The three commandments

 

The Christian commandments read like this:

 

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me

Insecure or what. A true god would have no need to state this.

2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image

Yet more insecurity..

3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain

I can see this is about respect… but seriously, 3 ‘commandments’ down and it’s still me, me, me

4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy

We’re at number 4 now and still no ‘thou shalt not kill’??

5. Honour thy father and thy mother

Finally, something worthwhile. We could definitely use more parental respect in the modern world. Could also use more parents worthy of respect too though…

6. Thou shalt not kill

The big one. Should have been first on the list, but at least it is here.

7. Thou shalt not commit adultery

Meh…fair enough, adultery doesn’t do anyone any favours in the long run, but I would have thought one against slavery or rape would have been more useful.

8. Thou shalt not steal

Common sense…don’t go nicking stuff.

9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour

Don’t lie…quite sensible

10. Thou shalt not covet

Don’t be jealous…though maybe ‘don’t be greedy’ would have been better.

So, ten of them and we don’t actually need the first four. Not really, unless you already believe in god…in which case you’d obey them anyway. And for anyone who doesn’t they are pretty much pointless. Also, it’s very insecure. Nearly half of them are about obeying god and respecting him etc. So we can get rid of them for a start.

Now we’re down to six. No killing, no stealing, no adultery, no lying, no jealousy — all good. We’ll keep them but I think they can be tidied up a little.

In fact, the spirit of almost every rule, every guideline, every good point that ALL religions have to make can be condensed into these ten words:

“Do not take that which is not yours to take”

It covers murder, theft, rape, slavery, etc…actually, pretty much every major crime is covered by it. Read it again if you don’t believe me, and apply it to any crime you can think of.

We don’t need ten commandments, just ten words is enough.

Then add these two…

“Strive to never hurt any living thing physically, emotionally or financially”

That one covers almost everything that is left – assault, bullying, cruelty to animals etc.

“Where possible, always be honest.”

Don’t lie. Sometimes you might be in a position where you have to tell a white lie, but white lies are usually worth it in the end (covering for a surprise party for example) and rarely lead to any real hurt.

…and we’re done! If everyone lived by those three rules then the world would be a much better place. I appreciate that the ten commandments were written a few thousand years ago…they’re old; drink-driving or internet piracy is not likely to be listed…but god used ten and still couldn’t cover everything. I have used just three and got the job done significantly better.

So to sum up, the ‘3 commandments’ (or grand rules, pillars of humanity, human directives etc) should be:

 

#1 Do not take that which is not yours to take.

#2 Strive to never hurt anyone or anything physically, emotionally or financially.

#3 Where possible, always be honest.

 

I do appreciate that I mentioned drink driving earlier and you could argue that none of the 3 commandments explicitly outlaws it (I suppose #2 is the nearest) but these are not supposed to take the place of any laws. These are not intended to be legally enforceable or cemented by political act (but if everyone believed and truly lived by them then we wouldn’t need many laws anyway!). They are more about changing the mindset of people. The kind of person who will take them seriously and embrace them truly is the kind of person that represents the future of the human race.

I do also acknowledge that none of them really outlaws prejudice, selfishness or any of those other negative human emotions, but those are things that are so inbuilt into us that the only thing that can really help there is evolution.

Finally I would add that these 3 directives are not to stand alone. I used the phrase ‘collection of guidelines and philosophies’ earlier in this piece, and 3 of anything is hardly a collection. They are to be the vanguard of a new era of thinking and will be at the head, and at the heart, of a new philosophy. One based on what is true and what is right. One that can never be wrong but that can always be changed. One that doesn’t persecute anyone or assume anything.

 

Next time: The way it should be.

So how did we all get here then?

Firstly, apologies for the massive delay between this and the last post. No excuses, I’ve just been both busy and (somewhat oxymoronically, if that’s even a word) lazy.

But I did promise my opinion on how we all got here, so here we go.
What’s in a name?

If you read the bible, koran, or any of the current god stories, they all use the word ‘God’. They may give him a name (it’s always a him, isn’t it…I would have thought that god, if there is one, is female – females are the only ones that can actually create life after all) but basically it’s just ‘God’. Which is just another word for ‘creator’, albeit a rather grandiose one.

