personal thing and I don't feel I'm the person to go and tell anyone. Neither do I aspire a patent on truth, let the various religions bicker about that among them. When three dog's fight for a bone..
Of course I will also keep shaking the religious tree. So far, no nuts have fallen on my head, although undoubtedly some readers will dare to disagree ;)
I'd like to operate in rough lines along the Hegelian principle, which is a process defined by the German philosopher Hegel, to produce oneness in mind through three sub-processes:
1)Thesis: to take a certain view or opinion on a subject.
2)Antithesis: to oppose to the former and critically evaluate it.
3)Synthesis: to merge the results of the former two steps and come to a new thesis.
With step 3 we have thus come to a new thesis which can then be subject to the same process. In theory, by going through these steps and subjecting ones thoughts to an internal evolution, oneness in mind is achieved. One could say it is just an effective way to keep an (aspiring) philosopher off the street and in his comfortable armchair. May be, but at least during the time he doesn't find the oneness he looks for, he isn't a nuisance to anyone :)
Just to give a more practical hands-on idea of what I mean, we could discuss the topic of killing humans:
1) Thesis: It's immoral to kill other humans
2) Antithesis: It's moral to kill (other humans) in self-defence or as capital punishment
3) Synthesis: It's immoral to kill except in cases of self-defence or capital punishment.
The principles of self-defence or capital punishment can then be subjected to another instance of the process, in which we look on the morality of capital punishment. And so on and so forth.
Let's see if we can apply this process to the existence of God...
There is a concept of oneness in philosophy, which is an initial condition that is lost as you grow up: A feeling of serenity, of being at peace with oneself and the world around you. A mental equilibrium so to say. A bit like the acquired concept of shame for nakedness: it is not something we are born with, it is acquired in life while the concept of oneness is lost. That is not to say that these are exchangeable for any others than dedicated nudists ;)
A simple and fast method to find this serenity is to turn to a religion of some sort, although this is by no means a guarantee. A lot of people that are religious never attain serenity or any state of oneness. Such people ought to throw their religion overboard, or at least try and find this oneness some place else.
So you may not want to go the religious route to find this oneness, either because you tried and failed, or don't want to try. You may be one of the people who doesn't have this 'spiritual emotion' I talked about earlier, but which to satisfy can also create a mental equilibrium. However, like a castrate not feeling lust, an absent spiritual emotion can not be satisfied. In that case one must go another way to find this oneness, or invent some framework by them self that provides it.
What happens if one doesn't find this oneness can be seen both in history and in the world around us. Look at Hitler for example, who tried to solve the problems inside him not by looking inside but by projecting his problems onto the world around him and then trying to re-arrange it in order to achieve this serenity. The results, as they say, are history.
In present life we can see this in all kinds of ways: the school bully, the all-knowing, all-seeing neighbour that complains about everything, skinheads, religious extremists etc. And without knowing their personalities, I think we can see symptoms of this in people like Marc Dutroux, Wolfgang Priklopil or Josef Fritzl. Google those names if they don't sound familiar, although they should if you haven't lived under a rock for the past 10 years or so :)
In that aspect we could talk about a duty to one self and others around us to find this serenity, but in a self-conscious, personalised way. One can become a nuisance to others when not finding it, as illustrated by example above. This also includes, but is not limited to, a solid ethical framework on which to base one's actions and judge its results.
If religion is not a vehicle on which one wants to travel towards this goal, another vehicle has to be either found or created. This is of course more complicated because it involves reasoning and thinking as opposed to just accepting what one hears in the church, mosque or other religious institutions. It can, however, also be more rewarding. Think about a world where every single person is at one with themselves and feels this serenity. Not only would all crimes committed out of frustration (which are more numerous than one would think) be erased, people would be less prone to insult: our vanity is easiest to be hurt when, just beforehand, our pride was hurt!
It is often heard that 'one lives his life like a good christian' but never 'one lives his life like a good atheist'. What I like to do in this blog is to give some ideas on this, some food for thought, maybe provide some sort of framework and to stir in some contrasting ideas for good measure. That is not to say that I'll tell people how to live a good life: whatever that may be is a very personal thing and I don't feel I'm the person to go and tell anyone. Neither do I aspire a patent on truth, let the various religions bicker about that among them. When three dog's fight for a bone..
Of course I will also keep shaking the religious tree. So far, no nuts have fallen on my head, although undoubtedly some readers will dare to disagree ;)
I'd like to operate in rough lines along the Hegelian principle, which is a process defined by the German philosopher Hegel, to produce oneness in mind through three sub-processes:
1)Thesis: to take a certain view or opinion on a subject.
2)Antithesis: to oppose to the former and critically evaluate it.
3)Synthesis: to merge the results of the former two steps and come to a new thesis.
