Judgement Day Cometh

“Jesus Christ – who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death and rose bodily into the heavens – can now be eaten in the form of a cracker. A few Latin words spoken over your favorite Burgundy, and you can drink his blood as well. Is there any doubt that a lone subscriber to these beliefs would be considered mad? Rather, is there any doubt that he would be mad? The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy. Because each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions need not be justified in the way that all others must, civilization is still besieged by the armies of the preposterous. We are, even now, killing ourselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically absurd could be possible?”

This is a quote from a book I am reading right now. ~Before you form your criticism of my reading habits I have also read 3 versions of the Christian book (you know the Bible) as well as the Muslim book (the Quran), the Tao, most (but not all – it’s pretty redundant) of the Dhammapada, as well as the “satanic bible” (don’t waste your time with this one, it’s an egomaniacs delusion). That’s just the relative to religion list. ~ This excerpt says something I have been trying to find a way to say correctly for a long time. More importantly it says it well; if religious acts were not performed by so many people they would be considered completely irrational. Which leads me to the rest of what I wanted to get off my chest.

People have developed sensible answers for most of the questions religion was formed to help alleviate. Amongst those questions are “why is the whole village suffering from a plague?” and “what manner of trickery has befallen my child to make him seem so similar to the milkman?” Now we know the plagues were carried by vermin and filthy habits, and your kid has the milkman’s eyes because your wife is a whore. The only question that has not been answered unequivocally is “what happens after we die?” everything else can be explained and I dare say a lot better than “God did it.”

But I digress let’s get back to “what happens after we die?” I think it’s safe to say we are asking about the consciousness that we believe ourselves to be, since we know the body decays and becomes worm/plant food. Well that seems to be the primary driving force behind religion today so let’s try both sides of this question; rational and religious.

Rational possibilities include:
- Nothing, you fall into oblivion, that same state you were/weren’t in prior to birth.
- The energy that makes up your being is converted and spreads into the ether (Einsteinian theories hint at this possibility)

Those are the only two rational outcomes I can think of so now for the religious possibilities.

Religious Possibilities include:
- Purgatory – awaiting the day of judgment (in the bible souls wait for a single all at once event that is known as Judgment Day, at which time all those dead and alive are judged and sorted into the next two possibilities)
- You wake up in Heaven (where everything is peachy)
- You wake up in Hell (where everything is not peachy)

I include purgatory as a term I am familiar with that the bible doesn’t actually name, but it does state that all souls alive and dead will be judged all at once on Judgment day (not days), although most Christians, Muslims, and Jews (all 3 books are based on the same story(s)) sort of avoid that particular part. I think it’s the lack of instant gratification but who knows.

Now with those lists in mind if you discount the self proving books and think rationally, you would most likely think anyone that believes the second list is living with false hopes. Where as if you discount rationality you would think anyone subscribing to the first list was living in either denial or depression. Now as a rational thinker myself (not necessarily right but at least rational) I tend to think “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true”. Not to mention the fantastical possibility of an all powerful eternal being formatted with human emotion and generalities having a place all set up for a bunch of underlings (relative to his greatness). In short I am curious; how much of what people believe about religion is because they were told it was true by other believers, and how many actually formed their own belief without the “push”? I could go on for a lot longer but have reached my page and a half mark (in Word) and should stop before it turns into a diatribe of tangents.

Closing thought; The moderate view of so many religious individuals indicates the trend of getting away from religion as a whole, already followers discount entire statements and fundamental practices prescribed by the book they claim has been written by an omniscient (because they know better?) being. It is only a matter of time till there will only be a rational list of possibilities. That is if the zealots don’t kill us all on the way.

Credit:
The quote is from “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris. If you have an interest in rational perspectives I recommend it. If you have no tolerance for “heresy” and/or are a member of the local book burning club, you may want to read it and burn it.