Religion's "12 Most Dangerous Ideas" and Neutralizing Them (Part 2)

Ancient image of 'Hell' with Lucifer at the forefront and his demons at work incinerating evil humans. Hell is one of the worst ideas and likely a creation of the reptilian brain.

We now continue looking at more of   Valeria Tarico's "most dangerous religious ideas" (in her salon.com piece) and my responses on how they can be neutralized.

7. Blood sacrifice – In the list of religion’s worst ideas, this is the only one that appears to be in its final stages. Only Hindus continue to  ritually hack and slaughter sacrificial animals on a mass scale.

When our ancient ancestors slit the throats on humans and animals or cut out their hearts or sent the smoke of sacrifices heavenward, many believed that they were literally feeding supernatural beings. In time, in most religions, the rationale changed—the gods didn’t need feeding so much as they needed signs of devotion and penance. The residual child sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible (yes it is there) typically has this function.

Christianity’s persistent focus on blood atonement—the notion of Jesus as the be-all-end-all lamb without blemish, the final “propitiation” for human sin—is hopefully the last iteration of humanity’s long fascination with blood sacrifice.

Response:  As noted above most of these primitive acts are on the way out so need not concern us. The blood atonement is the only one that does - the notion that the "pure lamb of God " (Yeshua) had to sacrifice himself for the expiation of humanity's "sin". But as I noted in previous posts, this is only relevant if Yeshua was really a "god-man" and there is no evidence he is, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/04/jesus-was-he-really-son-of-god-do.html

In the context of the God-concept, Yeshua is derivative and not primary in any case. In other words he is the "son" of the God-concept which most Christians accept. But again, if all such concepts are relative it doesn't matter in the end if people accept him as "Savior" or not. If it comforts them to do so, then that's fine. But because of the relative nature of the primary concept one can't use the son as a belief cudgel to threaten others who don't accept it.

8. Hell – Whether we are talking about Christianity, Islam or Buddhism, an afterlife filled with demons, monsters, and eternal torture was the worst suffering the Iron Age minds could conceive and medieval minds could elaborate. Invented, perhaps, as a means to satisfy the human desire for justice, the concept of Hell quickly devolved into a tool for coercing behavior and belief.

Response: The point about the limitations of "Iron Age" minds is apropos and fits also with their primitive god-concept of something along the lines of the vengeful, petulant demiurgos. Beaten down by climate upheavals and with tribe members eaten by beasts, these minds could only come up with vicious gods that punish for the smallest offenses, and demons that enforce "justice"

But at some point human brains - especially since the Enlightenment - were able to see through this nonsense, and with the advent of science moved on to more sophisticated God-concepts.  This meant religions had to figure out a new way to integrate "eternal" punishments into their dogmas. They also had to make "Hell" more believable - away from it cartoon fire basis. Dante Alighieri's great contribution lay in using the power of his imagination, in his Inferno, to remake Hell away from its childish, cartoon Hellfire imagery.

Instead of unending "fires" which were impossible and spelled  numerous metaphysical problems, including demon reproduction, Dante invoked and created subtle forms of eternal torments peculiar to the violations of the damned. For example, in the 2nd Circle of Hell we find those condemned for their lust, "the carnal malefactors"- for letting their raw carnal appetites subdue their reason. They're the first ones to be truly punished in Hell. (The First Circle is not truly a punishment level but rather "Limbo" - for all unbaptized infants. Not even Dante could image them being sent to eternal perdition!)

The RC Church, especially, began to invoke similar, more nuanced Hell visions to reinforce  its objective to coerce behavior, i.e. if you have sex before marriage you go to Hell, if you masturbate you go to Hell, if you kill yourself for any reason, you end up in Hell.

But the problem for the Hell mongers is that the concept isn't even logically coherent, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/07/hell-impossible-fiction.html


9. Karma – Like hell, the concept of karma offers a selfish incentive for good behavior—it’ll come back at you later—but it has enormous costs. Chief among these is a tremendous weight of cultural passivity in the face of harm and suffering. Secondarily, the idea of karma sanctifies the broad human practice of blaming the victim. If what goes around comes around, then the disabled child or cancer patient or untouchable poor (or the hungry rabbit or mangy dog) must have done something in either this life or a past one to bring their position on themselves.