With step 3 we have thus come to a new thesis which can then be subject to the same process. In theory, by going through these steps and subjecting ones thoughts to an internal evolution, oneness in mind is achieved. One could say it is just an effective way to keep an (aspiring) philosopher off the street and in his comfortable armchair. May be, but at least during the time he doesn't find the oneness he looks for, he isn't a nuisance to anyone :)
Just to give a more practical hands-on idea of what I mean, we could discuss the topic of killing humans:
1) Thesis: It's immoral to kill other humans
2) Antithesis: It's moral to kill (other humans) in self-defence or as capital punishment
3) Synthesis: It's immoral to kill except in cases of self-defence or capital punishment.
The principles of self-defence or capital punishment can then be subjected to another instance of the process, in which we look on the morality of capital punishment. And so on and so forth.
Let's see if we can apply this process to the existence of God...
Sunday, 28 December 2008
Doubt the deity
Now that I established some ideas about where our sense of spiritual belief comes from and how it translates into religion, I want to move on and start to shake the religious tree. I'm well aware that, as a result of this, some nuts may fall out. So let's hope none of them land on my head!
First thing I'd like to tackle is the existence of multiple monotheism's. I limit myself to the three monotheism's most familiar to me: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. All three of these exclude the other by saying that they are the only true religion. As each religion excludes the other two religions, each of the three religions are excluded by the two others. It's always two against one. In other words, none of them can be true!
There is a simple and amusing analogy to this. Many of us believed in Santa Claus at some stage of our lives. Now if you place yourself back in that stage of life and imagine you meet 3 men perfectly dressed up as Santa Claus. All three are telling you that they are the only real Santa Claus and the other two are just fakes. They start arguing about who is the real Santa and pulling at each others beards, which inevitably come off and unmask the Santa's as fake. For any small child that believes in Santa Claus this would be a disaster, for all those Santa clauses are obviously fake!
So who will bring the presents? Oh yes, the presents, how could I forget? As many children live through the year they try to behave so at Christmas they are getting presents from Santa Claus. Adults (religious ones) live through their years hoping that at the end of their lives they get the ultimate present from their deity: life after death. Oh, and absolution from their sins of course. To reach this ultimate goal, they let their deity rule their lives by means of an authoritative system of theology: religion. Religious leaders are the self-appointed ground-personnel of their deity and repent (did I say repent? sorry, I meant represent) him on earth. The catholics took this the farthest with their hierarchical structure on top of which they have the pope: a true godfather of religion. The line between organised crime (mafia) and organised belief (religion) is indeed very thin. Both have an insatiable hunger for money and power. Both are strictly organized to manipulate and dominate their subjects. And neither hesitate to kill for a 'higher cause'. We saw this in the crusades of the middle ages, and now we see it again in the 'war against terror'. It seems to me that the more fanatic one lives to the rules made up and imposed by religion, the further he is actually away from his deity!
If there really is an 'intelligent creator' then this is such a complex being, or concept of being, that we humans would not be able to understand it. Think about the ant heap. It's a little micro-cosmos within the world, full of ants doing their thing. They don't care about us humans, our technology, our culture or economics, because they are too simple for this. They might be aware of a human species when one of them destroys their ant heap, and how knows how they explain such a phenomenon among themselves. They probably don't, but instead try to rebuild their micro-cosmos as soon as they can. And once they did, they continue living their ant life without bothering anyone else. They have their very own purpose in the universe, of which they probably aren't aware, and fullfill this purpose perfectly.
Of course us humans are a lot more complex than ants, but so is the world we live in. As a result of our intelligence and awareness, we seek to understand the complexity of this world. Maybe if we connect all human brains together (like a clustered supercomputer) we will eventually unravel this mystery. Or maybe we need another phase of evolution before our brains have enough capacity for this? With the help of science, we have answered a lot of questions that religious institutions claimed to have a patented answer to. Hopefully there will be more and more of our questions answered in a scientific way which is acceptable to all religions and all people. As long as we don't understand it, we have to be satisfied with a more or less educated guess. It would be sad if we as a human species destroy ourselves and the world we live in because we make war against people who make that educated guess in a slightly different way.
Maybe if we would see the purpose of the human species to unravel the mystery it actually is, and if we could somehow work together to achieve this goal, we would actually get somewhere. Maybe not to heaven, or to hell, but to a state of one-ness with ourselves and the world around us. As long as we haven't achieved this, let's take an example from the ants and lead our lives without bothering each other in the progress.
First thing I'd like to tackle is the existence of multiple monotheism's. I limit myself to the three monotheism's most familiar to me: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. All three of these exclude the other by saying that they are the only true religion. As each religion excludes the other two religions, each of the three religions are excluded by the two others. It's always two against one. In other words, none of them can be true!
