I know that sounds rather presumptuous, but given that each of us is just one of many – and, when it comes down to it, not all that different from each other when it comes to what we bring to the table to take on the challenges of everyday life. That is to say, how different can we be in our overall approach to life, when as members of one species we are primarily driven by our shared biology, and the differences between us are no more than varieties on a theme, i.e., they are differences of degree, and not of kind.

Beyond that, there are the circumstances of our birth such as the place and social-economic environment that we grow up in including our culture –  that help shape us into the individuals that we are today.  That this will leave each of us as distinct and unique individuals with needs and desires and expectations from life possibly as different between two people as day and night is undoubtedly true, yet at the same time the differences again are a matter of degree, and not of kind.

And if I can shed some light on the meaning and purpose of life for myself by sharing my thoughts about it, perhaps this might help someone else to start thinking about what life means to them, and add some definition or context or value to their outlook on life in a world that, in my humble opinion,  is going down the wrong path in terms of pursuing the best possible future for our species.  This is not to say that I think the human race is irrevocably going to hell in a handcart, although there are many among us who appear to be doing their best to make this happen.

I’m thinking of the massive environmental damage being inflicted on our precious planet on a daily basis, and beyond that: who can begin to enumerate the number and variety of social  economic and health issues ranging from poverty to homelessness to starvation across the globe? Just this week the NY Times in an article titled The U.S. Can No Longer Hide From Its Deep Poverty Problem showed a tally of those living on $4 a day or less in selected developed countries, and it included 5.3 million people living in the US.  I don’t necessarily want to pick on the US, but with the highest GDP in the world you wonder how this can even be the case when a country is deemed the wealthiest country in the world.

Then there is the disturbing statistic that half of the world’s wealth belongs to the top 1%, while the top 10% of adults hold 85%, and the bottom 90% hold the remaining 15% of the world’s total wealth.  If you believe that these discrepancies  are simply a function of some folks working harder and smarter than others, and reaping the benefit of it, then bless you, but you may have to learn something about how some people, organizations and certain governments operate in order to produce the incredible wealth that they have accumulated.

So against these things  – and with the brazen assumption that there is a lot more going on in the world than meets the eye –  I am introducing “the larger context”,  which, I postulate, naively as it may be,  is the true meaning  or intent behind the world. It is the reason for it being there in the first place,  including our very own presence in it, and something I hope we will  be able to get a glimpse of once we look  beyond the nonsensical content of religious dogma  (of whatever flavor) and the unsupported and hence unintelligible notion that someone or something else is in charge of our world beyond ourselves.

Why do I think there is ” a larger context” or  “true intent” to life that we are currently not aware of?  Only because we are the offspring of the greater cosmos, and as such contain its “DNA” within every particle of our being.  We are in fact one entity! As a result, what motivates it likely motivates us, either directly or indirectly,  and then at  a level where we would be capable of initiating some course of inspired action commensurate with the evolutionary achievement that we currently represent. However, at the moment one might be hard pressed to think much of that,  given the aforementioned sorrowful status of the world today, and that would include the questionable quality of  leadership of some of the most powerful nations in the world at the moment..

But it is without question that our evolutionary path shows that the cosmos is on a mission, and to date we  appear to be that mission; it is just that we don’t yet know what that mission is about. But it would be unreasonable to think that this is a multi-billion year mission of self-annihilation, given the kludge that we are currently making of it, although I hate to think that we are  doomed to end up that way because we haven’t evolved enough in the grey matter department to be able to take care of it.

And so my hope is that by  gaining even an inkling of  understanding of the world’s greater purpose, on the assumption there is one  – oh, and what an assumption – we might eventually be able to abandon the current seemingly runaway path of self-destruction by rising to the occasion and take ownership of our destiny by determining as best we can what our role should be in this fantastic cosmic adventure that we have only  just woken up in.  Evolution is providing us with some pointers here, but we need to be able to understand a lot more of what has moved us along its path to the present moment  before we can start making more  sense of it.

In the end, much of this is about not being able to see the forest for the trees, or, for that matter,  the universe for the stars, when, usually, the whole is larger than the sum of its parts –  and so is the world; we’re just not seeing it at the moment, and my greatest fear is that we might never be able to.

When Spinoza writes about God, it is not in the anthropomorphic sense of a God as usually portrayed by the Christian-Judaeo or Muslim varieties of religious scripture, i.e., very much like a person with human-like traits,  an authoritarian or father figure perhaps.  Someone who seems to take an active and personal interest in what the creatures he created here on earth are up to.

