Religion and I

=====I am often misunderstood in regards to what I feel and think about religion. I am not what one would call a staunch Atheist, nor do I "hate" religion. I have been told that my views, about a lot of things, are negative, spiteful and hateful. Granted, I see nothing wrong with the emotion of hate, as it was implanted in the mind of every creature by nature, and I believe that rational hate, as created by rational anger, has its place. However, I do not believe in any religion, and I think it's all ridiculous nonsense, but I don't hate it in and of itself. I hate what religion does.
=====Religion has no good side. Well, it has no good side that could not have existed without the religion. Kindness, compassion, love, and brotherliness predate religion -- probably humanity, too. Religion does not create these things, it doesn't make these things possible by existing, and it doesn't perpetuate these ideals by itself. It does, however, cause -- though not create -- prejudice, bloodshed, torture, murder, the retardation of all science, the retardation of social development, the waste of economical resources, the waste of land, the waste of building materials, the waste of time, and the waste of most general resources. All of the harmful situations it causes, merely by existing, outweigh whatever small and intangible good it may have done during its ten to twelve thousand year history.
=====The ways in which the existence and practice of religion has caused prejudice, bloodshed, torture, and murder are far too obvious, in my estimation, to waste time talking about in detail. Just look at the battles between the Irish Catholics and Protestants, the Indian Muslims and Hindus, or the Middle Eastern Jews and Muslims to learn more about that. If war for the sake of intangible nonsense doesn't satisfy you, read all you can about Gandhi's feelings toward the black population in South Africa, or how the Serfs were treated in Lama ruled Tibet-- religiously fueled caste systems are a nice example of these obvious pratfalls, too. I think, though, religion has done more damage to the planetary population, including all species, by purposefully retarding the development of science, technology, and rational thought.
=====War and hate predate religion, too. Don't get me wrong. But why do those two things exist? Well, there are a lot of reasons to fight a war. Most of those reasons have something to do with survival. For instance, if you are the leader of a tribe, or even a country, and you don't have enough land or food to take care of your subjects, you have to start trying to expand and attain means of survival. This might mean you have to try to take some of your neighbor's land. Maybe your neighbor has more fertile land, and you don't even have enough resources to last your people another year. In this case, you fight your neighbor for his soil, and possibly his horded resources. But, that neighbor might not have enough resource and land to share, and certainly isn't going to give up those hard earned assets without a conflict. These are rational reasons to fight -- it's base survival.
=====Base survival is why all creatures in the animal kingdom war. Religion has done little -- more like nothing -- to develop ways to prevent these kinds of situations from happening. Instead, religion makes it possible for the people of one tribe or country to justify their actions by deciding that they are the chosen people of God or gods, thus have a greater right to survival than the other tribe or country. It isn't hard to be the chosen people of a God or gods created within your own culture. With science and technology, forces of which religion stands in direct defiance, it is possible to develop ways to prevent these kinds of base survival confrontations from taking place. With different technologies in architecture, it is possible to develop and utilize new ways to efficiently distribute and use land; with different technologies in agriculture, it is possible to develop and utilize new methods to maximize crop harvests, selectively breed or alter plants so that they bear the optimum nutritional value while taking up the least amount of acreage; with different technologies in medicine, it is possible to develop and utilize new ways to heal illness, improve the quality and longevity of life, and learn more about nutrition and exercise. Technology cannot exist without science. In these, and many more, ways, science could help bring many rational and necessary human conflicts to an end, whereas religion can only mutate such conflicts into acts of emotional and cultural precedence.
=====Religion causes the retardation of scientific development in many ways. Throughout the years of all religions, not just Christianity, many scientific and medical fields of study have been randomly dubbed immoral or sacrilegious and consequently outlawed. This slowed the evolution and theoretical development of such fields to a crawl, or even a standstill, during many of the human races formative years. One can only speculate how much farther along, had the Dark Ages and the crusades not interfered with development for hundreds of successive years, our medical and scientific knowledge would be. It is possible to say that we could be at least two to three hundred years ahead of ourselves, had the world's greatest minds been allowed to come together and study all science during those times. Today, religion still makes it possible for people to want to fight against medical and scientific advance. Followers of religion have fought to make it illegal to develop many important fields: stem cell research, a potentially powerful tool that could be used to not only completely understand the human body and how it works, but to fight cancer and many other degenerative and genetic diseases; humane methods of euthanasia, which, for some people, is the only escape from a life of endless and hopeless agony; genetic engineering, a field that, again, could not only help us to understand the make up of all life on the planet, and thus help us to develop better medical techniques and medicines, but DOES allow us to grow crops, for the entire planet, that are more resilient, more bountiful, more manageable, and completely safe, which have already saved billions of lives across the globe. If the religious or otherwise fanatically idealistic minds of the world succeed, or would have succeeded in some cases, in stopping these fields of research, they would have been responsible, directly, for the murder of billions of people. Religion's ability to cause the retardation of scientific development is quite possibly its most dangerous liability.