Response: There is not much to add to this, other than the 'blame the victim' meme comes to the fore.  Also, it appears none of the karma backers grasps the unending karmic loop engendered, and where it ends. If some bad guy did evil act E1  to Y, and it was Y's "karma" and Y does evil E2 to Z to make it Z's "karma" where does the karmic chain end? One karmic adherent I had a debate with claimed the Jews  that died in the Holocaust were all receiving "karma" for terrible things they'd done in past lives. The absolute abominable subtext of this needs no elaboration but it gets to the bottom (glaringly!) of what is wrong with the karma idea. That last example alone ought to be sufficient to neutralize it.

10. Eternal Life – To our weary and unwashed ancestors, the idea of gem encrusted walls, streets of gold, the fountain of youth, or an eternity of angelic chorus (or sex with virgins) may have seemed like sheer bliss. But it doesn’t take much analysis to realize how quickly eternal paradise would become hellish—an endless repetition of never changing groundhog days (because how could they change if they were perfect).

The real reason that the notion of eternal life is such a bad invention, though, is the degree to which it diminishes and degrades existence on this earthly plane. With eyes lifted heavenward, we can’t see the intricate beauty beneath our feet. Devout believers put their spiritual energy into preparing for a world to come rather than cherishing and stewarding the one wild and precious world we have been given.

Response: The last part is especially cogent and why I personally hate the idea of "eternal life" or "heaven" because it leads directly to the dismissal of Earthly life, environment and living in the here and now. It is no wonder then that those who cling the most to concepts like heaven have the least care about climate change and acting to stop it. "What's the point? Earth is only a way station anyway, heaven is my final destination".

But as I also noted in an earlier (April 14, 2012)post:

"The error of the Heaven confabulators, then, is basically the same as for the Hell inventors, since the two represent opposing poles of the same afterlife fantasy or two sides of the same sanity-raping coin. In any reward-punishment setting, one must offset the other. If you invent Hell to punish the unfaithful or the hardcore sinner who refuses to repent, you must have a Heaven for those who comply."

Thus, heaven falls just like Hell because they are two sides of the same "reward-punishment" God-concept. Since all God-concepts are relative then all afterlife concepts are as well, none is to be preferred to any others. Thus, the Buddhist concept of afterlife nothingness is as justified as the heaven-Hell model.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/02/myth-of-heaven.html


11.Male Ownership of Female Fertility –  The notion of women as brood mares or children as assets likely didn’t originate with religion, but the idea that women were created for this purpose, that if a woman begets life she must be subjugated is part of many religions.

Response: Again this goes hand in hand with the patriarchal nature of most primitive god-concepts: envisioning "God" as an old white man with a beard,  ruling over everything and everyone- especially women. Of course, the . most expeditious way to eradicate this foolishness is by replacing all personal God-concepts with impersonal ones, i.e. defining the ultimate in terms of energy. Since energy has no gender the male patriarch image becomes redundant.  The nature of a holistic impersonal Being is explicated in my recent book, Beyond Atheism, Beyond God.


12. Bibliolatry (aka Book Worship) – Preliterate people handed down their best guesses about gods and goodness by way of oral tradition, and they made objects of stone and wood, idols, to channel their devotion. Their notions of what was good and what was Real and how to live in moral community with each other were free to evolve as culture and technology changed. But the advent of the written word changed that. As our Iron Age ancestors recorded and compiled their ideas into sacred texts, these texts allowed their understanding of gods and goodness to become static. The sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam forbid idol worship, but over time the texts themselves became idols, and many modern believers practice—essentially—book worship, also known as bibliolatry.

Response: This is something I have commented on in previous posts. In terms of the God-concept context, it means that the Jewish concept of Yahweh, the Muslim concept of Allah, the Hindu concept of Brahmin and the Christian concept of the Trinity all stand in the same epistemological relation.  From an informational point of view, none can be selected as “true” to the exclusion of the others.

 This is completely analogous to there being inadequate information to distinguish one religion’s claims as true to the exclusion of all others. In the case of individual religions and religious traditions, the embodiment of the respective truth claim is found in a sacred revelation, or holy book. For example, the Holy Bible for Christianity, the Talmud for Jews, the Koran for Muslims and the Upanishads for Hindus, each proclaims inherent truths. For many of the respective faiths’ followers, these inherent truths are also absolute in the sense they dare not be contradicted. But if God-concepts are all relative and subjective, then all the sacred books on which they are based must be. None can be "true" to the exclusion of the others.

 

The problem is that the early writers for each scripture suffered from the same limitation of comprehension as their modern counterparts. A finite neural capacity means limited intellectual grasp, irrespective of the particular conceptual allegiance.  This then leads to a "holy" document or scripture that itself is limited and subjective, not absolute.

