Throw Jesus in the Volcano

(9 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

an evolutionary look at the questionable usefulness of deity

(crossposted from my blog, The Wild, Wild Left)

Photobucket

History is not proof positive of the Future.

Philosophers and thinkers often default to the models of the past, trying to counter that no society has had moral structure in the absence of deity, in fact, counter that all societies have had deities of sorts.

Religion is, in and of itself, an attempt by beings to explain the inexplicable. We no longer have to do rights and rituals to bring back the sun from the winter solstice, science has taught us that will happen in spite of our futile actions. We even know where the sun goes at night.

Crop failure or drought no longer are “assuaged” by beheadings on pyramids, altars of sacrificed sheep, nor throwing Joe in the volcano.

Evidently, religion itself has evolved to some extent in that way. So why, now the plateau? Why now, in some cases the regression? People to whom the God spake used to be institutionalized. Now they get a seat in Congress, if not the Presidency.

What fresh hell is this?  

It is oft-repeated that no morality can exist without Religion.

In evolutionary terms that may be true of our history, but is it true of our future?

Earth based religions valued sustainability as a means of survival, and instilled them by means of deity/worship. Polytheists saw a life-giving spirit in nearly everything that must be honored/appeased in order to, again, ensure the sustainability for their people.

Yet what is this, intrinsically but tribalism? “Make sure my people, my progeny survive in a World full of the inexplicable!” However, there have been models of this tribalism existing in the absence of deity, as studied by James Michener in “South Pacific.” A village was parent to all its children, no one owned them, and food, possessions, sexual bliss, and homes were shared by any and all of its number. There was no actual sense of ownership, just both duty and love of all, and the sense of responsibility to their environs to keep a sustainable stewardship, nay, symbiosis with their world.

Yet most other tribal peoples in our past relied heavily on one form or another of deity to both enforce this tribal-well-being behaviour and morality. Some were quite barbaric, others very pacifistic. We morally judge the former as hideous, and the latter as beautiful in this day. Why? Perhaps because as a people, we have evolved? Our religions evolved with us.

Our scientific observation and evolution in thinking have taught us that barbaric behaviours are not conducive to the propagation of the species, and are irrelevant to changing our external environment. No matter how you spin it, it comes down to that much. When does all rite become passe in our evolutionary movement?

We no longer throw Joe in the Volcano, but legions eat symbolic flesh of a sacrificed historical figure for salvation. Wow.

As populations grew, and competition grew for resources, humanity found itself relying less on tribal good, than power structures of those holding more assets ruling those who had less. The circle turned into a pyramid.

Naturally, deity too, turned toward mono-theistic and power structures with which to hand down the new asset of “salvation.” In this light, it is apparent that while humanity had moved forward in the branches of scientific reason, and devolved in the actual moral structure. People learned to exploit and create excesses for themselves by using or limiting the resources of others. Is not morality based on the greater good of all, and does this not show that theism is hindrance?

So, what morality exists outside of this new religion? Most of it.

The Judeo-Christian-Islamic premise is based on eternal guilt, and the denial of self that as many others have said is the perfect media in which to grow a complacent slave class. Again, it serves to explain the inexplicable: But now, the inexplicable was not where the sun went at night, but the general suffering of the people, people who are denied resources by the very power structures that created the organized religions who they serve.

“Why did my baby die?” is answered by some mysterious plan the deity has for us all, rather than the core issues of nutrition, clean water, and medical treatment afforded the elites.

Have we not evolved enough to see this? There is little inexplicable in the face of disease exists and accidents happen, and nature has powerful cycles. In fact, pollution, disease and poverty is readily explicable by the very structure of the ruling elite and the capitalist structure. Even in terms of ecological disaster, there is enough supply to supplant a crop failure and ensure the survival of all, were we a moral society.

There will always be the poor,” is lie perpetuated by this theistic view. This view is as unscientific and backwards as wondering if the sun will return tomorrow. It is not inexplicable, nor is it inevitable.

It is opiate to prevent the evolution of the species from deity to morality.

We no longer throw Joe in the Volcano to make a better crop, we let Joe starve to death because the rich take all the crops and think it as natural as they thought their superstitious morality.

Is my personal morality subject to my Christian indoctrination? In part, yes. it is also countered by my environment, my ethnic heritage as passed by my genetic makers, my midwestern middle class societal position, my peers, my formal education and my self-education. It is a distillation of this potpourri I pass down to my own progeny.

So the question is not, “has a moral society ever existed in the absence of a deity,” but is thus:

“Is it not a natural progression for morality to surpass its superstitious theistic beginnings and for man to serve the species from a point of view of the entire tribe?”

We have had scientific evolution, but moral devolution.

Tribalism is not innately evil or immoral, especially in light that we are now scientific beings who know the for the perpetuation of the species, the tribe is global. In view of the ecological non-sustainability of the present system, it will become mandatory for our species to realize a sustainable system.

A moral system without deity, where evils happen to us not because the will and our helplessness against a god-given system; but evils happen due to the men who choose to perpetuate them.

War, famine, poverty all exist as the result of human hands in a deist world.

Peace, prosperity, sustainability must exist in a world where reason trumps deity, and moral choices are made naturally.

Its a natural progression from the Volcano, to the Jesus, to the Triumph of Man.

Its time to throw Jesus in the Volcano, right next to Allah, Yahweh and the rest.

Our time must be now.

