automatousorautonomous?

Religion : Revealed or Inherent?

allanmcleod — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:01:48 +0000

In a habitat shared by many varieties of life it was essential that all should be able to coexist. Nature set out to do this by two means: by instinct and by adaptation. For a long time nature succeeded in maintaining a balanced existence for all species, but when her environment-stimulated incremental changes culminated in a reasoning primate, she had unwittingly imposed on the world a creature still dependent on her but no longer under her discipline. This boded ill for the rest of creation. Aware of his insecure position between instinctual bondage and free will, trammelled only by optional conscience, and that he was on his own in a world he did not properly comprehend and could not control, man reached out for succor beyond nature to the power he inferred was in command of the universe. This resolved itself into a superhuman being he called ‘God’. This was the genesis of supernatural religion.
Man has always had difficulty in accepting that extinction awaits him at the end of life. Consequently he looked for divine help not only for his life on earth but for a future life with his god. Man cannot properly orient himself to the world without religion, but this is where he took a wrong turning. His real problem was not how to prepare himself for a postulated paradise, but how to live in truth in this world. Putting reliance on a god diminishes the conscience and reduces ability for self-discovery.
As well as omnipotence the god conceived by man was often credited with human characteristics such as anger, vengeance and love. Adherents brought their inadequacies to religion such as egotistically believing themselves the chosen people of their god, or subjectively believing themselves the object of their god’s love. If there were a god of undoubted integrity and goodness who was in constant dialogue with mankind, it would be out of character for him to accept praise, flattery or obeisance but rather would insist on being approached in the sincerity and naturalness of a child at ease with his parents. Believers have difficulty understanding this and act as if they were required to sacrifice their self-respect for him. They affront their own intelligence by crediting him with being willing to intercept natural disasters on their behalf when it is abundantly evident that nature follows the laws of physics and is subservient to no-one.
At times of popular disillusionment with the secular world, self-proclaimed prophets arise who assert that they, out of all mankind in every generation, have been selected as God’s spokesman. Truth is timeless. The implication of revealed religion is that truth started at a certain point in history. The only thing that started at a certain point in history was the life of the founder of that religion. The implication is therefore that either the god in question forgot to reveal the truth earlier, or that the founder was assuming divine authority for his own mortal ideas. There have been no female founders of major religions so that would immediately make God partial even although he is attributed with creating both sexes. Sexuality is solely for the purpose of procreation so if there were a future life in paradise the immortals would logically be sexless,since sexuality there would have no purpose. It therefore argues against God appointing a proxy on earth at all if he were put in the absurd position of having to choose between the sexes. The supernatural religions have always been dominated by men, so despite their religiosity, they in effect attributed inequity to God to suit their own interests.
The notion that an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God of the universe who had every opportunity and facility to get the world right in the first place, had to rely on one or more of his fallible creatures to act as agent for his later corrections, points to the fact that these agents were unaware that such an all-powerful God would be able to correct these errors genetically and thus pre-empt sin, much of which is due to inherited personality limitations and disorders. Revealed religions win and retain others to their cause by ingeniously introducing a collateral: immortality with all its blandishments is contingent on the followers doing the will of the founder, supposedly acting for his god. Revealed religions freeze minds at the level of perception and intelligence of the founder. The belief that the ultimate truth has been discovered makes further intelligent inquiry unnecessary. Hence revealed religion is a hindrance to man’s moral and spiritual progress.
Unless nature’s design is properly comprehended, the will to survive coupled with the need to be esteemed, resolves itself into the desire for immortality and eternal love. In the case of Christianity this desire is strong enough to overcome any scruples about accepting someone else’s supreme sacrifice in order to win the prize of eternal life and love. The Mohammedans not only expect believers to be rewarded with eternal life but also with eternal sexual pleasure. They fail to realize that sex was designed by nature only for the purpose of reproduction, is essentially corporeal and has no purpose or meaning outside the temporal world. Mohammedans believe their god to be partial to themselves exclusively, and to condone violence and intolerance towards others, thereby achieving a totalitarian conformity. Thus they inevitably become intellectually sterile and their consciences remain in limbo. Seen with detachment it is evident that nature is concerned primarily with the survival of the race, not of the individual, and that she has set fertility high enough to cover any wastage that might occur. In short, as immortality has been bestowed on the race, individual immortality would be superfluous.
Because man is focused more closely on himself and other people than on the human race, he is apt to exalt the individual, whereas nature sees individuals only as expendable links in an immortal chain. Although nature does not have consciousness, she is not lacking in integrity of an unsentimental kind, for she is fully provident towards all life. This is where revealed religion is at variance with nature because it puts a value on the individual that nature knows nothing about. As revealed religion represents the unconscious need of man for recognition and acceptance of himself in reaction to the indignity of being disposable once his procreative potential has expired, he is falling short of the human virtue of courageously facing reality. Thus the founders of the revealed religions could not countenance nature as she is and invented gods who would be partial to man in ways which unsentimental nature is not. But they failed to see the inherent contradiction of setting up an idealistic man-centered god who as creator of the world is the genius behind pragmatic nature.
