Now, I know that saying I have a new religion sounds either flippant, (like I'm now going to worship the Moon God, Zordoz, and get a tax exemption) or scary (like Oh no! Here comes Tom again spouting religious drivel about being saved). But It's not like that. I've actually had a sincere revelation about my place in the universe, and what else is religion for, if not that?
There are unexplainable things in life - things that science cannot answer. This leaves us feeling afraid, so we have developed various systems (religions) for helping us understand these things. The main unexplainable things are: Where did the universe come from? Why did life originate? What is consciousness? Is there an immortal soul? Is there a God? And if there is, what is our relationship to God? Just about everything else we can deal with, but these things require religion. Religion requires faith and faith is not rational. I've thought of calling my new religion "Rationalism," but the word is already used in philosophy. But it will do for now, as long as we capitalize it.
My new religion requires faith in only one thing: that there is a meta-power that is unknowable, incomprehensible and beyond the scope of human understanding. For simplicity's sake, we'll call it God, and refer to it as a "He," though God has no human attributes such as gender. Gleaning from the evidence of world history, God also does not have the human attributes of love, knowledge, jealousy, anger, want, need, or pride. God just is. We were not made in His image. We evolved from a microorganism. It is easier for most people to understand God if they humanize Him. But God cannot be explained or understood.
If it can be said that God wants anything, then by the evidence, we must say that God wants life to continue. It is programmed inside every living organism to continue. So if we want to do God's "will," then we must act in ways that are in accordance with life continuing. There is no evidence that God wants anything more than this. But we have no obligation to make life continue, and no obligation to complete our own natural lives.
So If we are to continue with our own individual lives and the life of the human species, we must find ways to make it tolerable at least, happy at best. Happiness is attainable. We all have different brains which were formed by different genetic expressions combined with different life experiences. Most people's brains don't work optimally and as a result, most people are not as happy as they could be. Even when our brains are working well, there's much room for improvement. In Rationalism, the mind, spirit, and soul are all the same and are inextricably linked to the body and only exist so long as the body is alive. We strive to make our brains work better and to keep our bodies healthy.
The soul is not immortal and there is no afterlife. There is no fear of eternal punishment and no eternal reward, so our actions are entirely life-based. We are not required by God to love, to take care of one another, or to act morally or justly. But we do want these things as they help life to continue and deepen our mind, enriching our experience and connecting us with others, which connects us with God. All our actions are of our own volition, and God does not guide us. Our aim is to be in harmony with God.
We have found that love is an evolutionary strategy that the human animal has come up with to ensure the health and continuation of the species. Love is a relatively modern construct, though the urge to take care of one another is ancient. We see love as the prime directive, and love includes accepting everyone with whatever beliefs help them to love. We patently reject war for any reason, but understand the innate need for self-defense. We reject capital punishment for any reason. We think that even the sickest minds can be changed. Recent science has shown that the brain has plasticity, and though things get hard-wired into us and we react without "thinking," our brains, and our minds can change. We think jails ought to be places, not merely of penance, as in the word, "penitentiary," and not merely of confinement, but as places of therapy and reconditioning. The goal of jail ought to be to find a place in society for those whose minds can be changed. There may be some whose minds cannot be changed enough, and for them, confinement should continue.
There is no hierarchy in Rationalism. Everyone is holy and everything is sacred. Everything contains the essence of God. Everyone who accepts Rationalism is a priest. The role of a priest is to actively love in every aspect of daily living and to deepen our experience of life and the experience of others by learning about our own minds and sharing with the minds of others. There are no rituals or rites. We see these as superstition, which is not necessary. We encourage the meeting of minds, and any time two or more minds come together to share, God is in that place. We respect the religious traditions of others, in so much as the core of all religions is love. But we see all other religions as containing elements of superstition. Rationalism rejects superstition.
