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The Modern Problem
In the Bible there is not a single reference to the rejection of slavery. At that time in history slavery was just a normal part of life. As our civilization matured we realized that slavery lead to all kinds of abuses of humanity and that we could rise above it. The modern problem is the fact that religions are increasingly having less answers on not just the universe but also on moral issues. Usually what happens is that the truth becomes so blindingly obvious that the various religions will either adapt or die off.
A good example is cloning, the various issues regarding it are not discussed anywhere in religious texts. Our relationship with how industry should relate to nature is also not discussed in religion. When talking about the modern problem an example I like to use is leprosy. During the time of Jesus leprosy was a pretty big issue, and Jesus could apparently heal it. Today, we can cure leprosy without any type of divine intervention. What we once would of considered a miracle is just business as usual today. Another major issue religion might face in the next 200 years is the end of aging; something else that will have deep philosophical and moral implications.
Standard religious views have changed with time such as the idea that the earth is the center of the universe. The fact that we were not the center of the universe had deep philosophical implications because it would seem to imply that when we were “created” God didn’t give us any preferential treatment, a staple belief of the selfish human. Today of course, the issue is rarely discussed.
One of the last standing vestiges of religious “theory” is of course creation. Despite the tremendous amount of circumstantial evidence for evolution, the fact that macro evolution cannot be produced in the lab yet is the last string of hope for people who require a creation myth story. If we can produce macro evolution in the lab and or show the creation of some more complex proteins in the primordial soup, smarter and younger generations will not buy into any creation myths. Of course religions will adapt, the creation myth will become a metaphorical story instead of a literal one and people requiring religion will use a combination of tactics including pseudo logic to justify their beliefs.
“You would not get angry at a record player for not being able to play a CD.”
Unlike many critics however, I see religion as a catalyst for scientific progression. This might sound completely absurd, but let me explain. Religion in many ways has forced science to go above and beyond to prove points. Without religion there would be very little value in aggressively trying to show macro evolution in the lab. Further, I believe religion had a very small part in pushing scientists to find other means of acquiring stem cells for research.
For many religious adherents, there is a point of no return. It is a point when there beliefs are so integrated into their personalities that no amount of data will change their minds short of methods we have yet to realize as a society. A good metaphor would be a record player trying to play a CD, at a certain point new data becomes incompatible with previous modes of thought. This isn’t a characteristic restricted only to religion, it happens in science as well. Keep in mind, that we don’t necessarily want a record player to play a CD because the record player acts as a historical reference.
As Architects of order we do not limit ourselves because of change, however, this cannot be reasonably extended to the rest of the human population. Only so much effort should be exerted in an attempt to gain compatibility of thought because ultimately characters with archaic forms of perception will die. There is a separate issue of perception transference from parents to children, but the modern problem will resolve the majority of that issue. It might be easy to get angry at these people who do not seem to grasp certain modern concepts but anger and hate is not only frivolous, it is irrational. You would not get angry at a record player for not being able to play a CD. In the same way an architect should not get angry at a religious adherent for being incapable of accepting certain lines of modern thought.
Indirect Manslaughter
One of the easiest ways that we as architects can shape the best possible future for ourselves is to figure out the things that indirectly kill people. Whether we like it or not every action we do could potentially kill someone. How responsible we are for death is linked to how many “hops” there are to an event. If you do an action which causes a series of 15 connected events that leads to someone dying, you can’t really be held responsible. You also can’t be held responsible if you’re not really aware that what you’re doing is killing people. If you are aware that an action is killing someone, you are responsible.
Recently there has been a lot of commotion over gay marriage, particularly in the states. On one side of the issue you will have Christians who recite scripture saying and believing that this issue can lead to the downfall of civilization. On the other side of the issue you have people requesting equality. Generally I would not waste my time talking about civil issues because I believe most civil issues get resolved democratically. That said, I believe this is a special case scenario that can be utilized to show how lack of moral objectivity can lead to the death of humans.
So the church by not supporting homosexual marriage is by proxy not supporting homosexual monogamy and therefore is contributing to death by proliferating HIV.
