Reasonism

Why is it that people who believe in one god are atheistic to the god of another culture, and religions contradict and blaspheme the beliefs of another religion? Could it be because gods can only exist in our minds when we forcefully indoctrinate ourselves to believe in them? Could it be that people from different cultures are forcing themselves to believe in falsehoods, and, when they finally confront each other, they recognise, with rational minds, the absurdity of each other’s beliefs? Well, this is in fact, what I think is going on. I did suggest that perhaps these gods do not exist. We only believe in them if we make ourselves believe in them. We kill and die for these gods. The tragedy is that in our willingness to believe, we end up wasting and squandering our resources and our lives and of others’, as we serve and worship these gods we have imagined.

It is a common religious understanding that God through Scripture, gives us a way to live moral lives. In this chapter, Chapter 12, Marquez delves into this question of morality. What is it? Does it really come from a Divine Being or Divine Beings?

this week, we will be interviewing Shelley Segal. Shelley is a Melbourne based singer-songwriter who became involved in secular activism over three years ago after which she released her first album called 'An Atheist Album'.

It is often claimed that religions are the sources of our sense of morality. In this podcast, Marquez Comelab discusses why people are moral even without religions.

Many of us suppose that because religious beliefs are adopted by many, they are assumed to be wiser, less deceiving and less misleading. And most of the time, we do not question this do we? People say things like, “I do or do not do this or that because of my religious beliefs”. For example, someone might say, “I’m a Jehovah’s Witness so I don’t believe in Blood Transfusions”. Most of the time, we might not advance the discussion further. If we do, we might ask something like, “why not?”. The answer we get is usually something we do not comprehend, or find irrational or just confusing. But most people I’ve noticed, shy away from enquiring further because of not wanting to offend or seemingly ridicule the other person. We will come back to this in later chapters when I will argue that we as individuals and as societies should, and ought to question these beliefs for the sake of finding out what is true. Before we do that, however, I would like to veer off to another piece of this big puzzle we are trying to put together. It is often said that a particular religion teaches its people how to live moral lives. Many people claim that religion is the metaphorical light that guides people to live wise, moral and satisfactory lives. Is this true though? Are we not moral without religions? Have we not been moral even without religions? These are the sorts of questions I want to delve into today, Sunday, 27th of October 2013, Chapter 10 of the Tyranny of God, Early Human Societies.

In Chapter 8 of the Tyranny of God, we got thinking about memes. We generally defined memes to be anything that we, human beings can copy. Memes including ideas, stories, rituals and parables made up by people and got copied from one mind to another. Over generations, these memes join up with memes that are compatible or they may also make new memes conceivable. The idea that there is a soul for example, makes the idea of life after death, heaven and hell possible. These in turn makes it possible for gods to exist and we looked at all the different conceptions of god throughout the world. Religions embody and codify these conceptualisations of gods which is an argument I will delve into in later chapters. However, before we proceed further, in this week’s podcast, we will first discuss beliefs and delusions because they are two most powerful types of memes that influence our actions, thoughts and behaviour. This Sunday 20th of October 2013, Chapter 9 of The Tyranny of God: Beliefs and Delusions.

In Chapter 7 of the Tyranny of God, we got thinking about language. In our quest to understand human nature and the nature of religions, it is important to realise that language helps if not facilitates much of the way we think. In this chapter, I go through memes. Discussions of memes are important because a few chapters later, I argue that much like living organisms are made up of genes, religions are non-living organisms made up of memes. This Sunday 12th of October 2013, Chapter 8 of The Tyranny of God: Memes.

Last week, we defined what we mean when we use the word God and Religion in the context of this book. By the word God, we are mainly referring to the Theistic concept of God. That God is a supernatural being, who created the universe, watches our every move, listens to our thoughts and punishes or rewards us after we die. Jews, Christians and Muslims believe in a Theistic as opposed to a Deist or a Pantheist concept of God. These three religions are monotheists. They believe in only one god. We will refer to them as Abrahamic religions because they all trace their origins to a man named Abraham. Our use of the word religion in my book refers to these Abrahamic Religions not necessarily other types of religions like those found in India or Asia. In understanding religion, I believe we need to understand how we think. Since language determines how we think, I deem it necessary to touch on the subject of Language. This Sunday 6th of October 2013, Chapter 7 of The Tyranny of God: Language.

In Chapter 1, we discussed the origins of the Universe. In Chapter 2 we discussed the origin of life. In Chapters 3 and 4 we went through Genetics and how evolution works through Natural Selection. Last week, we concluded Chapter 5 titled How Life Evolved on Earth. So far, our discussions were purely to establish our natural history based on the evidence, proof and reason derived what we know of fossils, biology, geology, physics, chemistry and other branches of knowledge. This Sunday 29th of September 2013, we draw attention to understanding the nature of religion. Here now for you, Chapter 6 of The Tyranny of God: Respite.

Last week, we continued listening to how life began on Earth. We picked up our story from the Teleostomes, a species of animals that evolved into the ray-finned and fleshy-lobed fish which later developed into terrestrial vertebrates, tetrapods, amphibians, reptiles and mammals. Some of these mammals evolved into primates which include monkeys and apes. We pick up our journey of our human evolution after introducing our Hominini ancestors and we discussed the findings of Dr. Zeresenay Alemseged of the Max Plank Institute about the remains of a girl from 3.3 million years ago that looked human in many ways. This Sunday 22nd of September 2013, we conclude our journey of human evolution with Part III of Chapter 5 of The Tyranny of God: How Life Evolved On Earth.