Note, a genuine God putatively doesn’t make mistakes since perfection is surely a fundamental divine attribute. However, a human brain is quite likely to project its flaws onto its concepts and that includes beholding the contrived deity botching assorted events and actions. No one can blame (finite) brains for this propensity, but humans at least need to recognize that they do it!

 

On the other hand, this defect means that worshipping holy books is to avoided at all costs as another form of idolatry.

"Heaven" Is A State of Mind

Every now and then it's good and gratifying that a nation enveloped in its worship of materialist consumption - including the latest ipads, ipods, tablets, Kindles, HDTVs and all the rest, turns its attention on more metaphysical pursuits and issues. One of these is whether an afterlife exists, or if its merely a fiction of too many people's imaginations.

IN the most recent TIME (April 16, p. 30) the subject is revisited by Jon Meacham in the article: 'Heaven Can't Wait- Why Rethinking the Hereafter Could Make the World a Better Place'. In the piece, Meacham basically gives a brief survey of all the variants of the "hereafter" and to which religions they belong.

As one might expect for a U.S. publication, much prominence is given to the Protestant Evangelical chorus, since they are often the most sanctimonious, politically active and.. ...noisy. Thus, we learn of books such as 'Heaven is for Real' by Lynn Vincent that recounts Colin Burpo's story of how he "visited heaven" while undergoing an appendectomy. Well and good, but no one should take a kid's anecdotal account literally, since we know chemicals administered in anesthesia can wreak havoc on the brain and elicit all sort of wild cortical threholds and trigger ideations that resemble hallucinations.

Thus, if you want an atheist to invest in the "Heaven" or afterlife claim, don't parade anecdotes or cite "sacred books", but give us citations from scientific papers that have basically eliminated all natural causes. Once you do that we will sit up and take notice.

As I noted in an earlier blog some years ago, the problem with most "heaven" proposals (especially by orthodox Christians) is they essentially create division and separation (what I call "mental apartheid") on another plane of existence. Thus, it's not enough we have enclaves of division here on Earth, we're expected to embrace them in an "after life" as well - despite the fact no good evidence exists to support that.

The error of the Heaven confabulators, then, is basically the same as for the Hell inventors, since the two represent opposing poles of the same afterlife fantasy or two sides of the same sanity-raping coin. In any reward-punishment setting, one must offset the other. If you invent Hell to punish the unfaithful or the hardcore sinner who refuses to repent, you must have a Heaven for those who comply.

In most cases also, heaven claimants (who are also almost always Hell claimants) excuse their ideations by offering limited apologias such as:

"How can you have murderers, rapists, etc, as well as thieves being rewarded in the next life, especially if they got away with their crimes in this one? And look at Hitler!”

The problem with this is they all believe they can explicitly read justice at the supposed divine level. The fact is that "justice" is a limited human concept and invention, not a divine decree. It is also hard to make a cogent argument that the world wouldn’t be any more "chaotic" today if we did away with a lot of the so-called "justice". Truth be told, we probably would see a saner, more temperate world filled with fewer psychos (who had been degraded in prisons) out for blood when they leave. The hard fact is most human “justice’ retains an abominable “eye for an eye” atavistic undertow.

At another level, there’s no evidence that any afterlife exists, whether Heaven or Hell. No one has returned from the truly dead, by which I mean no heart or brain activity for at least twenty four hours, and given us proof that anything exists. All we have are ersatz reports of “near death” or people briefly technically “dead” for a few minutes, or maybe a bit longer. But no one has returned from a stone cold morgue and related in detail his or her experiences. See also the late Sir A.J. Ayer's account of his own "near death experience", i.e.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/10/sir-aj-ayers-near-death-excursion-1.html

and

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/10/sir-aj-ayers-near-death-excursion-2.html

Ayer's main takeaway point was not to disabuse the possibility of an afterlife, but only to warn that it may not be at all in the image of what its fantasists in the here and now believe. Thus, "just as there can be a godless life there can be a godless afterlife."

From this we have a tiny crack of hope (if you wish to call it that) which might enable humans to escape from total obliteration in nothingness, and I have blogged on this before too. This hope is contingent on the extent to which the brain operates in the quantum mechanical realm as opposed to the Newtonian-reductionist -classical mechanical. If the latter, then all bets are off and consciousness is merely an epiphenomenon of the brain. When you die, so does your consciousness. If the former, then there is a possibility that consciousness - in the form of primordial quantum waves (de Broglie waves) can survive death.