A core concept in Christianity is the idea of monogamy. Monogamy has actual biological benefits that extend far beyond simple religious ideals. Monogamy decreases STDs, birth rates, and also contributes to having a proper framework in place for raising children. Monogamous relationships are by no means exclusive to Christianity but Christianity plays a role in supporting monogamy. From a general Christian perspective there is little difference between a homosexual who is monogamous and a homosexual that is promiscuous. So if you happen to be a homosexual looking for religious guidance you will quickly discover that if you cannot repress your homosexuality, you will be considered purely evil. What I mean by this is that to a lot of conservative Christians you will have no redeeming characteristics until you “free” yourself of homosexuality. This is hypocritical of course because Christian don’t do this with other types of sins, homosexuality is treated like leprosy.
A certain percentage of these homosexuals will be compelled to become promiscuous because a large group of people indirectly tell them it doesn’t matter. This promiscuity leads to all kinds of terrible things including the proliferation of HIV. So the church by not supporting homosexual marriage is by proxy not supporting homosexual monogamy and therefore is contributing to death by proliferating HIV. This is not the first time the Church has taken actions that contribute to the death of humans. The Catholic church has refused to send condoms to Africa before believing that doing so is promoting premarital sex but completely ignoring the fact that many Africans are not Catholic. In this way the Catholic church attempts to push their ideological views on other humans by allowing them to die.
I want to make it perfectly clear that I think homosexuals are perfectly capable of monogamy without any religious intervention. However, the reality is that humans draw strength from social groups and can also be devastated by social groups that reject them. If homosexuals were allowed to be both married and part of the church they would have a support group that they might not otherwise have and this in turn would contribute to better humans behavior such as monogamy.
While I am picking on the Church, this same idea can be applied to anything that needs moral direction. Humanity is the most important thing humans have. If we give up humanity for perceived morality, it is not actual morality.
Jesus: Architect of Rational Morality
Whether you believe Jesus was a prophet, messiah, or a myth he remains one of the most influential characters to date in the human race. As a brand Jesus has influenced every form of media. Jesus is one of the most obvious architects I could think of but I had difficulty actually figuring out what his primary characteristic was. Each religion has a fundamentally different view of Jesus and this made it difficult to evaluate, but after deep though I discovered that the trait that made Jesus, Jesus was his direct opposition to existing norms by means of supporting rational morality.
In Christian theology Jesus is the messiah who opposed what is called the old covenant or the 613 mitzvah (rules). In Islam, Jesus was a prophet who foresaw that the future messiah was not Jewish. In both these cases Jesus was a messenger who opposed current existing religious thought. His opposition to stagnation and non progressive thoughts, as a side effect, made Jesus a marketing genius. Unfortunately the very essence of what Jesus stood for is all but forgotten by every modern Jesus based religion. Jesus’s common sense approach to morality has been traded in by all modern religions for rule of text. During Jesus’s time being holy consisted of how you groomed yourself, what you ate, and even what you wore. Jesus justified the only true basic tenet of all morality, loving your neighbor, and this made him incredibly popular.
This very simple truth apparently was not enough because almost all the religions that were based on him engaged in bloody warfare at some point. Christianty vs Islam, Catholic vs Protestant; it would almost be comedic if it wasn’t horrifyingly sad. If Jesus was real, and was a prophet, when he said “forgive them for they know not what they do” he was surely talking about us in the future. He despised what we would consider Bible thumpers today, following rules for rule’s sake instead of being rational. Nothing was more evident of this when he stopped the stoning of the harlot by saying, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
All religious theology and miracles aside, the core concept of Jesus I agree with. We must oppose anything that is not rational and that hinders the progress of the human race. Following rules simply because we think they justify some divine entity does not benefit us. Human progress should come first and above any text that any human claims to be a divine rule book that we must follow.
Balancing Forces (Karma)
We talk about balancing forces regularly. The most common is this concept of Karma. Since Karma is religious concept with after life meaning, I am instead going to call it balancing force. There are two types of balancing forces in our world direct, and indirect. I am going to touch on both of these types in this article and also explain how you can utilize both of them to improve your life.
Indirect Balancing Force
A large amount of the time I hear people use the term karma in a sentence it is out of smite. You’re cut off while driving, someone gets the promotion you wanted, or you are bullied in high school. What do you say? “Those people are going to get what is coming to them!” The problem with this is that not only does this not help you, according to the way we believe balancing forces to work, you are probably completely wrong. Let me give you a scenario. Every day you got bullied in high school and all you could think was, “one day that bully will get what is coming to him.” The only problem is he actually did get what was coming to him every day when he went home and got beat by his parents. In this scenario, the positive points he gets at home is negated by his bullying. If there is a universal score board, he has nothing to lose or gain.
