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Poking Religion

Lately, I’ve been doing social media posts that don’t hold back on the foundational theologies and doctrines of Christianity. As most people know, I’ve been very public about deconstructing my beliefs and the processes behind this.

One thing that I’ve found fascinating is how any attack on a person’s religious beliefs is usually taken as an attack on the person themselves.

This is understandable because of how powerful religious beliefs are. They govern our whole world view – from how we see ourselves, others, the state of the world, and our eternal destiny, so when someone challenges the very foundations of those beliefs, we can tend to get very defensive, because we’ve invested our lives into them.

Many don’t notice that in all my controversial opinions, I never actually attack the person, and go out of my way to make it clear that although I may find their beliefs completely untenable, I also completely understand why they believe them, and respect their sincerity with genuine empathy (mostly… I have my moments!), remembering only too well that I’ve been there myself.

I also try to make it very clear that underneath it all, the real enemy is dogma – the absolute conviction that our beliefs are the incontrovertible truth and everyone else is absolutely wrong. There are many of course, who are willing to concede that there’s room to accept various interpretations of traditional views and biblical writings, as long as they don’t undermine the foundations.

Religion thrives by claiming its inherent and inerrant truth.

But I often get challenged by people claiming that I’m also being dogmatic about my opinions, which on the surface sounds legit, so really, it comes down to looking at the substance of various claims that religion presents, and my own stance on dogma.

The whole idea of challenging dogmatic thoughts/beliefs/religious systems is not to promote yet another “truth” and replace them with its own dogma. It’s about helping people to see that all religious/spiritual and philosophical beliefs are subjective. There is absolutely nothing that can be proven to make any one system the “winner”.

If people ask, I happily present my personal views and why I find them to be the most viable. I’ll even engage in deep discussion as to why this is the case, and also have a Facebook page where I present my ideas.

But I do not hold my views as dogma, because there’s no way I can prove them! They feel right to me at the moment, but I’m also evolving and growing, constantly looking at “life, the universe and everything” to see what I can glean to broaden my outlook, and most importantly, to bring unity and love to the world.

So if you’ve been offended by my provocative poking of sacred cows, it could be that you’re far more locked in dogma than you realise.

Most importantly, unconditional, universal love is the end game, and sometimes we need a bit of a kick to break through our thought patterns to achieve this.

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Spiritual evolution?

I’ve been trying to write my next book “…But Not as We Know It” for a long time. But I’m forever struggling. Not through lack of inspiration, but because of the immensity of the subject.
 
Spirituality and religion define humanity. It’s arguably the thing that separates us from all other animals. We just can’t help ourselves.
 
We have this innate awe at the splendour and power of the universe. We create religions and philosophies to understand and process it all. Science is a direct result of this deep drive as well. Understanding, meaning, purpose – piecing together this insanely huge puzzle.
 
I’ve read so much philosophy and religious text, and the growth of our understanding through countless millennia is muddied by fear and insecurity. The threat of “existential crisis” is palpable through all disciplines. Religion handles this with magical thinking and dogma. Science handles it by ever pushing forward with knowledge. Philosophy handles it with mental gymnastics.
 
There are so many threads through every discipline, glimmers of hope that get tangled up and strangled in our deeper fears. We keep worshipping the wisdom of ancient peoples instead of acknowledging our own internal evolution and ability to build on that wisdom, or even start from scratch, or a willingness to see that no one methodology is “truth”, or the deep subjectivity of just about everything we believe.
 
There is so much, and yet in all that there is a way that transcends our cyclic futility, despite the most profound ideas constantly ending up as dogma, tradition, ritual – stagnating as their adherents refuse to use beliefs as stepping stones to maturity.
 
Religions are utterly incomplete and incompetent in their attempts to satisfy our spirituality. The moment they are formalised the vast majority see it as their final destination rather than part of our evolution as human beings. We use it as an attempt to calm our fears instead of fuel to grow.
 
