The Success of New Religions

Besides being able to detect most genetic diseases before birth, so we can decide if we want to bring the child into the world [though most thinking people would argue that the being is already ‘in the world’] we can now choose the gender of our children. The Genetics and IVF institute in DC has a 90% accuracy rate for girls and a 75% accuracy rate for boys. That's amazing.

It has made me think more about the debate yesterday about God and religion that me and the boys were having. Someone had made a point that religion often times historically was nothing more than a tool for the ruling state. A way to control the masses by the governing class through rules and laws that had no basis or justification in reality --- so the fear of God or the customs of the religion of the day or God’s “law” could all be used as a way to control people, since often times logic couldn’t. (one can easily see that still in force today in the reasons people give for not allowing same sex marriage rights in the United States –- no logical rational or justification to it, so they are forced to use God and religion as the main arguing points against it; and remarkably it works for the most part. In Fridays paper I even saw a headline that read “Why same sex marriage will surely lead to polygamy. Seriously. that was the headline! Fucking crazy people out there. and they're not the ones you think they are. With articles such as those, it’s the puritan right-wingers that are the biggest threat to human civilization. Then again now that you mention it, ever since I first started condoning same sex marriage I have noticed a strange desire within to make love with sheep as of late. maybe there's something to these theories after all.)

Anyway, certainly this is a given, historically speaking, that this is one of the main purposes of man’s religions – to control the masses by the state. I don't think anyone would argue with that one. Most of the western world today call themselves Christians because one man, the roman Emperor Constantine, hallucinated in the desert that he saw a cross in the sky on his way to battle. He decided to start adopting Christianity into his belief system of the time which still consisted of worshiping many roman and Greek gods and goddesses. It wasn't that he suddenly abandoned all of the other gods and goddesses that he and the rest of western civilization believed in, but he certainly started finding an affinity within for this newcomer Jesus into the hierarchy of deities who were popular at the time once he was crowned victorious in the battle that ensued. What's fascinating to ponder is the possibility of Constantine not hopping on the Christian train and instead jumping on board some other religious ship that was in the harbor of the times. if he would have instead discovered Krishna for instance, we would all be Hindus today.

The reason most in the western world are Christian has not much to do with the veracity or the logical justifications for the religion itself, or even how well it works, if one can qualify such a thing, but more to do with the fact that it was the religion adopted by the ruling class of that time, the roman empire, just as before then, we all held the religious beliefs of worshiping the sun God and the goddess astarte and isis etc, precisely because that was the religion of the ruling government. And of course the same was true for the Jewish religion since time began. It was and still is something you are just born into. if you're Jewish, you're Jewish. Not hard to figure out. plenty of people were at the time, but then the government of that time then adopted Christianity, and slowly over the centuries the people then too adopted Christianity. That's how it works. but it’s a slow process. Not a process one can watch over the time span of a single lifetime, but in much broader scope. It is a process, like many evolutionary processes, that takes life times to observe. Its not as if one day everyone just wakes up and decides that they are Christian or what have you.

A few hundred years later, Mohamed gets jiggy with it by himself in a cave and proclaims a new religion based on the same God as the Christians and Jews were digging, but adds a few more misogynous twists here and there, like women always having to be covered in public, and men being allowed to have more than one wife if he could afford to do so, because after all, we know how horny God could get back then. This new religion of Islam was much like Christianity, even the God was the same, but just a more revved up and militant version. it was all about death and revenge. Namely, death and revenge to the white people who ruled the earth. convert or die was the credo, pretty much the same credo of the Christian religion, which at the time, was called the catholic religion, which was nothing more than a cover for the roman empire. Remarkably convenient for himself and many of his Arabian brothers and sisters, the new home of this new religion was right there in the middle east and God it turned out was very Arabian. Just as the Christian God looked very white and Anglo Saxon, and the Hindu God looked very Indian. All very convenient; and a damn good testament to how good God is at creating people in his own image as they all say.
So again, a new religion is born and the power of that religion to take root in the hearts and minds of the people was not in the practical application of it, nor the seeming truth in it or logical justification of its tenets as much as just the fact that it was quickly adopted by the governing rulers of the times and forced on the people through various decrees and laws. This was done of course through torturing, murdering, and conquering, such has always been the case when one group of men want to force a new religion into a pre-existing culture. the ability of a religion to take root in the people is based on the ruling classes ability to beat it, force it, or frighten it into those people by however means necessary. We are still prone to the same tactics today; every now and then we’ll hear warnings of ‘gods wrath’ if we don't do this or that. in many parts of England and Ireland and many other countries around the world who are still on the catholic bus, gods wrath is still used as the primary motivating force to coerce women not to use contraception, or choose to have children that they do not want, or choose to stay married to horrible men that they do not love. its quite a powerful tool. When juxtaposed with the idea of free will it’s a fascinating concept.

For me, I've always found that if you align yourself with God, rather than set yourself up to be lower than God and thus be constantly afraid of him or his wrath, you're liable to have a better go at life in general. You know, like God is your best friend, rather than your lord and master. But that's just me. fuck me. what do I know. if it were up to me God would have come down ages ago and set the record straight and we could have avoided a lot pain and suffering over the years. but again, that's just me.

Anyway, one of the points someone made in the debate yesterday was that God and religion are only necessary to the degree to which they are able to offer solutions to the unsolvable. Such as was the case when we thought that the sun was a God or we needed to pray to God for healthy crops on any given year. that type of thing. I couldn’t help but think of that today when I learned that it is now possible to prevent a child being born into the world if he or she was predisposed to a genetic disease, or when I discovered that we can now choose the sex of our children before they are born.

Now that we have broken the genetic code we have come farther than ever in helping to free up more of gods time. you gotta figure that its only a matter of time before he is so freed up that he has the time to come on down here and offer his services to helping us kill off the rest of those pesky Iraqis or helping us stop those evil gay people from trying to get married. What is he waiting for?