(And, it should be noted, demonstrating a personality  featuring some of the more regrettable human traits I can think of, such as being  narrow minded, vain, jealous, as well as being vindictive and vengeful! Anyone familiar with the Old Testament will know exactly what I am referring to!)

Does this mean that Spinoza was an atheist?  Not really, since he holds that God is the one and only unique and indivisible substance that the universe is made of. There are no other substances. The view is a bit more complex than that, and involves perceiving this substance through a variety of distinct attributes – such as Thought and Extension – but not its basic premise.

It is interesting to note that Albert Einstein – also once accused of being an atheist – followed Spinoza in rejecting the  anthropological concept of God,  saying,  instead,  that he believed in “… Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of the world”.

So the point would be that, if God is everything, and everything is God,  this will render the concept of a distinct metaphysical entity over and above the world – the great creator –  logically and semantically empty (i.e., meaningless) since it doesn’t signify anything over and above the totality of the cosmos, and the name “God” ends up being just another label for it.

We worship this earth, we worship those heavens: we worship those good things which stand between the earth and the heavens and that are worthy of sacrifice and prayer, and are to be worshiped by the faithful man. We worship the souls of the wild beasts and the tame. We worship the souls of the holy men and women, born at any time, whose consciences struggle, or will struggle, or have struggled, for the good.

While “worship” or “faithful” or “holy” or “sacrifice” and “prayer” are typical terms as applied by the formalized, totalitarian religions as a means to keep the great unwashed under their thumb – and as much as the Zoroaster faith preached that God alone should be worshiped –  these terms can stand perfectly on their own without reference to a an imaginary deity of sorts,  i.e., God – by applying them to the way in which we pursue the truth about ourselves.

That is, we pursue these truths faithfully, for their own sake, and without coercion from anyone, and to the benefit of all mankind. And what we will find is the good inherent in all of us, and it is this truth that is “holy” and should be “worshiped” in the sense that we will put this above everything else that we treasure about life in the world.

By “sacrifice” we might well have to be less selfish than usual on occasion, in order to put the greater good ahead of ourselves in order to help others. And by “prayer” we need to do nothing more than express the hope and belief in ourselves that we are here for the right reasons, which is to realize the common good in ourselves as we rise to our full potential as human beings.

I can’t claim to have any special insight here, but it seems to me that, first of all, it makes sense to pursue the things that benefit us most as a species, and not look at sacrificing some individuals to the betterment of others as a means to advance the human race as a whole. This has to be a fundamental truth about ourselves, but sadly, the sum of human history to date shows primarily the exploitation and slaughter of the many to benefit the few.

If this proves anything all – and notwithstanding the enlightenment expressed by the ancient Zoroastrian faith –   it is that the formalized religions have been absolutely no help at all to the betterment of humanity, and in fact can be seen as the instigators – and in many cases the perpetrators – of much of the murder and mayhem that has befallen the many people of this earth for reasons that make no sense at all.

Surely we can get there without religious totalitarianism  and especially without  religions in their most virulent and primitive form and when ancient tribal laws are used in an inhumane and brutal manner. All this coercion in the name of a ‘higher” authority has nothing to do with serving an almighty god of sorts or whatever else they claim to be about.  In the end this more likely about the few having the means to control the many in everyday life, such as when women and girls are devalued to the level of cattle, to be used and abused at will because it is their duty to comply.

Life has no value  when it is so easily denigrated or even dispensed with in order to prevent dissent.  I’m referring to caning people in public, hacking off hands or stoning people to death: they are barbaric acts that have no place in a society that values the sanctity of life.   Clearly, no effort towards the greater good is happening here.

Lest we forget, by slaughtering the infidel unwilling to convert to their version of Islam, the Muslim Jihadis of today appear to have taken a page from the late great King Charlemagne – or Charles the Great – the king of the Franks, who became the first emperor in Western Europe since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and is sometimes referred to as the founder of modern Europe.

During his campaign to establish an empire in full support of the Church, he felt compelled to Christianize newly conquered people upon penalty of death, which lead to such events as the massacre of 4,500 captive rebel Saxons in October of 782 in what is now known as Verden in Lower Saxony, Germany. The unfortunate Saxons had rebelled against King Charles’ invasion and his subsequent attempts to Christianize them from their native Germanic paganism.

