Question Beliefs: Our Lives Might Depend on It

I am not intending to challenge any one religion... but all of their followers. I am more familiar (and less afraid of) the beliefs of the Christian Church but know that these theories apply Universally. (universe=one song. Beliefs are disharmonious.)

Belief is a touchy subject. So much so that it is a social taboo to question ones beliefs. But as I see it beliefs are what separate us from one another. Two folks believe differently and, due to the nature of beliefs, they can prove neither thus an em pass.

Belief, by definition, takes faith to support. A belief founded in logic becomes a theory. So in reality we are dealing in matters of faith. Indeed to question ones faith is not going to get results. Those of faith start going in a circular argument about belief and faith and break down into "if you don't have faith, you cant understand my beliefs." Likely it is they who misunderstand the source of their own convictions.

In order to understand said source, I must go back to evolution... intelligent design (in case you are a 'true believer'). The empty feeling that most humans feel and fill with their belief system, is a positive evolutionary trait. The reason is simple. Peoples that felt this way were more curious and inventive in an attempt to get psychologically contented. They were less apt to just be happy and exist in bliss, in other word, they left the Garden of Eden. Perhaps they even found more pleasure in the more mundane things in nature due to a satisfaction of filling the void within, whereas if there is no void to fill there would be no artificial satisfaction, no curiosity, wonder or invention. This psychological edge would be enough to dominate those without. Further, the development of a distinct spiritual system both attracted and pacified larger groups of people than had been possible any time before. Another reason it is a dominant trait in modern man.

But alas I must try and approach faith without sounding godless. In order to do so first I have to explain why anyone would want to disrupt someone elses life structure by attempting to undermine their beliefs. History is ripe with wars of faith. And we are not insulated from that now.

In the USA around a quarter of our populace BELIEVE that Armageddon is coming. That YHVH will rescue them from this Earth and take them into the sky. These people don't view Earth as anything more than a disposable temporary living space. The climate change problem don't effect them because they wont be here in the 'end of days'. This is a reflection of what religion is for, absolution.

Humans go to church and pay to be told what they think. Most don't bother to read the bible much less take the time to learn a new language to read the original texts. But are contented to listen to one mans interpretation of an already overly transcribed, and hand copied, Roman interpretation, of 200 year old texts written 50 years after the actual life of Jesus.

I am not saying it is of no worth. But the life of Jesus is being misused by the church as an example of behavior that will grant access to heaven. By putting Jesus between us and God the church has undermined Jesus main teachings about our personal connection with the all mighty.

Jesus' death has been used against us also. Are we not suppose to worship any false idols. Just worship the one God directly. Moses said this. Then came Jesus, and 250 years later (when Rome created modern Christianity... NOT JESUS or his followers) we are using a cross (a torture/execution device) as a crutch to remind us of the sacrifice. And our acceptance of Jesus dying for our sins grants us an eternal seat in the presence of a omnipotent omnipresent being that, I assume, must have billions of other worlds to monitor and grant miracles on. This seems a bit pride full, the original sin. Yet the cross is a sin, a false idol that serves only to put distance between you and God.

God, as it is, must be understood individually. There are NO SHORTCUTS. Churches are profitable organization that allow their followers to absolve themselves from personal responsibility by substituting our logical mental processes for unfounded beliefs and unneeded submission rituals along with rules of how to be civilized... in ages long past. Likely, the actions of the believer and the conscientious non-believer, will be the same in most every circumstance. Simply because a spiritual person will finds the truth...for free.

I am not sure how to challenge someones beliefs without getting anger as a response. But its got to be done. We cant allow the planet to be run by a bunch of people that believe God is a man in the sky with a white beard and big muscles and the Earth is just a place to wait for death or for "the man in the sky" to rescue them. This is the only planet we have got, and the faithful can't be logical about this. We must have logical reasons for what we do to effect the population and environment, not beliefs, and hopes, and absolution from sound reasoning due to 'its what the Bible said.'

But alas, stained glass windows, golden trinkets and bejeweled crosses (all needed to impress God?) cant be acquired through faith alone. If we could all find for ourselves what the spirit urns for, the churches would be nothing more than a strange cult.

We should wield the Bible as a weapon of peace and not an excuse to exclude other people of differing beliefs (or none at all). Nor to wage war or gather money. The words of God should connect us to mother Earth and let us know we are dependant on the rock we live on. That the true nature of God can not be found in a church but between the sky and rivers. That the path to your salvation is yours alone to travel, and no one can guide or follow you. My proof lies in the lives of the great prophets. They followed no one.

Thier unique experiences in life formulated their reality. So no man can ever hope to get to a higher place unless they are willing to throw away conventional ways and find their own truth. In doing so, you will be more liken to any one of the most revered humans in our history than those that are just faithful.

At least that was my theory... and is now my way of life. :-)

Time and the Control of Time

This is not a sci-fi/future tech blog her I am going to get into. I am using 'time control' in the real world way. For instance a boss delegates his employees activities thus their time at work is controlled by another.

We currently live in a very structured world. So structured that the mere notion of returning to some more natural and simple manner of seeing things seems loony at best. Bear with me here...

Humans originally came to understand day, being light, and night, being dark, were different from one another and that are behavior was naturally adapted to these two periods. Eventually we came to understand the winter and summer and their cycles. You may be saying "Everyone knows this. We weren't that dumb." But if you look at the evolution of man, it may have taken til just before the "Henge" period for us to understand the significance of the solstices and equinoxes. That is, after all, the alignment of the famous Stone Henge (solstice) if not the entire purpose of the structure (I think it was a meeting hall of the pre-English tribes.)

