Chapter I

 

In the Beginning

 

Life force was set into motion. It makes no difference whether it was Big Bang or by Design, only that it began.

 

I choose not to be drawn into the debate of how life began, as it is only a matter of group or individual Ego, as to who is right. For our lives today, what does it matter? What really matters is how we live our lives in the present, not to win some esoteric debate for the sake of winning. Do we need to kill, maim, reject, destroy, distrust, or fear someone or some other group so that we can claim we are the winner of the creation debate? When we fly a victory flag because we have won, vanquished, or destroyed in the name of our own belief system, this flies in the face of the evolution of our own spirit and soul, the life force, and even God as we each define it. (Note: I give God no gender identity; that’s up to you.)

What is important about Life is that Life Force was set into motion. It makes no difference if it was Big Bang or by Design; only that it began. Darwin is indisputable, except to those who seek to gain power, control or money from questioning it. The Scopes trial has long since passed. I will not argue or debate the beginning or what set evolution into motion. Intelligent Design is just as good an explanation as any; you can make that decision individually. Just accept that the evolutionary process began, even if was primordial ooze from some unknown source, an accident of amino acids, or some divine intervention.

Instead let’s fast-forward through the evolutionary history of man, to the time when we evolved from the Cro-Magnon man to the model of the modern-day Homo sapiens. Suddenly, the primitive tribal model that existed became much more organized. Social, cultural, political and spiritual concerns began to take form. Man was thrust out of the garden of innocence into a much more complicated society with responsibilities and alliances. Hunting and gathering, so that the tribe would survive and prosper as an entity, became a way of life for the early tribes.

It is in this setting that I wish to focus my attention on the spiritual evolution of faith and religion. I ask and for good reason, what was it that created the initial and primary development of belief and faith? I have asked many people and almost everyone gives me a similar answer. Faith evolved out of a fear of, or a respect for, the unknown, the mystical powers of the universe, as seen in daily life, from birth to death, from weather to environment .primitive man had no explanation and therefore assigned it to the un-answerable. Throughout the history of man, giving names, identities, even iconic stature, to the mystical powers with hopes that these entities could somehow influence, change or modify our lives, weather, birth, death, or environments, etc.

Now let us imagine 6,000 or 7,000 years ago, maybe 10,000 years ago, the tribe was out hunting and gathering. They identified a person, man or woman, in the tribe who took it upon themselves to be the keeper of the faith, as a shaman, a healer, a witchdoctor. The tribe was too busy hunting and gathering to be involved with the Gods, so the shaman took on the duties of keeping the tribe connected on a daily or weekly basis. The tribe would come to the shaman’s cave or campfire every Sunday to be reconnected. For that service, the tribe would give the shaman some of the food they’d hunted and gathered. (I like to call it the “meat and wheat.”) The shaman was starting to collect a reasonable quantity of meat and wheat. A great deal of power was starting to coalesce in the cave of the shaman.

Well, guess what happened? The chief/leader didn’t like that very much. He began to question the power of the shaman and the shaman’s intent; so one day he came knocking on the shaman’s door. “Mr. Shaman,” he said, “Do you want to live until tomorrow?” Well, you know the answer; of course, he/she did. Well, guess what he said? “You will now make me chief/leader of our tribe with a direct line (lineage) to the Gods. It is through my lineage and grace that the Gods grant you your power. I am now the way to God(s), via your teachings and beliefs.”

It is with this unholy alliance that the world entered into theocracy as a means to reach the Gods, and to manipulate and control the tribe through fear of the unknown and the reaction of the Gods through the Chief. Do it my way, or die!!!! “Follow my laws, which I and the Shaman have been given from the Gods, or else.” So the alliance between the shaman and the politician occurred, and a complicated code of behavior followed.

If the poor, unsuspecting tribesmen broke those codes, they would suffer untold acts at the hands of the chief and the shaman as allegedly dictated by the Gods. Thousands of years passed; laws, codes, stories, folktales, oral history evolved until writing was created, at which time, laws and codes became written down, solidified. Soon, they became the law of the land, administered always by a chief and a shaman of one sort or another. As populations and cultures grew, so did the powers of the theocracy, grounded in fear of the unknown, the mystical, and controlled by the codified beliefs as created by the chiefs and the shamans for control and power. This is still the primary model of most of our societies today. We need only to look at the American politic and the re-emergence of the religious right to see how quickly the politician turns to religion for power.

