Values dictated by others
Among people, belief has many definitions. When explaining the four levels of
experience, the most important definition is, Something accepted as true
without evidence.
Belief is the uncritical acceptance that something is true — evidence is
not an issue. And that is why belief can be dangerous. If someone can inspire
belief without having to supply evidence, that person gains total control.
There are few things more comforting than knowing that something is absolutely
true, with no room for doubt. This is why belief is like an addictive drug
— it suspends reason as drugs do. And, just as with drugs, people exposed
to the feeling of uncritical belief find they need more of that feeling over
time.
The first danger with belief lies with the source of beliefs. If a leader can
lie and be believed, that person's followers are in great danger. True
believers generally do not suddenly wake up and say, Wait a minute! This
makes no sense! That is because this kind of reasoning ability doesn't
spring up all
at once — it takes years of training. And True Believers don't spend those
years learning how to think.
Jim Jones' Church
Jonestown, British Guiana, 1978
914 dead.
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This is why Jim Jones was able to tell 914 of his followers to drink poison,
lie down and die (British Guiana, 1978). This is why David Koresh was able to
persuade 75 of his followers to stay inside a burning building and die (Waco,
Texas, 1993). This is why about 500 members of the Ugandan Movement for
the Restoration of the 10 Commandments could agree to a mass suicide and
be led into their church, which was then set on fire, killing them all (Uganda,
2000). This is why a relatively small group of Islamic terrorists could kill
themselves
and thousands of others in New York City and Washington, D.C., raising
religion's natural death toll to a new, horrible level.
People who have religious beliefs may think this is a bleak view of religion
and belief — after all, not everyone who is religious commits suicide or
murder, or
even thinks about such things. But please think — if you boarded a ship
for a cruise, wouldn't you like to know the cruise line's safety record over
time? How many of the company's
ships get to their destination safely, and how many sink on the way?
In fairness, the same questions
could
be asked about religion — what are the available destinations, and how
safe is the ride? Are there other ways to get to the same destination? But no.
Although these questions are always asked about ships, they are never asked
about religions.
Movement for
the Restoration
of the 10 Commandments
Uganda, 2000
500 dead.
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For those of you who have possessed religious beliefs all your life, please
read this article very carefully. It is not meant to doubt your faith or your
commitment. It is meant only to encourage you to think.
Religion relies on human spirituality — an individual experience — as
its energy source. Without human spirituality, religion would have no appeal.
It is fair to say that religion is the marketing of spirituality. Just like any
business, religion packages its product (spirituality), delivers it and
receives compensation.
But, as with the rest of retail marketing, it is not enough to have a product
and customers. You must make your product unique, set it apart, then encourage
consumers to switch from another product to yours.
So religion's promoters are faced with a bunch of potential customers who
possess a lot of natural human spirituality — people who might simply
stand in the middle of a field, look at the stars, and marvel at their number,
the vast distances, and the insignificance of this little planet (just an
example — substitute your own favorite spiritual experience). People who
might simply feel grateful to be alive, to be able to witness all that beauty.
What does religion do to attract those people into a building, get them to join
up, put money in a plate? Here is how one might build a religion:
David Koresh's Church
Waco, Texas, 1993
79 dead.
|
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Explain that ordinary experience is not valid,
that standing in a field looking
at stars is simply ignorant.
-
Appropriate people's common-sense behavioral rules
— gleaned from everyday
experience and shared human tradition — and give them the mantle of divine
wisdom. Claim that morals emanate from religion, not from everyday experience.
In other words, take common sense, rename it commandments.
-
Invent a prophet,
so there is no excuse left for people to interact with nature
directly any more. In other words, instead of acknowledging that spiritual
truths are everywhere, claim that there is only one true path to
enlightenment/salvation/whatever, and your church has it for sale.
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Tell your followers that they are special,
chosen, superior to all those other
people who don't believe. Encourage them to feel separate and then
become separate. Explain how the expression God is love can be
meaningfully translated into If only you weren't so ignorant, you
would join my church and share my beliefs.
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Instead of allowing your followers to comparison-shop,
tell them it is their
duty to convert other people
to the One True Faith. Tell them the most
effective way to do this is to always talk but never listen.
This is why religions have been the source of so much suffering in human
history — religion isolates people while explaining this is a
good thing. Non-believers should not be respected, they should be converted (or
killed). As a result, the very best thing that can happen to you in a church is
— nothing. The worst? You might be invited to partake of a cyanide-laced
sacrament. Even worse, you might do it willingly.
Religion is openly hostile to facts and ideas, the two experience levels
above belief. This is because the application of even a few trivial facts
undermines religion, and the application of ideas makes religion look downright
ridiculous. Therefore, like greedy international corporations, religions have
always tried to silence thinkers (their natural competition) throughout history.