We recognize and revere such personages as the Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and any others who have been geniuses in the field of love. We see them as being attuned to the meta-power, which they all interpreted in different ways. Islam says that a prophet is sent for his own particular din, and as such, they accepted that Jesus, Moses, Abraham and the other prophets were sent for different people and that Muhammad was sent for the Arabs. We revere teachers of any kind.
There are no sacraments per se, but we consider eating and sex to be sacred, as they have to do with life continuing. Eating and sex merely for pleasure is encouraged, though not always sacramental. Sex is not merely for procreation and can be enjoyed in any form between consenting adults. While our bodies may be ready for sex at puberty, we recognize that our minds aren't always ready, and therefore we adhere to the legal age of consent, even though some minds are not even ready well into their years.
We are Pro Choice, recognizing that not every sperm cell has to become a baby. A woman who is pregnant is a whole being, and can have any part of her being removed for any reason. An abortion is better than an unwanted child. There is only one soul involved - the soul of the woman. While she is pregnant, the baby is a part of her body.
There are no "shalts" and shall nots" in Rationalism. Love is the only practice. We have total free will. If we choose not to love, that is our business. But we recognize love as a good and supreme force for change and for fostering the furtherance of life.
This, for the most part, is my profession of faith. And an outline of how I intend to live. I'm not asking for converts, but if you share these sentiments, I'd love to know. Or, if you just want to start a conversation which will broaden each of our minds, I'm all ears. Life is empty without communication.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
The Black Death of 1348
Cheery topic, I know. But ever since examining that catastrophic year in a graduate history class years ago, I have realized how much the Great Mortality, as many contemporaries called it, changed the western world forever.
First the facts. It's impossible to say how many people died of Bubonic Plague in 1348 and the three successive years it spread over Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, but estimates are that from 75 to 200 million people died. If we take the high number and extrapolate for today's 7 billion population, that would be like 2.8 Billion people dying over the course of four years. That's almost nine times the population of the entire U.S. So the obvious result is that all of a sudden, there were a lot less people around, especially in big cities. The plague is thought to have originated in China and come by way of the Silk Road to India, Arabia, North Africa, and Europe via Mediterranean ships.
But there were so many other consequences besides a cull on the population. First of all, attitudes towards life changed. Before, life was seen as being just the preparation for eternal life in heaven. If we had to suffer a little, so what? As long as we would get our eternal reward, it was worth it. Only the highest born and the clergy could read, so minds were a little bit closed. These were the Dark Ages, after all. But no one needed to read - they were born on a lord's land and grew up working the land. There was no need to ever move, and in fact, in the feudal system, it was illegal. You were pretty much stuck where you were born.
But then, suddenly, there were people dying all around for no apparent reason. They had no real idea of how disease spread, so many chalked it up to God's anger. Many thought it was how the world would end. (Just think, if it had killed everyone in the known world, a new era of history would have begun with the primitives of the Americas and Australia. They might have one day evolved civilizations of their own which might have sent boats across the ocean to discover Europe). So people began to live for today. They were freer in their thought and actions.
With everyone dying, it seemed like God had abandoned them. So why be good? If you were just going to die anyway, what was the point of doing anything for the future? Why bother to work the land? There would be no more harvests, and no more planting. Many people adopted very casual attitudes towards life. They began to work less, and as they died, the land and the animals (the backbone of their economy) suffered too. The lords weren't about to work their own land, nor could they. So survivors, who sometimes felt like they were in God's good graces, started to hire themselves out, demanding much more money and getting it. The lords had no choice. Capitalism had begun.
And with shortages of people came shortages of supplies. So barter became more popular. If I had chickens and you had wheat, we could make some kind of a deal that the lord wouldn't be party to. Free enterprise sprang up. Before, the feudal manor produced everything one needed. After, you had to get things where you could. With barter came marketplaces, which eventually turned into towns and then cities. The lords became less important and less powerful. People started to take their fates into their own hands. People started to become individuals. Of course, there were individuals before, but common people never thought beyond the walls of their manor.