There is a simple and amusing analogy to this. Many of us believed in Santa Claus at some stage of our lives. Now if you place yourself back in that stage of life and imagine you meet 3 men perfectly dressed up as Santa Claus. All three are telling you that they are the only real Santa Claus and the other two are just fakes. They start arguing about who is the real Santa and pulling at each others beards, which inevitably come off and unmask the Santa's as fake. For any small child that believes in Santa Claus this would be a disaster, for all those Santa clauses are obviously fake!
So who will bring the presents? Oh yes, the presents, how could I forget? As many children live through the year they try to behave so at Christmas they are getting presents from Santa Claus. Adults (religious ones) live through their years hoping that at the end of their lives they get the ultimate present from their deity: life after death. Oh, and absolution from their sins of course. To reach this ultimate goal, they let their deity rule their lives by means of an authoritative system of theology: religion. Religious leaders are the self-appointed ground-personnel of their deity and repent (did I say repent? sorry, I meant represent) him on earth. The catholics took this the farthest with their hierarchical structure on top of which they have the pope: a true godfather of religion. The line between organised crime (mafia) and organised belief (religion) is indeed very thin. Both have an insatiable hunger for money and power. Both are strictly organized to manipulate and dominate their subjects. And neither hesitate to kill for a 'higher cause'. We saw this in the crusades of the middle ages, and now we see it again in the 'war against terror'. It seems to me that the more fanatic one lives to the rules made up and imposed by religion, the further he is actually away from his deity!
If there really is an 'intelligent creator' then this is such a complex being, or concept of being, that we humans would not be able to understand it. Think about the ant heap. It's a little micro-cosmos within the world, full of ants doing their thing. They don't care about us humans, our technology, our culture or economics, because they are too simple for this. They might be aware of a human species when one of them destroys their ant heap, and how knows how they explain such a phenomenon among themselves. They probably don't, but instead try to rebuild their micro-cosmos as soon as they can. And once they did, they continue living their ant life without bothering anyone else. They have their very own purpose in the universe, of which they probably aren't aware, and fullfill this purpose perfectly.
Of course us humans are a lot more complex than ants, but so is the world we live in. As a result of our intelligence and awareness, we seek to understand the complexity of this world. Maybe if we connect all human brains together (like a clustered supercomputer) we will eventually unravel this mystery. Or maybe we need another phase of evolution before our brains have enough capacity for this? With the help of science, we have answered a lot of questions that religious institutions claimed to have a patented answer to. Hopefully there will be more and more of our questions answered in a scientific way which is acceptable to all religions and all people. As long as we don't understand it, we have to be satisfied with a more or less educated guess. It would be sad if we as a human species destroy ourselves and the world we live in because we make war against people who make that educated guess in a slightly different way.
Maybe if we would see the purpose of the human species to unravel the mystery it actually is, and if we could somehow work together to achieve this goal, we would actually get somewhere. Maybe not to heaven, or to hell, but to a state of one-ness with ourselves and the world around us. As long as we haven't achieved this, let's take an example from the ants and lead our lives without bothering each other in the progress.
Saturday, 27 December 2008
Neurotheology
Following my post from yesterday about spiritual emotions, I want to go further on this unintended side track a bit and make a first visit to science.
Neurotheology [1] is a relatively new branch of neurology that concerns itself with the connection between subjective spiritual experiences and activity in the brain.
In a nutshell, neurotheology concerns itself with two things. One is the observation of brain activity during spiritual experiences of a human. The other is to artificially induce spiritual experiences in humans. Both have been done.
The Canadian Dr. Persinger is a pioneer in this field, which started with the research of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE). People who suffer from TLE often have spiritual experiences during their seizures. From this idea he started to research if there is a kind of 'God Spot' in the brain; a region with heightened activity during spiritual experiences that may be responsible for the same.
The first connection between the temporal lobe and religious experience was made in a research on TLE. A control group and a group of TLE patients were subjected to sets of words. Some groups of words were sexually oriented, some groups were religious and some neutral. The control group reacted mostly to sexual words, but TLE patients reacted stronger to religious words than to sexual words.
Another experiment by Dr Persinger was with a special helmet which induces a magnetic field on the temporal lobes. With it, he can create spiritual experiences in humans! A sense of 'not being alone' was reported in 80% of Dr Persingers test persons, of which a subset described this sense being a spiritual sensation. Famously, Richard Dawkins did not have any spiritual sensation in the experiment. I have also read about other experiments, which successfully incurred a feeling of 'leaving the body' by magnetically influencing certain brain areas. The test-person felt that she left her body and hovered over it, but once the magnetic field was switched off this condition ended immediately. The person described this as very similar to a near-death experience she had.
This makes one think whether or not some religious persons in history also had TLE, and religious experiences of for example Moses and Mohamed might have been seizures? It is impossible to prove without examining their brain structure, which is obviously not an option. But there is the case of a woman Called Ellen White, who started having seizures due to TLE after she was hit on the head by a stone. During these seizures she had spiritual experiences, following which she founded the Seventh Day Adventist Movement. Of course the movement itself resolutely denies Ellen White's experience to be based on epilepsy, because where would they stand if they didn't deny this?
