World Religion Day: Jan 20, 2019

Before ranting about Religion, it would be best to use some common definition to rants from. Wikipide defines it as: “a cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements.  However, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, sacred things, faith, a supernatural being or supernatural beings or "some sort of ultimacy.

First rant, Why Religion?  As a biologist who once leaned toward agnosticism or atheism, I had to admit that I found it weighty that every human culture surviving the last three million years of human evolution has some form of belief system that recognizes something beyond/outside the individual or the tribe.  It may have first served as a mental tool for answering questions that our primitive minds were curious about but had no logical answer for.  Many of those questions still exist today in nearly every young mind, until religion, science, or conspiracy theory calms the minds quest for an answer.  

Here’s my sloppy hypothesis as to why humans may have a God Gene -- a gene that favors our adoption of a perspective greater than just ourselves.  Once humans gained consciousness of our individualism (a liberating separateness) from others, it put at risk the family and tribal bonds that dramatically improved the chances of our individual genes being passed on to future generations.  There may be some conditions where a selfishness gene is advantageous, but it certainly wouldn’t be best suited for survival of the clan’s population under most threatening conditions.  Securing food, variable mate selection, protection against enemy tribes…

Tribal survival suggests another hypothesis. We (and other lower life forms) may also have a “Justice Gene”.   We viscerally and sometimes violently reject conditions that we perceive as unjust…or being treated unfairly.  If an human, tribe, or lower creature allows itself to be treated unjustly, the possibility of its genes staying in the larger gene pool would be significantly diminished.  
I have attempted to explain this to my ‘peace’ activist colleagues who believe ‘non-violence’ is the best and only path to peace.   I hypothesize that if such a group existed, and actually 'walked its talk' of non-violence, they wouldn’t live long or prosper.  Thus, I assert with reasonable probability, that the value of ‘justice’ is singingly superior to achieving ‘peace’ than ‘non-violence’ in the long run. 

Some evidence for this is that nearly all religions preach some form of the Golden Rule. I’m not suggesting their followers always walk their talk.  God knows millions of lives have been slaughtered under the religious pretext that ‘my religion is right, and yours is blasphemous’ and, if you don’t follow a specific rule of our sect, you will die by stoning, drowning, beheading, or battle.      

Here’s what the top religions offer as the Golden Rule:  

Christianity	All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.        Matthew 7:1
Confucianism	Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no resentment against you, either in the family or in the state.        Analects 12:2
Buddhism	Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.        Udana-Varga 5,1
Hinduism	This is the sum of duty; do naught onto others what you would not have them do unto you.        Mahabharata 5,1517
Islam	No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.        Sunnah
Judaism	What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.        Talmud, Shabbat 3id
Taoism	Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.       Tai Shang Kan Yin P’ien
Zoroastrianism	That nature alone is good which refrains from doing another whatsoever is not good for itself.        Dadisten-I-dinik, 94,5

One God, one aim, one earth, one destiny, and only one way.  Justice for all.

The hundred billion-dollar questions is why don't governments create and enforce laws that are just.  Some philosophers assert that if laws are unjust, they are illegitimate. 

Thus, the thesis, is that the world is in such chaos because there is zero justice on the global level between nations -  or for the protection of our inalienable God given rights.

So called ‘western civilization’ prides itself on the concept of the "Rule of Law” but then most often fails to incorporate justice into it’s legal system.  Those who claim the US is a Christian nation blindly accept our so-called “justice system” that is rarely just.   Anyone accused of a crime is far better off being rich and guilty than innocent and poor.

nother strike against the US being a ‘Christian nation’, “one nation under God’, with “in God we Trust” printed on our faith-based currency – is the fact that there are more churches in our nation than there are homeless families.  Wealth, hypocrisy, and greed, not Christianity, appears to be our actual religion.  And our worship of the Constitution, because it protects these values. 

The saving grace that opened my heart to the Christian faith was attending a “Justice Conference” in Chicago at the Willow Creek Community Church (structurally the largest church in the US?) where I mingled three days with 2,500 Christians of every age, denomination, skin color, sexual preference, ethnic group, political party, and nationality.  All who believed (and most practicing) the principle that the Bible is fundamentally a "justice manual" (and not a philosophy, history, science, or real-estate book).   

Abraham Lincoln once used a biblical passage applying it to our nation’s two most important founding documents.  He put them into proper context by calling our Declaration of Independence our nation’s “Apple of Gold” and our U.S. Constitution as its “Frame of Silver”.   I encourage you to read the first two paragraphs of the Declaration to understand why our Constitution and "We the people" have failed to address the volume, variety and velocity of global threats now upon us.

So here is one more "Truth" to consider as “Self-Evident”.  Unless we codify the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” into our Constitution, we will never have "a more perfect union", "Liberty and Justice for all", or “Peace on Earth”.   

As long as our human arrogance insists on making and passing human laws based on our ‘political’ creative ‘genius’ instead the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God, the unsustainability of our economy, environment, health, and security will inevitably manifest in unprecedented human suffering for many, most, and possibility all within our nation and abroad. 

Another religious insight I’m stuck with is the Bible’s prediction/prophecy of Armageddon.  I find it profound that the Bible’ has offered us this (self-fulfilling?) prediction/prophecy for millennium.  

It must have been obvious even back then that we would abuse our God given ‘freedom’ and creative our own principles (like ‘Peace through Strength’ or ‘America First’) instead adopting the fundamental principles offered by the Laws of Nature and the Golden Rule.   

Now the lyrics of the 1960s protest song …” Where have all the Flowers Gone” makes perfect sense.  “When Will they ever learn?”   Given the evolution of weaponry… its self-evident, we need to learn very, very soon!

If you are curious about my belief in God I offer a short story written by another blogger that explains it perfectly.   Talking with God   http://www.fullmoon.nu/articles/art.php?id=tal 

So, what religion am I?  I’m going to claim to be a “Religion Fundamentalist”.  Please do not accuse me of being a ‘fundamentalist Christian’, Islamic fundamentalist, or religious extremist.  There are approximately 40,000 variations of the Christian religion, and well over tens of thousands of variations of all other religions.  I don’t have time to read, remember and test each of their practices, but I do gravitate to their fundamental principle of the Golden Rule.  

As a biologist there is every reason to believe there is a force that brings us together, to hopefully build ‘on earth as it is in Heaven’.  And an opposite (devilish?) opposing force that divides us.   

I hope we can all chose the right force, very soon.