Now don’t misunderstand me; I do not want to discount the importance of codes of behavior and ethics that religion and faith have created to allow civilization to function. One only need look at the basic Ten Commandments, if nothing else, as a guide for us to live with one another.

I must take a moment to give homage to George Carlin, one of the great comedians of the 20^th century, who wrote a telling analysis of the Ten Commandments, in which he boils the 10 down to three and states that the rest was just hype designed to control and manipulate the masses. Basically they are as follows:

 

1. Always be honest and faithful

2. Try not to kill anyone unless they pray to a different avenging God than you pray to.

3. Keep your religion to yourself!

 

A paraphrased excerpt from George Carlin’s When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops (2004)

 

Laws are needed to maintain order in a civilization. It is when those laws are tied to belief and consequences from the mystical unknown as opposed to civil response that we begin to be manipulated and controlled by theocracy or theocratic concepts. Every church, mosque, synagogue, faith, and religion is a micro theocracy. They do not like to give up power or control and will therefore go to almost any length necessary to maintain and survive in order to perpetuate their belief system, including manipulate their followers, almost always with guilt and fear. These actions became justified so that a given belief system could continue, grow in numbers and survive.

It is in this context that my theory begins to unfold and to make sense. As science, logic, and rational thought began to emerge during the Reformation, some of these belief systems began to lose their luster. Always lurking behind the scenes were the power brokers and religious institutions who refused to surrender their grip on the populace. They created stronger rules, punishments, and consequences from the God(s) if their laws, rules and codes were broken, brain washing and frightening their sheep even more so. Generations of people were made to believe in irrational, illogical thinking processes until it became ingrained in their very essence, from birth to death. Questioning it meant death and “damnation,” excommunication, shunning and rejection, being cast out into the hard, cruel world alone.

As science and rational thought continued to emerge, the Powers That Be had to create a sense that science was the enemy of faith; so science became the scapegoat. If the theocracy could turn the people against science and rational thought, as destroyers of the faith, they could deflect their perceived attack on their belief systems and their control.

I am here to say that science is neutral in this debate. It was never the purpose of science to debunk or destroy faith, but only to enlighten, to learn, and to understand the natural world. The world is not flat! We understand that. The theocracy only accepts what it perceives scientifically neutral and rejects what may be considered an attack on its basis for existence. It fights against Darwinism, and yet ignores the obvious embryological development we can see in any such lab. It accepts creating hybrid flowers or foodstuffs. One of their own monks, Mendel, began the earliest demonstrations of this, yet they refuse to apply it to the human condition. How much longer do the masses have to suffer from the oppressiveness of the theocracies and their abuse of science?

I want to clear up something. I am not against an enlightened theocracy. We as humans derive a great deal from the organizational presence of the theocracies. We have order, ethics, and rules for living together as cultures and societies. There is social comfort, a sense of familiarity that appeals to our family/tribal model. There is support in a hostile world: a place to teach our young about the good and positive in the world; a place to go when life is hard or hands us obstacles. It has been a bastion for the arts and creativity, and yes, even learning and experimentation as long as it did not threaten the basic core folklore of the theocracy. Finally, it does what it was always meant to do, it attempt to connect us to the mystical and unknown.

So here is where I truly began this quest for an answer. How can faith and science reconcile? Where is the common ground upon which we can build a new paradigm? How can we bring these two forces together without what appears to destroy the very foundations of faith and belief, retaining a respect for the what the theocracy has done and can continue to provide the masses; and at the same time, understanding that science marches forth and is ever changing, and evolving our understanding of the universe and the natural world?

So I present Rational Universalism, The Second Directive; the alchemy of faith and science, a new view of the mystical and unknown, one which can be adopted by science to prove or disprove, and by the theocracies to bolster their institutions without fear of losing control.