Medicine for Man

In some parts of the world today, battles are being fought  for the establishment of religious dictatorships where religious laws are to be imposed upon an oppressed group of people. The oppressors are well-armed believers in the concept that a religion must be imposed as a form of law. The oppressed are the men, women and children of an expanding region who suffer under the violence of the oppressors.

The oppressors move amongst the oppressed, promulgating an undercurrent of whispered threats of violent retribution for any variance from the current local interpretations of the religious law. Those that would try to move the society out of the oppression and towards more rational belief systems and governments are brutally cut off from life.

At the root of a religious dictatorship is a concept of a malevolent supreme being who creates eternal hell for those who do not worship and who do not believe precisely the current version of the imposed dogma. But who is the leader of the oppression? Where is the dictator? To whom is the militant allegiance of the oppressors given?

If God exists at all, we know it is not she who is the dictator, because we can all see the decisions of God and they show that she is not malevolent towards man. Who is it then? We are looking for a blind entity, one that cannot see the things we all can see.

The dictator is a mindless molecular representation of an idea that resides in the mind of man. It mimics life in that it replicates and spreads from one thinker to the next, across the generations. It is not invulnerable, but it is well entrenched. The medicine that heals is knowledge, but the dictator executes hideous self defense against such incursions. It causes the production and release of chemicals in the brain that serve to protect and strengthen it. It forces a fear reaction that causes its hosts to physically ward off the light of reason.

The dictator then, is nothing but a false idea, an idea that somehow has become physically entrenched in the minds of man, taking up new posts in new minds in each new generation.  How can the dictator be removed from power? To answer this one must peer backwards in time to the point of its origin. We will understand that its existence was inevitable. Like any of the great questions of philosophy, it arises on its own, without revelation, with nothing but observation of the universe followed by the wondering as to why things are as they are.

Man observed the universe and saw that great murderous beasts lived in the earth, threatening, attacking and killing the children of man. Why is this so? He wondered. Why are there thunderstorms and lightning strikes? Is the roar of thunder the same as the roar of the beast? Is there some great being living above the sky? Why is it so angry and malevolent towards man? What could be done to appease it?

Today, we understand the cause of thunder and lightning. But in those days we only understood that living entities would move against each other. So it was inevitable, it was predictable, that as man evolved to become a conscious being in this realm where life and death are uncertain, he would consider a concept of a thinking being who was more powerful than all other beings and this was the being who thundered in anger and cast fire down from the heavens towards man.

In times of great and terrifying natural disasters, man found himself murmuring desperate supplications to the powerful being, pleadings to end the torment. When man survived to see the end of the storm, he rationally concluded that the powerful being had listened to his prayer. Man then began to form more detail theories as to the desires of the powerful being. Man observed that the being cast lighning capriciously, killing man and child alike, and man drew the logical conclusions that the powerful being demanded sacrifices and burnt offerings.

From these original theories of the angry malevolent being behind the natural disasters, man evolved his spoken and written traditions and used the name of God to convey his understanding. Once the idea of the malevolent God took hold in the mind of man, it spread quickly, from parent to child, from chief to sentry, from brother to sister. It became entrenched throughout the land and it replicated through time, through the generations to today, the year, 2012. it is well entrenched, blinding the members of entire societies, inciting the blind to violence.

Today. the blind cannot see how beautiful is the universe and how beautiful is his creator. If he takes a moment to think of it, if he averts his eyes from his blind belief in his scriptures and spoken traditions, the dictator releases its poison in a flowing of false ideas: “But it just might be true! If you proceed to doubt you are destined for eternal burning torment at the hand of the all-powerful creator of Hell! You must bow down and worship him, for this life and for eternity you must worship the creator of Hell, you are worth nothing more than that!”

The flowing of the false ideas evokes the release of chemicals that cause a fear response, and the afflicted man begs silently in anguish for forgiveness for each tiny moment of a doubt. And the logical mind becomes compelled to carry this forward to murderous extremes, for is his failure not to kill the unbelievers not itself a sign of doubt? How can unbelievers be allowed to live in blasphemy against the most powerful creator of Hell? One must do all one can or he has failed to fully worship, appease and obey. And so we begin to understand the mind of the radical fundamentalist, the nature of his illness. He is truly lost, a sheep whose eyes are overgrown with wool, wandering in blindness through a wilderness, ruled by panic and by fear, acting out in a reflected anger, hatred and violence towards his fellow man, toward his own children.

