[Only] while under the dominion of fear, do men fall … prey to superstition …
— Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 77), Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 1677.
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge …
— Proverbs, 1:7, King James Bible, 1611.
And in these four things,consisteth the natural seed of religion …
- opinion of ghosts,
- ignorance of second causes,
- devotion towards what men fear, and
- taking things casual for prognostics,
So easy are men drawn to believe any thing, from such men as have gotten credit with them; and can with gentleness, and dexterity, take hold of their fear, and ignorance.
— Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679), Of Religion, Leviathan, Chapter 12, 1651.
That's the thing about faith.
If you don't have it, you can't understand it.
And if you do, no explanation is necessary.
— Accession, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Episode 16, Season 4, 1996.
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Our CHIEF weapon is Surprise …
Surprise and Fear. …
Our TWO weapons are Fear and Surprise …
And Ruthless Efficiency. …
Our THREE weapons are Fear, Surprise, and Ruthless Efficiency …
And An Almost Fanatical Devotion To The Pope. …
Our FOUR …
AMONGST our weaponry are such diverse elements as:
- Fear,
- Surprise,
- Ruthless Efficiency, [AND …]
- An Almost Fanatical Devotion To The Pope …
Christopher Clark (1960):
[For] 300 years the Roman Church [persisted] in considering heliocentrism to be a heretical doctrine.
The Inquisition [forced] Galileo to recant his theories, and the Church [didn't] admit its mistake until 1992 when Galileo [was] ultimately vindicated by Pope John Paul II.
(Achievement and Rewards, Story of Europe, Episode 4, Season 1, 2017)
Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 77):
The greatest secret of monarchic rule isso that they
- to keep men deceived, and
- to cloak, in the specious name of religion, the fear by which they must be checked,
- will fight for slavery as they would for salvation, and
- will think it not shameful, but a most honorable achievement, to give their life and blood that one man may have a ground for boasting. …
They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and
- as they plot against the enemy in time of war,
- so do they against the citizens in time of peace. …
[Prophets] have the most power among the people, and are most formidable to rulers, precisely at those times when the state is in most peril.
(Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 1677, emphasis added)
Percy Shelley (1792 – 1822):
Superstition, in a thousand shapes, is employed in brutalizing and degrading the human species, and fitting it to endure without a murmur the oppression of its innumerable tyrants.
(A Refutation of Deism, 1814)
Mikhail Bakunin (1814 – 76):
[The] idea of God … is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind …
(God and the State, 1882)
Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939):
Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanour.
(The Future of an Illusion, 1927)
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955):
A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary.
Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
(Religion and Science, New York Times Magazine, 1930)
It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. …
An individual who should survive his physical death is … beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.
(The World as I See It, 1949)
Arthur Doyle (1859 – 1930):
What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear?
It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable.
But what end?
There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.
(The Adventure of the Cardboard Box, The Last Bow, 1917)
Baron d'Holbach (1723 – 89):
If we go back to be beginning, we shall find that ignorance and fear created the Gods.
That fancy, enthusiasm or deceit adorned or disfigured them.
The weakness worships them.
That credulity preserves them.
And that custom, respect and tyranny, support them.
(The System of Nature, 1770)
Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970):
[The] function of religion [is] not conducive to the exercise of intellectual adventure.
(Wisdom of the West, 1959, p 11)
James McPherson (1936):
The rise of education … since the seventeenth century [grew] out of the protestant Reformation.
The priesthood of all believers needed to know how to read and understand God's word.
(Battle Cry of Freedom, 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press, 2003, p 18)
David Hume (1711 – 76):
It is an absurdity to believe that the Deity [is subject to that lowest of] human passions, a restless appetite for applause.
(Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 1776)
Henri Poincare (1854 – 1912):
We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.
Gareth Southwell:
[A] 2012 report by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago … revealed that, since 1991, religious belief declined in 14 of 18 countries surveyed by an average of 2.4%, while atheism rose in all but three countries by an average of 1.7%. …
In Elaine Howard Eckland's 2010 book, Science vs Religion: What Do Scientists Say?, of nearly 1,700 scientists working at American universities, 64% [as opposed to 37% of the general public] had no religious belief (30% were atheists, and 34% were agnostics).
(50 Philosophy of science ideas you really need to know, Quercus, 2013, p 100)
Pope Gregory the Great (c540 – 604):
We are almost ashamed to refer to the fact that a report has come to us that your brotherhood is teaching grammar to certain people …
If it should be clearly proved here-after that the report we have heard is false and that you are not devoting yourself to the vanities of worldly learning, we shall render thanks to God for keeping you heart from defilement.