The real truth is that the universe doesn’t always work out the way we want it to. People who are mean and aggressive become rich and successful while other people who are very nice won’t be able to afford their mortgage. Now it is very true that there is a common story that exists where the mean jock will go on to work at a grocery store for the rest of his life and the quiet nerd will go on to be super successful, but this isn’t always the case.
If you want to believe in an indirect balancing force (Karma) you need to completely change how you view events that occur to you. When someone cuts you off in traffic instead of saying, “that person will get what is coming to them!” you need to say, “Thank you, this negative event you have caused me will make my future brighter.” Since you don’t have access to the universal score board, you have no idea what another person’s “score” is.
I personally don’t believe in a universal score board but I do believe in an indirect balancing force for another reason. We are all connected through our interactions. If I hold the door open for someone there is a connected event with that person that is created. If there is a person watching this occur, there is another connected event created. The combination of these connected events can have consequences on an individual. While it is impossible to predict ultimate outcomes, being mean to everyone is not going to have the best outcome.
Direct Balancing Force
Obviously relying on an indirect balancing force isn’t something most of us can be satisfied with. That is why we created systems of justice. Now these systems don’t always work as they should, but they are our first pass of bringing an ideal to reality. A direct balancing force also applies to when a person works very hard and is then rewarded for that hard work.
When it comes to direct balancing force there is really not that much to talk about because it is a force of our own creation so we have a general understanding of how it works and its current flaws.
Creating Reward Scenarios
Have you ever done something that you knew you were supposed to and then something positive happened shortly after? When positive things happen within a short time frame of an action we did, we sometimes like to create a relationship between the two and this is a very good thing.
Good things actually happen to us all the time but the problem is we can never be 100% sure why these good things happen. It could be that you are some how being rewarded for something you did, or it could be random. Regardless of why a good event occurs, you should associate it with an action you think most benefits your life.
This is partially deluding ourselves but it works out in our favor. If something good happens to you randomly and you accept it as random, besides possibly making you feel more lucky, the event has no force. Now if you believe the positive event was caused by something you did, then that event has more meaning. Depending on the positive event it may be impossible to know what actually caused it. It might very well be that it was caused as a reaction to something positive you did. If you can’t know, it is better to give the positive event some force to allow it to help shape your life for the better.
Conversation with an Atheist
He sat across from me, a little confused, “You’re telling me you believe in God?” I nodded and I knew where this conversation was headed, “So you believe all that stuff in the bible, you think it is all true?” I shook my head, “No I do not.” I could tell the common line of arguments were already lining up, the common atheist rhetoric that is used mostly to target those with a belief forged by the necessity of human capacity. I began to speak, “I don’t have a common belief in God I…” as if to try and catch me off guard he quickly interjected, “easter bunny.” I sighed and he continued, “God is no more real then the Easter Bunny or a flying spaghetti monster.”
“You forgot Santa Clause.”
“Exactly! how can you believe something that could of so easily been made up?”
“To assert that God is as real as a flying spaghetti monster is to assert that if God were real that God would be tangible. Theoretically if the flying spaghetti monster were real I would be able to reach out and touch it, this does not apply to God in my opinion. You could compare an intangible concept such as God is as real as karma, or love, or anger. However using fictional physical tangible entities to disprove an intangible one is a little silly.”
“This still does not prove that God is not fictional.”
“True, but my belief system does not have the necessity of God actually existing. While it would be nice, it by no means is a requirement for me.”
This was clearly not what he was expecting but none the less, defiant, he continued, “Well if God is so great why does he let suffering happen?” I laughed a little, “Why should he stop it?”
“Because God can.”
“So you assume that if God existed he has to be good or conform to some human trait that you have defined. You clearly admit that you don’t believe in God yet you seem to have a clear understanding of what its personality should be if God did exist.”
“It doesn’t make any sense though, why would God create something to let it suffer?”
“Well first, you’re making the mistake that I believe that God created us as a completed entity, which I don’t. Even if God did create us in the current state we are in right now, truly that cannot be a final state, but let me get back to your original question. Suffering is freedom. If we were incapable of making bad choices we would be no different then anything else, we would be complete automatons without any freedom whatsoever.”
