Review of book The Hopeful Heretic: How Institutional Religions Have You Looking For God In All The Wrong Places. WJ Selert. 2024. Kindle online sample. Section 1.
From introduction:
Why do "peace-loving" religions so often cause instability, conflict, and violence?
The Hopeful Heretic explores the HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF WESTERN INSTITUTIONAL RELIGION, providing the context, language, and arguments free societies need to understand and inoculate themselves against resurgent religious fanaticism in the 21st Century.
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It examines the invention of institutional religion as a social governance operating system built around THE HUMAN NEED TO UNDERSTAND OUR PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE.
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From pre-historic nature-based religions to structured polytheism to the main western institutional monotheistic religions, The Hopeful Heretic charts the history, innovations, key features, and inherent defects of those systems, demonstrating EACH RELIGION IS MAN-MADE, INHERENTLY DIVISIVE, AND PRONE TO CHRONIC INSTABILITY AND CONFLICT.
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Selert surveys the immense body of scientific knowledge accumulated since the questionable mythologies of our ancestors became generationally entrenched.
From Newtonian Physics to Quantum Mechanics, Deep Field Astronomy, and Emergent Intelligence, the Hopeful Heretic ARGUES SPIRITUALITY AND MEANING CAN BE FOUND WITHOUT THE NEED FOR "BLIND FAITH" by appreciating the scientific fact that life is a pre-programmed feature of a sublimely beautiful Universal Operating System and that we may all be part of and contributing to a living Universal Being.
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From book sample:
What is the origin and meaning of life? Is there a God? Did humans invent God or did God invent humans?
Those kinds of questions, which I collectively call the Uber Question, have nagged humans since the beginning.
WHY DO THOSE QUESTIONS MATTER? WHY DOES ANYONE CARE?
Uber Questions matter because people are naturally consumed with them.
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From well before the earliest recorded history of any human civilization and continuing to the present, very smart people have asked and tried to answer those questions.
Those answers have evolved over time to become the major institutional religions dominating western culture today.
The Uber Question matters simply because virtually everyone anywhere on this planet, regardless of religious conviction or lack thereof, is directly or indirectly impacted by DIVERSE ORGANIZED GROUPS PROFESSING TO KNOW THE ANSWERS TO THE UBER QUESTION AND DEMANDING CONFORMITY by overt or passive threats ranging from social rejection to physical violence.
That dynamic exists between different religions but also within communities of the same religion.
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The simple reality is a deeply held personal belief in the truth of any answer to the Uber Question are typically not personal at all, but part of a much larger GROUP BELIEF DYNAMIC THAT BECAME ESTABLISHED AND GEOGRAPHICALLY ENTRENCHED HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO together with inherent defects that periodically resurface to threaten peace and stability.
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HISTORY IS SO RIFE WITH BLOODY CONFLICT IN THE NAME OF RELIGION IT HAS ALMOST BECOME AN ACCEPTED AND EXPECTED FEATURE OF OUR MODERN STATUS QUO.
Both our present and future seem primed for more of the same.
From before recorded history we know Jews fought with their neighbors.
Christians later fought with Jews and Muslims.
Muslims fought with Christians and Jews.
Those factions continue to fight to this day.
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We also know within each of those religious communities, the members themselves historically fought and still fight with and among each other.
THE JEWISH, CHRISTIAN, AND MUSLIM RELIGIONS ALL CONTAIN NUMEROUS SECTS and subsects with long histories of resolving their internal and external disagreements through violence.
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The nature of those religions is even when it is not warring with another religion, it foments its own often violent internal conflicts.
THERE ARE MANY UNDERLYING CAUSES OF THE CONFLICTS, BUT TYPICALLY THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER, INFLUENCE, AND ECONOMIC ADVANTAGE ARE CENTRAL.
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The banners under which men destructively pursue those worldly goals are often flamboyantly religious in nature, as if God somehow has a vested interest in the outcome of any human conflict or favors one mortal group’s economic position and political interests over those of another.
SO CERTAIN IS EACH GROUP IN THE CORRECTNESS OF ITS POSITION IT CASUALLY AND EASILY JUSTIFIES VIOLENCE AS BOTH GOD’S WILL and the duty of every member of that group.
