Fear Society

I tend to become upset, even depressed at times by the propensity of leaders worldwide to rule by instilling abject fear in their respective populaces. Cases in point being AIDS, that huge osamabogeyman TERRORISM and illnesses such as Avian Influenza, SARS and the current mindscrewup SWINEFLU. All could so easily have been handled with a degree of honesty that did not necessitate making the populace have difficulty sleerping.

The meeter-greeter-teacher in this photograph is supposed to be standing on the school steps, welcoming the children with a polite "Wai" and ensuring all is well for the start of the school day. Instead, as you can see, she is standing as far as she can from the path they will take and wearing not one, but three masks to protect her from the current nightmare. I have no idea how she copes in the classroom. (This photograph was taken a couple of weeks ago.)

This afternoon, on the way to school, I noticed a helmetless lady riding a motorcycle, talking on the phone and wearing a mask. She obviously thought this dire disease is more dangerous than the prospect of her head contacting the road or roadside furniture in the case of a crash. (I wanted to photograph her, but decided safety was more important while driving.)

No sooner had I passed her than I noticed another similarly masked helmetless couple on a bike. During the 15 or so Kilometers to school, I counted thirteen motorcycles, each with one or more, presumably concrete-cranium-cretins in dire terror, masked in prophylaxis against contracting bacon disease.

If the powers can instill abject fear in their masses about such a relatively mild, (for most sufferers,) illness, why can they not make these people understand that skulls are softer than stone?

Dear America

Dear America

You like to refer to yourselves as a Christian nation, the greatest Christian nation on the planet.

You refer to yourselves as “One nation under God.”

When did you take up with the Devil? Why are you following Evil’s best practices instead of those taught by Jesus, your Saviour and great teacher?

In recent months and years you have shown yourselves to be true Satan’s spawn in so very many ways.

Where did your Saviour teach you to cause harm to others? Was his word not as: “Matthew 19:16 And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?
17 And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
18 He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness,
19 Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

He taught you to “love thy neighbour as thyself.” Do you do this?

Where did your Saviour teach you to seek vengeance for yourselves? To the best of my knowledge, all His teachings were of peace, love and forgiveness. Does your holy book not teach: “Romans 12:19: Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” Furthermore, if you are harmed, did he not teach in Matthew 5:39 “But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Does that mean you must seek vengeance?

The Lord your God claims vengeance for Himself. Are you not doing the Devil’s work when you seek to take this from him?

You have many thousand people who did harm incarcerated in your prisons. Are they there for the protection of your society, or are you taking God’s teachings in vain and following the Devil by seeking your own vengeance.

What of those you put to death. Where does the Lord your Saviour teach you it is right and proper to take the life of another? Surely He taught: “Matthew 19: 18 Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder.” Why then are so very many awaiting their own sanctioned murder on death row.

There is one dying man in prison in Scotland. He performed an admittedly evil deed. What do you think the Devil wants you to do? What about your Saviour? Who would prefer you to show kindness or forgiveness and allow him to return to his home to die in the arms of his loving family? Which of the two is gleefully witnessing the hard-hearted screams for continuing vengeance?

America – Throw out the Devil. Forgive your transgressors. Incarcerate those who pose a danger to your society but help the others. Seek no vengeance. Leave that to the judgement of your God. Prove to yourselves and all that you are truly “One Nation Under God,” and all will look up to and respect you again.

Religion:

Religion:

A good definition is as follows - Noun. A strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny.

The most important parts of the definition of “Religion” are the words Belief: Noun. 1. Any cognitive content held as true or 2. A vague idea in which some confidence is placed. and Supernatural: Adjective. Not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws; not physical or material.

Thus Religion is the process of placing a strong confidence in a vague cognitive idea that a power, not physical or material, that does not exist in nature, nor comply with the laws of the universe, is controlling a person’s destiny.

Hmmmmmm!

I have been asked, on several occasions, to explain my own religious beliefs. This normally occurs when I have been debunking fundamentalist Christian, Islamic, Jewish or other myths to their, frequently psychotic, adherents. A case of, “I’ve shown you mine, you must show me yours.” My companion at the time objects to my “attacking” their base superstitions if they do not know mine to attack in exchange.

Firstly and most importantly, according to the definition of Religion as above, I do not follow any although if I did, I would most probably chose the Bahá'í Faith as the most honest and logical of the religions practiced today.

In all probability, there is no airy-fairy supernatural being. There is no evidence for the existence of one and no logical reason why there should be one. The Bible is a collection of myths, legends and stories, the product of overactive imagination and, frequently, strong vested interest; altered almost beyond recognition by further vested interests over the millennia and more since it was originally penned.

