On Apr 28, 9:13=A0pm, "Carl Sagan's billions" <mm2te...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
> In my younger years I struggled for a long time trying to
> understand and make sense of Christianity.
>
> I contemplated and struggled with its basic doctrines, the core
> beliefs, the philosophies, the essence, the teachings
> and also the contradictions in Old and New Testament.
> I thought about the behavior of warrior so-called Christian nations,
> often wreaking havoc in non-Christian countries (and now again
> conducting horrible bombing wars on non-Christian people
> in Afghanistan and Iraq and Somalia).
> I tried to understand Genesis/creation, Adam and Eve, the first
> couple, Noah, the flood, the many prophets, the Messiah, the
> crucifixion, the resurrection, the many other stories and prophecies
> in the Bible, etc... I tried to apply reason and logic and
> understand it in the grand scheme of things.
>
> Then slowly (over at least 5 years) I came to understand several
> truths described below. These truths allowed me to gradually throw
> off the yoke, the blinders and the intellectual shackles of a long
> childhood indoctrination in Christianity, and =A0amazingly and
> steadily and happily and irreversibly
>
> I =A0 BECAME =A0 FREE =A0----- =A0FOREVER ------!
>
> That was still pretty dramatic, e.g., when I read Robinson's
> Honest-to-God and his brave search for answers (searches
> beyond the usual Christian dogmas) I cried and ****vered
> for hours. He made me see the first glimmer of light and hope
> in my own search. This was followed by Teilhard de Chardin's
> elaborate ideas of increasing complexity, Dobzhansky's books
> on evolution, Bertrand Russell's courage and ideas,
> and books on comparative religions, and many more.
>
> 'There was no need to fight and struggle anymore - forever':
> Not due to surrender, but due to liberation: Liberation from
> irrationality, illogic, and indoctrination in ancient religious
> beliefs.
>
> I understood ---- and (as happened with Galileo when he understood
> the earth position and path in the solar system) these insights
> and this freedom were irreversible. =A0I saw the reality of religions,
> and with that the mental captivity I had been in in one of them,
> Christianity (as well as the other related mono-theistic religions
> Islam and Judaism), was broken - - =A0and =A0forever.
>
> The mind broke free and I was off flying unen***bered.
> No longer mentally stunted, no longer kept in intellectual bondage,
> no longer bogged down and in eternal confusion about things
> written in ancient 'holy' books and derived religious texts.
>
> These are the 10 basic (simplified) truths I came to understand:
>
> 1. All religions and gods are 'man' made, made and made up
> by humans. Not necessarily to deceive but as a result of new
> ideas and concepts. These evolved over generations and were
> then gradually accepted and written down as the (new) truth, the
> (new) philosophy of life, the (new) gospel, the (new) 'true'
> religion.
>
> 2. The Christian concept and definition of a 'soul' is untenable.
>
> Why? Evolution is a fact but nowhere in the long line of evolution
> was the 'soul' (or something like the soul that makes us immortal)
> suddenly inserted in a certain species at a discrete point in time.
> If I assume that the soul was suddenly inserted in a living
> being, e.g., 1 million years ago, we must then argue that his
> or her father and mother did not have a soul. We cannot.
>
> This means:
>
> All living beings have a soul or no living beings have a soul. =A0As I
> don't believe a worm has a soul, I must conclude that the concept
> of a soul in each human being is a man-made construct.
> A man-made construct because we have a need to believe that
> we (or at least our 'spirit' or our 'soul') are immortal and will
> exist forever.
>
> We fear death; we cannot accept being gone forever.
> We want to deny death; we need to believe we are immortal.
> We have a deep need to formulate a reason for our existence.
> We have a deep need to believe that we will outlast all the
> pain and misery in our earth-bound lives and will 'live happily
> ever after' in a glorious place of light and joy called 'heaven'.
>
> 3. There is no heaven and hell. All religions are man-made, and
> the concepts of heaven and hell are man-made. They were created
> when social groups evolved culturally: =A0To keep individual behavior
> in line and within boundaries - to be beneficial to the group or to
> its leaders. Heaven was a carrot, hell was the stick.
>
> 4. The Christian dogma of sin, with human beings having free choice
> to obey or disobey, is untenable, as 'sin', killing, fighting, etc.,
> already existed millions of years before human beings came about.
>
> That means in the long line of evolution there was never a discrete
> point where the 'first' human being suddenly had free choice to obey
> or disobey. =A0That also means the dogma of Christ's death at the cross
> to atone for our sins is untenable. Human beings evolved and never
> (suddenly) had free choice to obey or dis-obey (=3Dsin).