And that massacre pales in comparison with the events almost 500 years later, in 1209, in the town of Béziers in the Languedoc region.  When the Roman Catholic Church established the Inquisition, it was set up initially to wipe out the Cathar movement in southern France where it had taken hold in opposition to the hitherto dominant Roman Catholic religion. Apparently, there were a lot of Cathars living in the town of Béziers, to the point that it was seen to be a Cathar stronghold, and on July 22^nd, 1209, under leadership of the Abbot of Citeaux the town was attacked, ransacked, and completely burned to the ground, the majority of its population of 20,000 people killed, including many women and children. That this would have included many thousands of Roman Catholic adherents who were also living in Béziers didn’t seem to matter. When questioned about this, the Cistercian abbot-commander of the Catholic crusaders, is on record of having said that: “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eis. (Kill them all, the Lord will recognize His own).

Now all this happened a long time ago, and while today the Christian faith is far more benign,  the justification for this kind of slaughter remains an intrinsic part of the foundation of the Christian faith: the bible, for in Deuteronomy XIII.12-16, the faithful are instructed as follows:

If thou shalt hear say in one of these cities …, Let us go and serve other Gods …; then shalt thou surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly and all that is therein. … And thou shalt burn with fire the city and all the spoil thereof every whit for the Lord thy God. … And it shall be a heap forever; and it shall not be built again.

And so we are here today, 800 years after the slaughter in Béziers – and yes, it was rebuilt again! –  and in the 21st century, and as can be evidenced from recent events in the Middle East, innocent people continue to be slaughtered in the name of some god or prophet or another. One might claim that this kind of action has nothing to do with the religious beliefs themselves – and that they are misused when wielded as weapons of murder and destruction. No – it is precisely the unsubstantiated and irrational nature of these beliefs that allows them to be used in this manner. When you think you have the creator and eternity on your side – all your actions are justified; you cannot be wrong!  Until we shake off the influence of these dangerous nonsensical beliefs, our species will continue to be murdered for them.

This leads me to say that to believe in the existence of a god or other kinds of super-natural beings has historically shown itself to be a seemingly endless source of human tragedy. Because – while in principle these are nonsensical and hence harmless beliefs– it is at the same time the sickly smell of centuries of savagery and senseless slaughter of thousands  of people in the name of such beliefs – and primarily in the competition between such beliefs.

However, the way I see it is that the way most people accept the existence of a God is along the lines of believing  something far less profound, e.g., believing that the earth is round. One accepts this to be a true fact about the world since it fits in with what you have been told about the world,  from the time you heard it first mentioned, from what you heard at school or from what you have read about it.  As such, accepting the truth of such a belief and  most other beliefs one holds as true is a function of coherence with other beliefs that seem to support it, giving you no reason to examine it critically or ever doubt it for that matter.

I’m willing to concede however that  – when people say they believe in God – they might be expressing more than just something that they have always accepted as true, such as the belief that the earth is round. What may be referred to as “spiritual beliefs” are the results of having a sense or an awareness that one is part of something larger and more profound than oneself while being unable to cite the specific reason for believing this to be a true belief about themselves and the world.  An example of that might be what Einstein wrote about in a  November 9, 1930 New York Times Magazine article  titled Religion and Science  in the context of what he referred to as “a third stage of religious experience”:

I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.

Beliefs based on such feelings  may have some intrinsic credibility based on the phenomenological nature of our everyday experiences, when one is led to expect a greater context for them beyond the immediacy of the present moment and whatever else one might bring to bear on them. It is within this expectation or awareness that one might ascribe to the possibility of a deity existing, especially when one is told from day one that there is such a thing as an all-powerful being named God, and being at the receiving end of a process I call “religious brainwashing” at the hands of some authoritarian religious institution that does not allow its core dogmas to be challenged.

Given this line of reasoning, you could say that the belief in God merely fills the void in one’s belief system that resulted from sensing the larger whole of one’s existence without being able to articulate exactly what that is.

And when it comes to that, I’m sure we will all agree that more than a little guidance is required to prevent the human race from finding new ways to harm itself.  As even primitive ape colonies appear to have hierarchies and moral codes to govern their members interaction,  it was likely in the interest of self-preservation that our ancestors came up with the idea to legitimize their tribal laws and institutions by invoking authorization from a higher source, e.g., a deity of sorts. This could be (at one time)  the sun-god Ra, the King of all Gods and mortals, or further varieties on that theme, unseen yet almighty entities with a supposed interest to keep us on the straight and narrow, and that we better do as we’re told, or else there would be hell to pay! And heaven would be our reward …

Enter religion – and until the eventual uncoupling of Church and State –  the self-proclaimed owners of whatever moral framework was seen as being necessary for a society to function with some degree of success towards a tenable future.  I know I have simplified this premise greatly, but it merely introduces the idea that religion is  about placing the seat of moral authority off-planet and hence beyond the ability to scrutinize it, question it or challenge it.