Another experiment by Dr Newberg of the university of Pennsylvania, proves that people who are in a state of prayer or deep meditation, have certain very specific (measurable!) brain activities going on, which also suggests that spiritual feelings are somehow a creation of the brain. Whether these brain activities are created by the prayer or are a sign of God is a question, whose answer depends on whether you believe there is a God that could do such a thing.
There is actually a lot more to this subject, and I invite anyone who is interested to visit the following links for further reading. Link nr. 2 is a transcript from a BBC radio program about the subject, while link 3 is an article about the same subject by "Religion and Ethics weekly", a strongly religious tinted TV-programme. Just so you can't say I'm giving one-sided links ;)
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotheology
2: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/godonbraintrans.shtml
3: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week510/cover.html
Neurotheology [1] is a relatively new branch of neurology that concerns itself with the connection between subjective spiritual experiences and activity in the brain.
In a nutshell, neurotheology concerns itself with two things. One is the observation of brain activity during spiritual experiences of a human. The other is to artificially induce spiritual experiences in humans. Both have been done.
The Canadian Dr. Persinger is a pioneer in this field, which started with the research of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE). People who suffer from TLE often have spiritual experiences during their seizures. From this idea he started to research if there is a kind of 'God Spot' in the brain; a region with heightened activity during spiritual experiences that may be responsible for the same.
The first connection between the temporal lobe and religious experience was made in a research on TLE. A control group and a group of TLE patients were subjected to sets of words. Some groups of words were sexually oriented, some groups were religious and some neutral. The control group reacted mostly to sexual words, but TLE patients reacted stronger to religious words than to sexual words.
Another experiment by Dr Persinger was with a special helmet which induces a magnetic field on the temporal lobes. With it, he can create spiritual experiences in humans! A sense of 'not being alone' was reported in 80% of Dr Persingers test persons, of which a subset described this sense being a spiritual sensation. Famously, Richard Dawkins did not have any spiritual sensation in the experiment. I have also read about other experiments, which successfully incurred a feeling of 'leaving the body' by magnetically influencing certain brain areas. The test-person felt that she left her body and hovered over it, but once the magnetic field was switched off this condition ended immediately. The person described this as very similar to a near-death experience she had.
This makes one think whether or not some religious persons in history also had TLE, and religious experiences of for example Moses and Mohamed might have been seizures? It is impossible to prove without examining their brain structure, which is obviously not an option. But there is the case of a woman Called Ellen White, who started having seizures due to TLE after she was hit on the head by a stone. During these seizures she had spiritual experiences, following which she founded the Seventh Day Adventist Movement. Of course the movement itself resolutely denies Ellen White's experience to be based on epilepsy, because where would they stand if they didn't deny this?
Another experiment by Dr Newberg of the university of Pennsylvania, proves that people who are in a state of prayer or deep meditation, have certain very specific (measurable!) brain activities going on, which also suggests that spiritual feelings are somehow a creation of the brain. Whether these brain activities are created by the prayer or are a sign of God is a question, whose answer depends on whether you believe there is a God that could do such a thing.
There is actually a lot more to this subject, and I invite anyone who is interested to visit the following links for further reading. Link nr. 2 is a transcript from a BBC radio program about the subject, while link 3 is an article about the same subject by "Religion and Ethics weekly", a strongly religious tinted TV-programme. Just so you can't say I'm giving one-sided links ;)
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotheology
2: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/godonbraintrans.shtml
3: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week510/cover.html
Friday, 26 December 2008
on spiritual emotion
In my last post I gave some reasons why we as a species have a spiritual 'emotion' and how this manifests itself in religion, which in turn satisfies this emotion. Catalysing the last post in one single sentence made me think about religion in another way, namely that we as a human created religion to satisfy our emotion. Just in the same way that we create food to satisfy our hunger and have sex to satisfy our desire. I know we are actually having sex to procreate, but people who have sex only as a means to procreate are a rare and frustrated species. But that's just a remark in between.
Back to the point I wanted to make, which is that religion is man-made. Seen from the perspective of satisfying an emotion,religion is self-indulgence. Humans as well as animals are guided by their emotions and their longing to satisfy them. Hunger and lust are easy to satisfy by eating and copulating. The spiritual emotion is much more complicated because it makes us seek answers to things we cannot grasp ourselves, like where we come from and how everything around us came into existence. I don't believe our system of morality is due to this emotion, as you can have a system of ethics without religion. Religions just picked up on ethics as a by-product. A bit like the video-shop next door that also sells crisps and fizzy drinks.
