Ah. Religion. This is where things started to go wrong. Picture our proto-human Timmys, just starting to get along with self awareness and developing an imagination. Even before a written language he would have mentally assigned capital letters to the important events that affected his existence, such as Sun, Moon and Leopard-That-Ate-My-Wife. As generations survived, stories of proto-Timmy's survival would have endured. This awareness of all the beneficial and horrid forces that blighted Timmy and his familiy led to rituals of Deification. Deification begat Worship: they needed to encourage the Good Things and discourage the Bad. Worshiping the Gods became a safe option. If things were good, then it worked. If things weren't . . .well, it didn't cost them anything.
Skip ahead to a huge population explosion and migration. Our Timmy tribe did this when they procreated faster than the indigenous food supply. Eventually our Timmys (and their stories) discover science and move from the nomadic hunter-gatherer society to an organised agricultural environment. They stayed in a single place. And procreated even more enthusiastically (as demanded by most species' survival genes). They need the Good Things to feed themselves because their planet tilts at 23 degrees and brings quite harsh seasons (dependent on the latitude they migrated to). And so the Leopard-That-Ate-My-Wife is replaced by the Drought-That-Ate-My-Crops and the Bloody-Cold-That-Froze-Us-All. And so they prayed . . .
"Remaining in one place and procreating" eventually leads to city-states and empires. Compress a few thousand Timmys into a well and they start to find other Bad Things. Invisible Things. Things-That-Made-My-Wife-Bleed-And-Die. Let's call them spirits and witches and find someone to blame (and burn).
And, of course, our well of organised, imaginative, self aware Timmys decided to create leaders to deal with all the troublesome issues of the day. Like making sure that they are not murdered in their sleep by Bad Things, Visible or Invisible. "We pay our tithes; why aren't you protecting us?" So started institutions like the Inquisition. Serves you right, Timmy.
Civilisation reaches a point where science, as proven by the creation of complex architecture for church buildings, sundials for time keeping, almanacs for predictive weather forecasts, astronomy for navigation, metallurgy for weapons and armor, and the like, has now made the worship of all those old Gods irrelevant. Primitive, even! What began to replace all those deities and pantheons was a growing need for a single deity; a monotheism.
And that is where it gets really interesting!
Sunday 25 October 2015
Sunday 18 October 2015
Chapter 3: Religion
And the city-states begat the nation-states that begat the empire-states. And, being top of the food chain and experiencing a population explosion unprecedented among primates in the history of planet Earth, Homo-Timmius, already cursed with self awareness and imagination, began, in a age that was already homicidally brutal, to fear Death.
The new style of monotheism was well suited to the needs of the populace. Not only did their proponents preach an end to murder and torture but provided an answer to a vexing existential question: the Afterlife. Of course, "God" came with some conditions. Most were written in the form of Books, Scriptures, Commandments, and various other diktats. All shared a didactic similarity: the first being that "This God is the Only One"!
In fairness, they also codified the behavior of several thousands of irresponsible, ill-educated Timmys. In the absence of a latter day labyrinth of mind-boggling Laws and their adherent lawyers and judges, most religions managed to tell their wayward offspring not to murder each other, shag their neighbours' females, or generally upset the otherwise fragile social apple-cart. In the more harsher desert environments they managed to conduct public health regulations by applying some brutal childhood surgeries to prevent the possibility of sexually transmitted diseases or instructing the terminally stupid not to eat with the same hand you just wiped your arse with.
But, in the end, the social engineers of the day, our early priesthood, had a problem. If, by declaring the single God to be invisible and stretched over an 11 dimensional framework extending at least 13.5 billion light years in any observational direction, how the bloody hell do you make it accessible to hundreds of thousands of Timmys who really, really want to Believe? The simultaneous answer from all these early religious engineers was this: "We create an Avatar". And Lo: thus was born a plethora of Prophets, Sages, Disciples and, in one memorable case, an Offspring! Now the Timmys really had something to focus on!
