Reasonism

Since the previous podcast in September, we have seen ISIS rise up from relative obscurity to a headline phenomenon requiring the attention of leaders around the world. In this podcast we provide you with a summary of a few headline cases here in Australia to fill you in. We continue with the reading of the Tyranny of God. In Chapter 20, we look at a World Without God.

In the previous podcast, I concluded that religious beliefs exist only to benefit their own progeny, not ours. In their struggle to assert themselves and dominate our minds, the memes inside our heads are commandeering us to wage war against each other and we simply become collateral damage. The sad thing is, even if many people kill and die for these beliefs, they are not alive. Yet many of us choose to act upon them and so manifest themselves in our world. In this podcast I argue against the idea that everyone should believe in whatever they want to believe to the extent that we should not even question whether these beliefs are true, valid or supported by evidence. This Sunday, 7th of September 2014, Chapter 19 of the Tyranny of God, Why We Need to Justify Our Beliefs.

In this podcast I will discuss the Fallacy of Religious Moderation to explore the ideas of religion being more modern, being more moderate and being more tolerant as though it has now evolved to a much wiser form of its violent and intolerant past. We will be prompted to ask what it is that we truly believe in and to think about what it means to believe.

In the previous podcast, we looked at the basic premise of democracy and the crucial concept of separating religion from the state. This Separation of Church from State is under threat in two fronts: Christian Dominionism and Shariah Law. Building on that in this podcast, I will discuss how Religions are undermining our Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Thought. This Sunday, 11th of May 2014, The Final Part of Chapter 17 of the Tyranny of God, God's Threat to Democracy.

In the previous podcast, I went through how human civilisation struggled out of religious despotism from the 1600s onwards. I said that our thinking has been transformed in different stages from the Protestant Revolution, The Age of Reason and The Age of Enlightenment all the way to the influences of scientific knowledge and discoveries and the development of new thoughts and ideas in politics, economics and philosophy. Now, we live in a world that has accepted and embraced many concepts that were once considered heretical, blasphemous or just generally irreligious. Yet, in most measures, our lives are generally much better off than they have ever been if we compare them with the lives of our ancestors living in the medieval ages and in more ancient times. In this podcast, I will argue that Religion continues to threaten the basic foundation of our modern societies: democracy. This Sunday, 5th of April 2014, Chapter 17 of the Tyranny of God, God’s Threat to Democracy.

In the previous podcast, we broadcasted the first part of Chapter 16 of the Tyranny of God titled Escape from Religious Despotism. I went through certain aspects of our lives today and compared them with what it was like when religion was at the height of its power centuries ago, before the wave of changes brought about by the Protestant Revolution, the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment. I discussed how homes, and not just the church, have become places of worship, and sex became something that can and should be, enjoyed by both men and women, and not something dirty, to be ashamed of. We talked about Divorce, how people no longer have to stay in relationships if they are being abused, cheated on, or for whatever reason. People have become more literate and are encouraged to read books and educate themselves. We talked about gays and lesbians who struggle to have their relationships validated and acknowledged, just like heterosexual relationships. The last topic we discussed was how art stopped being an instrument of religion. Artists began featuring everyday people, not just saints and angels, in their artworks , and began expressing their thoughts and ideas about the human experience. In this podcast, I will pick up from where we left off and discuss how the role and our perception of money and wealth evolved from just something to give to the church, to something that people used as an indicator of their soul’s fate, and now, as something on which we have built our capitalist societies. From there, I will discuss the rise of irreligious and secular ideas. I will list what they were and how we have changed the way we perceive ourselves and how we approach our lives. This Sunday, 16th of March 2014, Part 2 of Chapter 16 of the Tyranny of God, Escape from Religious Despotism.

In the previous podcast, we broadcasted the final part of Chapter 15 of the Tyranny of God where I hope to have shown how the two dominant religions, Christianity and Islam came to dominate our civilisation not by mysterious divine powers but by being methodical in ways that evolved over time as religious leaders learnt from what worked and what didn’t. For thousands of years, humanity has followed similar patterns of inventing religions, growing their number of followers through brute force and violence as evidenced by our history of wars and battles due to religious competition. Although we still have many people holding to divisive ideas and belief systems today, it is still remarkable and worthy of celebrations that we have managed to somehow break free from a world totally led and controlled by religious zealots. In the next Chapter, we will come to understand the inspiring story of how we have accomplished this feat. This Sunday, 23rd of February 2014, Chapter 16 of the Tyranny of God, Escape from Religious Despotism.

In the previous podcast, we broadcasted the first part of Chapter 15 of the Tyranny of God where I began going through the process in which religions, more specifically, Christianity and Islam have come to be the most powerful religions today. First, they establish their god and their scriptures as authorities. Then they demand people to take their god and their scriptures seriously. They encourage people to substitute the need for evidence with faith. They instil obedience. They discourage doubt and enquiry and they enforce regular meetings to keep the faith strong within the minds of their converts. They then proceed to protect beliefs and silence contradictory ideas. In this second part of the podcast, I will continue going through the steps in which these two major religions have come to dominate our way of thinking. This Sunday, 9th of February 2014, Part 2 of Chapter 15 of the Tyranny of God.

Marquez discusses how the two most dominant religions today: Christianity and Islam, have spread. We will see how they achieved this by simply looking at the way their memes work together. We will look at how their belief system is structured to understand what continues to enable and empower them to thrive in the minds of people as parents pass on their beliefs and ideas from generation to generation.

Religions are just human organisations and like other human organisations, they are under pressure to survive. To survive, they need believers to support them financially or otherwise. Thus, they act like memetic organisms. Like viruses, they replicate in the minds of people, influencing the actions and behaviour of people the world over.