“So you believe God created evil,” he said frustrated.
“No, we created evil as a way of defining things that make us less progressive as a race. Even if there was some kind of supernatural forces in play, it would be the same thing, a force stopping us from progressing as a race.”
“But there is zero proof of God! We are figuring out everything! We used to think we were the center of the universe. Surely you don’t think evolution is false?”
“Where I believe we came from does not factor at all into any belief I may have about God. While there may not be proof that God exists, we have circumstantial proof in the form of microcosms. Everything we don’t think God could be possible of, we’re doing. We’re creating artificial universes and intelligence. Despite the fact that we are a combination of multiple independent personalities, we are capable of working as a group to create a cohesive universe. If we were to create a universe with life, how would they fathom us?”
“So you believe God could just be some hyper intelligent entity or race that created us?” he said with a laugh.
“That is possible but, honestly, impossible to know. There is something more important then that though. It is how we relate to God that is important. You see everything we are trying to accomplish is represented in God as an epitome. Science is a way of gaining knowledge, God is all knowing. Art is the discovery of the meta physical, God is perfect meta. Philanthropy is represented in God as love.” his demeanor suddenly changed, he became curious, “do you think there is a correct religion? Do you think everyone is worshiping the same God?”
“This is where I disagree with Oprah. Every religion is not worshiping the same God, they are worshiping aspects. Further each religion we have today is characterized by primary traits. Christianity is love, Islam is majesty, and other religions are tradition. Each of these characteristics when combined make a singular personality. Of course they don’t see it that way, each system believes they can exist without the others. That would be like a warrior incapable of disciple or compassion. So what we get is war.”
“I still don’t believe in God, but you have done a better job convincing me then anyone I have met, but I just don’t feel it is reasonable.”
“That is understandable, what is reasonable is affected by time. If I could time travel 5000 years into the past it would be fairly unreasonable to ask those people to build me an airplane. What is truly unreasonable is that many atheists are completely aware that it is a logical impossibility to prove a negative yet they will write entire books on how something doesn’t exist. At the end of the day if God doesn’t exist that doesn’t bother me because it means we have something we can build.”
Suffering
Suffering is responsible for every accomplishment, happiness, and transcendent experience imaginable. The suffering of boredom, lack of success, or lack of quality of life drives us to do the things we do. Almost every spiritual system that currently exists revolves around reducing suffering. We are constantly trying to reconcile the fact that our entire reality is shaped by suffering but at the same time try to avoid it as much as possible. Our success at life really revolves around our pain tolerance for life in general. The lower our tolerance for suffering the greater our drive will be to try to escape it.
We don’t usually think in these terms, instead suffering is considered wholly evil. The world tells you that if you’re not happy there is something wrong with you and you should get the problem “fixed” through any means possible. This is not to say I don’t believe that people can have true biological sicknesses that can make them depressed but mental illness doesn’t seem to be declining. The people that manage to break free of restraint though monetary gain will often times become like fish out of water flopping around on a deck hopping from one religion to another. The others who have freedom but don’t do spiritual or religious jumping jacks instead achieve by creating a new level of personal suffering for themselves that they can beat.
Spiritual leaders of old have mislead the world. What they either don’t know or hide from the world is that suffering can be as addictive as joy. People will plunge themselves into suffering because they are drawn to it. People in perfect relationships will destroy them. People with empires will burn them to the ground. When these things happen we dismiss them, call them crazy, and then move on. Teens will often test the waters of suffering which will make them act in ways that seem completely irrational to their unfortunate parents. Since we have classified suffering as evil, people who are drawn to suffering will often times consider themselves evil and may incorrectly feel the need to do evil acts.
What we must understand is that the reason people are drawn to suffering is not because they are insane but instead it is because their lives have lost purpose and it is only through suffering that they can regain purpose. How deep they go into their personal suffering is really how far they are from their objective. We have created systems that monopolize on this in the form of religion. Humans will constantly plunge themselves into suffering drugs, violence, and criminal acts where they will then get to a breaking point where they will become “seekers”. Once they are in seeker mode the first religion to get to them with the most community support will usually be the religion they convert to. The religion will then, of course, take credit for changing that person’s life when in reality they changed their own life through self-inflicted personal suffering.