=====The religious also seek to put an end to other fields of study, such as evolution. Evolution is the scientific model for the development of life on this planet. Some of the arguments against evolution are too ridiculous to go into with great detail, but if you'd still like to take a peek, look here and here. Amongst some of the arguments made by the religious against evolution are: "How can so much functional complexity exist in the world without an intelligent plan behind its creation and execution?"; "How can so many 'advanced (a word they love to misuse in an evolutionary context)' species have developed on our planet from just single celled organisms?"; "Evolution has no model for 'devolution (something they just decided exists),' so only religious Creationism can account for things like flightless birds, legless lizards, and unnecessary bodily organs, right?" The rebuttals to the arguments against evolution are all fairly simple or rationally simplistic.
=====The first argument, about how so much complexity can exist without an intelligent plan, comes from the religious Creationists' lack of understanding and study of evolutionary principal and theory. It is the understanding of these people that evolution is based on completely random variables. They don't understand, at all, the meaning of natural selection. Natural selection is the means by which some species survive over others and genetic differences develop in those species. Natural selection works very much the same was as selective breeding works in agriculture. However, in nature, the process is slowed a little. For example, if a farmer wants to make sure that he has a good herd every year, he will try to breed the biggest, strongest and healthiest animals he can to ensure that their offspring inherit these traits. Natural selection works the same way. Let's say that a species of animal, a pig perhaps, lives in an environment which is rapidly changing. The weather has gone from warmer weather to slightly colder weather, and new predators, with sharper teeth and claws than usual, have moved into the territory due to the climate changes. It will be the pigs of this species with the thicker layers of fat, predisposition for longer body hair, and thicker skin that will have the better chance of surviving into adult hood and mating with other members of its species that also had these tools of survival. Over as little as twenty generations, as it has been found, these slight genetic differences can become completely developed and perfected mutations. Over a few hundred generations, these mutations stabilize and the pig becomes a new species or subspecies. Other members of the species that did not have the predisposition for thicker blubber, longer hair, or thicker skin would have either been killed off or moved out of the area in search of a climate more like the one for which they are suited. Therefore, natural selection is not random at all, but simply a version of selective breeding brought on naturally by necessity and circumstance. In a sense, there is a plan, but there is no active intelligence behind it; the plan is for survival.
=====The second argument, about advanced forms of life coming from life forms that are but a single cell, is my personal favourite. Not only does it exhibit the Creationists' lack of study of the scientific theory that they are trying to disprove, but it exhibits their lack of perception of the world around them. Firstly, in this argument, Creationists ALWAYS misuse and misunderstand terms like "advanced" in an evolutionary context. "Advanced" is not something that is decided upon by a panel of human beings, scientists or clerics, and it is NOT relative to the genetic complexity of a species. "Advanced," as determined by the stand point of evolution, is based on the ability of a species to survive and to thrive. Secondly, the act of a complex organism evolving from a single celled organism is an event that happens all the time. In fact, we see the result of this event roughly two-hundred fifty thousand times a day, around the world. I am referencing, of course, to the conception, development, and birth of a child -- be it human or otherwise. If such a development can take place, over only nine months, inside the confined universe of an animal's body, why is it so difficult to understand how it could take place, over billions of years, inside the body of the true, infinite Universe? I don't understand that kind of reasoning; they just aren't trying to employ common sense.
