I am absolutely fascinated. Two books I have read recently are:

The first is written by Christopher Jamison, Abbot of a Benedictine monastery. It covers the eight deadly thoughts (those that lead to the seven deadly sins), and teaches how to remain happy in a world that can be seen as difficult. The second is written by Robert Kiyosaki, a self-made American Millionaire about how to play the financial game and make your money work for you instead of working for money.

What’s the fascinating part?

Well, it’s the fact that both books have almost the same message in a lot of ways. In fact, several times, exactly the same advice was dished out by both books. They talk about greed, anger (at others and yourself), sadness at loss, all sorts. They both see mastery of ones emotions to be absolutely critical to success.

This backs up my theory further that God and money are the same thing – a fictional construct designed to make achievement, debt and credit easier to measure (albeit one has more influence in the external world, and the other in the internal). Indeed Robert Kiyosaki is at pains several times to explain that money doesn’t exist, it’s merely an idea shored up by people who think it does.

Both excellent reads, by the way. Though if you’re going to read either, I might recommend their prequels before you start…

I’m all for a bit of religion creating a good moral framework to live by. I’m all for gaining wisdom from the bible – seeing it as a meditation not a book of facts. I’m all for science. I think there’s a happy medium in there somewhere.

What I’m not all for is this kind of malarkey.

Iranian cleric blames quakes on promiscuous women
“Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society which increases earthquakes,” he explained.

Actually, to be fair he is applying scientific reasoning. Obviously immodest women can’t directly cause earthquakes. It’s the men who’ve been led astray by them that actually causes the problem. A very good case of NOT cause and effect reasoning.

(apologies to Borat)

The article then goes on to describe some of the downright disgusting behaviour these hussies engage in:

Correspondents say many young Iranians sometimes push the boundaries of how they can dress, showing hair under their headscarves [...]

Shocking!

Creationists believe that the bible is hard truth, and that the world was created in seven days starting (or finishing?) on 23rd October, 4004BC.

There’s a slight problem with that. Go and look for evidence of contradiction in the bible. You will find website after website of well-researched (read: people who need to get out more) quotes seemingly contradicting each other.

Now consider a poem. A massive poem – the sort of poem that would fill a big thick book. Now have it written by lots of authors. Do you think it might contradict itself in places? Of course it would!

If you look at groups 1 and 5 of the previous post, I think they both need to see the bible (or qoran, or any other religious text) as a meditation rather than a book of facts. Simply reading the bible with a view to seeing what you can learn from it would be preferable to putting in hours of work trying to prove or discredit it.

“And then X spake unto Y saying… ABC, and Y bonked X over the head”.

Oh? I wonder why X said that to Y. And why did Y bonk X over the head? Ah… yes… I remember when I thought about saying ABC to someone, but didn’t. Well, that was a close one, they might have bonked me over the head if I had. Hmm… yes, looking at Y’s point of view in the the story, they would have been justified too. I’d better be extra careful in future if I find myself about to say ABC to someone.

Just a thought.

The next post, coming shortly will be about hats.

It’s one of those mornings, my brain is doing a lot of whirring and a thought (or ten) struck me.

Militant Atheists. What should we call them? They go beyond atheism in, what I think, is an unreasonable way. I shall elaborate.

There are several degrees of religious belief, which are simplified beyond measure below:

1. Militant Religious – Following a faith to the exclusion of local laws and science. This is where your creationists lie, taking the (often contradictory) word of the bible as hard fact.
2. Religious – Following a faith, but being open and accepting of other faiths, science, reason and so on.
3. Agnostic – Take or leave.
4. Atheist – Does not believe in a god, but is tolerant of faith.
5. Militant Atheist – Does not believe in a god, and believes that no-one else should believe in a god. Rejects all forms of religious dogma.

It’s probably far more complicated than this, but for now this will do.

What got me thinking is that people often call group 5 “Darwinists”, but that’s not fair on the members of groups 2-4 who also fully accept that evolution has taken place, and that ’science and reason’ are a valuable asset to the world. Group 5 stands against anyone in groups 1-3, but that’s not fair on groups 2 and 3 who may see religious texts and cultures as a valuable asset to the world. Note also that the word “Muslim” often implies group 1, especially in the tabloid press. That is not fair on the group 2/3 Muslims.

Here’s a bold statement which is followed by explanation.

It is unreasonable for anyone with any level of intelligence to claim that god does not exist.

Have you gone mad? No. Substitute the word ‘money’ for ‘god’ and hopefully you’ll begin to understand where I’m coming from.

Even if you do not believe in a ‘Great Architect of the Universe’, you cannot deny that ‘god’ exists as a moral framework. Sure, he was invented by people, but so was money.

“But”, I hear you say, “money is real. You can touch it and feel it.”

I disagree. There are manifestations of money, coins, notes and so on. But look at any big banking and none of the money exists. There is an ethereal cloud of ‘money’ which is pushed around electronically or on paper. So… money is an invisible concept that makes the lives of people more convenient, giving them a set of rules as to how they can interact with each other, and what they’re worth as a result of their endeavours. Is that not, kind of, how god works? Even if you don’t believe that he ‘actually exists’.

Militant Atheism, just as blind communism attempts to rid the world of money and private posessions, seeks to rid the world of that which feeds spiritual needs. This is pretty dangerous. If you take Darwinism to its extreme, that we came about from cells which happened to duplicate and happened to turn into fish and then happened to walk on the ground etc., then there is no point to being here.

The hope of religion gives us all a point to being here, and even if you don’t believe in a god, I think it would be very foolish to remove that hope. The opposite, taken to extreme, would lead to complete anarchy where, for example, murder is acceptable because the person you’re murdering is only a bunch of cells that came together by chance (or the product thereof).

The militant atheists explain “how” we are here, but not “why”. Even if you don’t think there is a “why”, I believe it is necessary to have one.

I’ll go into the creationists and their view next time! Lucky you!