Of course, the problem was that not everyone one had the same idea about this, and so religious conflict was born. While this notion of  all-powerful metaphysical  beings helped to stabilize our species at the individual tribal level for certain periods of time,  it also appears to have been one of the main reasons for people to slaughter each other in order to establish the primacy of their particular brand of religious beliefs.

Regarding the latter, it is the nature of religious beliefs to be unsubstantiated, and examining them is like peeling an onion: after stripping layer after layer there is absolutely nothing at their core. Although some folks simply claim that they “know” that such beliefs are absolutely true – e.g., that a God exists – we can do little but take their word for it as they are unable to clarify what they mean by this assumption. This is at the core of every religious edifice – rationality has no place here – and as Nietzsche put it once  “Faith means not wanting to know the truth”.

Without a doubt religion has confused a lot of people into various stages of existential despair, the inevitable outcome of trying to believe in something that is entirely without substance regardless of what spiritual or ontological argument one wishes to root for it.  The attempt to make the leap of faith required in order to embrace some variety of eschatological mythology at the core of existence leaves one stranded at the dark abyss of irrationally because all reason must be abandoned beforehand.

Religion has no future, only a deadly present and a deadly past – it is the poisonous worm that, in the abandonment of reason, burrows itself deeply into the minds of those who find comfort in the kinds of beliefs that appear to let them off the hook for having to take any kind of responsibility for the moral character of our species, as this will have been decided “elsewhere”.  This reminds me of a line from a poem by Nietzsche’s favourite poet Holderlin which,  loosely translated from German, goes something like this: “While here on earth we mortals toil, elsewhere a God decides …”

Truly, in today’s language, God is vaporware, and at most an unsubstantiated rumour. But while the belief in imaginary entities might be deemed a juvenile condition by any other name, collectively our species should have grown out of this by now, and in the process have prepared the intellect to be immune from similar afflictions. This as we attempt to extract ourselves from the quagmire of religious superstition into a more enlightened future free from the self-denial featured by such beliefs. Hopefully we will then want to embrace the idea that we are accountable for our all our actions to ourselves only, and not to some entirely imaginary third party.

They are the latest victims in a series of deadly attacks on secularists since blogger Avijit Roy was hacked to death by suspected Islamists in February. Both publishers published Roy’s work.

While it would definitely be wrong to put all Islamists in the same fanatical and bloodthirsty category, it nevertheless says something about the nature of this religion when it is able to incite some its followers  to such barbaric and murderous measures in order to defend their faith.

I seem to recall that Nietzsche said once that “morality is a function of a herd’s instinct to self-preservation”  and clearly, the Muslim herd feels under threat here,  and is resorting to deadly measures   to defend itself against attacks based on reason and critical thought.

Presumably, this demonstrates once again the necessity for certain religious beliefs to be based on fear as opposed to having a foundation in truth, if only because there is none to be found.

Earlier, Sunni Muslim clerics had organized a 24-hour strike  across Pakistan to protest against possible changes to blasphemy laws. Rallies were staged in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta after Friday prayers.

The government has distanced itself from a bill to change the law, which carries a mandatory death sentence for anyone who insults Islam. Rights groups say the law is often used to persecute religious minorities.

The legislation returned to the spotlight in November when a Pakistani Christian woman, Asia Bibi, was sentenced to death. Although no-one convicted under the law has been executed, more than 30 accused have been killed by lynch mobs.

Even the Pope got into the act by asking to show mercy on Ms Bibi, who denies insulting the Prophet Muhammad during an argument with other farmhands in a Punjab province village in June 2009.

As I stated earlier – the insanity that is religion,  kills – and there are unfortunately no surprises here.  Those who are afflicted by the most extreme manifestations of this pathological condition will stop at nothing in order to prevent any opposition to it, and even the mildest forms of it are seen as a threat and must be eradicated.

Don’t look for any rhyme or reason at the bottom of it, as you will only find hate, deep seated hate, so blinding in its intensity that no appeal to a common humanity can get through. This is because these feelings are not truly human; they belong to that part of the brain that is still pure animal, and driven by the most basic of primitive instincts: fear.