In the early stages of man-kind, people would worship the sun or trees to satisfy this emotion. They didn't know as much as we do now about physics and chemistry and such, and thought they could make a rain-dance to get some rain for their crops, for example. Or they took a thunderstorm as a sign of their 'god' being angry with them.
Then when more and more people lived on this planet and started living together, they started to look for answers together. That's where the big religions came in, and as the amount of followers grew, so did the power of the religions. It wasn't long until religious leaders realised how much power they had over believers who sought to satisfy their spiritual emotions, and started to feed them with dogma that conveniently fitted into the religions' hunger for power. As long as the believers' emotion was satisfied they could feed almost anything they wanted to the people, and make them do all kinds of things. Both good and bad. And sooner or later the church was the state. In some countries it still is, and we can see this spiritual emotion (which initially was meant to be an evolutionary advantage) has actually become an evolutionary disadvantage.
Another thing that I find amusing to notice in believers, and which strengthens my opinion that spiritual belief stems from emotions, is that believers can get very excited when you discuss religious topics with them. The stronger the emotion and passion about their religion, the easier they get 'worked up' about it. I have met very reasonable and highly educated people with whom at one moment you can discuss with them about the weather or politics and they are perfectly fine. But start telling them anything blasphemous and it's like opening a flood gate. They are so overwhelmed by their spiritual emotion that their sense of practical reasoning gets a kick in the balls. That's why it's so hard to de-convert people, and why this blog is not an attempt to do so. Once their environment has taken hold of their spiritual emotion, they will hardly ever step away from it.
Unfortunately, having an emotional feeling about something does not constitute for a proof of existence, it doesn't decide about whether something exists or not. Neither does a logical conclusion about something decide about the existence of the thing itself. We can make up a conclusion, but the validity of that conclusion has to be proven in reality.
If I feel that something exists (e.g. martians) that doesn't mean there are people from mars. As long as there is no proof for martians, rational thinking forces us to assume they don't. We can say that there was water on mars and therefore martians may exist, but so far no martians were seen. They either left, died out or never existed. They may exist in my head, but then it is another form of existence than what the religions are about. I don't doubt that God exists in the head of Christians for example, but in their heads! And there only!
Back to the point I wanted to make, which is that religion is man-made. Seen from the perspective of satisfying an emotion,religion is self-indulgence. Humans as well as animals are guided by their emotions and their longing to satisfy them. Hunger and lust are easy to satisfy by eating and copulating. The spiritual emotion is much more complicated because it makes us seek answers to things we cannot grasp ourselves, like where we come from and how everything around us came into existence. I don't believe our system of morality is due to this emotion, as you can have a system of ethics without religion. Religions just picked up on ethics as a by-product. A bit like the video-shop next door that also sells crisps and fizzy drinks.
In the early stages of man-kind, people would worship the sun or trees to satisfy this emotion. They didn't know as much as we do now about physics and chemistry and such, and thought they could make a rain-dance to get some rain for their crops, for example. Or they took a thunderstorm as a sign of their 'god' being angry with them.
Then when more and more people lived on this planet and started living together, they started to look for answers together. That's where the big religions came in, and as the amount of followers grew, so did the power of the religions. It wasn't long until religious leaders realised how much power they had over believers who sought to satisfy their spiritual emotions, and started to feed them with dogma that conveniently fitted into the religions' hunger for power. As long as the believers' emotion was satisfied they could feed almost anything they wanted to the people, and make them do all kinds of things. Both good and bad. And sooner or later the church was the state. In some countries it still is, and we can see this spiritual emotion (which initially was meant to be an evolutionary advantage) has actually become an evolutionary disadvantage.
Another thing that I find amusing to notice in believers, and which strengthens my opinion that spiritual belief stems from emotions, is that believers can get very excited when you discuss religious topics with them. The stronger the emotion and passion about their religion, the easier they get 'worked up' about it. I have met very reasonable and highly educated people with whom at one moment you can discuss with them about the weather or politics and they are perfectly fine. But start telling them anything blasphemous and it's like opening a flood gate. They are so overwhelmed by their spiritual emotion that their sense of practical reasoning gets a kick in the balls. That's why it's so hard to de-convert people, and why this blog is not an attempt to do so. Once their environment has taken hold of their spiritual emotion, they will hardly ever step away from it.
Unfortunately, having an emotional feeling about something does not constitute for a proof of existence, it doesn't decide about whether something exists or not. Neither does a logical conclusion about something decide about the existence of the thing itself. We can make up a conclusion, but the validity of that conclusion has to be proven in reality.
If I feel that something exists (e.g. martians) that doesn't mean there are people from mars. As long as there is no proof for martians, rational thinking forces us to assume they don't. We can say that there was water on mars and therefore martians may exist, but so far no martians were seen. They either left, died out or never existed. They may exist in my head, but then it is another form of existence than what the religions are about. I don't doubt that God exists in the head of Christians for example, but in their heads! And there only!