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As I will attempt to demonstrate, the reality is INSTITUTIONAL RELIGION IS, FIRST AND FOREMOST, A SOCIAL GOVERNANCE OPERATING SYSTEM CREATED AND OPERATED BY MEN WHO MANIPULATE, focus, and direct the religious fervor of that group’s believers to pursue worldly objectives under the cover of manufactured righteousness.
Without the cover and disguise of religion, those worldly power struggles are substantially less emotional, less compelling and, I submit, much easier to describe, analyze, and solve at scale using secular law and fundamental notions of fairness and justice.
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How did we get here?
ARE WE DOOMED FOREVER TO A “WASH, RINSE, REPEAT” CYCLE OF PERIODIC RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE when the nature of religious conflict is, itself, ultimately based on nothing more than our collective inability to agree on one answer to the Uber Question?
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Given the extent to which religion has played such a destructive role in history and the increasing prominence of angry religious voices infecting our modern politics, the answer would seem to be yes.
But that answer is unacceptable.
NOT ONLY IS IT MORALLY INDEFENSIBLE TO WAR IN THE NAME OF GOD, BUT IT IS INCREASINGLY IRRATIONAL GIVEN THE SHEER AMOUNT OF INFORMATION AND PROOF THAT THE RELIGIONS FOMENTING THOSE CONFLICTS ARE MAN-MADE INSTITUTIONS with man-made and archaic mythologies and doctrines absurdly at odds with a growing body of information and evidence about the true nature of the Universe and our place in it.
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THE NATURE OF INSTITUTIONAL RELIGION AND HUMAN EGO COMBINE TO MAKE MEANINGFUL CHANGE DIFFICULT.
The solution to defusing the religious ticking time bomb requires us to master both.
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First, WE MUST RECOGNIZE OUR INSTITUTIONAL RELIGIONS ARE NOT DIVINE, THEY ARE MAN-MADE. BECAUSE THEY ARE MAN-MADE, THEY ARE SUSCEPTIBLE TO HUMAN ERROR.
Armed with that realization, we must then face that part of our ego that resists admitting the possibility of making a mistake or, more accurately, the possibility that we could be duped or misled into placing blind faith in an error prone and man-made institutional control system.
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Only through that realization and awareness can one begin to free oneself from the inculcated fear and indoctrinated guilt of questioning the institutional religion in which they were raised.
THE LOUD AND ANGRY INSTITUTIONAL RELIGIOUS VOICES THAT FOMENT DIVISION, FEAR, HATRED, AND CONFLICT SHOULD BE RECOGNIZED FOR THEIR BELLIGERENCY and arrogance and relegated to the background where that kind of noise belongs.
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Free from such concentrated social pressure, people can and should reconsider the Uber Question afresh, objectively, dispassionately, and above all, personally.
Even if that journey ultimately leads to the unsatisfactory realization and collective understanding THE REAL ANSWER TO THE UBER QUESTION IS AND MAY ALWAYS REMAIN UNKNOWN, we can and should leverage that uncertainty as the primary reason for peace and tolerance of different belief systems instead of war.
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The truth is that nobody knows for sure.
Allowing institutionalized religious groups to pretend otherwise is dangerous.
To have a meaningful dialogue to reach that conclusion, WE NEED TO EXAMINE AND UNDERSTAND THE ORIGIN, NATURE, AND EVOLUTION OF THESE DIFFERENT INSTITUTIONAL RELIGIONS.
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Statistically, any individual or community’s prevailing answer to the Uber Question is more likely a matter of geographic coincidence than any objective, principled study of the question itself.
SOMEONE BORN IN A COMMUNITY THAT HAS BEEN DOMINATED BY A PARTICULAR SECT OF A PARTICULAR RELIGION FOR ANY SIGNIFICANT PERIOD OF TIME IS ALMOST CERTAIN TO ADOPT THE ENTRENCHED BELIEFS OF THAT COMMUNITY because that is the community norm, standard, tradition, and expectation.
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People, by nature, generally seek to fit in and conform to community norms because to do otherwise is to invite the physical and emotional pain of social rejection and ostracization.
PEOPLE WHO ARE ALREADY MEMBERS OF A RELIGIOUS GROUP TEND TO DEMAND CONFORMITY FROM OTHERS BECAUSE TO DO OTHERWISE IS TO OPEN THE DOOR TO THEIR OWN DOUBTS IN THE SYSTEM IN WHICH THEY WERE RAISED.