Suffering is necessary for progress but what is not helpful is when people are destructive and pull us backwards. The idea of constructive suffering needs to be explored and we need to give people the opportunity to suffer in a way that will not permanently damage them or society. We must embrace the fact that people pursuing suffering are seeking purpose and not simply dismiss them or get them to go on drugs.
The New Tech Class
There have been a lot of conversations going on about the need for people to learn how to code and the opportunities that are present. Since the creation of modern computing something interesting has started to happen, we have introduced a new form of literacy called coding. Traditional language is responsible for communicating status while the language of coding is responsible for communicating function.
This is a very new invention for the human race. We now have the ability to communicate functions to machines that will do actions without question. In the past if we wanted to get another human to do a function we would have to resort to trust, manipulation, or force. However with the advent of computers we now have the capability to have machines function through explicit language.
While it is new, we are starting to witness what I believe will be a growing trend. You will have two classes of people, those who can code, and those who cannot. Now this might seem absurd until you realize that something with significantly less power then coding already has a divisive affect on the world and that is common literacy. Those with computer skills are also starting to become the most rich people in the world as well. It is only going to get worse. As coding manifests itself as automation and things like 3D Printing become the norm, coders, and also those with technical skills, will increasingly have a significant edge over everyone else who doesn’t have the same capabilities. This doesn’t just apply to economics, it applies to warfare as well.
All wars, even religious ones, come down to economics. In the past the easiest way to do a large amount of economic damage was to kill other humans. The problem with this method was that both parties would lose. Increasingly humans are being left out of the equation entirely with things like drones. Further it is easier to attack through cyber methods then through traditional warfare. As the world becomes more and more globalized, the ability to steal digital work is far more valuable then having the capability to destroy and kill. Death and destruction will only lead to creating economic entities (countries or otherwise) that you can no longer exploit.
Now if this sounds like paradise, it’s not. Those without the capability to participate will be left in an absolute state of desperation and this can lead to internal violence. So while wars between countries may stop, internal economic pressures could result in an increase in violent crimes. The only way to combat such potential threats to civilization are to insure that as many people have the capabilities required as possible. If you have children, I highly recommend nudging them to learn how to code, even if they want to do something else with their lives. Their ability to code may be invaluable to them in the future.
The End of Discovery
A group of individuals stand on an observation deck of a space station over looking earth. They watch the blue orb below as a female voice talks to them, “This is earth, our originator. While it has the highest biological diversity in our galaxy, it also has the highest historical death toll of organic life.” A child no more then 10 years old who had went through flash education looks over at the woman, “What is your opinion of the great human exodus from earth?” The woman snaps back to reality from reading her rehearsed script from memory, “Well there was really no reason to leave. After the human race completed cellular re-calibration, there was nothing stopping us from living there indefinitely.” The woman paused for a moment and then breathing out said, “I am of the opinion that there is the hope that something new will emerge from it that can associate itself with us.” The child looked at the woman with an inquisitive look, “You mean you were of the opinion right? According to hyper quantum mechanics we can predict everything that will happen on that planet down to the atom.” The woman frowned a bit, “Yes, of course, I meant was of the opinion.”
There is a commonly held belief that as much as we discover, there will always be more. Another concept that is related to this is that even if we figured out how everything works in science, there will always be the spiritual realm to discover. What if there is a limit? A critical mass of knowledge that can explain everything. Let’s hypothetically imagine for a moment that through neurotheology we could explain things like spirituality, religion, and we even discover that, through some means we are currently not fully aware of, our brains are all communicating with each other and this explains everything from coincidence to remote viewing. How would we handle this?
If the universe is discovered and we can even explain spirituality, what would the future of humanity hold? This idea might be disastrous to some and I don’t think it would be limited to those deeply religious or spiritual individuals either. A lot of scientists, including famous atheist Richard Dawkins, believe that we don’t need religion because there is so much to be discovered in science. Science is an endless well of things that will astound us, that is the hope, but what if they are wrong? I also personally believe that a lot of scientists who maintain religious ties do so because they personally want to believe that there will always be something more for them to discover. Francis Collins, one of the primary directors of the human genome project, is an evangelical christian.
