Rant 144: Having No Beliefs....

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

Note: I have finally caught up in ranting and posting. Now you won't have to be deulged with three or more rants at a time. At least for the time being. Enjoy...

Rant 144
Having No Beliefs...

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods you will understand why I dismiss yours."
-Stephen F. Roberts

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."
-Mark Twain

"When I was sent to a "school" to be "educated," that meant I was to be hypnotized into the tunnel-reality of my tribe. . . . Every politician knows how to induce hypnosis, and very damned few people on the whole planet know how to dehypnotize themselves. The world is not governed by facts or logic. It is governed by BS (belief systems)."
-Robert Anton Wilson (Cosmic Trigger, Volume 2)

"The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people don't like that statement, but few can argue with it."
-Kenneth V. Lanning, Supervisory Special Agent at the Behavioral Science Institution and Research Unit of the FBI Academy (from The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan)

"Religious belief is not a precondition either of ethical conduct or of happiness."
-The Dalai Lama

Having no beliefs is not that same thing as believing in nothing. Having no beliefs about whether God or Gods exist is not that same thing as believing that God or Gods don't exist. Anyone who fails to see the difference is likely still enthralled to the pernicious lie that it is necessary to have beliefs of some kind. People around the world are congratulated for holding firm beliefs against all odds. Such people even claim that beliefs are necessary in order to have convictions or to know right and wrong. But believers everywhere can and do justify any sick and evil thing they may commit on other people. Clearly there are still people who are unaware of the great joke perpetrated upon them by their adherence to beliefs. It is what the Myth of Eris and the Great Snub is all about.

If the only way you can accept something as being true is by faith, then your newly accepted "truth" is standing on shaky ground. Think about how absurd you would find it if people were to jump up and down and attack one another over differences about their beliefs in the sun rising every day. That the sun rises every day is an incontrovertible fact. A truth. No one needs to argue for or against it. No one needs to fight other people to prove their assertions correct about the sun rise. Now....take a look at religions. If their dogmas and teachings and beliefs were really true and incontrovertible facts (as believers often like to claim), why is their so much squabbling, forced conversion, evangelism and religious need to take over society? Why, if religions were true and their Gods existed, is there this need by believers to get others to agree with them? Religion is a con-job. And instead of seeing it for what it is, we celebrate those who are both victims and victimizers of this crime.

I don't have to resort to faith to explain my conduct or to explain all those things I do not understand. Why? For one, I have a conscious. There is no need for an Eternal Judge with a system of rewards and punishments. I don't need to fear anything in order to do good things for others and for myself. Two, I am okay with explaining that I don't know the answers to everything. There is no need to fill in the gaps of knowledge with the prefabricated ideas that beliefs are made of.

Hell, I usually tend to think that Eris (along with some other Pagan deities and my traditional dharma guardians) exists, but I don't believe. That would be absurd. I usually tend to think that people in my life such as my friends or family exist too. I don't have to resort to faith. Do you see the difference? I can validate the existence of other living beings and sometimes I can agree with others when they tell me of people or other life forms which I may have never met or seen. This even goes for other objects. When I take the train to get somewhere, I am reasonably certain of the machine being able to get me there. I need not believe in it. The sun "rises" and "sets" every day without my having to resort to belief in this motion. Sometimes I may have to resort to agreement within reason about the existence of objects or places I have never seen or personally experienced. For instance, Tibet. I have never been to Tibet but I agree that the country exists based on evidence I have been able to observe. (I know people who have traveled there. I have had teachers who were either from there originally or via cultural heritage of their family. Pictures, images, art, and meeting Tibetan people who speak their language; along with other clues can lead me to agree that Tibet as a nation exists.) Belief is still unnecessary.

Many of you have confused the idea of belief with thought. As in when someone says "I believe tomorrow it will rain." What this means is that based on the evidence - the sky, a weather forecast, or some somatic responses to atmospheric changes - they think it will rain. Again, belief is unnecessary. Religious people are either aware of this common usage of "believe" or they are confused. That is why they always say that it is impossible to be conscious and to not have beliefs. But it truly isn't. Having no beliefs about anything doesn't mean I don't have ideas, opinions, thoughts or a point of view. The difference here is that while beliefs are usually stable and self-perpetuating feedback loops which interpret all evidence to support their framework (while ignoring or repressing evidence that challenges the belief), thoughts that make up opinions or points-of-view are open to modification and change. Such thoughts and emotions can even change if the need arises, as it often does, to realign with changes in the environment, or the realization that the "map" is no longer adequate for describing reality.