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This was particularly true until the mid-20th century because prior to that point in time people and information traveled much more slowly and change was relatively glacial.
Because cultural interaction was so limited, prevailing religious norms could persist for centuries virtually unchallenged and PEOPLE BORN INTO THOSE COMMUNITIES WOULD MARINATE IN THOSE ESTABLISHED BELIEFS UNTIL THEY SEEMED AS PERMANENT AND NATURAL AS THE SKY.
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In fact, the trouble is there are many other communities all around the world that have very different belief systems and community norms just as deeply held and firmly established.
THE MAGNITUDE OF BELIEF SYSTEM DIFFERENCES IS DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO THE DISTANCE ONE TRAVELS FROM THE LAND OF THEIR BIRTH.
The next closest town might have a slightly different take on a small and relatively unimportant tenet of the same shared faith, but the next country over might have an entirely different faith and belief system altogether.
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How is it so many people in so many different parts of the world developed such disparate and diverse answers to the Uber Question?
And more to the purpose and point of this book, HOW DID EACH DISTINCT GROUP BECOME SO CERTAIN ITS PARTICULAR ANSWER WAS SO CORRECT THAT IT BECAME WILLING (OR EASILY MANIPULATED) TO MISTRUST, HATE, FIGHT, AND KILL THOSE WITH EQUALLY STRONG BUT DIFFERENT CONVICTIONS to prove that point?
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As a species, humans are scientifically classified as homo sapiens, a Latin term that loosely translates to “wise man” or “knowledgeable man.”
GENERALLY ACCEPTED SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS CURRENTLY HOLDS HOMO SAPIENS HAVE ROAMED THIS EARTH FOR MORE THAN 50,000 YEARS, a conclusion derived from careful examination of archeological sites and carbon dated fossil records.
The farther back in time we look, the more basic and primitive our ancestors appear, both physically and behaviorally.
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Physical differences aside, the modern human is distinguished from earlier hominid ancestors like homo habilis and homo erectus by AN INCREASINGLY DEVELOPED CAPACITY FOR LOGIC, REASON, AND ABSTRACT PROBLEM SOLVING.
It is apparent from the archaeological record at some point, well before homo sapiens arrived on the scene, our hominid ancestors found value in grouping together, whether for society, comfort, or self-preservation through collective hunting, gathering, or defense against external threats.
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Homo sapiens recognized the value of those practices, adopting and advancing them to suit their own needs.
Early primitive homo sapiens groupings were distinctively localized and predominantly tribal.
THE GROUP MEMBERS HAD NATURALLY LIMITED INTEREST OR CAPACITY FOR TRAVEL EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT NECESSARY TO SURVIVE, for example to find more reliable sources of food or to seek safety from hostile neighbors or environmental threats.
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Over tens of thousands of years, those people slowly moved out and about and those groupings morphed from small families into small tribes.
Some of those tribes would firmly establish themselves in a given area, joining with other tribes to form clans in which they could intermingle and sustainably procreate.
Over a long enough period, those tribal communities and clans would expand more broadly still, EVENTUALLY EVOLVING INTO SMALL SOCIETIES OF PEOPLE WITH DISTINCT CHARACTERISTICS AND TRADITIONS.
Adjacent, less established, or weaker clans would naturally and inexorably move farther away to whatever distance they felt necessary and safe to establish their own stable community without undue competition or threat from stronger tribes and clans.
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Homo sapien humans slowly spread in this fashion to virtually every corner of the globe.
Well before recorded history, numerous societies had evolved and established themselves with distinct and disparate ways of doing the same types of things like building shelter, sourcing food, making clothing, and building tools.
Each society would also eventually and inevitably attempt to establish norms, rules, and systems for tribal and social governance.
Those systems were by no means standardized.
The capacity to appreciate the importance and necessity of establishing acceptable rules of social governance is apparently inherent to homo sapiens as a species, because NO MATTER WHERE ONE LOOKS ACROSS THE GLOBE, EVERY CLAN, TRIBE, VILLAGE, COMMUNITY, AND CIVILIZATION APPEARS TO HAVE DEVELOPED SOME VERSION OF A BASIC OPERATING SYSTEM for that purpose.