(Epistles XI, 54)
John Mill (1806 – 73):
On religion [the time has come] when it is the duty of all who … have, on mature consideration, satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false, but hurtful, to make their dissent known …
(Moral Influences in Early Youth, Autobiography, 1873, p 45)
Christian morality {is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience …}
It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life [giving] to human morality an essentially selfish character, by disconnecting each man's feelings of duty from the interests of his fellow creatures …
What little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from Christian …
[The] Christian system is no exception to the rule, that in an imperfect state of the human mind the interests of truth require a diversity of opinions. …
[A] large portion of the noblest and most valuable moral teaching has been the work, not only of men who did not know, but of men who knew and rejected, the Christian faith.
In former days, when it was proposed to burn atheists, charitable people used to suggest putting them in a madhouse instead …
(On Liberty, 1859)
Tim Minchin (1975):
Science adjusts its belief based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observations so that belief can be preserved.
George Berkeley (1685 – 1753):
[There] is not perhaps any one thing that hath more favored and strengthened the depraved bent of the mind toward atheism, than the use of [the term: 'matter'.]
(Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists, 1713)
Alan Jacobs (1958): So when people say …We all believe in the same God, we just express that belief in different ways,we may with some justification commend those people for attempting to get beyond confrontation, dichotomy, [and] argument as [warfare.]
But we have to go on to say that the attempt is a facile one.
The real story will be far more complicated, and not to be grasped by replacing a fictitious polarity with an equally fictitious unity.
(How to Think, Profile, 2017, p 100)
Joe Haldeman (1943):
Macro … was a member of a militant supersecret sect within a sect: the Hammer of God.
Like all Enders, they believed God was about to bring about the destruction of humankind.
Unlike most of the them, the Hammer of God felt called upon to help.
(Forever Peace, 1977)
Michio Kaku (1947):
[The] neurologist V S Ramanchandran describes one split-brain patient who, when asked if he was a believer or not, said he was an atheist, but his right brain declared he was a believer. …If that person dies, what happens?(The Future of the Mind, Anchor, 2014, p 39)
Does one hemisphere go to heaven and the other go to hell?
Carl Sagan (1934 – 96):
[Why] is it necessary for God to intervene in human [affairs? …]
Why is there such a long list of things that God tells people to do?
Why didn't God do it right in the first place? …
[Why] should God be so clear in the Bible and so obscure in the world?
(The God Hypothesis)
[Better] the hard truth … than the comforting fantasy.
(p 191)
And if the world does not in all respects correspond to our wishes, is this the fault of science, or of those who would impose their wishes on the world?
(p 254)
Liberation from superstition is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for science.
(Demon Haunted World, 1997, p 294)
Protagoras (c490 – c420 BCE):
About the gods, I have no means of knowing either:Or what they are to look at.
- that they exist, or
- that they do not exist.
Many things prevent my knowing.
Among others, the fact that they are never seen.
(Essay on the Gods)
Kenneth Clark (1903 – 83):
The older medieval philosophers, like Anslem, had said:I must believe, in order that I may understand.Abelard took the opposite course:I must understand, in order that I may believe. …Strange words to have been written in the year 1122.
By doubting, we come to questioning.
And by questioning, we perceive the truth.
(The Great Thaw, Civilisation, Episode 2, BBC, 1969)
Steven Pinker (1954):
When [Westerners] affirm their faith in houses of worship, they profess beliefs that have barely changed in two thousand years.
But when it comes to their actions, they [generally] respect modern norms of nonviolence and toleration — a benevolent hypocrisy for which we should all be grateful.
(The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin, 2011, p 17)
Contents
The Second Comings of Christ
Yuval Harari: Homo Deus
Epicurus
The Multiple Personalities of God
The Second Comings of Christ
The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.
— Psalms 19:9, King James Bible, 1611.
Graeme Carddock [Branch Davidian]:
[I] saw someone pouring … fuel on the floor.
[Later] I heard someone from upstairs call out: …Light the fire!
75 people die in the inferno, including 25 children … 16 of the bodies, including David Koresh, have gunshot wounds to the head.
(Waco: The Longest Siege, Smithsonian Channel, 2018)
Charles Pace [Branch Davidian]:
They found most of the women and children dead [in a concrete vault.]
Some of them were stuck together because of the heat … the children hugging each other.
That's what happens when you misinterpret scripture.
God judges you.
Kat Schroeder [Branch Davidian]:
No one is getting out of that fire.
They are determined to do God's will.