The false idea tries to live in all of us, we have all inherited the idea of the malevolent creator of Hell who commands worship and specific belief. Our parents and our ancestors meant well, but they themselves were afflicted with the same parasite. From these original ideas we have evolved our books of scriptures, our Torahs, Bibles, and Qurans. Each book demands homage to the same malevolent creator of Hell.

As free societies began to evolve upon the earth, religious dogma found safe havens in which they could evolve. Benevolent forms of Christianity, Judaism and Islam began to exist. The ancient stories of a God who demanded the killing of women and children were seen as allegorical and not really true depictions of the character of God. But freedom has not spread throughout the earth. Religious dictatorships have become entrenched in societies, if not in constitution then in the murderous intent of clerics, scholars and blinded soldiers.

There are oppressed people who are crying out in silence for they cannot dare to cry out aloud. The blinded warrior himself, observing the spark of reason, dares not speak of it for fear of his afflicted comrade. But they all are seeking a way to escape and today there is nowhere that they can go. Freedom has been cut off. The dictator has a firm grip and is waiting to replicate itself, enforced into the minds of their children.

These children, with whom we are entrusted by the universe or by God herself if she exists, are born into a world where we ourselves are the conduit for the replication of the false ideas. We think it is our right and duty to force these false ideas of God into their minds well before they have reached the age of reason, well before they have achieved their education, well before they have achieved the political and cultural freedom and strength of mind to challenge us and prove to us that our ancient ideas of God are false ideas. Our children would heal the world if we would but ensure that they have educations and freedom of belief.

But we are beginning to evolve, we are opening up our eyes to study the universe, to study the creation. We never needed the opinions of our ancestors to understand the true nature of God. They themselves were mistaken. They themselves were also afflicted. They themselves inherited the false ideas of the malevolent God. If they do live on in an after life then we can see they do live on in anguish for they are no longer amongst us, they cannot stand to say that they were mistaken, that they should never have allowed the replication of this false idea borne out of misunderstandings of the forces of nature.

It is only we who can move to restore their peace. We can do this by protecting the next generations. We can establish human rights for children and that among these rights is the right to not be indoctrinated into any particular systems of belief. We will teach them about all beliefs but we will not insist to tell them they are born as believers in a particular belief simply because their parents are believers. We will carefully shepherd them through a rational educational process so that they can stand with us as adults and debate the benefits of the different systems of belief.

This is how we are healing ourselves. This is how we relegate the false ideas to their rightful place, to join with the myths of the ancient epochs of man. The dictator turns out to be nothing more than a false idea borne out of fear and ignorance of the forces of nature. This dictator is dissolved to nothing with the opening of ones eyes to view the beauty and wonder of the universe.

And if one wants to believe in God and he is struggling with this eviction, he has but to take a moment, an hour, a day, a week, or a season to remember that none of us can see God and so he is free to think of his creator as female and, instantly, all of the malevolence begins to fade. the believer finds himself standing to face the universe, eyes opened wide, discovering the great beauty and promise of the universe and the great beauty and promise of she who has created it if it is indeed her creation.

We are now evolving and extending freedom to the world. We are creating places of safety where the oppressed can come to live. We are making plans to turn our attention to the most severely afflicted. We are disarming and restraining the militant oppressors, we are teaching them how to open their eyes to learn, to finally see the things we all can see.

We are becoming atheists and rational theists, we are studying the cosmos to learn how to make the journey to spread our beautiful species throughout the innumerable watered planets warmed by their distant stars. In either form of universe, created or evolved, we are becoming repositories of trust for our children and we are educating them in truth and teaching them to love each other.

We are beautiful, in the eyes of our creator if she exists we are beautiful, in the extent of the beautiful universe we are the ones who live, the ones who love life, the ones who extend life and liberty to each other, we are beautiful, we are our brothers keeper.