Wednesday, 24 December 2008
Reasons for Religion
It is useful to realize where religion has come from and why we have it. Where does the human need for spiritual belief come from?
I say, it is an acquired need. Acquired as a species throughout the centuries, and acquired as an individual within our society. Let me explain..
Depending on the society in which we grow up, the concept of religion is more or less spoon-fed from when we are little. The right for freedom of religion which is constitutionalized in many developed countries is therefore a right not applicable to children. Religion is forced upon them by their parents and environment at an age where they are not mentally developed to come to their own conclusions. But the matter of freedom of religion will be discussed more in-depth in a future blog entry, as it's a topic on it's own.
The need for spiritual belief is a very old one, stemming from an age where humans lived in groups of hunter-gatherers. Probably even longer before. Without digging to deep I'd say it has arisen somewhere in the evolution between monkey's and humans. As far as we can scientifically know, the need and presence of spiritual belief is reserved for human beings. It cannot be ruled out that monkeys or even our pets have it, but we have no scientific way to find out due to lack of effective communication.
As with everything in evolution, there must have been a certain need for spirituality to develop. Now, when humans initially lived together in tribes of hunter-gatherers, there was a strong need for social cohesion. There are several 'emotions' that help with this social cohesion.
One of them is aggression, which was needed to fend off intruders (human and otherwise) and protect the tribe.
Another was discrimination, the feeling that people from other tribes are no good, which serves the same purpose of keeping the tribe together.
Last but not least we have the social cohesion of a common deity, and all the rituals that come with it, which stem from that spiritual emotion. If a certain group has a common set of beliefs and rituals that come with it, this serves social cohesion very well. We still see this today where people from various cultures in the middle east, Africa and Europe feel a sort of bond just because of their common deity and all the rituals it entails. Language and food are other factors that benefit social cohesion.
Looking at the above one could come to the conclusion that spirituality, like aggression, discrimination and also love, can be seen as an emotion. Yes it can be seen that way.
And depending on the social context and strength of the spiritual emotion this surfaces as some form of religion. The former sentence has severe implications, specially the words social context. What I mean by that is explained with the following example.
Say we take a young child (not yet able to speak or understand spoken word) from the middle east and place him in Texas. The chances of this kid becoming a Muslim is very small, because the social context he is placed in will most likely make him a christian. Of course, his new parents may raise him without religion and at a later point he may choose some religion as it suits him. But even if his parents don't raise him that way, his environment has a very strong christian backdrop and it will inevitably influence him in that direction.
So now we have established the evolutionary reason for a spiritual emotion in ourselves, what further purpose brings this to us?
All religions that I know off have some concept about life after death. This is a big topic that deserves it's own post, which it will get. But the fact that religions make this promise to people make them popular. It is hard for a person to find peace with the fact that after one's death there will be nothing. It is the big unknown, because nobody has come back from death. Yet it is a universal thing in life, we all die. If we wouldn't die, we wouldn't be alive, because one doesn't go without the other. Religion provides consolation for death more than for anything else. Not only to the dying, but also the ones surviving a loved one. The fact that a loved one is still "alive" somewhere in heaven can be very consoling if you believe it. Life after death and consolation are two things almost every human being asks for in some stage of their life, and many find the answer in religion.
So here we have two things that people look for in their lives and which are provided by the established authoritative systems of theology.
Another thing is leadership. People need leadership, and in the case where they look for spiritual leadership they turn to religion. Or whiskey.
This religious leadership often comes in form of ethical guidelines. Rules on how to behave morally so to say. The ten commandments are probably the most well-known. They are so general that they can't really be attributed to just one religion, but to believers and non-believers. Having said that: the commandment of not serving any other god than the christian god does obviously not apply to atheists. Now we have arrived at the ethical issue of religion, which is only to be mentioned here as it needs more than one blog-post on its own!
Last but not least: people turn to religion to get an explanation for things they cannot understand. It is hard for human beings to accept that they don't understand certain things, so they seek for answers. Where logic and experience fall short, there is an intellectual vacuum which can be filled with religion. Thus religion provided answers to scientific questions for many centuries. Truth is, that people have believed a lot of strange things. That the earth is flat for example, and that the sun turns around it. Science has solved a lot of mysteries and somehow demystified the world we live in. This is also one of the reasons that religion is slowly on it's way out. I am fairly confident that in the long term, we can find the answer to all questions and make religion obsolete as a means of explaining the unexplainable. The law of Murphy dictates this: anything that can happen, will happen sooner or later!
Looking back at all this, religion seems to be a solution for quite a few things, and gives an answer to quite a few questions that we all struggle with. It seems quite a task to set it apart, throw it out through a stained-glass window, and replace it with something else. A lot of people would probably say "don't try this at home! it will go horribly wrong!". Which it has: some of the most terrifying totalitarian regimes were atheist ones. Albeit not because they were atheist, but because they didn't have a proper replacement for what they tried to abolish, most of all a moral code.