And serve [His] purpose. …
I was proud of [my husband, but when he died] what I felt was more like jealousy.
Because Mike was closer to God. …
[David Koresh] was an incarnation of God. …
What are we going to do without David?
How are we going to know what God wants us to do without [him?]
(Christopher Spencer, WACO: Madman Or Messiah?, 2018)
(Waco: The Longest Siege, Smithsonian Channel, 2018)
(Christopher Spencer, WACO: Madman Or Messiah?, 2018)
Wikipedia:
[The bombing of the Alfred P Murrah building] was planned to take place on April 19, 1995, to coincide with:(Oklahoma City bombing, 26 May 2019)
- the 2nd anniversary of the Waco siege, and
- the 220th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
Peter Singer (1946):
L Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology, once wrote that the quickest way to make a million … is to start a new religion.
(How Are We to Live?, 1993, p 94)
Wikipedia:
In June 1993 [Anne] Hamilton-Byrne was charged with conspiracy to defraud and to commit perjury by falsely registering the births of three unrelated children as their own triplets.
She pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of making a false declaration and was fined $5,000.
(The Family — Australian New Age group, 23 March 2019)
Yuval Harari (1976)
Professor of History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
For thousands of years, the scientific road to growth was blocked because people believed that holy scriptures and ancient traditions already contained all the important knowledge the world had to offer. …
[If you] already knew everything worth knowing, [why] bother searching for new [knowledge? …]
[The] Scientific Revolution freed humankind from this conviction.
The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance.
Once humans realised how little they knew about the world, they suddenly had a very good reason to seek new knowledge, which opened up the scientific road to progress.
(p 212)
[The death of God has] not lead to social collapse.
Throughout history prophets and philosophers have argued that if humans stopped believing in a great cosmic plan, all law and order would vanish.
Yet today, those who pose the greatest threat to global law and order are precisely those people who continue to believe in God and His all-encompassing plans.
God-fearing Syria is a far more violent place than the atheist Netherlands.
(p 220)
[Industrial civilization's shortcomings] should not blind us to its advantages and attainments. …
[Doomsday] prophecies of collapse and violence have, [thus far,] not materialised, whereas the scandalous promises of perpetual growth and global cooperation are fulfilled.
[Capitalism] has not only managed to prevail, but also to overcome famine, plague and war.
For thousands of years priests, rabbis and muftis explained that humans cannot overcome famine, plague and war by their own efforts.
Then along came the bankers, investors and industrialists, and within 200 years managed to do exactly that.
(p 219)
Children of all religions and cultures think they are the centre of the world, and therefore show little genuine interest in the conditions and feelings of other people.
That's why divorce is so traumatic for children.
A five-year-old cannot understand that something important is happening for reasons unrelated to him.
No matter how many times you tell him that mummy and daddy are independent people with their own problems and wishes, and that they didn't divorce because of him — the child cannot absorb that.
He is convinced that everything happens because of him.
Most people grow out of this infantile delusion.
Monotheists hold on to it till the day they die.
(p 173)
Religion is anything that confers superhuman legitimacy on human social structures.
It legitimises human norms and values by arguing that they reflect superhuman laws.
Religion asserts that we humans are subject to a system of moral laws that we did not invent and that we cannot change.
A devout Jew would say that this is the system of moral laws created by God and revealed in the Bible.
A Hindu would say that Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva created the laws, which were revealed to us humans in the Vedas.
Other religions, from Buddhism and Daoism to Nazism, communism and liberalism, argue that the superhuman laws are natural laws, and not the creation of this or that god.
Of course, each believes in a different set of natural laws discovered and revealed by different seers and prophets, from Buddha and Laozi to Hitler and Lenin.
(p 181, emphasis added)
Religion is a deal, whereas spirituality is a journey.
Religion gives a complete description of the world, and offers us a well-defined contract with predetermined goals.
- God exists.
- He told us to behave in certain ways.
- If you obey God, you'll be admitted to heaven.
- If you disobey Him, you'll burn in hell.
Spiritual journeys are nothing like that.
They usually take people in mysterious ways towards unknown destinations.
The quest usually begins with some big question, such as who am I?
What is the meaning of life?
What is good?
Whereas many people just accept the ready-made answers provided by the powers that be, spiritual seekers are not so easily satisfied.
They are determined to follow the big question wherever it leads, and not just to places you know well or wish to visit.
(p 184)
Religion is interested above all in order.
It aims to create and maintain the social structure.
Science is interested above all in power.
