ZEAL IS WASTED ON RELIGION AND REVELATION SO BESTOW IT ON SCIENCE
INSTEAD
RELIGION
Religion comes from a word meaning to bind. The best definition of religion is
that it is dogma that people are bound to adhere to no matter what. The pope for
example does not permit himself to doubt that Jesus is God. Thus religion is not
the same thing as good. It is not about how many good people are in it. Religion
is about offering commitment to principles. Catholics give a good definition -
it is about forming a relationship with God by prayer and by believing what God
has said. For that reason, a Catholic who won't commit or try to is not a
Catholic. So Catholics rightly argue that the only question is when faced with
religion is, "Is it true?"
Atheism is not a religion as long as it is all about rejecting hypotheses there
is no evidence for and using reason and experimentation to work out the truth.
Atheism counts God among such hypotheses. If religion really cared about truth,
Catholics for example would be encouraged to check out the Church and given the
resources to decide for themselves and leave the Church if their conclusions
were unorthodox. You may say it is the person’s own responsibility, but the
Church claims to be the shepherd of souls meaning it takes responsibility.
REVELATION
When God or a spirit gives a supernatural message we call that revelation.
Revelation is propositional (in statement form) and clear. It tells you a truth
that God wants you to know. Unclear or controversial revelation is not
revelation but shows God is a bad teacher or the revelation is not really from
him.
Those who want to make out that all people and religions have the same essential
spiritual truth but do not realise it are saying revelation is non-propositional
are patronising. They want to make all religions the same and ignore their
differences which is nonsense and which is really a recipe for implosion. So
they are experts on every religion and can tell it what it really teaches?
Moreover they invariably discriminate against some smaller religions! It is
really relativism pretending to be tolerance. If God is bigger than our errors
and works in hidden ways - an idea at the heart of non-propositional revelation
ideologies - then it follows it is fine to get a sense of meaning and faith from
your dog or in being atheist.
Such "revelation" forces people to use their own understanding and
interpretation. There is no direct revelation or knowledge which accuses Jesus
and Muhammad and Joseph Smith of lying for saying there is. Non-propositional
revelation only produces a culture where people make religion and morals
whatever they feel it should be and nobody will agree. Experience, even
religious experience, does not support the notion of inward non-propositional
knowledge which is why we have different religions and sub cults in the first
place!
For Christians, revelation is the miracle of God giving us knowledge we wouldn't
get otherwise. It is necessarily anti-reason and anti-evidence - and therefore
anti-science. We will see this in a moment.
The Church disagrees - it says revelation is not irrational, not even slightly.
It says reason is good for seeing if a claim is coherent or true or false. It
sees it as a tool. But it says reason alone cannot tell us everything.
Reason says we need to take things on trust in order to function in life. It is
reasonable to do that for reason is not enough. But it is not reasonable to
claim that religious trust, trust in God and religion, is needed. The minimum
faith we need is faith in each other. That is the default. Humanism, us deciding
what is best for ourselves while assuming there is no more to life than the
natural universe, is the default. Any faith that goes beyond the essentials then
is against reason.
Revelation is invariably a scam with which to gain power over people’s thinking.
It denigrates our human ability to look after ourselves for the magical messages
would not be coming if they were not thought to be needed. God should help us to
reason better so that way he doesn't need to appear in visions or write holy
books through his channels. Revelation should take place the mundane ways.
We may not do well at looking after ourselves but that does not mean we need
revelation for we are just abusing our resources and could waken up. God could
give revelation simply by giving us inspiring thoughts that we don’t know are
from him instead of setting up a monolith of dogma, a miraculous source of
revelation such as a Church or Bible, which serves only to stir up trouble and
division and confusion.
Man cannot claim to be God for it will soon become apparent that he is not. So
the next best thing and the safest thing is to pretend you have a revelation
from God and have been appointed to a divine mission. If you slip up you can say
you are not immune to misinterpreting God once or twice.
A divine revelation to X that man passes on to you is not a divine revelation to
you. It is hearsay. For any man to claim to be the mouthpiece of God, to claim
to be the Son of God which is to claim to be the supreme mouthpiece, demands
extreme arrogance for he wants you to be dependant on what he wants you to
believe about God. Maybe God is talking through him but how do you know?
Remember that many people with stronger faith and more intelligence than you
could have another prophet saying completely opposite things. It is really the
man who is trusted and not God and it is the man’s vision of God not God that is
worshipped. If revelation is immoral, then so are miracles for they are
supposedly intended to reinforce the authenticity of revelation. The men in one
sect claim to have verified miracles that show their gospel is from God while
there are other sects claiming the same verifications for their gospel that
contradicts it. It is not God and religion we oppose when you think about it but
the men trying to fool us.
When man's word is mistaken for God's, you end up following what you think is
good and what you think is truth instead of the real good and the real truth.
The more you heed man then the bigger the risk of danger and the more you waste
your life and energy.
To embrace faith in revelation or miracles is really to abdicate responsibility.