>
> The man-made Christian God sacrificed his son to atone for all
> sins for all people forever for all times. That brilliant idea of
> hope and total redemption and forgiveness by the almighty ruler
> arose from much older pagan religions that had human sacrifices
> at their core:
>
> The ultimate sacrifice, as proof of total obedience and wor****p,
> is giving your own most valuable 'asset', which is to give up and
> offer/sacrifice your own son (example in the Abraham-Isaac story).
> That's why 'man' eventually came up with the idea that Christ
> - the Son, God's Son - was sacrificed by God, the Father, and
> died for the sins of all mankind.
>
> This was a BRILLIANT and unlimited expansion of the original
> idea behind human sacrifices:
> Not only did the all-powerful God himself give part of himself (the
> Son) as the sacrifice, this sacrifice was so big,
> so ALL encompassing that it forgave ALL sins of ALL human
> beings for ALL times -- forever.
>
> This idea is really mind-boggling in its ingenuity, scope and depth,
> and that may also explain some of its universal appeal.
>
> However as our species, Homo Sapiens, evolved over millions of
> years, there was never an Adam and Eve 6000 years ago.
> That means Eve disobeying God and eating from the fruit
> never happened. That means the 'fall' in the garden of Eden
> never happened. =A0That also means a 'fall' e.g. a million years
> earlier never happened.
>
> That means the philosophy of Jesus Christ having to die for our
> original sin, for us disobeying God, has no basis in fact.
> Our ancestors millions of years ago did not have the
> intellectual capacity nor the choice to obey or disobey.
>
> Even if the ideas of original sin and the fall are allegories,
> they do not make sense in view of the path of our evolution.
>
> 5. The Christian concept that you can only be saved by accepting
> Christ as your savior is untenable. As over 4.5 billion on earth are
> not Christians and may not even know about Jesus Christ,
> it is illogical to assume that God automatically condemns
> 4.5 billion out of 6.5 billion to hell =3D eternal suffering.
>
> There are also over 100-200 billion stars in our own galaxy,
> and a total of 100-200 billion OTHER galaxies in the visible
> universe, each on average containing over 100 billion stars.
>
> Assuming only 1 planet with an intelligent 'civilization' per 1
> billion
> stars (a very conservative estimate) then there are over
> 10,000 billion (!) 'civilized' planets in our visible universe.
> It is illogical to assume that God sacrificed his son on tens
> or even thousands of billions of planets.
>
> 6. All religions are man-made, which explains the huge variety of
> religions. Any evolving human society develops beliefs about life
> and death, which then often morph into absolute beliefs and then
> finally into structured beliefs =3D organized religion.
>
> That's why there are so many religions, so many spin-offs of existing
> religions, and why so many new spin-offs and denominations are
> created all the time, all over the world. There are always new
> thinkers with new ideas, creative thinkers who reject or modify the
> older ideas and entice multitudes with newer messages of hope.
>
> 7. All religions and their spin-offs are man-made, and the concept of
> 'God' in Christianity, Islam and Judaism is man-made.
>
> As nowhere in the material world do we see physical acts/actions on
> matter by a 'God', there is no reason to assume that an 'immaterial'
> God like the Christian or Islamic or Jewish God (who controls,
> guards, acts on matter =3D interferes in our material world) exists.
>
> 8. So we have to face the fact, with courage, and conclude that:
>
> GOD IS ABSENT, =A0IS DEAD =A0OR =A0DOES NOT EXIST.
>
> As I find it illogical that if an all powerful God existed, he would
> decide to disappear from our material world =3D universe into some
> other universe, or even die, i.e., disappear from all possible
> universes, there is only one conclusion left:
>
> There is no immaterial God applying material forces on or into
> our physical environment.
>
> That means all physical and chemical occurrences can be
> explained (sooner or later) without having to introduce/assume
> a supernatural and =A0'immaterial' =A0being capable of and actively
> acting on matter. =A0Therefore the conclusion is that God as
> defined by Christianity, Islam and Judaism does not exist
> and was made up.
>
> You can only exist if you are matter or tied to matter.
> You only exist if you can act upon matter. When tied to matter,
> you can be observed, measured, etc., and thus be proven to exist.
>
> Example:
> In the 2004 tsunami near Sumatra up to 100,000 innocent children
> were killed in just one hour (in total an estimated 220,000 died).
> 'God' did not do it.
> 'Satan' did not do it.
> Humans did not do it.
> The earth core is cooling, forcing huge plates to move,
> which occasionally rupture or fracture into earthquakes,
> volcanic eruptions, etc., which then can cause terrible
> natural catastrophes such as this tsunami.
>
> Nowhere did or does the 'hand of God' act anywhere.