So we humans had day and night, winter and summer. Further divisions for planting and harvesting times came about much later (agriculture is relatively new.) Then why, do you imagine, humans had the need to name the days. The first need is a cave person wanting to tell someone else to do something later. Being able to do so means the ability to divide labor. More precisely it was our first real attempt to control another beings life by controlling their time on earth absolutely.

Original humans lived from moment to moment with little to no account for their actions (Garden of Eden). Social groups were small and it is supposed we only worked 3-5 hours a day for food in our early homo sapien days. In these first few social groups a need for the ability to communicate the ideas of 'later', 'tomorrow' and even 'tonight', would facilitate the creation of some distinct terms (verbal or somatic).

When these groups got larger, a need for leadership and division of labor to sustain them, became needed. A simple way of dividing up the blur of days flowing by, is into a short cyclical "work week." Without this, a leader could not communicate to the workers when they would get to rest. How many days the original 'work week' was has never been looked at. In fact NONE of this has ever been looked at by serious science. I'd imagine the first 'work weeks' were tribe specific in their duration.

All I am saying is this: The days of the week, months of the year and hours of the days, are UN-NATURAL and only here for our original enslavement by the civilization we chose to create. We should understand that these things are needed in order to exist in our world, but we need to view them as control mechanisms. We should feel our time is blissfully ours... not live each day doing things we would otherwise not do, simply because we have the weekend or vacation to look forward to. Take back your time.

Letting our division of time become so integrated into our lives has lead to an unnatural mental state for human beings. The civilisation it facilitated has left us numb and we would never survive in nature (no Wal-Mart). The very mother of our creation (nature) can NOT support its own children, and I say it is due to division of labor. Thus ability to overpopulate.

Without days divided against one another labor and civilized society could not exist. The structures that hold up society often will hold down its populace. It appears that we have made our choice as humans to give over control of our time on Earth to the society that we live in and ignore our nature...our mother.

Arrogance of Humans

It is common to give ourselves more importance than we deserve. To give our common everyday problems an undue weight on our consciousness and therefore an unreasonable sense of self-gratification upon accomplishment or alleviation of said problems. Further we value our own existence more than others. The only exception is when our conscious mind overrides our instinct. If it were any other way, and it likely was for pre-historic man, those species lacked a 'survival mechanism' and thus were eventually integrated or fell by the wayside of evolution. It can be argued that the very same can be said about those that did or dint posses a feeling of emptiness and curiosity (likely artifacts let over from our primate ancestry), the two things that lead to invention and spirituality. Maybe even lead the first apes from the trees and left their brethren behind.

There I go, using 'behind' to state that man now is in some way superior. Are we humans better than the apes because we have made more changes to our DNA? That just makes us more fortunate, but not better. We humans seem to think that because we are the only history keepers on the planet that we can destroy parts of it. From an off worlder point of view, that seems illogical at best... verging on insane.

The recent climate change issue has awoke many to the fact that we are a part of a living system, not the lords of it, not the reapers of Gods bounty. Seems a shame that our religious systems don't do much to connect us to earth but instead to God and heaven. Thus earthly existence is more tolerable. Good for the last 1800 years but we are big boys now and are able to wear big boy pants. With these new clothes comes new responsibilities.

• Do not blow up the earth
• Throw away belief systems that discriminate in any way
• Challenge everyone beliefs so they must think about them
• Try and get off the planet because it isn't stable with or without our interference
• Understand that a human life is equal no matter the age, race, religion, nationality, ect...
• Know that, due to our destructive nature, a human life is worth less than most other creatures on earth

This belief in our own self-importance is the root of our personal and global problems. In our personal lives we often overlook others needs, both inadvertently and purposefully, while dwelling in our own issues. Seems that those that like drama spread it through all means at hand. In fact this all boils down to.. many humans thrive on drama, which is simply a distorted view of their own self-worth.

We find self-importance when someone else is dominated by thoughts of us, good or bad. It makes one feel like they have worth. Like they have the ability to effect the people and things around them. And we do. But it is a human fallacy to behave like this. And it draws our attention away from the true issues of our time.

On a global scale, we disconnect with the ecosystem that birthed us in order to spread its pollen (plants came first and thus, are our ancestors, and likely those original animals that evolved so as to help the plants to flourish, thrived with them), to a point where, until recently, it was taboo to say we weren't just plopped here a few thousand years ago by a big man in the sky with a white beard and big muscles. Christians have believed for ever that this planet was theirs to use up. That God gave it to them/us to use as we see fit. And that they have no future here.

The Rapture will take them away and leave all of the rest of us to deal with an empty shell of an ecosystem. I got news for you Christian fundamentalists... God is caught up in a galactic confrontation and will be a bit late. So make due till he gets here. But he assures you that each insignificant human soul on this speck of dust in a blizzard of stars called the milky way, flying around a giant black hole with billions of other galaxies, ARE HIS FIRST PRIORITY. And further each one of us, through deeds and thought alone shall be granted eternal bliss in his ever glowing presence. Yup, we allow ourselves to believe we are that important to Mr Omnipotent.

Put your ego in check. Question beliefs. Be logical. Be spiritual. Get to "know" lesser life forms. Run from drama you cant avoid. Most of all the next time you crush out a roach or fly, think about life and death and how precious and amazing that creature must be to do so much that you can't do. Because with all we can do with all the advantages we have, all we have done is destroy and abuse the source of our evolution and existence. Then measure your worth on earth vs. the roach. Uh... be honest (its an ego thing).