On Religion

I am having a running battle with my nephew, who has become a bible basher, is doing religious studies and has decided that he has "let JC into his life" or some such.  I am rather disappointed with these developments for several reasons. I have never been religious minded myself and my parents also.  At school I used to come last in religion classes as I only ever wrote my name on the exam papers. My parents could not have cared less about this. It was the other subjects that mattered - though it did pull my average mark down a mite. My daughter is similarly inclined and opted to be Jewish at primary school because the food was better. We also at one time thought we had Jewish blood in us so this made some sense.  But this turned out to be a furphie (i.e. not true).  But that is another story.

In recent years I have become more aggressively anti religion because I believe religions have been responsible for incredible evilness in the world over the centuries - in the name of religion. Think of the Crusades, the religious wars in Europe, the Spanish Inquisition, extremist Islamic religions etc etc. I am a big fan of Richard Dawkins as a scientists and he has had a major impact on my thinking. I value his book The God Delusion.  This nicely turns the debate on its head.  Turning a scientific eye to the existence of religions.  And when you think about it it is very understandable.  Back then the world was a pretty strange and scary place.  There were monsters out there.  If the sun did not come up again the next day we were stuffed.  And what were all those twinkly things in the sky? And why did people die?  What happened to the person you knew when their body packed it in?  Scary stuff yet the people back then had more or less the same brains as us.  But they could not go to school or read a book and find out how and why things worked the way they did.  They had to make it up for themselves or listen to someone else.  And they did and some stories had more appeal and greater following.  Important and powerful people with ideas and claiming irrefutable truths.  If they had all this power and strength of belief they may be right. Or anyway it was prudent to go along with them.

And knowledge is power.  The Greeks and Romans had it in spades (and shovels, roads and bridges and philosophy too). But they had slaves and the downtrodden. Christian beliefs united the underdogs and help set them free mentally (the afterlife) and actually - the rose up.  Then there was darkness upon the earth. The thugs and barbarians took over and they could not read the Roman stuff. Except for the Arabs, thanks, for keeping all the Roman literature and knowledge alive and storing it for the future. But after the barbarians fought it out some big irrefutable ideas arose and united large numbers of people in the name of religion (in the West anyway). The Catholics arose and had big armies to ensure acceptance of their ideas.

They had the Greek and Roman knowledge in the books and stored them. But no one was allowed to read them.  The general populace could not read anyhow and did not understand Latin.  Imagine trotting along to church on Sundays and seeing all that stuff on display.  The statues, the gold, the terrifying pictures, the fine costumes, and the strange sermons in a language you did not speak.  The guys in charge must be better informed than me. And they tell me this too. And if I do not understand and do not go along I get into all sorts of trouble both here and now and hereafter.  So I do go along physically and mentally.

The ideas are rather clever and many are common sense rules for living with others in productive and mutually acceptable ways.  Do good not bad. Do unto others as you would be done by.  Follow the 10 big rules. All very sensible.  You don’t have schools and a legal system yet. Other beliefs are impossible to refute and cover up anything.  For example: "God works in mysterious ways" "It might be tough now but this is only practice for the next life" No evidence based reasoning here.  The only evidence is what a few books say (which one or more depends on your religion).  And they can be rather inconsistent and interpretable in various ways. But when only the few in charge can read it the official interpretation rules.

This serves humanity well in some way.  Keeps order.  Keeps the peasants from revolting.  Keeps some in luxury. But all hell brakes loose when someone translates the bible into languages people can speak and read. Then different interpretations arise and Protestants start to argue with Catholics, the Pilgrims get going and long periods of religious wars occur with much mayhem and pain.  And it continues to this very day.

Religion seems to suppress thinking rather aid it.  It drives it down dead ends and gets it caught up with angles on pinheads type arguments.  True thought about life, living and society is dangerous and to be avoided for the most part.  Focus on finding ideas to follow from the few main sources.  But even then there is room for variation.

To me science, evidence based reasoning and open transparent sharing and criticism of ideas is the new "religion".  It does not get you bogged down in dead ends. It evolves and evolves and grows unendingly. But more on that anon.  You cannot argue your way into believing you are "right" and have the right to kill those who do not believe as you do.  You cannot argue that "God" is on my side and every side make the same argument and justify mayhem and inhumanity in the name of humanity.

Oh well back to work.  I will tell you more of about my "discussions" with my nephew in a later blog.