> He did not cause it, and he did not prevent it.
>
> 9. The mystery of matter and the most crucial question and
> most profound mystery of all
>
> --- 'WHY WE (made of matter) EXIST' =A0----
>
> does not mean we have to assume an all powerful being like the
> Christian God who creates, controls, acts on matter,
> and rules and monitors everything.
>
> In the last 1000 years more and more mysteries have been explained.
> In the coming hundreds of years many more mysteries will be
> resolved. That means religious beliefs get pushed back more and
> more, away from the current simple absolute religious 'truths'
> and beliefs as described in 'holy' books.
>
> Religions always consist of a mixture of man-made philosophies,
> myths, theories, taboos, legends, laws, rules, remnants of pagan
> religions, etc.. Explanations from hundreds of years or even much
> longer ago will be pushed back or often voided by science and more
> rational explanations.
>
> That also means a religion such as Christianity can only survive if
> it develops a much better explanation and rationale for the mystery
> of matter and life, and for our own existence. However Christianity
> cannot =A0're-engineer' itself. It cannot offer a science-based
> explanation of life, or even reform itself into a more rational
> philosophy of life.
>
> So it will remain an anti-scientific and mostly static belief system,
> based on fixed explanations for life and death, made by men and
> women who lived hundreds and even thousands of years ago.
> The contradiction between what we learn from science and the
> fixed explanations from hundreds and thousands of years ago
> will grow. Christianity and other similar religions likely will
> have difficulty to survive. The psychological human need for
> spirituality will not disappear, but the dogmas and beliefs of
> religions such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism will become
> less and less acceptable to more and more people. The rites,
> rituals, songs, communal feelings, music, spiritual teachings and
> social interactions may survive but the doctrines and absolute
> dogmas are unlikely to survive.
>
> 10. The core issue is really a direct conflict between:
>
> o =A0 the religious/emotional/non-scientific approach or persona and
>
> o =A0 the scientific/rational approach or persona
>
> Spirituality will stay in various forms; dogmatic religions based
> on ancient fixed beliefs will slowly disappear or only remain with
> smaller and smaller groups of the uneducated or the un-enlightened
> or the desperate or the indoctrinated.
>
> There may be long religious revivals and reactions but
> on longer terms science and associated education
> will (albeit slowly) void ancient belief systems.
>
> However, religions can very well hang on for a long time,
> even when becoming unsatisfactory to many people, e.g. if
> and when there are no other enticing spiritual/social frameworks
> as substitutes or replacements. For scientists that could well be
> science and the wonders, the size and the unbelievable beauty
> and complexity of the physical universe.
>
> But the m***** are poorly educated and never get enthralled
> by nature or by scientific exploration and thought. They do
> get enthralled by food, drink, ***, entertainment, s****ts, and
> the unending ac***ulation of material possessions:
>
> The absence or substitute for or even opposite of spirituality.
>
> The basic science-religion conflict is also why so many religions,
> including Christianity and Islam, in their core will stay so anti-
> science. They can never embrace a much more rational belief
> system that so clearly exposes the fallacies in their inherited
> belief system.
>
>
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
> Why is rejecting Christianity in my opinion a step forward?
>
> Instead of believing in fixed philosophies, laws and taboos
> created by men and women many hundreds and even thousands
> of years ago (people who did not know any better (not their fault)),
> it is much better to determine your own beliefs and truths.
>
> That will enable us to leave behind outdated laws, fears,
> prejudices, misconceptions, racism, intolerance,
> supremacy feelings, and ancient ideas about death,
> heaven, hell, sin, soul, gods, etc.
>
> That freedom will jettison the religious ballast that is
> a constant obstruction and obstacle to a better, more rational
> and more humane and spiritually more free world.
>
> Rationality does not ENSURE more humanity, but in my
> opinion it is a more promising path than non-rationality
> inherent in religions such as Christianity and Islam.
> Rationality combined with humanism may guide us
> to a better world of fairness, the alleviation of poverty,
> of global sharing and caring, and of justice and peace.
>
> Do I think this is feasible? Not that much: Power, greed, racism,
> and power politics are super-strong human and societal forces
> (for injustice, wars, killing, irrationality, waste, destruction,
> hate, intolerance, etc.).
>
> But it may show the direction of hope which we can then analyze
> rationally. That may empower and enable us to plan a path and
> build societal and global structures to channel, restrict or even
> partially control the beast.
>
> With regards,
> Michael M. Terra - Carl Sagan's Billions
> (Carl Sagan understood the 'grand' magnitude of the universe)
All of which will fly right off the thick skulls of brainwashed
delusional Xtians
|