So establishing a non-spiritual alternative for what the religions provide us seems to be quite a challenge. One that I gladly accept!
I say, it is an acquired need. Acquired as a species throughout the centuries, and acquired as an individual within our society. Let me explain..
Depending on the society in which we grow up, the concept of religion is more or less spoon-fed from when we are little. The right for freedom of religion which is constitutionalized in many developed countries is therefore a right not applicable to children. Religion is forced upon them by their parents and environment at an age where they are not mentally developed to come to their own conclusions. But the matter of freedom of religion will be discussed more in-depth in a future blog entry, as it's a topic on it's own.
The need for spiritual belief is a very old one, stemming from an age where humans lived in groups of hunter-gatherers. Probably even longer before. Without digging to deep I'd say it has arisen somewhere in the evolution between monkey's and humans. As far as we can scientifically know, the need and presence of spiritual belief is reserved for human beings. It cannot be ruled out that monkeys or even our pets have it, but we have no scientific way to find out due to lack of effective communication.
As with everything in evolution, there must have been a certain need for spirituality to develop. Now, when humans initially lived together in tribes of hunter-gatherers, there was a strong need for social cohesion. There are several 'emotions' that help with this social cohesion.
One of them is aggression, which was needed to fend off intruders (human and otherwise) and protect the tribe.
Another was discrimination, the feeling that people from other tribes are no good, which serves the same purpose of keeping the tribe together.
Last but not least we have the social cohesion of a common deity, and all the rituals that come with it, which stem from that spiritual emotion. If a certain group has a common set of beliefs and rituals that come with it, this serves social cohesion very well. We still see this today where people from various cultures in the middle east, Africa and Europe feel a sort of bond just because of their common deity and all the rituals it entails. Language and food are other factors that benefit social cohesion.
Looking at the above one could come to the conclusion that spirituality, like aggression, discrimination and also love, can be seen as an emotion. Yes it can be seen that way.
And depending on the social context and strength of the spiritual emotion this surfaces as some form of religion. The former sentence has severe implications, specially the words social context. What I mean by that is explained with the following example.
Say we take a young child (not yet able to speak or understand spoken word) from the middle east and place him in Texas. The chances of this kid becoming a Muslim is very small, because the social context he is placed in will most likely make him a christian. Of course, his new parents may raise him without religion and at a later point he may choose some religion as it suits him. But even if his parents don't raise him that way, his environment has a very strong christian backdrop and it will inevitably influence him in that direction.
So now we have established the evolutionary reason for a spiritual emotion in ourselves, what further purpose brings this to us?
All religions that I know off have some concept about life after death. This is a big topic that deserves it's own post, which it will get. But the fact that religions make this promise to people make them popular. It is hard for a person to find peace with the fact that after one's death there will be nothing. It is the big unknown, because nobody has come back from death. Yet it is a universal thing in life, we all die. If we wouldn't die, we wouldn't be alive, because one doesn't go without the other. Religion provides consolation for death more than for anything else. Not only to the dying, but also the ones surviving a loved one. The fact that a loved one is still "alive" somewhere in heaven can be very consoling if you believe it. Life after death and consolation are two things almost every human being asks for in some stage of their life, and many find the answer in religion.
So here we have two things that people look for in their lives and which are provided by the established authoritative systems of theology.
Another thing is leadership. People need leadership, and in the case where they look for spiritual leadership they turn to religion. Or whiskey.
This religious leadership often comes in form of ethical guidelines. Rules on how to behave morally so to say. The ten commandments are probably the most well-known. They are so general that they can't really be attributed to just one religion, but to believers and non-believers. Having said that: the commandment of not serving any other god than the christian god does obviously not apply to atheists. Now we have arrived at the ethical issue of religion, which is only to be mentioned here as it needs more than one blog-post on its own!
Last but not least: people turn to religion to get an explanation for things they cannot understand. It is hard for human beings to accept that they don't understand certain things, so they seek for answers. Where logic and experience fall short, there is an intellectual vacuum which can be filled with religion. Thus religion provided answers to scientific questions for many centuries. Truth is, that people have believed a lot of strange things. That the earth is flat for example, and that the sun turns around it. Science has solved a lot of mysteries and somehow demystified the world we live in. This is also one of the reasons that religion is slowly on it's way out. I am fairly confident that in the long term, we can find the answer to all questions and make religion obsolete as a means of explaining the unexplainable. The law of Murphy dictates this: anything that can happen, will happen sooner or later!
