By Brian Kellogg ~
I believe the title of this post really strikes at the core of religious belief. Humans, in general, so desperately want to believe that they either personally have magical power over a chaotic world or they have a god that can exercise such power for their benefit. It is a very traumatic event in one's life to honestly confront the fact that the Universe is wholly indifferent to us and is in fact quite chaotic and out of our control. The religious find comfort through the illusion of control and power afforded by their religion in much the same way superstitious fisherman or baseball players do with their good luck charms and other good luck rituals. I can understand and sympathize with this to a point.
We see such thinking often played out in disasters where one church is destroyed but another survives seemingly miraculously. The parishioners of the surviving building thank god for his goodness, but what of god's goodness for the parishioners of the other church? Well they say god works in mysterious ways and so on and so forth. We see the same circular reasoning employed in many other instances; sickness, job loss, ... . There is no rebuttal to this fallacious logic because those who employ it are not as concerned with truth as much as they are with emotional succor.
It is my sincere hope that humans can move beyond religion and especially messianic religions as these are terribly and intentionally divisive and contentious.It is my sincere hope that humans can move beyond religion and especially messianic religions as these are terribly and intentionally divisive and contentious. This will take considerable time and good fortune as this Universe is indifferent to our plight. I doubt I will be alive to see it. I don't expect a humanistic utopia to take hold some day where everyone always gets along, but I think we would be much better off without messianic religions especially.
When reviewing history I would be hard pressed to recognize anything else other than science and democracy that have contributed more to the betterment of the human species. Religion is not even close on this list. Now some would argue Christianity provided the fertile soil by which science and democracy have been nourished. This is not true and it is a very myopic view to hold especially when considering Chinese, Indian, and Muslim advances throughout the centuries among others. This gets into the whole untruth of the US being founded a christian nation. All I have to say to this is Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine; argument over. In fact I would argue religion, Christianity especially (dark ages through to now), has stunted our advancement considerably.
We need to get off this fragile blue spinning ball onto other fragile spinning balls to hedge our bets. Religion, for the most part, is an impediment to this most important of humanistic goals.
We see such thinking often played out in disasters where one church is destroyed but another survives seemingly miraculously. The parishioners of the surviving building thank god for his goodness, but what of god's goodness for the parishioners of the other church? Well they say god works in mysterious ways and so on and so forth. We see the same circular reasoning employed in many other instances; sickness, job loss, ... . There is no rebuttal to this fallacious logic because those who employ it are not as concerned with truth as much as they are with emotional succor.
It is my sincere hope that humans can move beyond religion and especially messianic religions as these are terribly and intentionally divisive and contentious.It is my sincere hope that humans can move beyond religion and especially messianic religions as these are terribly and intentionally divisive and contentious. This will take considerable time and good fortune as this Universe is indifferent to our plight. I doubt I will be alive to see it. I don't expect a humanistic utopia to take hold some day where everyone always gets along, but I think we would be much better off without messianic religions especially.
When reviewing history I would be hard pressed to recognize anything else other than science and democracy that have contributed more to the betterment of the human species. Religion is not even close on this list. Now some would argue Christianity provided the fertile soil by which science and democracy have been nourished. This is not true and it is a very myopic view to hold especially when considering Chinese, Indian, and Muslim advances throughout the centuries among others. This gets into the whole untruth of the US being founded a christian nation. All I have to say to this is Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine; argument over. In fact I would argue religion, Christianity especially (dark ages through to now), has stunted our advancement considerably.
We need to get off this fragile blue spinning ball onto other fragile spinning balls to hedge our bets. Religion, for the most part, is an impediment to this most important of humanistic goals.
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