What this suggests is that if the quantum basis is legit, then "heaven" could well be regarded literally as a "state of mind" or more accurately, a state of consciousness. The problem is that since all quantum waves exhibit nonlocality (or inseparability) then that consciousness is fundamentally spread all over and within a collective wave form with others - not individual. What does that mean? Who can say since no one has come back from the truly dead to inform us.

Thus, in the absence of unambiguous empirical proof, the simpler hypothesis applies, according to the Ockham’s Razor Principle. That hypothesis is that when we die, our bodies (including brain) die and decay, and there is no residual, individual life of any type that remains, including an individual consciousness.

No afterlife of any kind we’d recognize. Essentially no “self” would remain that could be associated with the prior physical being and its peculiar neural matrix, preferences or disposition. For all practical purposes, once we die, the condition is little different from that experienced when we undergo total, general anesthesia. You are simply not “there” and when you awaken you have no recall of anything. The difference is that with death there is no wake up, no revival, no coming to. Bottom line, nothingness is the end point of life.

There is no Heaven or Hell, these are fairy stories (as Stephen Hawking has noted) invented by Church Fathers (and latter day 'Elmer Gantrys') determined to employ a not so subtle means of psychological coercion to get their flock or the general populace to heave to and follow their marching orders. (Which they have the hubris to call "God's orders".)

What perhaps is more worthwhile, and which Meacham intimated in his TIME piece (p. 32), is that we pay more attention to the here and now and drop all the artificial divisions between peoples - that we may at least (for a time) approximate a "proxy" heaven on this Earth!

Has Rob Bell "saved" God?

On reading the feature article in the recent 'TIME' (Is Hell Dead?, Apr. 25) on Pastor Rob Bell's influence in re-thinking the Hell concept, it brought back memories of my last debate with a churchman, in January of 1983 in Barbados. My opponent was an ordained Anglican priest and after a full one hour of heady debate, we finally reached the bugabear notion of Hell. I went first, marshalling a furious defense of atheism and a withering attack on the fact Christians had to resort to playing the fear card to get anyone on board. For the coup'de grace I introduced famed philosopher Bertrand Russell's words from his marvelous book, Why I am Not A Christian
:
"Hell is Religion's source of terror, and in dignifying it Religion has institutionalized fear"

I then awaited the reply of the Anglican cleric, which almost knocked me for six, to use the Bajan expression:

"But we don't do that! In our essential theology - that of the Anglican Church and Anglican Union- all people eventually are enfolded in the Divine Being. We call this teaching 'Universalism'.

It took me several minutes to collect my senses since, of course, I'd never heard of it before. We had to wait until after the debate, which concluded in the next ten minutes, for me to sort it out using probing questions. A number of those in attendance remained behind in the small Anglican church to hear the discussion.

My first question to him was an obvious one: if this was an official doctrine of the Anglican church then why wasn't it more widely known?

He responded that it could have been but the common lay people didn't want to hear it. They preferred the easier to comprehend version of "heaven and hell" which satisfied their human prejudice and longing for "justice". So, he replied: "We have to give them what they want, wrong though it is, because otherwise they'd join the fundamentalists who do teach this!"

My second question was more personal, I asked him how he felt about having to conceal the actual teaching doctrine of his church to instead feed his parishioners the 'heaven-hell' codswallop. His answer again was somewhat surprising:

"I humbly accept that as part of my duty and hope that some day, one day, ordinary people will be developed enough mentally and spiritually to accept the more profound truth. But as we know, even Christ Jesus had two sets of teachings, those in simple parables for the ordinary folk of his day. And the secret teachings intended only for the select few disciples."

My last question was why did he think Universalism as a doctrine was so critical. He replied:

"That's the easiest! Without it, God is a failure! His whole creation, especially of humans, was all for naught if most are damned or even a significant percentage. He could as well have not created anything and preserved perfect nothingness."

The last part has formed an ongoing philosophical project and question of mine ever since. One which any intelligent or inquiring mind must ask, just as Leibniz first did
:
"WHY must there be something as opposed to nothing?"

Think about this: If "nothing" be the simpler state, in which an invisible deity could still exist as "spirit" then why create a universe at all? Why go through the effort? Especially one which would be fraught with violence, despair, "sin" and all the rest. Also, one which an ominiscient deity would have to know (IF it was judgmental) that it would have to condemn billions before he even created them.

This itself makes the act of creation an act of violence against those created, who would not be able (for whatever reason, including where they were born) to live up to its standards, or gain 'saving' knowledge, say for a poor Hindu in Delhi. Thus, we would have to question on an a fortiori basis any judgmental deity that created the cosmos. It could not have good will at its core, since it would know its act would condemn billions before its creation even began. Hence, it would be a pre-meditative sadist!

