Religion?

Preamble: The title of this page is misleading, as is the reference in the about page. I have to be honest and admit that I adhere to no recognised religion but am not without faith. Confused? You shouldn’t be, the way I see it religion is a tool used by groups of people to manipulate, coerce and generally confound the freedom of the individual. Obviously I think this is a bad thing. Faith on the other hand is what an individual actually believes. On this page I will set forth what I actually believe and the reasoning behind those beliefs. I will use language more often associated with religion and refer to god quite alot but don’t fall into the trap of thinking this is your god that I am talking about, its mine, and you can’t have it :-P. If anyone wants to take issue with my reasoning feel free, I’ve never been much of one for expressing my thought processes coherently so if you see the point but believe theres a better way of putting it, let me know. Right on with the show.

The Universe.

My perception of my universe is created by my mind. I create my own version of the universe and will never be able to understand it in its entirety. This is true for everyone. I have no more chance of knowing your universe than you have of knowing mine. I am not you, I cannot see with your eyes nor think with your mind. For any one person to claim to know all the answers regarding the universe is preposterous all they can claim is knowledge of their own universe.

There was a period (thankfully short) where my reasoning led me to believe that we each were gods of our own universe because we created it in our minds, this didn’t help and frankly if I’d told anyone about it they’d have looked at me funny and called the men in white coats. Our perception of our universes cannot come from nothing, there must be a cause. This cause is the true Universe. The one that exists independently of us, outside of us, feeding us stimuli which our brain interprets and filters creating our universe.

The wonders of the universe, even when filtered through our limited perceptions, are quite something. There is beauty everywhere you look, from the patterns clouds make in the sky to the intricate mathematical relationships between subatomic particles, and everything in between. All we have to do is look and we will see heaven all around us. We don’t need to wait till we’re dead to go to heaven, we already live there.

Why am I here?

I am part of the Universe, that much is a given. Why am I part of the Universe? What is my purpose? What part of this huge and magnificent machine am I?

The Universe is concious and aware. How do I know this? I know this because I am part of the Universe and I am concious and aware. I think therefore I am; I am part of the Universe, therefore the Universe is capable of thought. Now I could go off on one and postulate that the Universe may think on various levels, the life and death of stars may be evidence of monumentally huge and slow thought processes but that would just be fantasy and wishful thinking, without any basis in empirical evidence. I’ll stick with what I know, understand, and can prove (even if it is only to myself). It may even be that there is no purpose to our existence but that smacks of nihilism and I won’t stand for it.

Now given that I am concious and aware, and I am part of the Universe, and that because of this the Universe is concious and aware. May be my purpose is to figure out the purpose of the Universe. If I’m sitting here trying to work out my purpose then the Universe is also trying to work out its purpose. We are each parts of the Universe, experiencing it and thinking about it, working it out for ourselves, like a whole load of parallel processors each taking a tiny portion of the problem to chew over. As I see it there may never be an answer, I mean in the grand scheme of things we’ve only just started thinking about these things. 10,000 years isn’t even a blink in the eye of a star, we’ve a long way to go and alot more of the Universe to see before we’re anywhere near an answer.

Morality

Now this is a bit of change of topic, you see I don’t think that the above two paragraphs have anything to do with my morals. The thing is that people seem to think that morals have to do with religion. Religion makes the rules, again as a means of control. Morals are little things which we try to live our daily lives by. The Universe has no morals, its not good or evil, right or wrong, heaven or hell. It simply is. Morals are a human construct, a set of rules defining how we behave towards other humans, not something that the Universe defines. There are no phisical laws determining whether it is right to slap your wife or steal, there are only human laws and they are extremely flexible.

The basis of my moral code is the Wiccan Rede, which is basically “Do what you like as long as you don’t hurt anyone”. (I’ll reassure you now that I don’t buy into the rest of it, no dancing naked under the moonlight or brewing love potions for me. For one thing its too wet and cold where I live and I don’t find my naked body that attractive so I dont want to inflict it on anyone else, and for another; love poitions? I mean come on…) That and “Do unto others as you would wish done to you”. Two rules; simple, flexible and non-contradictory.

The good thing about my moral framework as I see it is the fact that involves a degree of critical thought. Not like the lists of proscribed activities and codes of behaviour espoused by the majority of the worlds religions which seem to positively discourage such thinking.

Heaven and Hell

What happens when we die? Basically what I believe is that our universe ends, never to be repeated. The stuff that makes up our body gets disposed of in some fashion and eventually goes back to the stars where it came from. In a way we never cease to exist, in another way we cease to exist entirely. We become a cherished, or reviled, memory. Integrated into the universes of every person we interacted with during our life.

Thats pretty much it. We only have one life and we should live it well, not for the sake of some theoretical afterlife but for the sake of having a good life. Be nice to people, not because you’ll go to hell if you don’t, but because people are more likely to be nice to you if you’re nice to them.

Heaven and hell are fantasies, perpetuated by religion for the sake of, yes you guessed it, control. I had heaven described to me once by a minister at my parents church, he completely shot himself in the foot. He said that in heaven you want for nothing. I asked if that meant that we got everything we wanted and he said no. I pointed out that if I went to heaven I would want to be able to want things, to have no option but to want nothing sounded pretty boring to a 12 year old. You’d think that they’d train their salesmen better, I mean the moslems get 72 virgins and a garden of delights and we lose our free will and get nothing in return. I know I will be part of the universe in one form or another until it ends and thats enough for me.

In a Nutshell

  1. The Universe is a thing of surpassing beauty and wonder, to be appreciated at every oppotunity.
  2. My purpose is to know myself and the Universe.
  3. Do what you like but don’t hurt anyone and be nice.
  4. My body will exist forever but my mind ends with me

Hope I made sense.

Epilogue: Anyone of a religious bent willing to debate these things with me are quite welcome to do so with the following provisos: Don’t try and save me, I don’t need saving. You can only tell me I’m going to hell if you can prove it and agree to meet me there. Don’t pray for me or my soul, I don’t want your prayer. Don’t tell me Jesus loves me, I’ve never met the man. I’m blessed enough already. Use your mind and reason to argue your points, rely on your own faculties rather than appealing to a ‘higher’ authority. Follow these guidelines and I’m sure we can have many enlightening discussions.