Why is it that people who believe in one god are atheistic to the god of another culture, and religions contradict and blaspheme the beliefs of another religion? Could it be because gods can only exist in our minds when we forcefully indoctrinate ourselves to believe in them? Could it be that people from different cultures are forcing themselves to believe in falsehoods, and, when they finally confront each other, they recognise, with rational minds, the absurdity of each other’s beliefs? Well, this is in fact, what I think is going on. I did suggest that perhaps these gods do not exist. We only believe in them if we make ourselves believe in them. We kill and die for these gods. The tragedy is that in our willingness to believe, we end up wasting and squandering our resources and our lives and of others’, as we serve and worship these gods we have imagined.

It is a common religious understanding that God through Scripture, gives us a way to live moral lives. In this chapter, Chapter 12, Marquez delves into this question of morality. What is it? Does it really come from a Divine Being or Divine Beings?

this week, we will be interviewing Shelley Segal. Shelley is a Melbourne based singer-songwriter who became involved in secular activism over three years ago after which she released her first album called 'An Atheist Album'.

It is often claimed that religions are the sources of our sense of morality. In this podcast, Marquez Comelab discusses why people are moral even without religions.

Many of us suppose that because religious beliefs are adopted by many, they are assumed to be wiser, less deceiving and less misleading. And most of the time, we do not question this do we? People say things like, “I do or do not do this or that because of my religious beliefs”. For example, someone might say, “I’m a Jehovah’s Witness so I don’t believe in Blood Transfusions”. Most of the time, we might not advance the discussion further. If we do, we might ask something like, “why not?”. The answer we get is usually something we do not comprehend, or find irrational or just confusing. But most people I’ve noticed, shy away from enquiring further because of not wanting to offend or seemingly ridicule the other person. We will come back to this in later chapters when I will argue that we as individuals and as societies should, and ought to question these beliefs for the sake of finding out what is true. Before we do that, however, I would like to veer off to another piece of this big puzzle we are trying to put together. It is often said that a particular religion teaches its people how to live moral lives. Many people claim that religion is the metaphorical light that guides people to live wise, moral and satisfactory lives. Is this true though? Are we not moral without religions? Have we not been moral even without religions? These are the sorts of questions I want to delve into today, Sunday, 27th of October 2013, Chapter 10 of the Tyranny of God, Early Human Societies.

In Chapter 8 of the Tyranny of God, we got thinking about memes. We generally defined memes to be anything that we, human beings can copy. Memes including ideas, stories, rituals and parables made up by people and got copied from one mind to another. Over generations, these memes join up with memes that are compatible or they may also make new memes conceivable. The idea that there is a soul for example, makes the idea of life after death, heaven and hell possible. These in turn makes it possible for gods to exist and we looked at all the different conceptions of god throughout the world. Religions embody and codify these conceptualisations of gods which is an argument I will delve into in later chapters. However, before we proceed further, in this week’s podcast, we will first discuss beliefs and delusions because they are two most powerful types of memes that influence our actions, thoughts and behaviour. This Sunday 20th of October 2013, Chapter 9 of The Tyranny of God: Beliefs and Delusions.

In Chapter 7 of the Tyranny of God, we got thinking about language. In our quest to understand human nature and the nature of religions, it is important to realise that language helps if not facilitates much of the way we think. In this chapter, I go through memes. Discussions of memes are important because a few chapters later, I argue that much like living organisms are made up of genes, religions are non-living organisms made up of memes. This Sunday 12th of October 2013, Chapter 8 of The Tyranny of God: Memes.

Last week, we defined what we mean when we use the word God and Religion in the context of this book. By the word God, we are mainly referring to the Theistic concept of God. That God is a supernatural being, who created the universe, watches our every move, listens to our thoughts and punishes or rewards us after we die. Jews, Christians and Muslims believe in a Theistic as opposed to a Deist or a Pantheist concept of God. These three religions are monotheists. They believe in only one god. We will refer to them as Abrahamic religions because they all trace their origins to a man named Abraham. Our use of the word religion in my book refers to these Abrahamic Religions not necessarily other types of religions like those found in India or Asia. In understanding religion, I believe we need to understand how we think. Since language determines how we think, I deem it necessary to touch on the subject of Language. This Sunday 6th of October 2013, Chapter 7 of The Tyranny of God: Language.

In Chapter 1, we discussed the origins of the Universe. In Chapter 2 we discussed the origin of life. In Chapters 3 and 4 we went through Genetics and how evolution works through Natural Selection. Last week, we concluded Chapter 5 titled How Life Evolved on Earth. So far, our discussions were purely to establish our natural history based on the evidence, proof and reason derived what we know of fossils, biology, geology, physics, chemistry and other branches of knowledge. This Sunday 29th of September 2013, we draw attention to understanding the nature of religion. Here now for you, Chapter 6 of The Tyranny of God: Respite.

Last week, we continued listening to how life began on Earth. We picked up our story from the Teleostomes, a species of animals that evolved into the ray-finned and fleshy-lobed fish which later developed into terrestrial vertebrates, tetrapods, amphibians, reptiles and mammals. Some of these mammals evolved into primates which include monkeys and apes. We pick up our journey of our human evolution after introducing our Hominini ancestors and we discussed the findings of Dr. Zeresenay Alemseged of the Max Plank Institute about the remains of a girl from 3.3 million years ago that looked human in many ways. This Sunday 22nd of September 2013, we conclude our journey of human evolution with Part III of Chapter 5 of The Tyranny of God: How Life Evolved On Earth.