(no subject)
The Balance of Atheism
Since the beginning of mankind, perhaps since the beginnings of our concious minds, man has had an internal desire for reason and understanding. This desire has manifested itself in many forms, including science, the arts, and philosophy. The one that has had the most impact on society and our culture however is philosophy, and more specifically religion. From the birth of recorded time, one can notice this trend. Starting with the developement of small communities came a need for order and stability. Without a system and code for people's actions to be weighed against, there would not have been society to begin with. Even with society however, people still had a need for explaining the unknown and what they did not understand. Even today you still are aware of folklore in many cultures and social groups. Thusly religion was, and still is an integral part of humanity. Religion became an essential aspect to our sense of identity as human beings. It always explained the huge question of our origins, and always gave us hope for the future. The future has, and always will be a frightening concept for the human being. It is rooted in the unknown, and anyone will notice what us humans do not know or understand has always spawned fear. Death is an inevitable part of everyone's future, and humans have always been aware of it. I do not know of one major religion that does not have a promise of life continuing in some fashion after death, and rightfully so. If we walked around on this earth concerned with the concept of ourselves eventually ceasing then how would we even do anything to survive. The world would be a hopeless exhistence and therefore religion was born, the problems with it still enduring today.
Let us look at the positive things religion has brought mankind first before revealing the problems it sows.
1. A moral standard for people to be judged against.
Before this moral standard, society could not single out people who oppress others and collectively do something to stop it. Without reprocutions for your actions, you are able to do as you please, whether it harms another person or not.
2. An ability to answer the questions that affect us so deeply.
Our beginnings an endings, why certain things in our environment occur, why there is drought and disaster. These questions man is always asking, and without answers we would be unproductive as a whole
3. The ability to pass wisdom to other generations through stories of example.
Manking needs to at least have the ability to warn future generations of past mistakes, regardless if the warnings will actually be heeded.
These main points I believe can be beneficial to any society and make it more productive and improve the lives of the people within it, although nothing works out strictly to its ideals.
Throughout the ages you can also point out another trend that is timeless and will never change. Power corrupts. A person will always look out for their self-interests more, and therefore power in the hands of any man will eventually live up to less than its ideal. Religion is and always has been used eventually as a method of control. It starts as a philosophy, and turns into a government. In the hands of men things have always ended up this way. Out of the monotheistic religions, which one hasn't eventually ended up in some form or fashion as a system of rule. Judaism, Islam, Catholicism, and Christianity. One can see their origins, and their results.
If you look across all the ages you will also notice a prevailing animosity between each "community's" doctrine. For some reason a culture's beliefs are always going to be imcompatible with that of anothers, my own opinions of that being due to human nature and the "us" and "them" mentality. This competition between societies has always been and always will be, and it will always permeate into religion regardless of how much it contradicts itself. Anything that can be used as a weapon will be done so.
These observations strongly support evidence that a god doesn't exhist. That religion is because of our denial with death, and is created in order to persuade people to accept their respective places in life. How else can this be more evident in christianity. This religion exalts the weak and the oppressed and gives them consolation with promise of a life after their miserable suffering on earth. It would seem to me that people who are rich and in power would like this idea very much so, and if you look at statistics, the most religious types of people are those who are of low incomes. In many places found in the bible, you will find teachings urging the importance of following the law and respecting their political leaders regardless of their actual rightiousness. If you analyze the 1000+ year reign of the holy roman catholic church, it is not hard to see that it was a government entity with taxes, laws, foreign policy, and motives for political gain. Does this not seem obvious like a method simply for control?
I however do not want to be as religion has always been and present an argument based solely on one side. I don't want to prove one side, and attempt to disprove the other. I also don't believe in black and white, good or bad, one or the other. I believe in polarity, as there are two sides, but there is also a middle that you can't ignore. In today's world there is a constant argument between the conflicting views of athiesm, and that of religion (more specifically monotheism). It is a great chasm which causes us to question and judge each other's integrity and intellect. Like always, conflicting doctrines are used as weapons against each other. Here however is another viewpoint upon religion which should be evaluated with similar care.