Such instincts serve the herd well and keep it alive, for religion requires herd-like behaviour that allows it to be a force to reckoned with, and not because it is made-up of  individuals who are themselves strong – no, precisely the opposite! Membership in the herd is based on mindless participation, of unquestioning obedience and servitude. As such, a mob, herd or a posse is a function of strength in numbers only.  No individuals need apply: there is no room for people who think for themselves, as that will only serve to destabilize the mob and so are seen as an absolute danger to it. And so they must be hunted down, murdered and destroyed to keep the herd safe.

Sadly, this was Salman Taseer’s fate today – shot down by his own bodyguard, someone who was hired to protect him, and dedicated keep him safe from harm. A traitorous, dishonourable act by any other name – but allegiance and honour are higher human qualities and are meaningless in the stunted mind of any member of the herd.

So indeed, a very, very sad day  for humanity today.

I heard some of it on CBC the other day, and enough of it to feel comfortable with my view that Blair’s position is a sham, while befitting him as well as any of his previous untenable positions similarly devoid of true substance during his life as a politician, but nevertheless staunchly defended by him. Well, there is his view on the invasion of Iraq – and repeated consistently right up to the present moment, in that the invasion was “absolutely the right thing to do”, etc.

I must admit, not having a particular favorable view of Blair as a result of his political life – slick, if not oily, are the words that come to my mind – I am immediately suspicious of what he says, and why he would say them. Now knowing that his earnings since leaving Downing Street and hitting the lecture circuit are calculated to have topped £12 million, and in 2008 that figure represented more than six times his previous lifetime income, it is clear that his most outstanding skill is to speak convincingly about matters he is absolutely wrong about while claiming them to be absolutely true, and getting lots of money for it. In particular, his always somewhat evangelical speaking style has suited him well – and especially now, when he is trying to claim that religion isn’t the scourge that some of us make it out to be, and that it is a force of good in the world.

Christopher Hitchens does his usual good job of dispelling the metaphysical fog around religion, and exposing it for what it really is: an irrational state of mind too often met with deadly consequences, particularly between those who have competing versions of it. And as history has shown to those who are free to see this for themselves: the human race would be better of without it. This, of course, is a view to which I wholeheartedly subscribe.

Blair, on the other hand, is grasping at straws while trying keep his head above the usual quagmire of religious conundrums. He claims that, while religion has done bad things, such acts – atrocities, etc. – have been committed by non-religious folks as well, and can therefore not be blamed on religion exclusively – (Hitchens doesn’t claim that, BTW) – but that in many instances people have been driven or inspired to do good things because of their religious beliefs. Therefore “Religion is a Force for Good in the World”, according to Blair. Hitchens then goes on to show that people have done good and noble things without being religious – therefore, you can’t be sure that it when good and noble acts are committed they were part of a sense of common humanity that people were tapped into.

So, the bottom line for me would be the fact that while we would experience good acts and bad acts with and without religion, doing away with religion would remove an historically significant source of death and destruction in the world. And as I have claimed a number of times in earlier posts, one might claim that these kinds of actions have nothing to do with the religious beliefs themselves – and that they are misused when wielded as weapons of murder and destruction. No – it is precisely the unsubstantiated and irrational nature of these beliefs that allows them to be used in this manner. When you think you have the creator and eternity on your side – all your actions are justified; you cannot be wrong! Until we shake off the influence of these dangerous beliefs, our species will continue to be murdered for them.

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. (Steven Weinberg, 1999)

And – not surprisingly – most of the noise about this will come from the Muslim communities around the world,  and which are not exactly known for their tolerance  of  divergent religious beliefs in  their midst. In fact, they are the least likely to make allowances for other religions  in their communities – and the irony of this should not  be lost on anyone

But let’s be clear:  this is less about the freedom of religion, and more  about the need by some to brand the landscape with one’s  particular flavor of religious superstition through the use of distinctive architecture.

When this has happened, I can’t help but think of how similar this is to what animals do to mark their territory (!)  But by erecting one’s uniquely symbolic  architecture across the country is one way to assert ownership or control of sorts.  This is religion at its very tribal origin – and  goes together with all the other outward symbols of religious tribalism, such as hairstyles,  beards, turbans and other headgear, e.g., burkas, kippahs,  shtreimels, as well as specific rituals, such as genital mutilation, etc.

And so this wasn’t at all about some religious group not being able to practice their faith in public. But by  rejecting the public display  of their most visible and overt  symbolism of their faith  across their landscape,  the Swiss are in effect only saying that  “believe what you want, but don’t  mark or otherwise contaminate our landscape with it!”