Fast forward a few generations and we find our hitherto successful Priesthoods have grown into even more successful Organisations. Not only did the Creed overwhelm the originally beneficial social message, but the ritualistic dogma overwhelmed the original concept of a benevolent "God". The New Religions developed a massive internal structure, almost machine-like in its purpose, creating formidable Bureaucratic, Political and Enforcement Divisions. Being pan-geographical in nature it could quite literally topple kings and Governments. And did. Local crises abounded over the necessity to separate Church and State until, with some regions, the Church made the decision for the people. Religious Governments dominated. And had no intention of going away!
As they grew, each religious institution began to disagree with the "Right Way" of worshiping their god, eventually leading to multiple schisms predicated on an insane level of detail of creed and ritual. Of course, it would not be unreasonable to add, "they also disagreed very violently" over the course of the centuries. Once-Upon-A-Time there were only a few religions who claimed to be the "True Religion". Now there are more. Many, many more. And the violence continues.
Oh My God. It would appear that Timmy has fallen down the well gain! "What's that Skippy? There are bloody great wells all over the place?" How many? "All over the damned planet?" But how many Timmies are down there?
"That many?!!" Oh My God!!
The new style of monotheism was well suited to the needs of the populace. Not only did their proponents preach an end to murder and torture but provided an answer to a vexing existential question: the Afterlife. Of course, "God" came with some conditions. Most were written in the form of Books, Scriptures, Commandments, and various other diktats. All shared a didactic similarity: the first being that "This God is the Only One"!
In fairness, they also codified the behavior of several thousands of irresponsible, ill-educated Timmys. In the absence of a latter day labyrinth of mind-boggling Laws and their adherent lawyers and judges, most religions managed to tell their wayward offspring not to murder each other, shag their neighbours' females, or generally upset the otherwise fragile social apple-cart. In the more harsher desert environments they managed to conduct public health regulations by applying some brutal childhood surgeries to prevent the possibility of sexually transmitted diseases or instructing the terminally stupid not to eat with the same hand you just wiped your arse with.
But, in the end, the social engineers of the day, our early priesthood, had a problem. If, by declaring the single God to be invisible and stretched over an 11 dimensional framework extending at least 13.5 billion light years in any observational direction, how the bloody hell do you make it accessible to hundreds of thousands of Timmys who really, really want to Believe? The simultaneous answer from all these early religious engineers was this: "We create an Avatar". And Lo: thus was born a plethora of Prophets, Sages, Disciples and, in one memorable case, an Offspring! Now the Timmys really had something to focus on!
Fast forward a few generations and we find our hitherto successful Priesthoods have grown into even more successful Organisations. Not only did the Creed overwhelm the originally beneficial social message, but the ritualistic dogma overwhelmed the original concept of a benevolent "God". The New Religions developed a massive internal structure, almost machine-like in its purpose, creating formidable Bureaucratic, Political and Enforcement Divisions. Being pan-geographical in nature it could quite literally topple kings and Governments. And did. Local crises abounded over the necessity to separate Church and State until, with some regions, the Church made the decision for the people. Religious Governments dominated. And had no intention of going away!
As they grew, each religious institution began to disagree with the "Right Way" of worshiping their god, eventually leading to multiple schisms predicated on an insane level of detail of creed and ritual. Of course, it would not be unreasonable to add, "they also disagreed very violently" over the course of the centuries. Once-Upon-A-Time there were only a few religions who claimed to be the "True Religion". Now there are more. Many, many more. And the violence continues.
Oh My God. It would appear that Timmy has fallen down the well gain! "What's that Skippy? There are bloody great wells all over the place?" How many? "All over the damned planet?" But how many Timmies are down there?
"That many?!!" Oh My God!!
Sunday 11 October 2015
Chapter 4: Science
If the Enemy used to be "Evil" or "Shaitan" or "The Horned Beast" for all those early primitive religions, then today the enemy of today's organised religions is the emergence of rational observation.
The persistent examination of physical sciences led to the creation of many unassailable things. For example: impressive and fairly permanent free-standing ancient buildings that still can be seen today; astronomical observations that enhanced the trade empires; massive reductions in global death from disease; lighter, stronger shields and swords for the empire builders; and gunpowder of course for the "quick fix". In fact, the examples are endless.