Here's one of those stories. Giordano Bruno was a thinker, very far ahead of
his time, who anticipated relativity theory in the late 1500s by saying:
"This entire globe, this star, not being subject to death, and dissolution
and annihilation being impossible anywhere in Nature, from time to time renews
itself by changing and altering all its parts. There is no absolute up or down,
as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body
is relative to that of other bodies. Everywhere there is incessant relative
change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the
center of things."
This and other writings of Bruno came to the attention of the Church, which
realized this way of looking at the universe made the Church seem unimportant
(in those days, religious dogma had it that Earth was the only center of the
universe, Rome was the center of the earth, and the Church as the center of
Rome). So, after unsuccessfully ordering Bruno to recant his ideas, they took
him outside and burned him at the stake.
Well, okay, this shows one difference between old-style religion and the new
kind. In the old days, religious people mostly killed other people, especially
members of other religions. Now (apart from some exceptions like murdering
health
care workers who happen to be in a clinic that advocates or performs
abortions), they usually kill themselves.
World Trade Center
September 11, 2001
Approximately 3,000 dead
Copyright © 2001, New York Post
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But from time to time in the course of human affairs, we witness a public
example of religion's essential nature, of religion unmasked. I am speaking of
the terrorist attack that brought down the World Trade Center in New York City.
This attack is a perfect
example of normal religion brought to a new depth. Instead of clucking their
tongues at the infidels, the ordinary pastime of the religious, a group of
Islamic fanatics killed themselves plus a large number of the sworn enemy
of all True Believers —
anyone who doesn't believe exactly what they
believe.
But why should this sort of activity be so surprising? Most religions explain
that
life on Earth is much less important than what follows — the afterlife. So
religious people naturally feel an impulse to move along — if Planet
Earth is really just a bus station in Kansas, and the afterlife is the
real thing, well, let's get on with it!
Religious followers, being True Believers, usually don't figure out that all
the talk about the afterlife is just a way to get them to tolerate things
they shouldn't. In the everyday world, if you want a raise, you ask for it. You
boss might say, Next week, okay? and you can await the outcome. But
if a religious leader says, Your reward is in the hereafter, what
exactly are your options?
Business owners much prefer to hire religious people (unless any originality or
creativity is needed in the job, of course) because they are such sheep. This
would be less remarkable except that religious writings are filled with
references to sheep and flocks — why don't people get it? So, as a result
of this, there are forces in society that most definitely support the religious
outlook, forces having nothing to do with spirituality (assuming religion has
anything to do with spirituality). Businesses want to exploit their labor
force, and religion is a perfect training ground for that exploitation.
But this is all less important than the biggest problem with belief, which I
have saved for last.
Belief keeps people from adapting to change.
Belief is a fixed, rigid system, but nature's requirements
constantly change. This guarantees the True Believers will be left behind
over time. They can burn a few people at the stake for a while, blow up a few
health care clinics, murder a few doctors, but pretty quickly the world moves
on and leaves them in the dust.
Here's an example. At one time, it was accepted as immoral not to have a large
family. There was a lot of unoccupied land, and people were dying left and
right from diseases. Small families were seen as immoral in both the
conventional moral sense (agreement between people) and in the religious moral
sense (religious dogma).
Now (at the time I write this) there are six billion people and counting.
The human population doubles every forty years.
This means:
-
We are going to have to learn family planning, or
-
A lot of children are going to starve to death.
There is no option three, no feed all the hungry. That is quite
impossible. Every time we double food production capacity, the world's
population doubles also. Pretty soon,
every new child born will guarantee that another child will die.
That is nature's math, not mine.
Because of this change since biblical times, in the conventional moral sense
(agreement between people), it is now immoral to have a large number of
children. Why? Because of human suffering, a cause not even listed among
religion's priorities. But in a religious moral sense (religious dogma), it is
still moral, even a duty, to have large numbers of children — religion hasn't
adjusted to reality. In fact, worldwide and in general, religions will not even
allow family planning knowledge or skills to be shared among their followers.
Why? Why would religion allow this tragedy to unfold? For our answer, we need
only look at the history of religion. Religion always fights change, to the
extent of murdering the messengers of change. And, of course, there's always
those business owners, supporters of religion, for whom a system that
perpetually produces more exploitable workers and customers is a dream beyond
imagining.
In the largest sense,
belief brings evolution to a halt.
It stops the music of the human family, the movement that makes us who we are,
that allows us to respond to nature's constantly changing requirements. Yes,
belief is comforting to individuals, but it trades comfort for the suicide of
an entire species.
To move beyond belief, we must listen to nature's messages (facts, the next
experience level) and then we must become nature's partner by shaping our own
experience in coöperation with nature (ideas, the highest level).