Looking back at all this, religion seems to be a solution for quite a few things, and gives an answer to quite a few questions that we all struggle with. It seems quite a task to set it apart, throw it out through a stained-glass window, and replace it with something else. A lot of people would probably say "don't try this at home! it will go horribly wrong!". Which it has: some of the most terrifying totalitarian regimes were atheist ones. Albeit not because they were atheist, but because they didn't have a proper replacement for what they tried to abolish, most of all a moral code.
So establishing a non-spiritual alternative for what the religions provide us seems to be quite a challenge. One that I gladly accept!
Monday, 22 December 2008
Introduction
A life without god? During advent? Well, I have not specifically chosen this time of the year to start my online meandering about an atheistic lifestyle, but it is something I have thought about for a while and now I finally decided to do something with the idea, to act upon it and put it out into the world.
The idea is (in a nutshell) to have a closer look at religion, how it influences our life, atheist or not, and then find out how to minimize that influence without doing harm to the environment we live in.
That is to say, to live without some of the traditions and values passed down to us by various religions (whichever you chose or was chosen for you) yet to still have the same, and living a good life. Good in the sense of being an honest, sincere, sociable person. In other words: the things that society expects us to be regardless of religious dogma.
That is not to say: categorically throw out all moral dogma because it stems from religion. You can be an atheist and still live by the ten commandments, or do charitable things. I think a lot of this blog will be about ethics because it is one of the few useful things given to us by religions. So living without religion means to define your own ethics, or at least find them someplace else.
This blog is not to begrudge anyone from their spirituality. Anyone has, at least in my opinion, the right to choose their own world view, that being a religious one or not is none of my concern. If you are reading this and you are a christian or a Muslim, then do not see this is as anything near an attempt to convert you or rob you of your religion. You may feel insulted or upset because the world view described here does not comply with your own, or even contradicts it. Please don't send me a bomb, but go within yourself and think about why this upsets or insults you.
Just to make this clear: none of what is and/or will be written here is meant to insult or upset anybody. But to some people even the hint of Allah not being so great or Jesus being a fairytale figure may be insulting. If this is stuff you cannot read without your feelings getting mixed up, navigate away from this page now.
If, however, you are an atheist, agnostic or open-minded believer, please read on. I hope you will find some inspiration and ideas. And please comment on my postings, so we can get some pro and cons.
PS: I wanted the url of this blog to be lifewithoutgod.blogspot.com but somebody already has a blog there which is not at all about a life without god. Then I momentarily thought about livewithoutgod.blogspot.com but didn't like the imperative nature of it. lifeaftergod.blogspot.com was another idea but it doesn't fully encompass what I want to say here. So it became Alifewithoutgod.blogspot.com
PPS: The subtitle of this blog is "and other random thoughts". What I mean by that is that I may sometimes throw in some interesting facts, ideas, poetry or whatever "food for thought" I seem fit for this blog but which is not directly related to the above.
The idea is (in a nutshell) to have a closer look at religion, how it influences our life, atheist or not, and then find out how to minimize that influence without doing harm to the environment we live in.
That is to say, to live without some of the traditions and values passed down to us by various religions (whichever you chose or was chosen for you) yet to still have the same, and living a good life. Good in the sense of being an honest, sincere, sociable person. In other words: the things that society expects us to be regardless of religious dogma.
That is not to say: categorically throw out all moral dogma because it stems from religion. You can be an atheist and still live by the ten commandments, or do charitable things. I think a lot of this blog will be about ethics because it is one of the few useful things given to us by religions. So living without religion means to define your own ethics, or at least find them someplace else.
This blog is not to begrudge anyone from their spirituality. Anyone has, at least in my opinion, the right to choose their own world view, that being a religious one or not is none of my concern. If you are reading this and you are a christian or a Muslim, then do not see this is as anything near an attempt to convert you or rob you of your religion. You may feel insulted or upset because the world view described here does not comply with your own, or even contradicts it. Please don't send me a bomb, but go within yourself and think about why this upsets or insults you.
Just to make this clear: none of what is and/or will be written here is meant to insult or upset anybody. But to some people even the hint of Allah not being so great or Jesus being a fairytale figure may be insulting. If this is stuff you cannot read without your feelings getting mixed up, navigate away from this page now.
If, however, you are an atheist, agnostic or open-minded believer, please read on. I hope you will find some inspiration and ideas. And please comment on my postings, so we can get some pro and cons.
PS: I wanted the url of this blog to be lifewithoutgod.blogspot.com but somebody already has a blog there which is not at all about a life without god. Then I momentarily thought about livewithoutgod.blogspot.com but didn't like the imperative nature of it. lifeaftergod.blogspot.com was another idea but it doesn't fully encompass what I want to say here. So it became Alifewithoutgod.blogspot.com
PPS: The subtitle of this blog is "and other random thoughts". What I mean by that is that I may sometimes throw in some interesting facts, ideas, poetry or whatever "food for thought" I seem fit for this blog but which is not directly related to the above.
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