=====The third argument is one invented entirely by the Creationists and has no bearing on anything remotely scientific -- evolution included. It is the concept of "devolution" within the context of the theory of evolution. This doesn't really exist, at least not in the way they think it does. An example of their argument can be found at the Answers in Genesis website, but I'll give a quick overview of it for the sake of this piece. According to the Creationists, if an animal has four legs, like a lizard, and at some point it "reverts" back to having no legs, similar to a snake, this is an instance of "devolution." In other words, they believe that the animal with four legs is "more advanced" than the animal with no legs. Again, as mentioned previously, that is not how one defines "advanced" in an evolutionary context. Most, if not all, snake species have "toes," located near the reproductive organs, that are used for various things. It is believed that these "toes" are the remnants of legs that have since evolved away. What the creationists are also missing in this example is the fact that all change in natural species is the result of adaptation and mutation. So, all change is considered "evolution," because whether the animal gains an organ or body part or loses one doesn't make any difference; it is adapting to a new environment in the most efficient way possible. It is quite possible that in a particular environment, or series of environments, that some species of lizard would find it easier to catch particular prey, move through particular terrains, escape particular predators, maintain body temperature, and/or swim without the use or need of legs, but, instead, with a stronger, larger body. So, over a few generations, the appendages get smaller and smaller, and their bodies get longer and stronger, as those are the generations that are most likely to survive and breed, until eventually the legs are gone and the body is a streamline, well articulated, powerful muscle. The loss of the legs is not "devolution," as the creationists believe, but evolution. In that particular environment, whatever it may be, that particular species of lizard is more apt to survive with no legs and a modified body, while other species of lizards may adapt in other ways that allow them to maintain their more lizard-like qualities in the same environment. Both resulting species are well adapted and evolved to survive and thrive in their environment, and neither is more "advanced" than the other, but they are both better suited to survive than was whatever animal from which they evolved. So, despite the Creationists' claims that a) devolution exists in the world, and b) the theory of evolution has no model for it, evolution does have a model for when a creature adapts to lose organs or appendages that have been rendered unnecessary by environmental change.
=====Such disregard for logic, science, and, as a result, humanity does tend to get me worked up. Not too much, though. I am in rare form when I am truly in a rage over anything. It does happen, though. It doesn't even have to be over something one might consider profound, and I am not ashamed or taken aback by my anger. I embrace it as one of the many gifts of emotion bestowed upon me by natural selection. But, despite my anger, to whatever degree I might experience it, I do not hate religion. I simply understand the lack of need for such a cultural device in this day in age. I also realize the hindrance that religion has become to the development of the world. I realize that, as long as people continue to give it the power, religion will continue to stall and retard the growth of science, culture and civilization, and I'd like to see that come to an end. I think its ok for people to practice, study, and appreciate religion -- as a belief structure -- in the privacy of their home or private club. I just don't think its ok for religion to be practiced, studied, or appreciated -- as a belief structure -- anywhere else.
=====I am not a staunch Atheist, because I have a few ideas about the origin of existence, and some of them do involve a "creator." However, I don't believe that such a creator would be particularly benevolent, omnipotent or supernatural. Instead, I think it would be intertwined with the very essence of nature and the cosmos. Perhaps, time, being necessary for any progress to take shape, would had to have been present before all other things; otherwise, all other things could not have progressed into being. So, perhaps time, being the first thing, created the means by which the rest of the universe came into formation. If something creates, it must be creative, and, in order to be creative, there must be some kind of intelligence at work. That is, of course, a very fanciful theory. It is less a theory, actually, and more a game of thought. I do not consider or label myself an Agnostic, because I think to do so would be to label myself indifferent. I can't fathom how someone could be wholly indifferent to the origins of the Universe, so I can't be an Agnostic; and, I do believe in the possibility of a natural, not supernatural or spirit-based, creator or god, so I am neither a true Atheist.

Pantheism and Taoism

=====I recently became interested in the ideologies that exist within Pantheism, and that research eventually led me to research Taoism. The two ideals are very similar, and they start out, on paper, as very good ideas. However, they both lose sight of some of their own ideals by creating "philosophies," "goals, "and "dogmas." I was enticed by some of the good ideas that can be found in both religions -- a term I am using loosely, though that is essentially what they are as they are suggestions for a way of life -- but ended up being turned off by the same nonsense one comes across in all of the better known religions.
=====The first wrench in the works is distributive organization. I don't really consider something a religion until it becomes organized and shared. That is to say, until more than one person is "striving" to achieve a goal or a principal of an ideology, I consider it to be one individual's natural state of mind. So, to me, the minute such an idea becomes shared, and a following grows, it ceases to be natural, because the only state of mind natural to a being is the one it knows on its own. The only ideologies natural to a person are the ones the person comes to on his or her own. In other words, how a person interprets and processes facts to perceive reality is their only true natural state of mind. The goals built from that perception are their only true natural goals. Those goals may not automatically include methods of suppressing certain emotions or actions. In this way, distributive organization pretty much destroys the "natural order" of any belief system.