So we have a creator. Of course we do, otherwise we wouldn’t be here (though it need not be a conscious creator, natural processes / evolution are just as valid). You can re-read the religous texts and substitute the word god with the word ‘creator’ and it’ll still pretty much read the same.

But the bible, and presumably others, say that god created man in his own image. Therefore, god is humanoid.

So we have now a humanoid creator. Starting to sound a bit sci-fi isn’t it?

How else could we rename god? Well, he / she is extraterrestrial. Has to be. If this planet was created by God then, by definition, god cannot from this Earth. Ergo, extraterrestrial. An alien. A being not from this planet.

So now we have renamed god as an humanoid extra-terrestrial creator. Same concept just a different, yet equally correct, name. If you re-read the bible now, using that definition instead of just ‘god’ then it starts to read quite differently. Yet that is exactly what god is – an extraterrestrial creator, in humanoid form. But that name doesn’t engender as much mystery or awe as simply saying ‘a god’. God implies all sorts of powers and mysteries, and in doing so makes us think we are special. Well, we must be if the God of the Universe created us. No one else, just us. And this makes sense when you consider who wrote these religious texts, and when. Man wrote them, and he did in a time when there was no science, no reason, no logic. Instead there was mystery, superstition and confusion. Man needed something to cling on to, something to make him feel less small and finally (and maybe most importantly) to take away the fear of death. Believe in me and you shall live forever etc. Unless you’re gay. Or eat meat on a Friday. Or contravene one or more of the other silly rules…some of which have since been rescinded.

Science (geology, cosmology, palaeontology etc) shows us the universe is 14 billion years old, give or take. It shows us the Earth is about 4 billion years old. And it shows us humans have been here, in one form or another, for 5 or 6 million years – maybe more. Modern humans perhaps a few hundred thousand years.

So in reality, we’ve only just arrived. We have almost no idea about what, or indeed who, may have been here in the billions of years before we arrived. It’s ridiculous to think that God decided to create the heavens and the Earth, wait a few billion years, create early primordial life, wait some more, slowly build the complexity of life up until finally we arrive. That’s the pattern of evolution, not some being who’s sole focus (we’re told) is man. If he loves us so much then why wait…why give dinosaurs hundreds of millions of years on this planet before us…why not send Jesus down to Neanderthal or Cro Magnon man, or even the Pharoahs? Egyptians were worshipping gods long before Jesus arrived. And if they could have written it down then I’m sure we’d see that cavemen were also able to realise the concept of some sort of creator, to think they never looked up at the stars and wondered is naive.

And if anyone reading this is thinking that the Earth is only 6000 years or so old, and so in reality there never was this big gap, then you can stop reading now and leave. You’re existing on blind, unquestioning, dumb faith. Your mind is closed and nothing I, or anyone else, can say will convince you otherwise.

Q. So how did we get here?
A. I call it ‘Directed Evolution’

Many years ago, this planet was visited. These visitors likely roam the galaxy looking for seed planets, or somewhere that life can be (or already is) established. They then do what they can to promote sentience on that world. It’s not just intelligence that is so special about us, it’s the fact we are sentient. Sentience gives us the ability to reason, to guess, to try, to wonder.

Life evolved, but humans *were* evolved. That is to say, some intelligence saw the potential of this planet and decided to intervene by cherry-picking the best candidates (primates) and then slowly directing the evolution of that species to favour intelligence over everything else. How else can the massive discrepancy between us and primates be explained? We share almost all our DNA with them, look remarkably similar to them and yet humans are able to not just use tools (something primates, dolphins, even crows also do) but to compose symphonies, make art, find things funny etc. It could be that chimps genuinely have a sense of humour…or that dolphins sing arias to each other…but no other species does it quite like we do. Plus, none of them use fire…and I think that is what truly separates us. Fire is a tool, but it’s one that has to be observed and figured out. Fire is the first technology that our species ever really used. Primates haven’t done it because fire is hot and it burns. And that’s that. Humans saw fire and also realised it’s hot and it burns. But then we wondered ‘how?’, ‘why?’ and ‘what if?’. And it’s our ability to ask those three questions, more than anything else, that’s responsible for the technological age we now find ourselves in. We have the ability to leap beyond logic, to see past what our eyes show us and to stop fear and uncertainty from holding us back. We are curious beings, we want to know everything. And from man’s use of fire (whether learned, or given to us by the ‘directors’) sprang everything else. No fire = no cooking, no heating, no light in dark places, no universal weapon, no smelting.