It aims to acquire the power to cure diseases, fight wars and produce food. …
The uncompromising quest for truth is a spiritual journey, which can seldom remain within the confines of either religious or scientific establishments.
(p 198)
[The] idea of souls [is incompatible with the theory of evolution,] at least if by 'soul' we mean something indivisible, immutable and potentially eternal.
Such an entity cannot possibly result from a step-by-step evolution.
Natural selection could produce a human eye, because the eye has parts.
But the soul has no parts.
If the Sapiens soul evolved step by step from the Erectus soul, what exactly were these steps?
Is there some part of the soul that is more developed in Sapiens than in Erectus?
But the soul has no parts.
(p 104)
Think of the first baby to possess a soul.
That baby was very similar to her mother and father, except that she had a soul and they didn't.
Our biological knowledge can certainly explain the birth of a baby whose cornea was a bit more curved than her parents' corneas.
A slight mutation in a single gene can account for that.
But biology cannot explain the birth of a baby possessing an eternal soul from parents who did not have even a shred of a soul.
Is a single mutation, or even several mutations, enough to give an animal an essence secure against all changes, including even death?
Evolution means change, and is incapable of producing everlasting entities. …
From an evolutionary perspective, the closest thing we have to a human essence is our DNA, and the DNA molecule is the vehicle of mutation rather than the seat of eternity.
This terrifies large numbers of people, who prefer to reject the theory of evolution rather than give up their souls.
(p 105)
… Hitler's political career is one of the best examples we have for the immense authority accorded to the personal experience of common people in twentieth-century politics.
Hitler wasn't a senior officer — in four years of war, he rose no higher than the rank of corporal.
He had no formal education, no professional skills and no political background.
He wasn't a successful businessman or a union activist, he didn't have friends or relatives in high places, or any money to speak of.
At first, he didn't even have German citizenship.
He was a penniless immigrant.
When Hitler appealed to the German voters and asked for their trust, he could muster only one argument in his favour: his experiences in the trenches had taught him what you can never learn at university, at general headquarters or at a government ministry.
People followed him, and voted for him, because they identified with him, and because they too believed that the world is a jungle, and that what doesn't kill us only makes us stronger.
(p 256)
[While liberal humanists] tiptoe around the minefield of cultural comparisons, fearful of committing some politically incorrect faux pas, and [socialist humanists] leave it to the party to find the right path through the minefield, evolutionary humanists gleefully jump right in, setting off all the mines and relishing the mayhem. …
According to evolutionary humanists, anyone arguing that all human experiences are equally valuable is either an imbecile or a coward.
Such vulgarity and timidity will lead only to the degeneration and extinction of humankind, as human progress is impeded in the name of cultural relativism or social equality.
(p 260)
Christianity … spread the hitherto heretical idea that all humans are equal before God, thereby changing human political structures, social hierarchies and even gender relations.
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus went further, insisting that the meek and oppressed are God's favourite people, thus turning the pyramid of power on its head, and providing ammunition for generations of revolutionaries.
In addition to social and ethical reforms, Christianity was responsible for important economic and technological innovations.
The Catholic Church established medieval Europe's most sophisticated administrative system, and pioneered the use of archives, catalogues, timetables and other techniques of data processing.
The Vatican was the closest thing twelfth-century Europe had to Silicon Valley.
The Church established Europe's first economic corporations — the monasteries — which for 1,000 years spearheaded the European economy and introduced advanced agricultural and administrative methods.
Monasteries were the first institutions to use clocks, and for centuries they and the cathedral schools were the most important learning centres of Europe, helping to found many of Europe's first universities, such as Bologna, Oxford and Salamanca.
[The] Catholic Church … and the other theist religions have long since turned from a creative into a reactive force.
They are busy with rearguard holding operations more than with pioneering novel technologies, innovative economic methods or groundbreaking social ideas.
(p 274)
[Liberal humanism] won the humanist wars of religion [and is] now pushing humankind to reach for immortality, bliss and divinity.
Egged on by the allegedly infallible wishes of customers and voters, scientists and engineers devote more and more energies to these liberal projects.
Yet what the scientists are discovering and what the engineers are developing may unwittingly expose both the inherent flaws in the liberal world view and the blindness of customers and voters.
When genetic engineering and artificial intelligence reveal their full potential, liberalism, democracy and free markets might become as obsolete as flint knives, tape cassettes, Islam and communism.
(p 276)
It is dangerous to trust our future to market forces, because these forces do what's good for the market rather than what's good for humankind or for the world.
The hand of the market is blind as well as invisible, and left to its own devices it may fail to do anything about the threat of global warming or the dangerous potential of artificial intelligence.