Philosophies are embraced and then treated as religious dogma. Gurus, preachers, religious leaders, all dole out their glimpses of wisdom to hungry adherents who refuse to do even the most basic work of finding their own unique place in the universe. They swallow the bite size chunks and call them their own.
 
We are taught to be spiritually lazy. Our favourite teachers perpetuate the hand feeding of their sheep. And yet I believe we are slowly learning. Change is coming. I can see it. Religions are failing. Science is not answering the things that concern us the most. Philosophy runs around in circles. But through it all there is a merging. Each field is starting to embrace each other. We are beginning to see that what we have accepted so far has not worked, or ever will. We are becoming willing to break new ground and drop all dogma and preconceptions.
 
I’m struggling to express the enormity of what I see as the way forward, because it requires more unlearning than learning. It requires so much breaking down of existing paradigms that it’s almost overwhelming! And I’m constantly challenged by my own fears, in fact, even thinking that I have some sort of insight is dangerous ground in itself!
 
So my next book may be a while yet. Perhaps it won’t be me that writes it!!
 
I just ache for humanity to grow up.
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Proof of God!!

You can’t prove god exists, and I can’t prove he doesn’t!

Sure, there are all sorts of philosophical angles you can take on the issue, but in the end, no one can prove anything.

What you CAN do is present theories based on subjective observations. They can be beautiful and quite functional theories that meet some of our emotional needs, but they are theories none the less.

You can present ancient writings from other cultures that express everything from of wisdom writings through to the nature of various divinities, but you can’t “prove” that this god is actually real.

You then have to ask yourself what “proof” is. What I find extraordinary is so many christians saying that if you can’t see the “proof” in everything around you then you are [insert derogatory name here]. But of course, if it’s not obvious through examining all the evidence, then it isn’t proof at all. Proof, by the very nature of the word, means there is no ambiguity or doubt. The worst “proof” offered however is the bible. Irrespective of however one may interpret the writings in the bible, they are still subject to the same demands of proof. As I say, if the bible was indeed proof, there would be no ambiguity and everyone who read it would be convinced. The bible is like any other sacred writings – full of interesting cultural stories – myths and legends, various types of wisdom, justifications for cultural traditions etc… everything except “proof” of god.

I just recently saw a video from a highly qualified physicist who claimed that the theories about the big bang being caused by quantum fluctuations, that are pretty much universally accepted in the field, are proof of god! Sorry Mr Professor, they are simply proof that there is a greater level of physics that we don’t understand yet.

And as for atheists (yes, you don’t get away unscathed either), you can dismantle theology entirely and present absolutely convincing arguments for the non-existence of a deity, but at the end of the day, you still don’t know. At best you can only really call yourself agnostic, simply because you don’t know what you don’t know!

Having said all that (as I often do, lol) feel free to believe whatever you want, but the moment your beliefs turn to dogma and become “truth” you have slipped over into self delusion, and that’s a topic I’ll leave for another blog!

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The Ever Elusive “Truth”

I was having a conversation with an on-line friend and the question came up – what is truth? – as it does, lol. My response was basically this.

That’s the million dollar question! https://i0.wp.com/img.picturequotes.com/2/208/207088/truth-is-of-course-relative-but-then-so-is-relative-quote-1.jpg?resize=202%2C261

I think there are infinite truths that are unique to every situation.
Truth is dependent on our paradigms and observations.
Moral and ethical truths are societal and cultural constructs.
Religious truths are the same.
Scientific truth is ever changing as we dig deeper into the nature of “reality”.
In fact, the only truth that is slowly being revealed through science and spirituality that could be a candidate for the foundational truth is that everything is energy. Although even that is a problem when we ask “what is energy?”.
We also now know that our entire personal reality exists only as a vast complex hallucination within our brains – and that’s mind blowing in itself!

So yeah, truth is something we crave and yet slips through our fingers the moment we try to grasp it.

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