All over the world children are being indoctrinated with the arbitrary religious beliefs of their parents. This is not necessarily because parents in their wisdom have chosen the best beliefs they can discover, but because they in their turn were so indoctrinated, and thus were not able to choose freely for themselves or for their children. The concept of family integrity has sanctified this practice but in reality it violates the children’s right not to have arbitrary opinions forced upon them. Religion which is sacred only for its inherent truth, acquired by reason, logic and discussion, orients everyone in the same direction, whereas the revealed religions unwittingly create dissention and hostility because they confuse inherited emotional loyalties with the verifiable truth. The human mind is not sovereign, being essentially the product of the output of a brain which is genetically determined from birth, and the prevailing culture which is predetermined and may be flawed and biased. In unreasoningly accepting the prevailing culture, society is perpetuating the errors of the past. The education for children must therefore include a critical study of the prevailing culture so that past misapprehensions are not perpetuated.
Those whose religion calls for charity and compassion towards others are likely to be tolerant of other faiths even although they are not acceptable to them, and even where the tolerance is not mutual. This is wrong because we are then honoring religions which we know are in error. Thus what appeared a virtue was simply an error of judgment, for only intelligent tolerance is a virtue. Hence other faiths as well as our own must be scrutinized impartially and our findings made known to the world so that everyone may have a chance to break free from the tyranny of their religious culture, retaining only that which is veryfiably good, thus paving the way for enmity to be replaced by amity.
As man evolved from instinct to reason, nature endowed him with conscience to counteract the moral chaos of free will which is the concomitant of reason. Revealed religion devalues the conscience since doctrine takes precedence over it. It is tragic for mankind that in earlier times man’s intellectual development was insufficiently advanced to comprehend this. If it had been realized that religion can have existence only in the human mind and that conscience is its progenitor, much often ferocious religious strife could have been avoided.
Thus man is in error in looking externally for moral guidance since nature has already given him all that is needed for discovering the truth for himself. Wisdom lies in having a good moral and spiritual relationship with the total environment rather than with things supernatural. It would have been morally better if the religious had not sought the truth by revelation but had recognized conscience as its only source and had undertaken the education of conscience rather than its undermining. Conscience is not an imperative like instinct, but man’s intelligence enables him to understand its over-riding importance, and further that it is the progenitor of morality.
The subjectivity which revealed religions induce in their followers by offering supernatural favors is inimical to them and puts in question the doctrine responsible for it. The result is that their moral and spiritual growth is retarded because they are motivated by the desire to receive rather than to give. The outcome of any religion must be profound good manners and goodness, which can only come from the will to give. When subjective believers pray they are asking to be given that which fulfills their inadequacy. Those who believe that religion is concerned with the benign disciplining of free will by conscience, know that fulfillment can only come about through their own efforts. Therefore instead of praying to receive, they resolve to change themselves to conform with their moral and spiritual ideals. The motivation for this is the desire for self-respect which comes from submission to the conscience.
Although Plato did not formulate a universal definition of religion, his Theory of Ideas may be so applied.Thus religion in its quintessential form maybe defined as man’s moral and spiritual relationship with his total environment. All other religions, natural or supernatural, are therefore particular religions in the Platonic sense. This provides a basis whereby to appraise them. The supernatural religions came into existence in isolation from the reason based knowledge existing at the time, and the founders were unaware that their religion was simply one of various particular religions whose veracity and worth could be tested against its Platonic Form.
Thus the great intellectual and spiritual achievements of Plato still stand in spite of man’s tardiness in availing himself of his wisdom. Long before the advent of Christianity Plato realized the supreme importance of wisdom, which may be defined as reason informed by a knowledge of goodness, beauty and truth. Reason alone is not sufficient. If the world had been ready to apply Plato’s rational thinking to religion it would have been spared the long and painful diversions into the supernatural religions with their dogma, subjectivity, superstition, intolerance, prejudice, egotism, partisanship, violence and mind-closing fundamentalism.
Only now is the Western world beginning to outgrow the need for revealed religion, aided by science, education and increasing satisfaction with this life. The decay of institutional religion has resulted in an inevitable lowering of moral standards, but the decline in external moral authority has freed consciences, resulting in concern for such causes as human rights and protection of the environment. It is significant that most of this concern comes from outside institutional religion. This augers well for rational religion in terms of man’s moral and spiritual relationship with his total environment. There are some who because they cannot accept supernatural religion, dismiss religion altogether. This is mistaken because religion is part of the human experience, since it derives from conscience and spirituality, which are inherited characteristics.
True religion can have existence only objectively in the human mind since it derives from conscience which nature endowed man with to give him optional control over the chaos of free will. Religion therefore is essentially the philosophy for translating the life nature devised for our instinctually motivated ancestors into the greater sophistication of a life subject to reason, free will and conscience, enhanced by spirituality. Religious subjectivity is a neurotic aberration since its motivation is self-gratification, rather than the desire to live in truth. All of nature’s great accomplishments are achieved rationally, logically and pragmatically. If supernaturalism had validity, nature would be the first to know, since immortality would have to be triggered by mankind’s genetic inheritance. Education cannot produce autonomous citizens unless curricula include a study of cultures so that students are able properly to evaluate the beliefs which are open to them.