Einstein explained the truth most succinctly in a couple of letters he wrote in 1954, the year before his death:

• This first, open-letter was written to those who falsely attributed religious and creationist beliefs to him: “It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

This next abridgement of the letter to Eric Gutkind from Albert Einstein at Princeton in January 1954, (translated from German by Joan Stambaugh) is particularly telling regarding his beliefs, his thoughts on the Bible and Judaism. It was sold at Bloomsbury auctions in May 2008 for a record sum for a single Einstein letter of £404,000. Professor Richard Dawkins was one of the bidders who failed to purchase it:

· “... The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. . . For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.”

I personally regard the modern-day Abrahamic religions as evil, using base fears and superstitions designed by a ruling elite to instil fear in the masses as a method of control. In this group of evil movements, I include not only the purported monotheistic, Abrahamic triad of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but also non-theistic religions such as Stalinism, Maoism and personality cults such as those practiced in North Korea, Zimbabwe, Jonestown and even Thailand. There is so little difference between these religions and cults that I am sure an alien, coming from another galaxy, would be hard pressed to tell them apart. They are just different faeces on the same die.

Let us go back to basics to try to discover the natural, logical truth behind the mumbo jumbo, mythology and ceremony surrounding the modern versions of the religions practiced today.

All modern religions either started either as the result of the teachings of a leader, or they were distilled from stories and legends, handed down from their original adherents, from their history and that of people they came in contact with. Hinduism is a classic example of a religion derived from myth, as is Judaism, which was distilled from the beliefs of the ancient Cretan conquerors and civilizers of the Hebrew peoples, with input from teachings that originated in Persia, the Indian subcontinent and further afield. Hinduism is falsely regarded as a polytheistic religion when in actuality all the “gods” are simply different incarnations or avatars of the same being, making it maybe the first monotheistic religion.

Christianity and Islam were both founded by teachers who altered the Judaic and Zoroastrian myths to their own purposes, (mostly with good intent). Buddhism was also started by a teacher, although true Buddhism makes no claim for any supernatural power, so it can not strictly be called a religion. Zoroaster (founder of Zoroastrianism), Siddhārtha Gautama (The Buddha), Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji (founder of Sikhism), Lord Rishabha (founder of Jainism), Mírzá Ḥusayn-`Alí Nuri (founder of the Bahá'í Faith), Mohammed Christ and other exceptional teachers were all entirely natural, fully mortal human beings. They existed in nature and complied fully with all her laws. All supernatural claims, if any, made for any of them were made by followers, frequently centuries, even more than a millennium after they died. There is strong evidence that all these leaders lived and taught, however none of the claims of supernatural events or miracles attributed to any of these teachers have any contemporaneous historical evidence of any kind, despite the evidence of their existence. This leads to the logical certainty that they were each exceptional, albeit normal, mortal teachers most of whose lessons and life stories have unfortunately been edited, altered and bastardised by multiple generations of highly vested interests. Mírzá Ḥusayn-`Alí Nuri and the Bahá'í Faith being a notable exception because he and the other leaders of this young faith distilled the most important teachings from other religions to build a teaching based on peace, compassion, understanding and the “Golden Rule.”

Most religions, particularly the Abrahamic triad, serve two main purposes in society.

1. They tell people how to live their lives and have a risk/reward system, the reward often being promised for some time after death. (Control.)
2. They separate believers in society from non-believers.

Senior members of a religious society promote a culture of fear, which can only be alleviated in part by unquestioning acceptance of their authority. They bind a people together in a multitude of ways and “protect” them from “unbelievers”, keeping them at a safe distance. These unbelievers may be those of a different race, tribe, caste, class or even gender or sexual persuasion. Note the many religious prohibitions against adherents of one faith taking a spouse from a different one. Some who dare flout such a prohibition are likely to be killed, often with extreme brutality, even in the current new millennium.

If we throw aside the fear, superstition, mumbo jumbo and childish stories that hold most religions together, we need to begin with a clean slate and offer a true alternative, serving a similar, but more humane, purpose in our modern society. Our new way of living and teachings should:

1. Be based on logical, repeatable scientifically provable evidence.
2. Help people to lead happy, productive lives, allowing moral and intellectual enrichment motivated by concern for the alleviation of suffering.
3. Remove their fears, including that of death, without replacing them with deceit, false hopes or sham promises.

Let us take these in order:

The first is easy. We need to teach our society to question what they are told. Any individual beliefs they may have must be based on evidence. Frequently evidence means an observable fact, something you can actually see (or hear, feel, smell, taste etc... ) that something is true. Other types of evidence fit the description that they are the only or by far the most likely logical explanation for something. Examples would be evolutionary theory or the theory of relativity. All the observable facts fit and give veracity to the theories. If later observations using your equipment, your hearing, sense of touch, smell, taste etc show the theory to be wrong, then the theory will be reworked to account for them. This is scientific method and it explains the world we live in. No facts should ever be altered or ignored to fit a pre-existing theory or belief system, as they are so frequently today by those who chose to follow illogical religious teachings.

We must take no account of teachings based on tradition, authority, or revelation, the three evil cornerstones of religious belief systems.