It is therefore unforgivable that today's unwashed masses accept the benefits of generations of scientific endeavour without a single, cohesive, rational, questioning thought to the principles behind them. Watch TV? Got a pc or an iPad? Then you'll understand electromagnetism or quantum mechanics! Go to Church on Fridays/Saturdays/Sundays, etc.? Then you'll know where today's version of your ancient calendar came from! Einstein? Few understand the concepts even after 100 years. Heisenberg? Never heard of him. There are still people that would rather believe that the moon landing is a long-standing hoax!
In the 20th there was a nasty fight to ban "evolution" from being taught at schools in the Bible-Belt States in America. In Cambodia, a regime tried to murder the past by declaring a "Year Zero". Today, Islamic State will physically destroy any evidence of science, including the practitioners. In some places in the world taking a picture with your camera is a punishable offence despite the fact that satellites can see you in all your glorious detail. Galileo was imprisoned by his Church. Health workers are shot. Just last month it was reported that women were being burned for "sorcery".
In England, no matter whether your children are Arts or Science-minded, the teaching of "religious education" is mandatory. If good 'ol gentle C of E can do it, why not some of the more aggressive Religions? Therein lies the danger of State-run schools when the State is a run by the Church. Far better in a secular environment that RE be taught as a subset of other scientific principles (such as sociology or anthropology).
In fact, this is the crux of the problem. If a future-civilisation is to grow and progress then the next generation need a fair chance at choosing their belief systems. The world is dividing; not into the haves against the have-nots, precisely, but into the scientifically educated communities against the impoverished wells of religious ignorance.
And in a world where literally anyone can get guns the future is fairly easy to predict.
The persistent examination of physical sciences led to the creation of many unassailable things. For example: impressive and fairly permanent free-standing ancient buildings that still can be seen today; astronomical observations that enhanced the trade empires; massive reductions in global death from disease; lighter, stronger shields and swords for the empire builders; and gunpowder of course for the "quick fix". In fact, the examples are endless.
It is therefore unforgivable that today's unwashed masses accept the benefits of generations of scientific endeavour without a single, cohesive, rational, questioning thought to the principles behind them. Watch TV? Got a pc or an iPad? Then you'll understand electromagnetism or quantum mechanics! Go to Church on Fridays/Saturdays/Sundays, etc.? Then you'll know where today's version of your ancient calendar came from! Einstein? Few understand the concepts even after 100 years. Heisenberg? Never heard of him. There are still people that would rather believe that the moon landing is a long-standing hoax!
In the 20th there was a nasty fight to ban "evolution" from being taught at schools in the Bible-Belt States in America. In Cambodia, a regime tried to murder the past by declaring a "Year Zero". Today, Islamic State will physically destroy any evidence of science, including the practitioners. In some places in the world taking a picture with your camera is a punishable offence despite the fact that satellites can see you in all your glorious detail. Galileo was imprisoned by his Church. Health workers are shot. Just last month it was reported that women were being burned for "sorcery".
In England, no matter whether your children are Arts or Science-minded, the teaching of "religious education" is mandatory. If good 'ol gentle C of E can do it, why not some of the more aggressive Religions? Therein lies the danger of State-run schools when the State is a run by the Church. Far better in a secular environment that RE be taught as a subset of other scientific principles (such as sociology or anthropology).
In fact, this is the crux of the problem. If a future-civilisation is to grow and progress then the next generation need a fair chance at choosing their belief systems. The world is dividing; not into the haves against the have-nots, precisely, but into the scientifically educated communities against the impoverished wells of religious ignorance.
And in a world where literally anyone can get guns the future is fairly easy to predict.
Sunday 4 October 2015
Chapter 5: Mysticism
In the last hundreds of thousands of years of homo sapiens' development the emergence of organised, totalitarian monotheistic cultures had only begun to dominate in the last mere thousands. This Messianic Impulse was brilliantly explored by Frank Herbert in his seminal science fiction opus "Dune" in the mid-TwenCen. His Missionaria Protectiva was a big reveal on how religious organisations planned for the long term.