The problem, then, is all of those holes or gaps in knowledge. People use beliefs to explain those gaps or holes; those areas of life for which there are no clear evidence-based ideas or knowledge that explain them. People tend to have beliefs in place of those gaps. Such as humans not really agreeing that evolution explains our origins on this planet and then positing old religious ideas such as "creationism" or "intelligent design." Isn't it more honest and respectful of the universe and of life to simply say perhaps we don't have all the answers but some of our explanations are the best we have so far? That's not what believers do, now is it? They argue and fight to get their beliefs accepted as the explanation. They see the beliefs as truth and can't understand why anyone would disagree. They come up with all sorts of prejudices such as when Christian fundamentalists say that people who don't believe are simply in "rebellion against God." For me it is more "mysterious" and awesomely respectful of life to admit to not being completely certain; to know and speak the truth that ideas and explanations only go so far and must always be open to new evidence or better systems of explanation.

Beliefs also convince people that doing all sorts of horrible things to each other and to the environment (you know, all those non-human living beings we usually tend to ignore) and still consider themselves good people doing good things. Beliefs validate this disgusting behavior and reify themselves in the process. Think about Islamic or Christian evangelists and all of the sick games they have been playing for the past several hundreds of years. Think about the so-called "atheist" ideologies (really nothing but belief systems dressed up as non-religious thoughts) such as Communism or Fascism (though Fascism tends to work alongside religion) which have been responsible for millions of untimely deaths in this world. Think about the unexamined beliefs of the consumerist Global Village which are causing the death and degradation of millions of both human and non-human living beings even as you read this now. (You know the beliefs such as the one which underlies the gasoline/petrol consumption which is polluting the air we breath and destroying forests; along with other life forms.)

Beliefs are akin to mental illnesses in that they allow one's consciousness to stop functioning at its optimal level. They shut off the awareness and sensitivity which for hundreds of thousands of years was the main impetus and tool of our successful survival and development as a species. It is high time we recognize the threat and see beliefs as what they are: Like the plaques that harden in one's arteries and cause disease and painful death, beliefs are mental plaques which lead to mental disease and painful death as well. To be alive, even in the fullest spiritual sense of that word, needs no beliefs at all. Beliefs only get in the way of that full life. That is why we say "It is my firm belief that it is a mistake to have firm beliefs."

October 19th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

(Under the influence of Buddhism and the White Mouse. Go figure. I asked the White Mouse to stop bugging me and to write his own rants. So he has decided to use my brain and fingers to do so.)

[Eldora, Oracle of Alchemy]

I can't find a good quote, but I remember Dr Gene Scott covering this from a different angle.  He actually had a PhD and he was the only televangelist I ever watched.  He's dead now, I just found that out by googling.  Anyway, if you translate the stuff in the old testament, faith and belief are different and there is another word that gets translated as belief but it is something different.  It is something like faith is belief in action.  Most religious people do not take any actions on their beliefs, like love each other an all that.

Interesting side note, Clinton went to church every Sunday, maybe he still does, GWBush, never goes to church.  GW tells everyone god is important to him.  Where is faith, where is belief.

I believe in my son, because he needs me to.  That's about it, btw.

[fluffy]

yay, baby hughie!

i am glad you finally caught up
because reading three rants in one day
overtaxes my peanut brain

good stuff as usual

are you going to collect your later works
like you did the previous set of rants?

[Enrico Salazar]

Hu.gh,  You may not like Enrico, but Enrico likes you.

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

Hu.gh,  You may not like Enrico, but Enrico likes you.

What makes you think that?

[Lord Daddy Lombrosis]

i am glad you finally caught up
because reading three rants in one day
overtaxes my peanut brain

See, I'm the opposite way because I'm used to seeing a new rant and feeling like it's christmas time and I have two other presents to open after I open this one.

[Zurtok Khan]

*claps* excellant rant Hugh!

And, LDL, I feel the same way =)

[Eldora, Oracle of Alchemy]

You guys are both single with no kids, right?  

[Zurtok Khan]

Yup

[Eldora, Oracle of Alchemy]

Yup

I read 2 Hughie rants tonight and I think that is a record.  Of course, I was interupted by my husband.  He wanted Miracle Whip, we're out, then he couldn't find the mayo, it's in the fridge, the big white thing in the kitchen where you keep your beer I am sooo glad he is not that bad most days, holy shit

Oh, my son was sleeping soundly, so he wasn't bothering me  

[Lord Daddy Lombrosis]

it's in the fridge, the big white thing in the kitchen where you keep your beer

 

So THAT'S what that thing is called.

[Enrico Salazar]

Hu.gh,  You may not like Enrico, but Enrico likes you.

What makes you think that?

Enrico assumes everyone doesn't like him . . . at least he has since last week when he was chased through his neighbourhood by a crowd with torches.

[Eldora, Oracle of Alchemy]

Hu.gh,  You may not like Enrico, but Enrico likes you.

What makes you think that?

Enrico assumes everyone doesn't like him . . . at least he has since last week when he was chased through his neighbourhood by a crowd with torches.

I hate when that happens  

[Enrico Salazar]

It's been happening to Enrico more and more often lately.

What is a gorgeous motherfucker to do?

[Eldora, Oracle of Alchemy]

Well, I like you, just not that way, so keep your hands to yourself