Nature Beleaguered

allanmcleod — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:19:41 +0000

It could be supposed that nature is supremely intelligent and that all of her endeavours will have a successful conclusion. Nature is indeed supremely intelligent in the ways that are open to her, but her intelligence does not for instance extend beyond the planet. Otherwise why would she evolve dinosaurs into a monstrous size only to be annihilated by an asteroid? It is evident that rather than having the presumed far-seeing vision of a creator, the unconscious intelligence of nature is limited to responses to given situations. It is vital for man to accept that the survival and welfare of life on the planet rests with himself and nature. Thus nature was not able to anticipate the consequences of conscience only being able to limit the chaos of free will and not prevent it. As a result she has evolved man’s intelligence too far for her own good.
Man’s intelligence is compromised by his subjectivity. Heedlessly he takes everything from nature and is not discriminating as to what he gives back, even if it means undermining nature’s ability to continue giving. Although nature endowed man with consciousness, she herself does not have it, which gives man the moral obligation to be her surrogate. Nature is not an entity but rather the inner core of life, and has her existence in all organisms. She manifests herself in ways as countless as the variations to be found in the environment. Hence her vulnerability to man’s unthinking tampering with the habitat he shares with all the other forms of life. Nature originally sought to protect and control her domain by instinct and adaptation. That strategy works well with the unreasoning creatures, but reason has enabled man to escape her hold. As it is clearly nature’s intention that life in all of its multiplicity should continue to adapt and prosper, in evolving man from instinct to reason she has unwittingly made a disastrous and perhaps even fatal, mistake.
Nature’s only hope of salvation lies in the conscience she endowed man with but which, because of free will, is too optional to ensure her security. As a moral life for man is in nature’s interests as well as his own, it behoves him to use all means to cultivate his conscience. A minority in society is vociferous in its defense of the environment, but the majority remain complacent. Because of the inertia imposed by the culture, society finds it difficult to change itself even when the intelligentsia sees the need. Effective change can only be brought about through the educational system whereby education is designed to inform the culture, not the converse by default. A philosophy of education is required which sets out the objectives for achieving a civilized existence in harmony with nature, and devises a curricula for bringing it about.