Some may argue that it’s farming and organised agriculture that allowed humans to be so successful, to live in larger and larger groups…and that’s true…but it’s fire that allowed us to refine iron from ore and in that we see the roots of the industrial revolution. There’s a reason people say ‘bombed back to the stone age’ or ‘they’re living in the stone age’ – it’s because that’s the age when all people has was what was there rather than what could be made from what was there. It conjures up an image of cavemen in loin cloths throwing stones. And it was like that for many thousands of years, until fire came along.

So that’s it. For my money, we are not alone in this vast universe and it’s another of the species in our galaxy that has helped us along on our path. And they have been doing so, every now again, for millions of years.

Whether they still are though, well that’s another question…

Thanks for reading, hope it at least made you think, and any comments are always welcome.

Next up…what next?

Think clearly

I cannot prove there is no God…but by the same token nobody out there can prove there is. I guess that’s why they call it faith. You don’t *know* it to be true, nobody can ever prove it’s true…but you believe anyway. But I don’t need to disprove anything…if anything the onus is on the believers to prove their case. Personally, I don’t think there is a God. But if there is, or ever was, then the main thing is that said deity is no longer watching out for us (see my previous post for a full explanation of this).

However, the more we examine the world around us the more the existence of a ‘God’ who created us and the heavens and the Earth etc, becomes increasingly implausible.

In my previous post I outlined the case of a convicted rapist who won millions on the lottery. This, to me, is proof that everyday happenings on this planet are down to chance alone and that if a God is up there then he is keeping out of it’s day to day runnings. There is much more evidence to lend credence to the idea of an evolved world, a world where things develop, change and grow according to natural laws of biology and chemistry. For aeons this world had various ingredients necessary for the type of life we know today. All the elements required for amino acids were present on early Earth, lightning and UV from sunlight has been shown to be able to split atmospheric nitrogen apart and promote the formation of exotic and radical chemical species, like ozone for example, and so it is both possible and likely that the building blocks formed here, naturally, and very slowly. The potential contribution of comets and asteroids cannot be discounted – it may be that a comet brought the ‘spark’ needed to light the tinderbox of life here on Earth – but I don’t believe there was ever a Godly hand at the helm. Basically, this world exists in a universe governed by laws and once the ball is rolling then those laws take over. What started the ball rolling is an excellent question…current theory is obviously the big bang…but it’s not universally accepted.

It could be a God started the ball rolling, for whatever reason, and if that’s true then we’re certainly not alone in the universe but we are definitely on our own until we find the neighbours.

 I’m digressing though. What I really want to outline is the contradictory, bizarre and often confusing nature of what far too many people actually believe.

And I mean actually believe, not just think or reckon or guess.

So…why are there different religions? I mean, if there’s only one God then why would he create different belief systems? They can’t all be right.

Either:

1. all religions are correct…and there are many, many Gods up there all with (or without) their own agenda performing their wonders in their own mysterious ways.
I guess this is possible…but this polytheist standpoint is not a popular one with humans in general. Also, it would kind of imply that we are the playthings of these Gods…that they toy with us for their sport or entertainment…and as such deserve no prayers or worship of any kind.

2. only one religion is correct, but the God who is true is happy to let us kill ourselves trying to prove which one it is.
Well if that’s true then he must be a real horse’s arse of a God.

3. none are correct, and we exist for reasons we don’t yet know, haven’t yet considered or just simply refuse to accept.
This is by far the most likely option in my humble opinion, but all major religions posit just one true God who created everything, so let’s run with that theory for a bit.