• “Tradition” means beliefs handed down through the generations or from books handed down through the centuries. Most of these beliefs start because somebody just made them up, normally to gain some kind of advantage over others or to explain some observable fact that they found inexplicable at the time. Santa Clause, monster under the bed, tooth fairy, sun god, god of thunder, even the Abrahamic god all fall under these traditional belief systems. Do not believe something just because it is in a book or tabloid newspaper. Look for provable evidence.
• “Authority” means believing a story simply because you are told to believe it by somebody more important or knowledgeable than you consider yourself to be. That person could be somebody older than you, a teacher, a parent, a man with a big gun, or a religious leader. For them to use only their authority to try to make you believe something is truly evil. They must provide access to provable, reproducible evidence. Some claim that scientific texts are simply an aspect of “Authority” teaching, but this is not the case because you can use the texts as a basis to prove the truth of what is written. I can tell you here that light speed is approximately 298,000 Kilometres per second and you could easily find out how to prove that experimentally. However, if I tell you that a man can walk on water, you could never reproduce it without trickery, illusion or thick ice.
• “Revelation” means that somebody claims something to be true simply because they thought it to be so themselves. They sat and prayed, or meditated or dreamed or had a hallucination because they ate some bad grain or fungus or nasty drugs and this idea came to them that they want everybody else to believe. Alternatively, they felt left out of their society and made something up to make themselves feel important. You see people like this all the time. There were thousands waiting for the start of the year 2,000, claiming God had told them the world was going to end. (As far as I know, the evidence would seem to prove it is still here as I type this.) Another example of a “Revelation” can be seen at Lourdes in France and other “miracle” sites. Millions of people go there hoping against hope to be cured of their ills, but it never happens. The only claimed cures are far more likely to be pure chance or to have entirely natural explanations. “Revelations”; do not believe them whether they are yours or anybody else’s. They are mostly just the symptom of a mind temporarily short circuited.

Secondly we must help people to lead happy, productive lives, allowing moral and intellectual enrichment motivated by concern for the alleviation of suffering. This is also not too hard if we have already accepted the first part, that all teachings must be based on logical, repeatable scientifically provable evidence.

In this regard, the “Golden Rule”, slightly rephrased and taken back to an earlier version here, is all important: “Each person should love their fellow beings as a mother loves her children.” Or phrased in a more recognisable manner: “What you do not like when done to yourself, do not do to others.” In this simple but profound rule can be found the true meaning of good, the basis for most of the philosophy by which we should all strive to live our lives. In contrast, the absence of the Golden Rule is the very epitome of devil, when people commit acts on others they would never like to be committed on themselves.

Good and devil are both alive and well and fighting a constant battle in our hearts and minds. Some truly good people naturally follow the “Golden Rule”, unfortunately other devil members of society prefer to totally ignore it and always follow the opposite course of action, cause pain or suffering where they can. Most of us are caught in between the two.

Devil pokes us in the ribs and persuades us to be selfish, lie or cheat or steal, he promises so much happiness, wealth or power but always, eventually leaves us or another with a bitter pill to swallow and a nasty taste to go with it. Good, on the other hand, keeps us awake at night if we have done something wrong, but he also rewards us with a feeling of absolute joy and happiness if we do something truly good and selfless. This can all be proven by simple experiment. If you dry a child’s tears or return lost or stolen property, you will always feel good about it. If, on the other hand, you cheat an old lady or knock her over, you will be guaranteed to stay awake at night or feel unhappy because of it. Unless, of course, you choose to mostly follow devil’s ways.

So, to recap number two: It is necessary to follow the “Golden Rule” and to base all our teachings on logical, provable, scientific evidence.

Lastly, we must fears, including that of death, without replacing them with deceit, false hopes or sham promises. If our teachings are based on logical, provable, scientific evidence, there will be no deceit, false hopes or sham promises and the only real remaining fear will concern the unknown, death or the afterlife. All others can be overcome by simple honesty.

Fear of what happens at the end of life is more difficult. It is after all “After our Life” and nobody has ever passed through and returned to tell the tale. However we each have a spark of consciousness within us that is not extinguished, indeed it returns to us after we sleep or enter alternative states of unconsciousness caused by accident, (coma,) or medication such as anaesthesia etc. There is a logical probability that this spark could well continue after our mortal remains have been cremated or rotted away as food for worms. If this spark is indeed reborn in a different body, as some believe, we could have no evidence of it. Memory is, after all, a function of the neural networks of the brain we left behind in our past corpse. We simply do not know, and can never do so. So there is really no point in worrying about it. At the end of our days we will simply go for a long, comfortable sleep from which we will not awaken in the same shell. This is something to look forward too, not fear.

As I wrote above, I feel a great affinity for the Bahá'í Faith. Their teachings of peace, harmony, the unity and equality of humankind are entirely logical except for their belief in a supernatural being, although their belief that God, if there is one, is too great for human comprehension, has its merits too.