Automatous or Autonomous?

allanmcleod — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:09:12 +0000

Sub-heading : God or Conscience?

Man creates a god in his imagination who is his moral arbiter. He is thus externalising his conscience which was provided by nature to safeguard against the chaos of free will. Conscience when listened to is uncompromising, so if his courage fails him, man subjectively invokes the help of a god presumed to be kind, loving, forgiving, helpful and all-powerful. The adherents of some religions even think they are the chosen people of their god and that he will aid them against their enemies. These beliefs are dangerously subjective and counterproductive since they weaken personal initiative. They also explain why the supernatural religions have made so little positive impact on mankind. If such a god existed and he was able to influence human behaviour, it could only be via the conscience which is man’s only source of knowledge of right and wrong. As the conscience nature endowed man with is autonomous, his help would serve no purpose, which predicates against the existence of a god. Those who put their trust in God are simply expressing their own psychological need whose fulfillment requires his existence.
When confession is made to God or to a priest they become surrogates for conscience. The motive for such confession can only be to escape the consequences of having disobeyed the conscience. Nature has not only endowed man with conscience but also with a sense of guilt as a reminder that the conscience has been ignored. Without the capacity for guilt man could become very dangerous. The act of confession is therefore hypocrisy or desperation. The alarm sounded by guilt is the signal to desist and to make amends. The prior knowledge that confession is an option undermines the conscience.
The human personality inevitably lacks coherence since it has been modified and added to piecemeal, according to the requirements of evolution. Man’s instinctual motivation takes place in a different part of the brain to his reason, so they remain uncoordinated and often at variance. Before man evolved from instinct to reason procreation was initiated and supervised by instinct, and so no moral questions arose. When man attained to reason he acquired the ability to exploit his sexuality, but nature perceived the problem arising from evolution and endowed him with conscience. Thus man had the means of avoiding moral chaos while retaining his autonomy. If God rather than conscience were the moral arbiter, man would become an automaton and would be morally diminished.
Although nature endowed man with conscience, it was for pragmatic reasons only. She herself does not have conscience but a certain integrity motivated by the need for survival of the species. Conscience being optional, free will enables man to use it in ways more noble than nature’s utilitarian purpose. Those who find it difficult to accept the unsentimental but bountiful reality of nature. Prefer to attribute conscience to God whom they credit with being willing to love, forgive and reward man. But they fail to see that if God as creator is responsible for nature, He cannot be morally superior to her.
In schools instead of religious instruction, which appeals to the emotions rather than to reason, it would be more productive to explain how nature, loosing control of man through the instincts, devised conscience to bring order to the potetial chaos of free will, and t5hus gave him the option of moraql autonomy. Thus children would become confident of being able to cope with life themselves rather than automatously feel the need for external help and consolation.
Because of their otherworldly preoccupations, religious institutions epitomise subjective complacency rather than the unrelenting zeal for the objective truth. Thereby they devitalise conscience and so deny themselves the enlightenment which would help sustain their credibility and relevance. To accept beliefs acquired automatously without the endorsement of intellect underwritten by conscience, is recklessly credulous and can only bring in train further erroneous thinking. Although conscience manifests itself in such areas as human rights, tolerance, the environment, and social and economic aid, it is far from having the ubiquity that a well -ordered world requires.As conscience is made optional by free will, and as its absence is a prime cause of ignorance and vice, it is vital that educational institutions take on the education of conscience. As conscience is the driving force behind all true religion, there should be no abstentions on religious grounds.