There is a lot of different ideas about our existence such as us being the product of a divine entity, a product of chemical chance, and also that we are all God. If all those ideas were wrong, what would we be? We’re not a creation of a third party (God), we are not here simply by chemical chance (a mere bi-product of galaxy emergence), and we are also not God. So what are we? This might seem like a logical impossibility, surely one of those previous ideas has to be the correct one. There is another possible explanation and that is we are the birth place of that thing we call God or as I title the process, Elolight. This universe is nothing but a womb and every life form that emerges in it has nothing more then the potential of ripping a multidimensional tear in the universe to escape to a reality beyond this one. The biggest danger is not discovery, or that things will die, the biggest danger is that this universe will not give birth to its intended child.
Justification
There was a flower and it was the most beautiful flower on the planet, just looking at it could put you into euphoria. There was two groups, one that was obsessed with keeping it from harm and another group who believed it should be destroyed because the flower also created the most dangerous poison in the world. Both equally justified, the two sides engaged in a bloody war. As the blood flowed it caused the flowers to begin spreading even more, the pro flower supporters took this as a sign. The pro flower supporters used the new volume of flowers to poison the water supplies of those who were against the flower. This further supported those who were against the flower and believed the flower only brought death. The anti flower supporters began to kill even more of the pro flower supporters which lead to even more flowers growing. As the last human stumbled through a field full of the flowers, bleeding to death, she came to the realization that the flower had not killed anyone, it was humans.
The war between Israel and Gaza brings up some valuable issues for the entire human race. The primary issue for me of the war is not about who is right, wrong, political, or religious issues. These issues we have always had wars about. The most important issue is about how we define good or how we justify actions. In the movies when a villain is holding a hostage the hero will always do something like shoot the gun out of their hand or steadily aim and take out the villain without harming the innocent. This is how we believe it should be and it makes us feel good.
Real life isn’t so clean and there will always be split second decisions that have to be made that could cost the lives of the innocent. There seems to be a tendency to get caught up too much in reality and lose our focus on Elolight. There is only one word to describe innocent death and that is tragedy; it’s not a necessary evil or an accident. We all die and there will always be more humans but that does not mean there will always be ascension or evolution. There will always be people who will want to believe people, property, or ideas are holy. There is absolutely only one thing in the universe that is truly divine, and truly holy – our desire to ascend. How we believe we should ascend may vary greatly from person to person but the idea that we can is the only perfect thing in the universe because any possible perfection will derive from our need for it.
The slope from justification to regression is a steep one. We have brutal examples of this such as Stalin killing millions believing that the ends justify the means. We have all done it, it is easier to justify things then to confront them. Religion is in the business of justification, everything must be justified. Whether it is the promise of heaven for good deeds or the fear of hell, we like to justify our actions. The problem with justification is that it is almost never for the good of human race but instead it is for the good of ourselves.
Rejecting Purism
Humans tend to be in a constant need to inject purity in to everything. Whether it is is politics or religion, we want everything to be pure. All political systems are susceptible to corruption and people driven by their selfishness will figure out ways to abuse any system that is put in place whether it is a free market system or a social system. Free market idealists will believe that freedom can be achieved through inequality since people have more potential in either direction. Extreme socialists believe freedom is obtained through equalization where if we equalize resources, everyone will have more freedom to pursue other things things which will almost always be some form of artistic or intellectual en devour. The reality is that both systems have significant draw backs and we have enough history to come to this conclusion. With pure free market policies you can get slavery of different varieties and with socialism you can get long waiting times and technical stagnation.
We cannot and should not as a race accept purism because we as a race are not pure and nothing we create is perfect because we are in a constant state of evolution. This concept has been expressed negatively by religions by demeaning humans through illustrating our many imperfections. However, our imperfections should not be seen, necessarily, as wholly negative. Recognizable negative traits represent things the human race can improve on. Purism makes us accept imperfect political systems and believe in fallacies to justify a world of perfection.
Nature is completely perfect it and we must go out of our way to protect it or we have enough right now and can achieve perfect economic equalization through distribution are both common purist beliefs. Every one of these purist ideals and many more revolve around this idea that perfection exists some where in the world. The need to believe in purity even affects our relationships and we will put our relationships into harms way because we want to believe a particular relationship is perfect and impervious to outside influence.
Purity is what we are seeking with Elolight and not where we are at or what we have.