=====Both Pantheism and Taoism are built around the idea that a natural order is sacred. Pantheism takes that a step further to say that the "Universe is divine." What they mean by that is that the Universe is the center and cause of all creation and being, and that, because we are all made of the same "star stuff," all things within it are eternally and invariably connected. That's an ideology I share almost to the word, so I was naturally drawn to read more about the ideology; however, the more I read, the more Pantheism went from a simple and unconditionally constructed ideology to a strict and well organized religion. The more pantheism read like a religion, the more it resembled Taoism.
=====There are very many versions of Pantheism, but they all seem to share the same tendency to embrace religious structure. Pantheisms various incarnations most often resemble preexistent Pagan religions and Taoism.
=====My problem with Pantheism and Taoism -- aside from my aforementioned problem with the contradictory 'dogma vs. natural perception' concept -- is the fact that they tend to be very flaky in nature and design. The American Heritage Dictionary defines flaky as "3. Slang Somewhat eccentric; odd," and that's basically what I mean, as well. More specifically, I think the two religions take basic scientific principals and nature and attach them to baseless spiritual fluff. If you claim that your "spirit" is "one with a tree," then you are no longer speaking my language, and you no longer exist within realms of physical science. If you say that your physical make up, as broken down into molecules and elements, connects you to a tree because it is made of all the same materials, and the matter that makes up those materials cannot be created or destroyed, so you are connected by means of your coexistence in the natural state of the Universe and the formation of the Galaxy, then I can appreciate that as a scientific and emotionally moving piece of information. When you start talking about elements of the super natural like "spirits" and "spiritual oneness," then you are removing yourself from a scientific, fact-based approach to understanding. I'm not saying that using flaky fluff to reach an understanding of the world around you is wrong or even unnatural to you; I'm just saying it isn't my thing.
=====Taoism goes much deeper into realms of spirituality, emotional suppression, and dogma. It is, in every sense, a religion. There are those that claim that it isn't a religion or a philosophy, but a way of life. That, of course, makes no conceptual sense, whatsoever. Religion is the means by which one gets people to follow and practice a philosophy. A philosophy is an idealized way of life. So, by that reasoning, to say "Taoism isn't a Religion or a Philosophy, but a way of life," you contradict yourself three times in the same sentence -- impressive, but not in the way I think the ideology is meant to be.
=====The contradictions that riddle both Pantheism and Taoism are so numerous and profound to the philosophies that one could say that the ideologies are basically founded upon them. Both religions call for a deep and necessary connection to nature, the earth, and the "natural order," in the same breath that they present to a practitioner the means by which the practitioner must work to achieving that connection. By telling a person to do something that they have to work to achieve, and so otherwise they would not be naturally inclined to do, you are asking them to fight against their own nature. An individual's nature, as defined by their individual perceptions, is already perpetuated and empowered by the "natural order"; otherwise, their perception wouldn't exist in the first place. With these kinds of contradictions at work, it is hard for me to lend any moral credit to either religion -- every good point is ultimately negated by the existence of dogma or elements of the supernatural.

Why I Am Smarter Than the Dalai Lama

=====Recently, someone posted a message to me regarding something possibly quoted by the Dalai Lama. The quote was "Suffering is a state of mind." This quote rather pisses me off. Now, while I could not actually find anywhere -- on the internet -- that the Dalai Lama had ever said this, I did find it sticking all over Buddhist websites and dogma like an unsightly mold.
=====One reason it pisses me off is that it makes no real sense, yet, obviously, there are people who understand this as a reality. It makes no sense because most suffering in the world, mental and physical, is a direct result of physical anguish. Be it starvation, exposure, or unjustifiable violence, some people in the world are forced to experience physical tortures every day of their lives. To say that suffering -- and in such general terms, clearly this means all suffering -- is a state of mind, is to be extremely insensitive and insulting to the daily struggles of these people.