PS I have used the prescribed email address but cannot find any mention of posting by email.

Women and the Culture

allanmcleod — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:40:59 +0000

Since the dawn of history otherwise enlightened people were not able to see that slavery was morally wrong. This was because although they had consciences, tolerance of slavery was firmly embedded in the culture and kept there by self-interest. In the same way, for countless centuries society has failed to grant women equality with men. This may have come about because their vulnerability during childbearing made women dependent, and they were thus regarded in unsophisticated cultures as inferior. Nature has made man aggressive for survival in a competitive world and women gentle for child-rearing, and this relationship of protector and protected has persisted from primeval times through to the present, giving men the illusion that they are superior to women. The innate difference of temperament results sometimes in a better contribution from one sex and sometimes from the other.
In earlier societies in the West, and still in the developing world, the economic contribution from daughters was valued less than that of sons for physiological reasons, and thus they were considered economically inferior. In some parts of the world reactionary cultures result in discrimination against females and even their murder at birth, often with the mother’s conivance. Also in some unenlightened societies women are discriminated against by making marriage contingent upon provision of a dowry for them, and if this is deemed unsatisfactory by the husband, the culture permits him to murder his wife, often with impunity. In the Moslem world the culture enables men to believe that women do not have the right to be themselves but that man has been divinely appointed to govern them. They protect their own selfish interests by preventing women being attractive to othe men by shrouding them from the world.
Before the advent of popular birth control women were expected to settle the accounts of passion by having one child after another even if detrimental to their health. Thus while men were relatively free agents, women had no choice but to be procreative slaves and household drudges. Later when Western women gained control of their fertility, they were able to consider a career, but were still at a disadvantage as it continued to be a male-dominated world due to the innate resistance to change of the culture.
The injustices which women have always had to contend with are due more to the conservatism and prejudice of the culture than to any conscious conspiracy against them. Society must however take responsibility for failing to question the culture in the light of conscience. Nature clearly is concerned with the immortality of the race and not with right and wrong, the sense of which she pragmatically gave mankind through her endowment of conscience, to mitigate the chaos of free will as man evolved from instinct to reason. The fact that women are physically weaker than men and are dependent on others during childbearing does not mean that they are inferior to men, but rather that they and all other creatures perforce comply with nature’s scheme of things and hence cannot be criticised. Therefore if society takes a lead from nature no inferiority or superiority need be impuited to anyone, but rather the acknowledgement is necessary of the behaviour that her pragmatism requires.

Automatous or Autonomous?