Today technology and improved transportation has resulted in a Great Intermingling of cultures, religions and race. The purity of monotheistic programs are no longer guaranteed. Ages-old belief systems exist within larger, more tolerant and questioning cultures. New generations of thinking humans who, in earlier ignorant times would have been at the mercy of both the nature and nurture of their parents, now have access to other intellectual stimulus as they grow up (unless, of course, they are completely imprisoned in the State/Church-run schools of their parents' priests or imams).
So why, in this enlightened age, is there still an overwhelming urge to seek and own ancient mythologies? It is a historical fact that modern religions are both figuratively and literally built on the ruins of the old. Take Christianity: the Church superposed both their physical and ideological New Religion upon the old pagan religions. Not only did they commission extravagant buildings to be built on top of their defeated enemies' religious sites but they absorbed their beliefs in the process. Except that such absorption was a two-way street. The resultant evolutionary offspring was a mutant bastard called "christmas", itself now an example of a new and powerful Worship regime. It alone is responsible for many many years of irrational behaviour; entire cultures in the thrall of rampant consumerism that has very little to do with pagan or god worship.
Further examples abound. Individuals who fail to succumb to the Churches' messages take comfort in the resurrection of symbology from the Dark Ages. In practically every town and hamlet you will find small shops given to the practitioners of Tarot, Clairvoyance, Reincarnation, Karma, Psychic healers, Ouija readers, and other sundry mediums and exorcists. Most modern cultures within western America are affected by the bleed of mystical concepts from their nearest Pacific neighbours. Hospitals, where the practitioners study anatomy and biology for years or decades at a time, exist side by side with practitioners of acupuncture, diviners of water and mineral deposits, chakra healers and manipulators of chi energy. And with the invention of the Internet, this cultural bleed finds greater purchase . . .
The 60-year old weekly New Scientist magazine devotes its last page to the growing incidence of pseudoscience; or what it calls "fruitloopery". Examples are unfortunately commonplace. They usually start with titles such as "All Universal Laws and Principle Governing Life". Such metaphysical rubbish proves the authors have never attended a day in a science class in their lives. They assume pseudo-scientific terms like “energy, light, vibration and motion” to justify a regurgitation of all the other pop religious soundbites that have gone before and then dump them on a gullible, equally-ignorant public all arrogantly dressed up as a “universal truth”! This display of ignorance and stupidity is infectious. Take this excerpt: “As we learn to relinquish our rational thinking and surrender to our intuition -- our connection to Infinite Intelligence -- we discover how easily, effortlessly and spontaneously events unfold for us”. WHAT!? It typifies everything that is wrong with the world, from the gun nuts in America to the animal rights groups in Europe to the “Kill All The Infidels” Jihadists in the Middle East. As a species we need more rational analysis not a supernaturally justified abrogation of it!
More sophisticated web sites abound. In this site the author explains his rationale: "And because reality is flashing in and out of existence (hypothetically at Planck time – 1044 times per second – as explained by The Resonance Project biophysicist William Brown), every time our reality oscillates between form, and the pure energy state of the field, our awareness which is constant and doesn’t flash in and out of existence informs the field what to reappear as when it makes its transition back to form at the quantum level." The fruitloopery continues with: "The human energy field is interacting and influencing the quantum field all around us at all times and the energy of our beliefs and intentions are infused into our energy field because they are defined by the energy of our thoughts and emotions." Er . . . no, they are not! In fact, it is unbelievable to an educated mind how much total bollocks is being promulgated here.
Of course, Planck time wasn't "explained" by a completely fatuous wannabe "resonance project biophysicist William Brown" Ha Ha! (The arrogance really is funny!) It was predicted by the eponymous Max Planck a hundred years ago in his formula to create a mathematical constant. As anyone with a a basic education would tell you, the whole of quantum mechanics is the attempt to explain the behaviour of matter and energy at the very, very smallest levels of existence.
These examples of "fruitloopery" would be laughable drivel if it wasn't for the fact that so many so-called responsible adults accept it at face value. Not only does our nascent, educated civilisation have to contend with mother-to-daughter, father-to-son rituals to maintain the theology of a "supreme deity", it now has to contend with propagated nonsense espousing ridiculous fantasies. Ignorance is becoming a worse disease than Ebola.
