Sunday, April 7, 2019

Irrationality and Survival

Zero Sum Survival. Part III. Survival Acres. Apr. 6, 2019.

In Part I, bullets over beans, and Part II, sudden collapse were revealed to be false memes, and yet still widely embraced.

This post is Part III, and deals with religious ideology and survival strategies.

Readers will already know that I spent years of my early life in the ministry, following and practicing what I believed to be factual and true. Just like any new zealot, I fervently embraced my new found ‘salvation’ with ardor and zest. As part of the religious teaching and indoctrination that I had once accepted as “biblically true” are the following statements – still being taught to millions today:
  • Human are not responsible for the condition of the Earth;
  • Humans do not have control over outcomes, including any and all human events that occur on the Earth;
  • God governs all things, both the good and the bad and everything that happens is in accordance to his will and desires;
  • God will “Rapture” the faithful from the coming wrath and judgement on the Earth;
  • End Time events were happening then and now;
  • God’s Word is found in the Bible and must be rigorously enforced and adhered to;
  • The future of the Earth is not man’s concern or responsibility;
  • All of the wicked and sinful will be judged;
  • All the righteous will be rewarded;
  • Prophecy was and has been fulfilled;
  • Christianity was the true religion among all other religions;
  • The Bible accurately portrays historical events, facts, people and places and is considered the final authority on all matters.
Later, I came to deconstruct each of these beliefs and their foundations by extensively examining the source of all Christian belief, the Bible. The reason for this “search for truth” became painfully obvious as I witnessed intense conflict with the church, the ministry, the membership and the world itself. Something seemed deeply amiss, including errors and contradictions that were in conflict with other parts and passages of the Bible. Explanations and attempts at clarification did not resolve these conflicts – they only worsened them.

Thus begin decades of independent study and reading by turning to historical experts, archeologists, researchers and theologians that provided evidenced based explanations to the deepest questions, on belief, on faith, on historical accuracy, on biblical characters and events, on epistemology.

I’m not going to attempt (again) to repeat here what has already been published, but if you are even slightly interested, you can read the following:
I realize it is very unlikely all of these previous posts will actually be read by those that reject anything that violates their own bias, but that’s on you if you don’t. They each convey in different ways, what I eventually found to be factual and true:
  • The Bible is not God’s Word and never has been;
  • The Bible is a fictional book for the most part, portraying events and characters which have never been verified or known to exist despite extensive research now spanning thousands of years;
  • Entire “books”, chapters, passages and words were removed, added, modified and redacted to suit the era;
  • The Bible still contains thousands of errors, contradictions, omissions, and interpolations despite this centuries of editing;
  • There is no such thing as non-human responsibility for human events on Earth, humans alone are entirely and solely responsible;
  • God is not real and never has been;
  • Christ is not real and never has been;
  • There is no such thing as the End Times;
  • The Rapture is imagined fantasy;
  • The early church “fathers” were quite willing to fabricate, lie and invent whatever was deemed necessary to preserve power and influence;
  • Christianity was and still is a cult of significant influence on human behavior, thought and action;
  • A “bible based” life of belief, faith, thought, and action is based on mostly fiction, imagination and falsified words;
  • The rejection of reality by religion (all religions) has had enormous, harmful and lasting consequences upon humankind;
  • Christianity has held back civilization and human development for at least one thousand years (and still counting);
  • Religion and religious belief has deeply and negatively influenced politics, commerce, trade, finance and spawned numerous brutal wars and genocide (including the recent Iraq War);
  • Any country that permits religion anywhere near a place of leadership is risking a return to the Dark Ages of suffering and intolerance;
  • Religion operates on the principle of layered lies, sins of omission, distorted reality and mind control;
  • Religion was fabricated whole cloth to attempt to explain the unknown world, and then later, to control it;
  • Anyone and everyone who attempts to convert, preach, teach, testify or indoctrinate anyone else with religion is selling snake oil.
It is irrelevant to me if anyone accepts or rejects any of this. I have come to know that all of the above statements are true, factually correct and historically accurate.

There is a direct relationship with the religious beliefs and zero sum survival planning.

There will be no “intervention” by God, Christ or space aliens to “save” anyone or anything on Earth from the destructive power now being unleashed, which I will call climate change, collapsing Earth systems, natural disasters or any other events. If you are expecting this type of salvation at any level, then your survival plan is deeply and tragically flawed. In effect, it is no plan at all, and thus, zero sum survival.

There will be no Rapture, no End Times, no Tribulation, and no prophecy fulfillment. What has been, and still is, being passed off as “prophecy fulfilled” simply isn’t – it’s a highly contorted, deliberately twisted and force fit attempt of actual events (like the election of Donald Trump) to “fit” either contemporary or historical “prophecy”. NONE are accurate. None have any “meaning” whatsoever. You have to suspend all the demands for evidence, proof, verification and truth to be convinced otherwise.

ALL of the “faithful believers in Christ” (and every other religion in the world today) will endure, suffer, and die right alongside everyone else as climate change erases human habitability on planet Earth. Nobody will be raptured, nobody will be saved, nobody will escape the effects of climate change and all that it means. There are no “chosen people” or “preferred nations” either.

The longer religious cultists of the world today embrace a imaginary world-view of how life actually works on Earth, the worse things will become for everyone. The non-reality based worldview that religion teaches will continue to have a devastating impact on Earth systems, civilization and societal interactions world-wide and will, in all likelihood, lead to massive civil conflict and death (like it always has).

The rejection of science, facts, evidence, reason and even common sense by the “faithful” to imaginary deities, angels, demons, and flights of fancy are among the primary reasons the world systems are what they are today – corrupt, abusive, destructive, intolerant, unjust and greedy. Religion is not the only cause of these human ills, but it remains the largest contributor for repressing human development, reason and intelligence through fact-based education, science and literature.


This post will be painful for some and of course, rejected by others, but it is still necessary as the world and individuals “decide” how they will attempt to grapple with the existential threat that climate change has now become. Will we devolve into useless prayers and imagined fantasies of a magical but unfulfilled rescue? Or will we finally reject superstition and powerless pretending at “divine will” and accept the factual human responsibility that we did this to ourselves, and that it is solely OUR responsibility to finally act?

If there is to be a solution, or even any kind of a survival strategy – or even if there can only be an individual response to any of this, it will need to be based upon reality. Anything else is a zero sum survival strategy.

Religion must be understood to be nothing more than human constructs in the mind. That is what makes it so powerful – and so attractive. Nothing is actually required of you – just “belief”. From there, it’s supposed to be smooth sailing into eternity. Except that none of this is factually true. Humans bear the responsibility for everything that has happened on Earth (minus events of nature). Either we finally, collectively accept that responsibility – or we go on pretending otherwise.

In effect, a significant portion of the human world is having to be dragged along by every one else that has a fact-based, reality world view. It’s exhausting, and it isn’t working. It’s never worked. But it is a primary source of the problems we have with human development and human conflict. This needs to change, desperately and immediately.

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