=====For the most part, Buddhists -- well, those who are not forced to practice the religion by its regal monks -- are not impoverished people. Whether they are Tibetan practitioners, who, before China helped to straighten out the economy a little, ruled over the lands, forcing people into their religion and into slavery -- and forcing farmers and starving serfs to pay homage to their temples, Lamas, and monks by handing over 75 percent of all livestock, crops and possession -- while wallowing in lavish lifestyles complete with slaves, jewelry, precious stones, wealth, and unending supplies of clothing, food and warmth, or the modern day yuppie or hippie practitioner, who, in-between trips to the office and Whole Foods, spends thousands of dollars on unnecessary yoga classes, a good number of Buddhists do not live lives of poverty. I mention this to bring up this point: when you have everything you will ever need out of life, for probably the rest of your life, you probably don't know what it is to have no options available to you. So, these people have never actually known suffering. Suffering is three parts physical torture, one part economical hopelessness. Granted, Buddhists like to pretend that they live a life that does not require material possession and wealth, but when someone can show me the Buddhist who needs a cosigner for a car loan, doesn't go to a temple decorated in gold, or doesn't spend countless dollars on books, videos, and other objects in the pursuit of other aspects of the religion, I will stop thinking the entire belief structure is built on hypocrisy. Even Siddhartha Gautama was a prince. The whole religion was founded by the wealthy, and is used today, around the world, to feed the wealthy off the sweat of the poor under the guise of enlightenment and compassion.
=====I pick on Buddhism a lot. This is because -- for New Age goofballs and confused, easily misled college youths -- it is second only to Paganism as the favourite means by which people are made instantly "open minded," "wise," "unique," "cultured," and "spiritual." That, in and of itself, makes it obnoxious enough to draw my attention. There is also the fact that it is, indeed, founded entirely on hypocrisies and the awe-inspiringly ridiculous musings of kings. Thirdly, it is a religion. The fact that it is a religion -- a belief structure based on the stories inside some person's head -- automatically disqualifies it from any race of the profound or intellectual. Discussing Buddhism as one might any other Mythical fiction, like the story of Hercules or the Chinese unicorn the Chi Lin, is fine. It is even fine to draw a moral from some of the stories and anecdotes that make up the religion, like one might draw from Humpty Dumpty. We're talking about a set of dogmas and doctrines that claim that a person comes back to life as other creatures, directly (Please, save the disagreements. Some scholars say "yes" while others say "no." The view Buddhists have on reincarnation varies from discipline to discipline but also depends on who's reading the information or even who Guatama was talking to. Do not tell me that it's not a Buddhist belief, but a Hindu one. The Hindu understanding is often identical to the Buddhist understanding of reincarnation; so, don't fuck with me). To attempt to alter one's behaviour, or mindset, based on this kind of cosmic understanding not only defies nature and reason, but it defies the fragile state of the human psyche. The abilities to feel pain, be sad, and understand loss are all crucial to the survival of any animal, human beings included. If you switch those neurological programs off, which are handpicked by natural selection, you do not achieve a heighten state of being, you simply become less than yourself and less than a human being -- you become a machine. For that alone Buddhism should be ridiculed.
=====So, getting back to the philosophy that "suffering is a state of mind," basically what the Buddhist tradition offers the unfortunate masses of the world is the ability to become an unnatural machine that feels no pain. Once the pain is gone, there can be no more suffering. Well, no. Once the pain is gone, and you erase the concept of reason and understanding from your mind, so you don't realize that without economic stability you will eventually perish, then you will have no more suffering. In essence, if you become the living dead, then it wont matter that your life sucks and will probably end before its time.
I suppose that seems reasonable. It's not helpful in any way, but it does make grammatical sence -- that is, the words make sense together in a sentence. When taken off the page and applied to real life, it's fucking horrible and mind numbing.
=====Basically, these people -- the aforementioned goofballs and youths -- need to realize that there are no good religions. Every religion that still exists on the planet today still exists for a reason. It doesn't exist because it was all such a good idea. It exists because it was created or controlled by people powerful enough to force the ideals onto other people. In the case of Christianity, it was the Romans who rewrote Christianity to fit their preexisting concepts of power and honor. In the case of Buddhism, the thing was started by kings, and handed over to Lamas who ruled an entire country and forced the beliefs, through violence, onto their subjects. They're all just made up shit. None of them are useful beyond their merits as fiction.
=====Don't depend on stories solidifying abstract concepts to control your life, unless you made them up yourself. If you want to pretend that a giant purple dragon named Dingleslor flew out of the sun and vomited forth the planets and the creatures of the Earth after it tripped over the moon, you have my utmost respect and attention. But, for you to select one of the template belief structures as your own, you might as well let me sit down and write you a creation story, and accept that as your own. The ones available to you were made the same way. At least mine would be made with a mind that exists in the 21st century. I'm pretty good at it. I could make you a nice religion -- who doesn't like purple dragons?