Today technology and improved transportation has resulted in a Great Intermingling of cultures, religions and race. The purity of monotheistic programs are no longer guaranteed. Ages-old belief systems exist within larger, more tolerant and questioning cultures. New generations of thinking humans who, in earlier ignorant times would have been at the mercy of both the nature and nurture of their parents, now have access to other intellectual stimulus as they grow up (unless, of course, they are completely imprisoned in the State/Church-run schools of their parents' priests or imams).
So why, in this enlightened age, is there still an overwhelming urge to seek and own ancient mythologies? It is a historical fact that modern religions are both figuratively and literally built on the ruins of the old. Take Christianity: the Church superposed both their physical and ideological New Religion upon the old pagan religions. Not only did they commission extravagant buildings to be built on top of their defeated enemies' religious sites but they absorbed their beliefs in the process. Except that such absorption was a two-way street. The resultant evolutionary offspring was a mutant bastard called "christmas", itself now an example of a new and powerful Worship regime. It alone is responsible for many many years of irrational behaviour; entire cultures in the thrall of rampant consumerism that has very little to do with pagan or god worship.
Further examples abound. Individuals who fail to succumb to the Churches' messages take comfort in the resurrection of symbology from the Dark Ages. In practically every town and hamlet you will find small shops given to the practitioners of Tarot, Clairvoyance, Reincarnation, Karma, Psychic healers, Ouija readers, and other sundry mediums and exorcists. Most modern cultures within western America are affected by the bleed of mystical concepts from their nearest Pacific neighbours. Hospitals, where the practitioners study anatomy and biology for years or decades at a time, exist side by side with practitioners of acupuncture, diviners of water and mineral deposits, chakra healers and manipulators of chi energy. And with the invention of the Internet, this cultural bleed finds greater purchase . . .
The 60-year old weekly New Scientist magazine devotes its last page to the growing incidence of pseudoscience; or what it calls "fruitloopery". Examples are unfortunately commonplace. They usually start with titles such as "All Universal Laws and Principle Governing Life". Such metaphysical rubbish proves the authors have never attended a day in a science class in their lives. They assume pseudo-scientific terms like “energy, light, vibration and motion” to justify a regurgitation of all the other pop religious soundbites that have gone before and then dump them on a gullible, equally-ignorant public all arrogantly dressed up as a “universal truth”! This display of ignorance and stupidity is infectious. Take this excerpt: “As we learn to relinquish our rational thinking and surrender to our intuition -- our connection to Infinite Intelligence -- we discover how easily, effortlessly and spontaneously events unfold for us”. WHAT!? It typifies everything that is wrong with the world, from the gun nuts in America to the animal rights groups in Europe to the “Kill All The Infidels” Jihadists in the Middle East. As a species we need more rational analysis not a supernaturally justified abrogation of it!
More sophisticated web sites abound. In this site the author explains his rationale: "And because reality is flashing in and out of existence (hypothetically at Planck time – 1044 times per second – as explained by The Resonance Project biophysicist William Brown), every time our reality oscillates between form, and the pure energy state of the field, our awareness which is constant and doesn’t flash in and out of existence informs the field what to reappear as when it makes its transition back to form at the quantum level." The fruitloopery continues with: "The human energy field is interacting and influencing the quantum field all around us at all times and the energy of our beliefs and intentions are infused into our energy field because they are defined by the energy of our thoughts and emotions." Er . . . no, they are not! In fact, it is unbelievable to an educated mind how much total bollocks is being promulgated here.
Of course, Planck time wasn't "explained" by a completely fatuous wannabe "resonance project biophysicist William Brown" Ha Ha! (The arrogance really is funny!) It was predicted by the eponymous Max Planck a hundred years ago in his formula to create a mathematical constant. As anyone with a a basic education would tell you, the whole of quantum mechanics is the attempt to explain the behaviour of matter and energy at the very, very smallest levels of existence.
These examples of "fruitloopery" would be laughable drivel if it wasn't for the fact that so many so-called responsible adults accept it at face value. Not only does our nascent, educated civilisation have to contend with mother-to-daughter, father-to-son rituals to maintain the theology of a "supreme deity", it now has to contend with propagated nonsense espousing ridiculous fantasies. Ignorance is becoming a worse disease than Ebola.
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