To better understand everything that is to follow, make sure you have already covered my previous post Presence and Purpose so you can follow along. If you wish to start from the original article, check out my post The Roadmap to Overman.
In this article you will learn the following:
- Pros and cons of religion
- Alternative option to religion
- Importance of morality and solution to the problem of morality
Much of the following text was influenced by Sam Harris and many other authors and creators, so I do not wish to take away any credit from them.
When it comes to the question of God and his existence, I want you to be completely open-minded while reading through the following text. I don’t wish to force my beliefs upon anyone. If you still disagree with my views after reading it, that’s completely okay. I just want to give you another perspective on the whole concept of religion, and all I ask for is that you read it without an ego. At the end of the day, my view on religion, and anything else for that matter is the same:
“Absorb what is useful. Reject what is useless. Add what is essentially your own.” —Bruce Lee
What I am trying to teach you could be interpreted as philosophy but certainly not religion. You should take it upon yourself to think through these ideas carefully and question them deeply.
Pros of religion
Religion brings meaning to people’s lives, a sense of hope and inspiration. People have a system of beliefs, values, and morals to follow, and they don’t feel as lost as they would without their religion. The holy books also contain a lot of good advice and wisdom. In many ways, it gives a model of morality that has flaws but is still significantly better than the atheistic view which has almost no moral rules. So to conclude, many things that religions teach are truly good for society, people, nature…
Problems of religion
Religion discourages free inquiry and restricts freedom of thought. It forbids open-mindedness and disallows any form of progress that would cross paths with the rules set by the holy book. It often uses fear to consolidate power, and unfortunately, many leaders use it in this way to gain financial and other kinds of gains. It also in some ways promotes hate towards the non-believers (I know that it also promotes love, and not all religions promote hate at the same amount, but it’s undeniable that at least at some level, every religion promotes negative emotion towards some other group).
Alternative option to religion
There are two alternative options that I believe are good. The first one is to listen to Bruce Lee and follow any religion partly with only the undeniably good stuff. Unfortunately, this is not very exact and certainly, some people will choose the wrong things from the book. The second option is to follow the idea of religion that I am about to offer you. It is a combination of many things, from the god of Spinoza to the spiritual teachings of Buddhism. My goals with this idea of religion are to:
- Keep all the good stuff: morality, faith, hope…
- Eliminate all the bad stuff: closed-mindedness, harmful beliefs…
- Keep the system flexible, simple, logical, understandable, and useful.
Before you continue reading, make sure you have watched the video below. It will explain some of the concepts I will be using and save us all some time.
You can also read this short article explaining some additional concepts if you would like even more information before continuing to read.
Here is the idea of God that I present to you:
There exists only one unified thing, the universe, or you could call it the God, or the One. You could also call this thing united consciousness or just consciousness (I will be using all of these terms interchangeably). Everything else, all small parts of this united perfect thing, are just imperfect expressions of it. These small little parts I am talking about are both immaterial (like ideas and values) and material (like atoms, wood, paper…). So this infinite, perfect universe is expressed through many little forms, which when combined give us the only one thing that truly exists.
God is not the all-wise creator, the supreme ruler, or the holy judge. God is indeed “the all-perfect being,” but by perfection is not meant the possession in supreme degrees of moral and intellectual characteristics, such as justice, wisdom, foreknowledge, and love, but simply completeness of existence, existence without limit or qualification. God is that which is one, absolutely infinite, indivisible, self-caused, eternal, conceivable through itself alone. God is everything that is.
As we know from science, matter doesn’t disappear. It only changes its state, it keeps flowing. Inside of you are atoms that once were part of a star in the sky, and one day atoms that make your body will be part of something else. This is the way I want you to think, a view of the world where everything is truly connected and part of the same thing.
This uncompromising assertion of the absolute unity of God, of the universe, a unity which excludes division within as well as addition from without, is a perfect basis for a world of only love. How could you not love the person next to you, or the plant in the garden, when you are indivisible from one another? You are part of the same One that exists.
This system of thought also gives way to the belief in divine power and to the “infinite intellect”, to the supernatural yet still conceivable and useful. You can still believe in miracles and have hope, because this all-perfect One that exists has all the knowledge and power in the world. It is that knowledge, it is everything that exists. And you are part of that One, so you have access to its powers, you just need to find a way to get to it.
Nonetheless, this system doesn’t force you to believe in anything supernatural if you decide you don’t want to. There is no absolute book of rules to follow, nor is there a closed-minded approach, where innovation is forbidden. It is simply a system that promotes absolute love towards everything that is, whilst keeping faith and hope. It eliminates harmful beliefs and the need for blind belief in dogma. It simply starts with a premise that everything is One and it doesn’t forbid science or anything else for that matter. Neither does it imply something absurd.
If you truly take an objective look, there is no division between you and the space around you. The subject-object relationship is a creation of thought and nothing else. As we know thought is just another thing, another imperfect small part of the universe, an immaterial idea.
Importance of morality
Without morality, what we get are irresponsible, dangerous people who are prone to bad behavior. We get drug dealers, gang members, bullies, terrorists… Morality is the baseline of society and if you wish to one day become worthy of the title Overman, we must find a system of moral belief that doesn’t depend on religion, culture, country of origin… It must be an objective moral system.
Solution to the problem of morality
The solution that I offer is Sam Harris’s view on morality which he explains in great detail in his book “The Moral Landscape”. It is a little bit of a harder read, but if you have any questions regarding what I am going to explain to you in the following paragraph, I am almost certain that the answer could be found in his book.
The first thing we must understand is that objective moral truth does exist. We must understand this, and if you have any counterarguments to this statement, the explanation can be found in the first two chapters of before mentioned book. There are too many counterarguments for me to try and explain here and I find it unnecessary since Sam already did a great job, and certainly a far better job than I ever could.
Once we understand and accept the statement above, we can move on to the following proposition: A morally good act is one that increases the well-being of any conscious being. Consciousness here is used the same way we previously defined it.
The moment one begins thinking about morality in terms of well-being, it becomes remarkably easy to discern a moral hierarchy across human societies. Moral claims can really be true or false and the rightness of an act depends on how it impacts the well-being of conscious creatures. We may not be able to know what the right thing is in any given situation. But the right gesture certainly exists, and it is our duty to try and act by it.
Conclusion
We have already covered a lot of ground and you should truly be proud of yourself for sticking through. The next thing we will be doing is summarizing everything we learned by now, so when you are ready continue on to the Small Summary.