14 comments

Skip to comment form

    • Diane G on September 3, 2009 at 16:23
      Author

    & thanks to Elian’s post on WWL for the brain fodder.

    yeah, probably not in my lifetime.

  1. I was rigorously raised in the Anglican Church, yet at puberty was allowed, by a very enlightened mother, to determine my own spiritual decisions, and directions. Many of the lessons I learned in Sunday School, and from the Preacher’s sermons were valid and profound. I would not be the moral person that I am now if it were not for those Sundays of being exposed to those teachings.

    However, the science classes I was being exposed to from that point in my life on, put the lie to the Story of Life as pronounced by the Church. The knowledge obtained from science enabled me to look at the Bible as parable, rather than fact. Once this was clear to me, any remaining (very little) guilt in respect to Original Sin went up in smoke.

    No, that smoke happened a few years later.

    However from that time on I was no longer concerned with being “saved”, I was no longer concerned with some old man in the clouds determining my future. Yet many of the moral imperatives I had learned still seemed to be valid, to my young mind.

    And at this point in my life, my sense of personal responsibility has me constantly (well pretty much) concerned with questions of my character faults and how to resolve them. If there is an after (this) life existence, it will only be known in certainty after this life.

    There is a body of literature devoted to re-incarnation that makes re-incarnation seem to have more sense to me than a one time existence. This due partially to my own experiences in recognizing physical locations, and in knowing “what is around the next corner”. Instantly knowing someone, with out any chance of having met him/her before, in this life, makes me think of re-incarnation. Also my understanding of the evolution of intelligence, which is understood only rudimentarily at this point by anyone, points me to an underlying intelligence in the cosmos.

    However, please don’t confuse an underlying belief in re-incarnation as looking for some authority to hold sway over me in any manner. I believe, first and foremost, that this a free will universe. There is, in MVHO, nobody or nothing to worship, nobody to appeal to, nobody to ask forgivance from. There are perhaps spirit guides that help us in subtle ways, yet in my belief system they are but beings that have progressed farther in a moral perspective than those that are physically incarnate, and are simply helping others in their respective lessons.

  2. the reverse. Can morality exist with religion. Deciding what is moral via a political hierarchy that uses a higher being outside oneself to lay down the laws that are interrupted by the priest’s is political power unconnected from morality.  Ancient tribal texts that explain the universe then and were used for survival are imposed as reality and morality in the now. ‘God is a concept by which we measure our pain.’

    Carl Sagan once said that the Hindu religion was the closest to explaing the universe, the Judo Christian religions are the worst as their deity is an out and out asshole, a patriarchal authoritarian from hell. Any religion may have at it’s core universal principles that all humans know, the morality that is written by our body, minds and spirits.

    For me organized religion is the most blasphemous of all political structures as it takes our humanity away and claims we have to atone and pay for sins we commit against a outside deity, instead of looking at the fact that we are all beings that are divine. Suffering codified as Gods plan and necessary for redemption is a concept that is easier to control people with as it takes the responsibility of being enlightened and moral out of the human realm. It places it in the hands of either an alien deity or another human who lays claim to the truth that we all own and are.

     

  3.  My DIL send me this, I think it great!

           The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid term.

           The answer by one student was so ‘profound’ that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, is why we now have the pleasure

           of enjoying it as well:

           Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

           Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle ‘s Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

           One student, however, wrote the following:

           

    First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

           Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle ‘s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

           This gives two possibilities:

           1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

           2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

           So which is it?

           If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, ‘It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,’ and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over! The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct……leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting ‘Oh my God.’

           THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+

     

  4. Jesus is, believe it or not, the most BENIGN version of this “not peace, but a sword” monstrosity.

    Monotheism began with Zoroastranism. Anyone who has read the flagellation-happy, sexist teachings of that warped worldview and who is familiar with how it morphed into Mithraism, Judaism, Islam and eventually Christianity would be glad to join with me in pulling out that entire poisonous plant at it’s cannibalistic, bloodthirsty roots.

    • RUKind on September 5, 2009 at 20:22

    The Ass-Holes equation states that for each billionaire removed from the population the CO2 level will be reduced by 0.01%. For each centi-milliornaire the CO2 level is reduced by 0.008% percent.

    Measure the CO2 level. Determine the correct level needed. Do the math. It’s really very simple.

    They use the Black-Scholes equation to lose (steal) all of our wealth. We can use the Ass-Holes equation to get it back and restore Nature to envirostasis.

    Shanti.

    • jamess on September 5, 2009 at 23:27

    many horrors have been done in the name of Power and Greed, too — NO Deity required!

    Such Horrors, tend to be done, by Horrible People.

    Throw them into the Volcano, if you wish,

    that is if, you can sort out “the Good from the Bad”?

    And if we truly have no spiritual component, no Souls,

    then Throw ALL Religions, into the Volcano,

    and construct the scaffolding for Humanism,

    and all the ‘Value Metrics’ that would entail.

    But if we DO have that essence, beyond our atoms,

    then perhaps, those Spiritual aspects of Religion(s) does have relevance?

    Who can tell?  We can’t weigh the Soul — the confluence of instincts, passions, thoughts, and meaning? It seems to have an Existence all its own.

    and if it doesn’t, well a New belief system of Humanism, and Human Potential —

    will take a LOT of very well-meaning People, to reach its ultimate finish line. Let the construction commence …

    Thanks Diane W. for the thought-provoking and well-written essay.

Comments have been disabled.