If God created everything, then he made all the countries too. And the people in those countries. And he made them muslim, or sikh or whatever. But he then goes and makes it central tenet of the Christian faith that you have to accept Christ for salvation. But these people born in Pakistan, for example, have almost no choice other than to be muslim. It’s all around them, it’s what their parents / friends / contemporaries believe…so they are raised and indoctrinated to believe it also. And in doing so are deprived of their choice to accept Christ. So…God has created a load of humans, given them a false religion (and along with that, no chance of getting into heaven) and then told all his true followers that these other people worship a false God. A false God that the ‘real’ God created and gave to them. Does that make any sense to anyone??
This brings us to the very real point that religious belief is a matter of geography more than anything else.
Think about it: If you’re born in the US or western Europe then you’re more then likely to be Christian than any other faith. Born in India and you’re a Sikh or a Hindu. Born in any other part of the middle East and you’re almost certainly a Muslim…and born in Israel and you’re Jewish. Look at any census or demographic data for the world and you’ll see this is true. Hardly fair though, is it? I mean, God says you have to accept Christ (ie be a Christian) to be saved, yet he then goes and creates loads of people for whom this will never be an option. Ever. So it’s like he’s created a load of people just so they can NOT be saved?? It makes no sense.

Christianity states that God created everything. This must therefore include gay man and women. Why, I have to wonder, does he then decide to put in the bible that homosexuality is bad and sinful? Why would he create homosexuality in the world and then command his advocates to hate it’s practitioners? What does he have against gay people? If he hates them so much then why create them in the first place? It makes no sense.

What also makes no sense is the church’s reluctant acceptance of the fact that homosexuality is a fact of life. Surely, if God says it’s a sin then that’s the church’s position and always shoud be. God is infallible etc, isn’t he? It also makes no sense that women bishops are not allowed…but gay male ones are as long as they’re celibate. Aren’t women just as capable of being ‘holy’ as men? 

Also, if everything we see was created by God, then what the hell was he doing for the couple of billion years between Earth being formed and humans arriving…twiddling his thumbs?

 

I have made it clear that none of what I have described above makes any sense when considered rationally. Well actually, that’s not quite true. All of it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense for a world with no God, it makes perfect sense a world with just whole load of people left to their own devices and imaginations for thousands of years.

In short, it all makes perfect sense if we’re on our own…and always have been.

 

Next time: How we, as a species, really got here

We’re on our own

The title says it all…whether you believe on a God or not it really doesn’t matter because we are most definitely on our own.

Obviously, if there is no God, then it stands to reason that we’re on our own in this universe. If there is a God though, then we’re still on our own. Otherwise how do you explain all the injustice and un-necessary pain and suffering in the world? If there was a loving, caring God looking out for us then stuff like this wouldn’t happen:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/alison-phillips-column-why-its-time-901459
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8991590/Lottery-win-rapist-Iorworth-Hoares-victim-waives-anonymity-after-MBE-award.html

There are plenty of other articles about this case out there (and probably many other cases like this as well), I just picked a random two, but if you’re a believer then you have to ask yourself why God allowed this vile person to have so much luck when others who are far more deserving get nothing. Or they get a hurricane, or tsunami or some other natural (and if you’re a believer then natural is the same as saying God’s will) disaster.

We’re on our own because there are no other explanations that make any sense.

Either (option A) God exists or (option B) God does not exist. There are no other possibilities.
Option B = we are on our own.
Option A = well, where is he? There’s all this injustice and nothing gets done, poor children die every day through lack of clean water (which he could fix easily) yet at the same time convicted criminals win the lottery. Does this make any sense whatsoever to anybody? The way I see it, if there is a God then he is one, or more, of the following:

uncaring: he exists but doesn’t care enough to do anything
unwilling: he exists but won’t (for whatever reason) do anything
unable: he exists but can’t (for whatever reason) do anything
unpresent: he exists, but has long since bugg*red off

These are the only options – either he’s not there, or is but can’t or won’t do anything. In every case the result is the same – we are on our own

Personally, I suspect that if there is a God (and I am not discounting that possibilty by the way, I just don’t think it is the least bit likely) then he has long since left us to fend for ourselves. But it really makes no differenece as to what anyone believes as long as we as a species start to accept that we’re alone now, and in charge of our own destinies. Otherwise we will continue to let invalid reasoning hold back our development. Imagine how far we could have come if nations would talk to each other and co-operate instead of being mistrustful. We could have created artifical life by now, or discovered inter-stellar travel, or cured many or all diseases that afflict man, or worked out how to alter telomeres to achive a pseudo-immortality. The list could go on and on.
And I know that it’s not always religion that hinders progress, differing ideologies between nations also get in the way, but none evoke so much passion and closed-mindedness as religion.