Let us presume that you are god, or perhaps just an all knowing entity with an infinite amount of power. Presume one day you become bored or lonely and decide it would be nice to have children to share your wealth with. You realize and understand that you cannot just create something that thinks similar to you and is aware of you, because their loyalty first off will be questionable. Like any child, they question their parents and rebel, eventually going off on their own seperate way. Instead, you decide to create a system in which your children have a choice, and where you can truly identify those who wish to be with you. In such a system you are able to determine who is genuine. This system has to be unbiased however, or else you will never truly be able tell. You create a perfect balance to everything, and make sure it is not completely obvious that you are behind it all.
Newton's third law of physics explains that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. We see this "balance" everywhere in the universe and it has been described by many religions and philosophies including taoism and buddhism. We also notice that matter is neither created nor destroyed, merely displaced. This also demonstrates balance within the universe. I am speculating that this balance permeates everything, including religion.
So now you have arguments that are for or against an afterlife, for or against exhistence of a supreme spirit or "spirits", and so on. If any one of these arguments were obviously true, then we still wouldn't be arguing them today, and yet we do. Everyone has a perspective on it, and every perspective makes perfect sense to each and every person who has it. The more that science reveals about our universe also doesn't solve the question. It may explain it more in depth, but the more we find out about things the more we also realize that we don't know. On a macroscopic level things get infinitely bigger and infinitely more complex, and conversely on the microscopic level. We find out that the earth is billions of years old, which is incongruent with many christian doctrines, but it still doesn't answer the question of its origin or that of life completely and concretely. DNA is incredibly complex, and you can argue that complexity has to come from a higher intelligence. yet on the other side you can also see how with infinite time, it is inevitable for something like such to happen eventually.
Perhaps, and just perhaps this perfect balance was placed here for a reason. So that one could decide on their own what they choose to believe. however theres always the other side of the coin...
Since the beginning of mankind, perhaps since the beginnings of our concious minds, man has had an internal desire for reason and understanding. This desire has manifested itself in many forms, including science, the arts, and philosophy. The one that has had the most impact on society and our culture however is philosophy, and more specifically religion. From the birth of recorded time, one can notice this trend. Starting with the developement of small communities came a need for order and stability. Without a system and code for people's actions to be weighed against, there would not have been society to begin with. Even with society however, people still had a need for explaining the unknown and what they did not understand. Even today you still are aware of folklore in many cultures and social groups. Thusly religion was, and still is an integral part of humanity. Religion became an essential aspect to our sense of identity as human beings. It always explained the huge question of our origins, and always gave us hope for the future. The future has, and always will be a frightening concept for the human being. It is rooted in the unknown, and anyone will notice what us humans do not know or understand has always spawned fear. Death is an inevitable part of everyone's future, and humans have always been aware of it. I do not know of one major religion that does not have a promise of life continuing in some fashion after death, and rightfully so. If we walked around on this earth concerned with the concept of ourselves eventually ceasing then how would we even do anything to survive. The world would be a hopeless exhistence and therefore religion was born, the problems with it still enduring today.
Let us look at the positive things religion has brought mankind first before revealing the problems it sows.
1. A moral standard for people to be judged against.
Before this moral standard, society could not single out people who oppress others and collectively do something to stop it. Without reprocutions for your actions, you are able to do as you please, whether it harms another person or not.
2. An ability to answer the questions that affect us so deeply.
Our beginnings an endings, why certain things in our environment occur, why there is drought and disaster. These questions man is always asking, and without answers we would be unproductive as a whole
3. The ability to pass wisdom to other generations through stories of example.
Manking needs to at least have the ability to warn future generations of past mistakes, regardless if the warnings will actually be heeded.
These main points I believe can be beneficial to any society and make it more productive and improve the lives of the people within it, although nothing works out strictly to its ideals.