allanmcleod — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:14:04 +0000

National Culture
—————-
Without memory, reason would be too sporadic to function. Memory stores information on which the mind draws to give it coherence and continuity. But this is at a cost due to the culture, which is the collective memory, imposing values, beliefs, prejudices and loyalties on the minds of individuals without their sanction. This is because the culture is absorbed unawares, and therefore uncritically, since infancy. Consequently nations tend to be led unconciously by their culture rather than consciously by reason. So well does the culture conceal its traces that centuriesa go by without nations realising that they are not properly in control of their destiny.
Once the culture is firmly embedded in the memory there is little scope for any alternative culture to establish itself unaided. The individual is therefore blind to his own cultural deficiencies, although able to see clearly the faults in other cultures. This may result in patriotism towards one’s own country and hostility towards others and is a contributary cause of war. The American Civil War is an example of the clash of cultures. The ability to see the need for change constitutes liberalism, and the disposition to see advantages in keeping the culture as it is constitutes conservatism. Independent nations rejoice in their freedom but are unaware that they are free only to act out their unexpurgated culture, regardless of its flaws and limitations.
In theocratic states the culture is pervaded by religion, and often so insidious is the indoctrination that the people become religious chauvinists and fail to see that they have been conditioned by it involuntarily rather than having chosen it themselves because of its superior merits. Thus they become religious and political automatons, and they and their state become potentially dangerous because reason, free will and conscience, have in various ways become redundant. The democratic world needs to explain to the theocracies how this predicament has come about, and that intellectual freedom permits progress and growth whereas religious ideology prevents it.
For many millenia, in default of the ability to appraise themselves objectively, nations have stumbled on, led unquestioningly by their culture. Militaristic cultures lead inexorably to war and expansionism. Cultures characterised by greed and economic expansionism are the driving force behind colonialism. Whereas primitive societies where man is close to nature often have a proper respect for her, supposedly civilised societies exploit nature for short-term gains, which demonstrates that a proper respect for her is absent from the culture. Thus an uninformed culture puts the ecology at risk.
When man started evolving from instinct to reason, and hence out of natures direct control, she endowed him with conscience, the progenitor of morality, to limit the chaos of free will. Because the use of conscience is optional, many believe its advocates are idealists, and abide instead by pragmatism which is the survival-oriented way of nature towards her unreasoning progeny. But as she has evolved man to govern himself by reason, free will and conscience, pragmatism is no longer sufficient. As free will makes the use of conscience optional,morality can only be made an operating force by implanting it in the culture.
In every country the prevailing culture, which is the inherited national identity, in turn conditions the succeeding generation. Because the culture is involuntary and unplanned, nations can be projected into events as a consequence of their conditioning rather than from rational choice. That Russia precipitated the Great War because of religious and ethnic sentiment towards the Serbs, is one example. Any country which aspires to act of its own volition must therefore examine its culture carefully. Change is difficult because those immersed in a culture are often blind to its defects. Dissidents can easily stir up irrational hostility. It is more productive to introduce changes to the culture throgh the educational system, the students being encouraged to examine and question the culture which they have inherited unwittingly and unasked. Thus they may have a chance to become truly themselves rather than the creatures of their inheritance.

Automatous or Autonomous?

allanmcleod — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:27:33 +0000

Culture or Conscience?

In evolving from instinct to reason we have

become hybrids, neither fully determined by

instinct nor fully liberated by reason. Reason

alone does not ensure a good and useful life

in harmony with man’s total environment.

Conscience is needed to supervise the choices

free will allows reason. Therefore life is

necessarily an accomodation between

instinct, reason, free will and conscience. There

is also the further complication of culture

which conditions our thinking unawares from

birth.

Culture can be a stronger determinant of

behaviour than conscience. Once people

decide to support a particular political party

they participate in a partisan culture to the

detriment of reason guided by conscience.

This diminishes democracy which only

flourishes when minds are uncompromised.

In religion early indoctrination produces

committed protagonists in a culture

consecrated to submitting to an external

authority rather than to conscience. In

commerce employees are likely to allow the

self-interested culture of their employers to

override their consciences even although the

product is a harmful one such as tobacco or

asbestos.

The human mind can only function coherently

because of the memory nature has provided.

Memories collectively are the conduit for

culture. As a result we are creatures of habit,

good or bad. To will ourselves to change, if

indeed we discover the need to do so, is much

more difficult than continuing complacently

to be governed by memory. So it is of the

utmost importance that children should be

made aware of the troubles around the world

which are the outcome of arbitrary beliefs and

attitudes acquired uncritically since infancy.

Thus by learning to govern their memory

rather than allowing it to govern them, they

may enjoy the optimum command of their

destiny that is open to them. Control of what

goes into the memory requires a philosophy

of life, the acquisition of which is an essential

part of education. We can only be ourselves

if all our beliefs and values are tested by our

intelligence and conscience.

Hello world!

allanmcleod — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:01:57 +0000

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!