As I do from time to time, I would like to reiterate that “the human condition” can be improved through the actual application of intelligence. All the problems we face–of war, of poverty, of sadness and isolation, of a sense of futility–can be solved through the application of intelligence.
To be clear, greed is the outcome of failing to know how to live. It is a failure to understand how to generate deep, authentic connections with important parts of our selves, which in turn enable fruitful, fulfilling connections with others. It is a failure to learn the lesson that objects cannot gain you what you crave most of all if you are honest.
Likewise, religious dogmatism is a failure to open up belief to experience. Everything that is REAL about religion is as available today as it was 2,000 or 4,000 years ago. We can investigate prayer. We can investigate life after death. We can learn to understand moralities–and I personally would argue there should be as many of them as there are people, within certain bounds–as systems for self fulfillment, and social harmony. They are not commands. God does not punish us. We fail to seek God. That is our punishment.
I will add to that as well that I have come to realize that the concept of “sin” is meaningless as used in religious contexts. Why would an infinite being CARE about what we do? We exist within that being. We are that being, or more properly He is us.
This being consists in infinite love, in my view, and no loving being would condemn or hurt us for our ignorance; and sin is always ignorance–not in the sense that you were never told the rule, but in the sense that if you commit a “sin” you only do so because you do not understand why that rule exists. Rules, like “be kind to others”, exist for our own benefit. If we are kind, we are happier, and if everyone follows that rule, our world is a more happy place.
In my view, the conceptions both of sin, and eternal damnation for minor misreadings of texts written in another language thousands of years ago, exist for SECULAR purposes, for command and control purposes, for political purposes. Take excommunication: this power of the Pope was considered quite considerable for a very long time, and kept many would-be rebels in check.
A great many of the griefs currently darkening human lives around the world could be ameliorated if we replaced religion with scientific knowledge about how the after-life actually worked.
Bringing–not these ideas, but this mountain of EVIDENCE–into the mainstream of science would revolutionize human life in many powerful and positive ways.
Leftism, as a death cult, exists mainly as a strong psychic reaction to the notion of death as eternal dissolution, and the social order as the only possible mechanism of immortality. Given that leftism is currently the most pernicious force in the world, the force which creates the most suffering, bringing this evidence into the light would be greatly beneficial for many suffering souls.
Few thoughts.