It is letting another tell you what to think and believe. In principle you
became like the Nazis, "Oh I was only following orders." The outlook is evil in
its intent. Like the Nazis you virtually tell yourself, "I choose to think this
because X thinks it. So I will live it out and if it harms or misleads others I
care not." Not all believers will necessarily do much evil but the mindset is
the same as the ones that do. They have a vicious mindset underneath the
sweetness.
SCIENCE
Science teaches that there no truth claim or doctrine or belief that should be
made immune to testing and questioning. Science is about always checking things
out and rechecking. Religion refuses to change its mind at least in matters
supposedly revealed by God. The attitude is the reason for the gulf between
religion and science. The other problem is that it is too easy for man to
present his ideas as God's.
Catholicism is infamous for being opposed to science. Today it claims to respect
science and both science and religion (the Catholic one) are valid sources of
truth. Is it true that Catholic faith or any religious faith fits and endorses
and learns from science and merely sees faith as another way of gaining
information and truth?
If science says it is okay if there really is a God and he speaks, it still
cannot take man's word for it that his word came from God. It is biased and
unfair to take man's word for it that his words are God's. It is biased and
unfair in principle. Also, when religious prophets contradict each other it
proves it is risky to elevate any man's teachings to divine authority, to invest
them with divine inspiration. Thus science will have to ignore religious claims.
If science says it has no problem with God, we must remember that it is not that
simple. It does not imply science must be open to religion or any religion. It
could only be open to a religion that is from God. It will be open in principle
but in practical terms this is not possible. Science cannot risk mixing man-made
doctrine with scientific truth. It seeks to teach so it cannot encourage the
layman to mix.
Man-made religion is definitely a threat to science and even religion should
admit it. It can admit it. Man-made religion creates errors and as man's word is
mistaken for God's people are reluctant to challenge it. They feel they cannot
and should not query God's word. So such religion creates more error and where
there is a lot of error it is hard for the voice of science to be heard.
If God and science are complimentary as religion says, this only applies if God
is real. Mormons say God is a polygamous married man with great but limited
power. Catholics say he is absolutely not like man at all and has boundless
power. Science will be unable to do experiments to support either of these
ideas.
We see that it is religion that says they are complimentary - science cannot say
that. It may say they are not complimentary or that no body knows. Religion is
consciously lying.
We see that if two theories fit together it does not mean they really are
complimentary. Complimentary means that both theories have to be true. A wrong
theory fitting a true one only threatens the true one.
We see that religion is trying to make its theories equal with the facts and
theories of science. That is utterly deceptive, dangerous and disgusting. No
religious doctrine could ever compare to a fact. No doctrine taken on faith
could ever be equal to a theory that is developed after testing and experiments.
Science ignores the supernatural because the supernatural cannot be tested. A
scientist can only say that an alleged miracle is unexplainable. Occam's Razor
says that if something takes place that needs explanation, we must look for the
most likely and simplest explanation. It does not say the explanation is
necessarily right but it is the one we will choose if we are sensible.
Miracle and science are diametrically opposed. Those who are truly grateful for
and to science, will not sully themselves by propagating miracle stories.
The whole purpose of miracle and magic beliefs is to encourage people to put
them out of reach of any tests. The person who believes in a miracle is putting
her belief beyond testing. For example, we could find out that the apostles were
on opium when they thought they saw Jesus back from the dead. Would that prove
that the miracle of the resurrected Jesus apparitions never happened? It in fact
would not. If God wants you to see a miraculous vision then you can see it
despite your propensity to hallucinate through drugs. It would take a greater
miracle for a smackhead to have a genuine supernatural vision than a clean and
normal and sane person. A belief that is made untestable is not worth anything.
The doctrine of the resurrection being a miracle actually fails to make it any
more important than the notion that a flower told you that a spaceship is coming
next week to take you to a planetary paradise forever.
Suppose a miracle happened. All science can say, "We can find no scientific
explanation." That means there might still be one. To say it is a miracle is an
assumption - it's going too far.
The believer in the Bible who thinks that all knowledge - whether revealed by
him or not - comes from God will find he has to reconcile science and everything
else with the Bible. In other words, everything must be made to fit the Bible.
Anything that contradicts it may evoke an attitude of, "We still hold the Bible
is right and let us wait for more light. Maybe this thing that contradicts it
will be proven false." This attitude can only lead to fundamentalism and
distortion. The best obscurantist always pretends to be distorting nothing.
It only takes one or two false notions or beliefs or assumptions to make you go
far wide of the truth. Hitler developed a bad view of all the Jews based on a
few unpleasant stories about some Jews. And the New Testament played its role.
Science is based on the fact that whatever assumptions and beliefs you have
control how you view and interpret evidence and it seeks to reduce this tendency
as far as possible. It wants to see things as they really are. This totally
opposes the view that any alleged revealed religion should be considered when
interpreting and trying to understand the evidence. It's what the microscope
reveals that counts. There is enough to skew our perception without religion's
input and especially with all the severe disagreements between religions.