Throughout the ages you can also point out another trend that is timeless and will never change. Power corrupts. A person will always look out for their self-interests more, and therefore power in the hands of any man will eventually live up to less than its ideal. Religion is and always has been used eventually as a method of control. It starts as a philosophy, and turns into a government. In the hands of men things have always ended up this way. Out of the monotheistic religions, which one hasn't eventually ended up in some form or fashion as a system of rule. Judaism, Islam, Catholicism, and Christianity. One can see their origins, and their results.
If you look across all the ages you will also notice a prevailing animosity between each "community's" doctrine. For some reason a culture's beliefs are always going to be imcompatible with that of anothers, my own opinions of that being due to human nature and the "us" and "them" mentality. This competition between societies has always been and always will be, and it will always permeate into religion regardless of how much it contradicts itself. Anything that can be used as a weapon will be done so.
These observations strongly support evidence that a god doesn't exhist. That religion is because of our denial with death, and is created in order to persuade people to accept their respective places in life. How else can this be more evident in christianity. This religion exalts the weak and the oppressed and gives them consolation with promise of a life after their miserable suffering on earth. It would seem to me that people who are rich and in power would like this idea very much so, and if you look at statistics, the most religious types of people are those who are of low incomes. In many places found in the bible, you will find teachings urging the importance of following the law and respecting their political leaders regardless of their actual rightiousness. If you analyze the 1000+ year reign of the holy roman catholic church, it is not hard to see that it was a government entity with taxes, laws, foreign policy, and motives for political gain. Does this not seem obvious like a method simply for control?
I however do not want to be as religion has always been and present an argument based solely on one side. I don't want to prove one side, and attempt to disprove the other. I also don't believe in black and white, good or bad, one or the other. I believe in polarity, as there are two sides, but there is also a middle that you can't ignore. In today's world there is a constant argument between the conflicting views of athiesm, and that of religion (more specifically monotheism). It is a great chasm which causes us to question and judge each other's integrity and intellect. Like always, conflicting doctrines are used as weapons against each other. Here however is another viewpoint upon religion which should be evaluated with similar care.
Let us presume that you are god, or perhaps just an all knowing entity with an infinite amount of power. Presume one day you become bored or lonely and decide it would be nice to have children to share your wealth with. You realize and understand that you cannot just create something that thinks similar to you and is aware of you, because their loyalty first off will be questionable. Like any child, they question their parents and rebel, eventually going off on their own seperate way. Instead, you decide to create a system in which your children have a choice, and where you can truly identify those who wish to be with you. In such a system you are able to determine who is genuine. This system has to be unbiased however, or else you will never truly be able tell. You create a perfect balance to everything, and make sure it is not completely obvious that you are behind it all.
Newton's third law of physics explains that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. We see this "balance" everywhere in the universe and it has been described by many religions and philosophies including taoism and buddhism. We also notice that matter is neither created nor destroyed, merely displaced. This also demonstrates balance within the universe. I am speculating that this balance permeates everything, including religion.
So now you have arguments that are for or against an afterlife, for or against exhistence of a supreme spirit or "spirits", and so on. If any one of these arguments were obviously true, then we still wouldn't be arguing them today, and yet we do. Everyone has a perspective on it, and every perspective makes perfect sense to each and every person who has it. The more that science reveals about our universe also doesn't solve the question. It may explain it more in depth, but the more we find out about things the more we also realize that we don't know. On a macroscopic level things get infinitely bigger and infinitely more complex, and conversely on the microscopic level. We find out that the earth is billions of years old, which is incongruent with many christian doctrines, but it still doesn't answer the question of its origin or that of life completely and concretely. DNA is incredibly complex, and you can argue that complexity has to come from a higher intelligence. yet on the other side you can also see how with infinite time, it is inevitable for something like such to happen eventually.
Perhaps, and just perhaps this perfect balance was placed here for a reason. So that one could decide on their own what they choose to believe. however theres always the other side of the coin...