Again, I will wecome any comments on this and I will not moderate any comments left unless they are rude or just worthless trolling.

Next time on this blog:
Other things that simply make no sense…like why does the Catholic church (not the only one though) hate homosexuals when it was their God that supposedly created them all in the first place and made them homosexual? What kid of a God creates the very people that his religion despises??

God and the future…a thought experiment.

The future exists…right? It exists in so far as there are still things that will come to pass. The world just isn’t going to stop when I finish typing this sentence. See? We are all still here.
So with that in mind…does God know the future?? There are only 2 options:

1. He does not know the future. If this is the case then he’s not a God. He’s supposed to be omniscient but here’s something he doesn’t know – the future. Ergo he is not omniscient and therefore not a God, and therefore does not exist. You can’t have half a God, or a God who knows most things but not all…it just doesn’t make sense. And, of course, a God who doesn’t know everything blows away the basic tenet of every major religion.
2. He does know the future. If this is the case then that means the future is set and we have no free will. You get people starting to believe that and it will be used as justification for anything and everything. Also, do you really want to exist as just a passenger with the illusion of free will but in truth you’re just living a life that has been predetermined at some point prior? Neither do I. That also means that everything that has happened, is happening and will happen is Gods will. He decided it all long ago and there’s nothing that can be done about it. Some drunk driver kills your granny? God decided that ages ago for some reason, and clearly it had nothing to do with her living a good life or not. Your child is born deaf and blind? God decided that way before your child even had the chance to live a good life.

 
The inescapable conclusion from option 2 is that nothing matters…nothing you do is of any consequence because, regardless if you believe or not, God has decided your fate long ago. Which makes a mockery of things like the ten commandments…everything has already been decided so why bother to be nice, or altruistic, or kind of spirit etc. You might as well be a selfish…if you could. But you can’t because it has already been decided. Unless of course you are selfish in which case that was all you could ever be. And the more you think about it, the less sense it makes.

Free will is the car that we drive on the road of life. The road goes in one direction but we at least can decide what lane we’re in, what speed we go and where we might stop for a picnic. Without free will we’re just passengers admiring a view that was decided for us long ago.
Again, we have to ask what makes sense here. What is the most likely option? And it’s option 1, clearly. We’re here, existing on this little planet, and when sh*t happens we just have to deal with it. I appreciate it’s not a comforting thought…but it’s the only real option here. If you plumped for option 2, the ‘passenger’ scenario, then you need to open your mind because otherwise there is no hope for you.

I will appreciate any reasoned and well-thought-out comments, and will do my very best to address them. But be warned, I will only attempt to address comments or criticism based on logic, reason, observation or deduction. I’m neither philosopher nor theologian and, while I do appreciate a good philosophical debate, I would prefer to keep this as factual as is possible given the subject matter. However, the end result of this brief foray does seem that you can either have God but no Free Will, or Free Will but no God – the existence of one precludes the existence of the other.
 

Stay tuned for more logical, reasoned proof that we are on our own and that God really is irrelevant…whether he exists or not. Which of course he doesn’t, but those of you who do still believe will have your faith tested.

And then, for some of you, it will be broken.

Hello world!

This is a blog to publicise my thought and ideas, to see what kind of other thought and ideas are out there and to gauge support for my way of thinking vs other ways of thinking.

Note that this is not a blog to try and disprove God, that can’t be done (it’s also worth noting that it can’t proven true either), but rather a blog to put forward the idea that God doesn’t matter and instead of killing each other to try and prove the unprovable, we should instead acknowledge that no one can win that argument to the satisfaction of the other party and so we should therefore agree to disagree…and move on. It’s the moving on part that’s important here because, as long as humans put their faith in things that aren’t there, we’re not going to progress as far as we can as a species.

I will put points that are negative toward the existence of a God, though, because that’s the way I see things. All posts I make are just my opinion and are fully comments-enabled. So please feel free to comment or contradict as you see fit. I’ll not censor anything other than bad language or pure rants with no sound argument made.

Thanks for visiting – I hope you enjoy what you read or, at the very least, it makes you think a little.