Leibniz himself used two premises: 1) the principle of sufficient reason, and 2) an a priori argument from simplicity for the presupposition that - spontaneously - the universe feature nothing contingent at all, because the Null universe (nothingness) is the most natural of all.

As he put it
:

"the great principle of sufficient reason holds that nothing takes place without sufficient reason...a reason (or condition) to determine why it is thus and not otherwise"

But again, why would a sufficient reason be to simply create something which He already knew would have to be destroyed, as in most of humanity dispatched to eternal perdition? It made no sense! Well let me rephrase that: it would make eminent sense to a cosseted, parochial-minded religious zealot who embraced spiritual apartheid and the conviction that salvation's path must be narrow and exclusive, never broad. But then if an infinite love is postulated to be part of the Divinity, how or why would it be so petulant and inferior-minded to let a little paltry unbelief serve as a conviction yardstick? Obviously, such a petulant being was man-made, not divine!

Let us also bear in mind that if an all perfect Being already existed, it would have no need to create at all. It would ALREADY be complete, perfect, self-sufficient and non-contingent. In effect, by creating it really adds something (universe) to itself - so it cannot be "infinite" in the true sense, unless it and the universe are one and the same. Worse, it adds imperfection to itself so it is no longer perfect. (If one argues the universe is a separate creation from the deity, then one is saying the deity is not infinite, since an extra additive exists to delimit it.)

Thus, Leibniz solved his conundrum by reverting to the Null hypothesis: that there ought to be nothing rather than something. But the external evidence points to something, and hence this 'something' is unexpected from the Principle of sufficient reason. Therefore, the actual existence of this something cries out for an explanation.

Hence, it is the job of the deity believer to explain why there is this actual existence in addition to positing his God. This also underscores his principle of sufficient reason to account for why we have something rather than nothing. Or to put it another way
:

Why wasn't `nothing' (no creation- ab initio perfect "Being") good enough for the creative force or deity?

Why perform an act of creation that renders it imperfect?(Since if "omniscient" or assigned such attribute, it would have had to know before all time that it would create those it would later have to destroy?

Obviously, the Anglican cleric and his church thought carefully about these issues which was why they arrived at the doctrine of Universalism. Obviously also, others like former Episcopal Bishop Shelby Sponge and Pastor Rob Bell have also thought of them. Bell's take is more interesting, since as the 'TIME' piece observes, it has been crafted out of a background replete with Elmer Gantry -style Hell mongers: the Fundamentalist Christian extreme right. So how or why did Bell risk all by trying to expand the umbrella of Divine love for salvation though he had to know he'd be crucified by his lesser-minded and less intelligent cohort for it?

I can only conclude he did it on the same basis as the Anglican cleric: If it was true that all but a few humans would be damned for eternity, then for all practical purposes the Divine creation project was an abject failure. Worse, the failure signified not a perfect, or omniscient Being but a very defective one. Maybe not even a real God at all! I mean, even a lousy architect that cuts corners with his building project (say in exchanging quality materials for cheaper ones, like quality drywall for the Chinese imitation laden with lead, etc.) HAS to know there will be adverse consequences! It is stupid to claim he won't or that he isn't responsible! Of course he is! He chose to go on with a project he knew was a failure

How much more then, the accountability for a "Supreme" Being presumed to be OMNISCIENT or knowing everything that will transpire before it even happens! This character doesn't even have the limited knowledge excuse (for absolute fact of outcome) of the crappy architect! In fact, he's a billion times worse than the architect for even allowing his "project" to get off the ground when he knew the failure rate (or "non-salvation" rate in fundie parlance) would be next to 99.99999%. THAT is failure by any definition!

Rob Bell, as an obviously intelligent pastor saw this problem - I've no doubt he did- and understood that sooner or later many intelligent lay people would see it as well. (Mayhap even from reading this blog, whose hits average is now approaching 10,000 /month). Thus, Bell used the fundamental precept of Divine love to attempt to extend the Divine "arms" beyond the tiny limits proposed by his fellow fundies. For that, he merits kudos and congratulations. Not because he's opposing stupid beliefs that have no logical basis (see my earlier logical disproofs of Hell) but because he has the courage to think for himself, see a serious theological problem and attempt to resolve it, instead of being a passive, unthinking and uncritical sheep. In this sense, Rob Bell may have "saved" God for any remaining faithful. Not from any any foolish hell, but from being consigned as a permanently useless concept devoid of even basic rationality or sense.