If it weren't for the Black Death, the feudal system might never have ended, or would at least have been seriously delayed. The industrial age might never have needed to happen. The Enlightenment might never have come. No Renaissance. No Age of Reason. Our growth as a civilization would have been seriously stunted. No Magna Carta, no Rights of Man, No American Revolution. A European History without the Black Death would have been a much more peaceful affair. Eventually the peasants would revolt, as in the Peasant Rebellion of 1381 (I think) but they would be driven back, there leaders hanged. And life would continue. When the population got big enough and the peasants outnumbered the aristocrats by a significant enough margin, then the tables might turn. In Russia, it took until 1917.
So the Black Death was a good thing in the long run. Or was it? That depends on if you like the way things turned out. But one thing for sure, things would be very different if it had never happened.
First the facts. It's impossible to say how many people died of Bubonic Plague in 1348 and the three successive years it spread over Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, but estimates are that from 75 to 200 million people died. If we take the high number and extrapolate for today's 7 billion population, that would be like 2.8 Billion people dying over the course of four years. That's almost nine times the population of the entire U.S. So the obvious result is that all of a sudden, there were a lot less people around, especially in big cities. The plague is thought to have originated in China and come by way of the Silk Road to India, Arabia, North Africa, and Europe via Mediterranean ships.
But there were so many other consequences besides a cull on the population. First of all, attitudes towards life changed. Before, life was seen as being just the preparation for eternal life in heaven. If we had to suffer a little, so what? As long as we would get our eternal reward, it was worth it. Only the highest born and the clergy could read, so minds were a little bit closed. These were the Dark Ages, after all. But no one needed to read - they were born on a lord's land and grew up working the land. There was no need to ever move, and in fact, in the feudal system, it was illegal. You were pretty much stuck where you were born.
But then, suddenly, there were people dying all around for no apparent reason. They had no real idea of how disease spread, so many chalked it up to God's anger. Many thought it was how the world would end. (Just think, if it had killed everyone in the known world, a new era of history would have begun with the primitives of the Americas and Australia. They might have one day evolved civilizations of their own which might have sent boats across the ocean to discover Europe). So people began to live for today. They were freer in their thought and actions.
With everyone dying, it seemed like God had abandoned them. So why be good? If you were just going to die anyway, what was the point of doing anything for the future? Why bother to work the land? There would be no more harvests, and no more planting. Many people adopted very casual attitudes towards life. They began to work less, and as they died, the land and the animals (the backbone of their economy) suffered too. The lords weren't about to work their own land, nor could they. So survivors, who sometimes felt like they were in God's good graces, started to hire themselves out, demanding much more money and getting it. The lords had no choice. Capitalism had begun.
And with shortages of people came shortages of supplies. So barter became more popular. If I had chickens and you had wheat, we could make some kind of a deal that the lord wouldn't be party to. Free enterprise sprang up. Before, the feudal manor produced everything one needed. After, you had to get things where you could. With barter came marketplaces, which eventually turned into towns and then cities. The lords became less important and less powerful. People started to take their fates into their own hands. People started to become individuals. Of course, there were individuals before, but common people never thought beyond the walls of their manor.
If it weren't for the Black Death, the feudal system might never have ended, or would at least have been seriously delayed. The industrial age might never have needed to happen. The Enlightenment might never have come. No Renaissance. No Age of Reason. Our growth as a civilization would have been seriously stunted. No Magna Carta, no Rights of Man, No American Revolution. A European History without the Black Death would have been a much more peaceful affair. Eventually the peasants would revolt, as in the Peasant Rebellion of 1381 (I think) but they would be driven back, there leaders hanged. And life would continue. When the population got big enough and the peasants outnumbered the aristocrats by a significant enough margin, then the tables might turn. In Russia, it took until 1917.
So the Black Death was a good thing in the long run. Or was it? That depends on if you like the way things turned out. But one thing for sure, things would be very different if it had never happened.
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