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The need for a basic operating system for social governance probably suggested itself to the cognitively advanced homo sapien based on personal experience and oral traditions describing the chaos, insecurity, and injustice that results when no such systems or rules are in place.
As each human collective struggled to establish acceptable governance rules for their societies, they also began grappling with the logical rationale to support and explain the need for that operating system to current and new members of their community.
THE NEED TO JUSTIFY THE OPERATING SYSTEM FOR SOCIAL GOVERNANCE NATURALLY LED TO QUESTIONS OF WHAT IS RIGHT? WHAT IS WRONG? WHAT IS FAIR? WHAT IS UNJUST? WHAT SHOULD BE PERMISSIBLE? WHAT IS IMPERMISSIBLE, AND WHY?
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Along with those considerations, homo sapiens, because of their inherent cognitive capacity and natural inquisitiveness began asking and exploring closely related questions that ULTIMATELY LED TO THE UBER QUESTIONS: WHERE DID WE COME FROM? WHY ARE WE HERE? WHAT’S THE PURPOSE?
It seems unlikely any other animal species concerns itself with the reason for its own existence or what happens when its life ends.
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OTHER ANIMALS SEEM ONLY TO KNOW THAT THEY LIVE AND HAVE A BIOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE TO EAT AND REPRODUCE.
Beyond that there is little to worry about other than avoiding predators.
Animals have been observed to engage in entertainment, wrestling, and playfully chasing one another (like baby bear cubs or lion kittens) and even exhibit sentimentality, care, and love for one another, the way that some birds mate for life or the way monkeys preen one another or the way that herds of elephants, dolphins, and whales protect and nurse one another and mourn the death of a loved one.
Even lizards and snakes appear to relax and leisurely nap in the sun from time to time.
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But there is little evidence any of those animal species spends hours obsessing about where they came from or where they go when they die.
Humans do that and, most likely, have done that from the start.
While homo sapien humans with advanced cognition and endless capacity to obsess over the Uber Question have clearly existed for tens of thousands of years, THE EARLIEST WRITTEN RECORDS OF UBER QUESTION MUSINGS DATE BACK ONLY TO AROUND 3,200 B.C.E., WHEN THE EGYPTIANS AND SUMERIANS FIRST BEGAN CHISELING THEIR THOUGHTS on those matters on stone tablets and the walls of their temples, tombs, and shrines.
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Before that, we can only speculate from cave drawings and shards of pottery. But WE DO KNOW WELL BEFORE THE EGYPTIANS AND SUMERIANS BEGAN PHYSICALLY RECORDING THEIR RELIGIOUS THOUGHTS, HOMO SAPIEN HUMANS HAD ALREADY DEVELOPED SOPHISTICATED AND WIDELY VARIED ANSWERS TO THE UBER QUESTION.
(end of section 1)
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Section 1 240930
Own comments:
“The real answer to the Uber Question (collectively, what is the origin and meaning of life? Is there a God? Did humans invent God or did God invent humans?) is and may always remain unknown.”
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Personally, am a dichotomic HATomic PIE Deist.
Think of God as a positive spirit for happy and Satan as a negative spirit for misery.
Satan infects All with negative spirit, able to do more with some people and less with others, those with more are forced to negative side.
Forever positive-siders and negative-siders contend here on Earth and everywhere out there.
Without fear and doubt We positives gather All tHAT We can, change, and every day follow God’s love’s sweet plan and outmaneuver Satan.
Positive good repeatedly and endlessly wins over negative bad and center line is moved more and more toward tHAT PIE.
At first We positives hem dem negatives in, save ourselves from dem, then save dem from Satan and then we'll All go together.
Everybody can be spiritually fulfilled with or without great wealth, but better with both, dem stand in the way of tHAT so We must push past zat.
Then, enabled by excess success and wealth, We go out into and range through the universe and seed Positive Intergalactic Energy out there.
On half of planets God-side wins over Satan-side.
Only half, unfortunately, due to universe positive-negative balance, half of planets eventually - after full misery no longer fun and the demon wants to move on - are reduced by Satan to a ruin of windswept rubble.
All/oll the above Hence All Terr veracity and/or efficacy to be accepted and projected by the positive side and to be rejected and contested by the negative side.
Zeir key duties be to doff, scoff, fuss, and fire-up us.
(The Byrds songs Change Is Now, Wild Mountain Thyme, C.T.A.-102, Space Odyssey)
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