This is just about the worst idea yet. "Force them to conform"? You're kidding right? Substitute one extremely oppressive establishment for another? That doesn't sound like a very good plan. You can't force someone to believe something. The only way is through education and letting people figure things out for themselves.
"unless we of no religion rise up and...."??? well, er uh....aint that about the same thought as "we of CHRISTIAN belief rise up...." or "we of Muslim belief rise up and...."???
The "rising up" IS the problem. When any group "rises up and makes"....we get what we have now.
Here's an idea....how bout if NOBODY "rises up"? and just lets folks choose whether they believe or dont believe?
What makes you think the "non-believers" are "right"? Any more "right" than the goddam Believers are?
When can all people get it that the question is UN-ANSWERABLE and UN-PROVABLE?
The Believers dont know for sure there IS a god....and the UNbelievers dont know for sure there isnt one.
Until a time comes when ALL people earnestly respect the other side's right to their beliefs, (or UN-beliefs as the sace may be) they're ALL dangerous to the Ones's Who Dont Agree.
For instance, suppose all the Mus should admit, "hey! Im a Muslim! But the truth is, I dont KNOW for sure!" and the Christers should say, "Hey! Im a Christer....but I dont actually KNOW!" and the atheists should say, "I dont THINK there's a god....but hell, I aint SURE!"
Then we might just realize we're ALL in the exact same boat----we dont, any of us, KNOW shit.
What we have here, globally, is a shitload of people with opinions about something not a damn one of us knows anything for SURE about.
Nobody knows. Everybody THINKS he knows. That's the one thing I kinda admire most about Jews. At least they KNOW they dont know anything about any suck thing as an "after-life" They're wise enough to say, "We dont know what happens after death....so let's focus on LIFE and how to best behave while we live." The othet two mid eastern religios cults keep insistineg THEY "know" what happens after death and furthermore "they"(the other guys) aint gettin IN.
It's the "we're right andf they're wrong" thing that has kept Mus and Cris killing each other for 1500 years, both in "the name of God" (or Allah).
Now, as far as "educating" people....the Chinese tried that, so did the now defunct Soviet Union. Both discovered that, regardless of "education" that "god is a false belief", a certain (latge) percentage of people STILL refused to give up their idea of "god".
There just MAY be a reason, fundamental to all humans, for this.
Since the first Cave Guy left his cave and stared up at the stars, some people have come to the conclusion that, "Somebody Out There MADE all this....and that mutherfucker MUST be GOD."
Spirituality is inherent within our species. We alone can look at this Cosmos and be awe-stricken. "HOW did all this come about?", we ask.
And, until the late 19th century, nobody even questioned it. Clearly, SOMEbody made the universe. Then along came the advent of "modern" science. By the 20th century, (the latrer half, at least), we had enough actual knowledge of physics, astronomy, biology, to begin to question whether "god" made it or if maybe it was all just some big cosmic accident of nature.
Before there was science (last couple hundred years), there was Magic (previous 10,000yers or so) Each of these is a reflection of the thought of Man. Man "evolved". However.....regardless of how humans changed, the universe stayed pretty much the same. It didnt care that early man looked out at the stars and was awe-stricken. It doesnrt care NOW that we peer into It's depths with the Hubble telescope, either. The constant is----both Mr. Neanderthall and Mr Astronomer STILL say,
Holy shit....this is amazing....and I dont know how it all got started."
I was watching NOVA last night and some astronomers were showing the Huble and announced that at last we KNOW exactly WHEN the Universe began. The date of the Big Bang was 16.7 billion years ago. They know this by measuring the length of red waves and blue waves given off by stars as they move away from the viewer,(near as I could understand)
OK, Im happy with that. Except.....IF the universe had an actual Beginning.....a precise moment when it went from DOESNT EXIST to DOES EXIST, then....doesnt that mean there will also be an eventual ending?
These guys say the universe is expanding. Into....what? Empty space. OK. If the universe, then, is finite.....should we assume space is finite, also? Andf if so....what the fuck lies outside it's edge? Or, is space expanding, too? and if so, wont it always hold the millions of galaxies, no matter how spread out they get?
Here's another thing I thought was cool.....science used to think there was only one galaxy. Now, the Huble has shown there are millions of others. They showed a "hole" some astronomer looked thru, the size of a drinking straw, into am "empty" spot of empty space..... and woo hoo.....thru the rabbit hole, there were a whole nuther world of other galaxies. One can only assume a peek theu one of that other galaxies "dark spots" would reveal yet another....and another, and so on.
But here's the mind-blowing part: The images they showed looked EXACTLY like the images of fractals we've all seen.
I mean, exactly. In fact, If I showed you an image from those other galaxies and said, "What is this"? You guys would probaly reply, "looks like a fractal to me."
Now.....OK, so we didnt see a fractal until the computer came along and Dr. Mandelbrot produced a visual image of one. But they were always there. One could say that fractal geometry is the math God used to design the universe. Whether we use science to look deep inside the tinyest of matter....of to look outward at the galaxies....the images look just the same. Literally. I mean, I could show you a drop of urine with calcium oxilate crystals in it taken frm a patient with kidney stones thru an electron microscope and tell you it was a picture taken tru the Huble of a distant star and you'd say, "OK, I see it."
Now...if this is all just a cosmic accident, then....... well, I'll blow you on Main Street at high noon on Christmas Day. The more science reveals the complexity of this extraordinary universe, the less likely it seems to me it could be an "accident".
Perhaps what we "enlightened" folks of the 21st century need is NOT to throw out the outdated concepts of God....but to embrace a brand new one--- of God as the ultimate Scientist, not merely "discovering" the intricate Laws of the Uni, but thinking them up in the first place, setting them into motion and patiently waiting for us to begin to understand.
I heartily agree that religion is bullshit, mythology and lies. But that doesnt mean there is no God. It just means we're only NOW just at the earliest stage of beginning to tiptoe from what God is NOT to what God Is. God is NOT the gray-bearded old man handing out punishment and reward. That concept reflects our own evolutionary growth. We Had nothing BUT our own experience of the patriarchal "father figure", either happy(and rewarding) or pissed off (and punishing) at our behavior, to draw from. It was what we knew. That "God created man in His own image" is clearly, nonsense. Man created God in his own image is truth. That we imagined God to be The Big Daddy in The Sky is not surprising. What else could we have done prior to science?
OK, so we spent 100 little tiny years all full of ourselves for having finally "discovered" "there is no God." Oh, we're SO smart now, with all out science, we FINALLY figured it out that the Bible is all just mythology." Yeah, yeah, yeah. YES, the Bible IS all mythology. But let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. True, there was no Voice speaking from any damn Burning Bush, there aint no guy ever born of a virgin, aint no guy ever got up from the dead. But, so what? Those stories CAME from OUR desperate need to "know", with no science to draw from. Those stories are out-dated now, revealed to any 21st century, thinking mind as bullshit. But all that means is that our concept of god is no longer applicable, not that God doesnt exist.
We need to expand our concept. God, the Creator, the Scientist, the Mathemetician, the Engineer of the Cosmos. Beardless, genderless, Pure Aware Creative and Benevolent Energy.
CW