(p 376)
So of everything that happens in our chaotic world, what should we focus on?
- If we think in term of months, we had probably focus on immediate problems such as the turmoil in the Middle East, the refugee crisis in Europe and the slowing of the Chinese economy.
- If we think in terms of decades, then global warming, growing inequality and the disruption of the job market loom large.
- Science is converging on an all-encompassing dogma, which says that organisms are algorithms, and life is data processing.
- Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness.
- Non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves.
- Are organisms really just algorithms, and is life really just data processing?
- What's more valuable — intelligence or consciousness?
- What will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves?
(Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Penguin, 2015)
Would you like to know more?
Epicurus (341 – 271 BCE)
Death is nothing to us; for that which is dissolved, is without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us.
Letter to Menoeceus
[Death] is nothing to us since:
- when we exist, death is not yet present, and
- when death is present, then we do not exist. …
By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.
It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of revelry, not sexual lust, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul.
Of all this the beginning and the greatest good is wisdom. …
The Principal Doctrines
It was impossible for someone ignorant about the nature of the universe, but still suspicious about the subjects of the myths, to dissolve his feelings of fear about the most important matters.
So it was impossible to receive unmixed pleasures without knowing natural science. …
Of the things which wisdom provides for the blessedness of one's whole life, by far the greatest is the possession of friendship.
The Multiple Personalities of God
America's Four Gods
The Baylor Religion Survey
(p 26)Figure 13:
Categories of America's Four Gods
Type A: Authoritarian God
Individuals who believe in the Authoritarian God tend to think that God is highly involved in their daily lives and world affairs.
They tend to believe that God helps them in their decision-making and is also responsible for global events such as economic upturns or tsunamis.
They also tend to feel that God is quite angry and is capable of meting out punishment to those who are unfaithful or ungodly.
Type B: Benevolent God
[Believers] in a Benevolent God [also] tend to think that God is very active in our daily lives. [However,] the Benevolent God is mainly a force of positive influence in the world and is less willing to condemn or punish individuals.
Type C: Critical God
Believers in a Critical God feel that God really does not interact with the world.
Nevertheless, God still observes the world and views the current state of the world unfavorably.
These individuals feel that God’s displeasure will be felt in another life and that divine justice may not be of this world.
Type D: Distant God
… These individuals tend towards thinking about God as a cosmic force which set the laws of nature in motion.
As such, God does not “do” things in the world and does not hold clear opinions about our activities or world events.
Percent of American Population which believes in each Type of God(Adapted from Figure 14, p 27) | |
| High Engagement (57%) | |
| Authoritarian | 33% |
| Benevolent | 24% |
| Low Engagement (43%) | |
| Distant | 26% |
| Critical | 17% |
| High Anger (50%) | |
| Authoritarian | 33% |
| Critical | 17% |
| Low Anger (50%) | |
| Benevolent | 24% |
| Distant | 26% |
Parental Bonding Instrument | |
|---|---|
| High Control / High Care | High Control / Low Care |
| Low Control / Low Care | Low Control / High Care |
(p 27)
(Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion and Department of Sociology, Baylor University, September 2006)
Does God Have a Heart?
Andrew Newberg & Mark Waldman
The Cultural Evolution of God
In Western culture, the authoritarian notion of God dominated human through until the 1400s, when a series of events undermined the power of the [universal] church.
The Black Plague wiped out half the population of Europe [undermining] religious authority [and as science] gained favor … God retreated farther into the heavens.
In a minority of Jewish, Islamic, and Christian texts, God's wrath also [receded,] to be replaced by [conceptions] of a more benevolent and mystical force.
[In the 16th and 17th centuries, Europe was wracked by religious wars] between competing Christian theologies [and the] Catholic Church splintered as people [sought] a more personal God.
[Some of these fled to the New World, seeking] the freedom to practice religion as they saw fit …
(p 117)
The War Between the American Gods
According to the Baylor study, more than half of Americans are intolerant of non-Christian values …
Two other studies … found that 17-18% of Americans … believed that their religion should be the only true religion in the world.
[29%] said that we should … try to convert people of other religious faiths [to Christianity.]
(p 121)
[Nevertheless, if] you put all the surveys together, there appears to be a slow decline in religious intolerance, especially over the last five years …
[In] each new generation Americans shift their allegiance from Christianity to other faiths or systems of belief. …
[Indeed,] Protestantism has been slowing declining since 1965.
(p 122)
(How God Changes Your Brain, Ballantine, 2009)
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