KNOWLEDGE
We use numerous words to indicate we know something: Knowledge, reason, religion, science, intelligence, experience, cognizance, perception, apperception, awareness, understanding, comprehension, education, learned, enlightenment, erudition, etc. Clearly, the apperception of a dumb-downed American populace aside, we all want to acquire knowledge. At the same time we all recognize the human mind has limitations, any total reality being beyond reach.
Science and religion have always been sort of uneasy bedfellows. Some things we can prove, other things we just have to believe. I can accept this up to a point. It is ok to believe a certain team will win the championship, that a certain marriage is likely not to last, that a certain politician will win an election etc. I believe a lot of things and accept the limitations of a belief. But I balk at formulating religious principles based on inheritance, or the written dictates of some human centuries ago, or on fabricated rituals, or worship in fancy cathedrals, or involving any salaried hierarchy of weirdly dressed titled designees of supposedly superior religious status. This degrades religion into some sort of inheritable voodooism.
Like most other areas of conceptual understanding religion should be a dynamic, ever growing and changing perception of principles which shed enlightenment on the meaning of life and relationships between the planet and all the living species on the planet, including of course the proper interrelationships between humans. The guiding tool for forming religious beliefs should always be reason. Most every human, at least at a basic level, understands right or wrong. If they don't they are some sort of psychopath, which of course is a mental disorder. The problem, almost always, is finding the conviction to sacrifice personal inclinations for the betterment of society for all members of society.
Today there stands out in my mind two overriding concerns regarding religion. First is the concept of community. Earlier in history a community was a small village. This then expanded to some kind of larger state or nation. Then nations began to form alliances and community became a larger and larger concept. Today, with modern means of rapid communication and travel, we live in a global community. In a practical way religion can then no longer be centered primarily around a small community as much earlier in history. This makes the application of religion more difficult. Unfortunately, at least in regards to our own country, a sense of community has gone by the wayside (for many reasons) and has been replaced by 'family values', which means for most that community has been reduced to simply a first generation family unit----a sort of focus on the needs and feelings of one's immediate family. Meaningful interaction outside of this small unit is becoming less and less. Neighborhoods and towns have little relevance to human interaction anymore let alone any feeling of responsibility for any global community. Thus, we find ourselves living in a global community but isolated into self centered family units. Second, there seems to be a growing tendency, I suspect from the loss of any sense of community, for people to use narrow inherited religious precepts to attack others---either physically or with oppressive laws. This just adds the ultimate fuel to violence as the solution for conflicts of most any sort.
To me, any kind of legitimate use of religious beliefs cannot lead to violence as a solution to anything. History and reason clearly have demonstrated that violence begets violence; that successful violence just begets revenge and revenge begets more revenge and just like that you end up with situations like in Ireland, Afghanistan, Iraq, and an increasingly growing number of other spots across the globe. Overpopulation and poverty may be the incendiary causes, but religion often provides the emotional level for the rage. It seems whenever there is war, there are always religious priests of some sort blessing combatants on both sides of the conflict, each side totally convinced God is on their side. If it weren't for the human massacre these war scenes would be comical, especially the tough talk by non combatant leaders. When a leader has a past of avoiding battlefield adventures himself, the tough talk is downright cowardly. I always think of Teddy Roosevelt who thought early in his life that wars were the greatest adventures, a true test of manhood. With Teddy, if there were no war he would start one. But to his credit he always wanted to be, and often was, on the front line. After losing three sons to war he later decided war wasn't such a great thing after all. I suppose better late than never. Then there are those people who find the adrenaline rush of battle as rewarding as those daredevils who engage in all sorts of dangerous hobbies. If allegiance to war as a solution to conflict is a measure of patriotism, then these warmonger addicted citizens are the best patriots of all. They are more than willing to risk their lives---their country, right or wrong.
Accepting reason as the basis for formulating religious convictions does not lead to any uniform end point. After all reasons are not the same thing as facts. I would like to think otherwise, since I am not that good at math, but it seems almost all reality in our created world follows mathematical laws of some sort. Some of these mathematical equations are formulated centuries before their reality in nature is finally demonstrated. Amazing. I wonder if all the mysteries of nature will eventually be proven to be described by some sort of mathematical formula. All these constantly moving molecules which create the orderliness of our universe are all moving according to the dictates of mathematical equations.
The question then begs: what can we know about religion from reason?
Here things get a bit personal. Humans don't all reason alike. Lot of stupidites abound except you and I----and sometimes I wonder about you. But for me it starts with the existence of a Creator. Ok, I can't see the Creator, I can't know the Creator, I can't talk to the Creator, but I am surrounded by the results. If someone sends me a gift it is irrational to believe there is no sender. I know, some people claim they talk with God all the time, know him well. To me this is delusional since they can't present the smallest evidence of any such relationship. This is not to say such a delusional unreasonable (in the absence of evidence) stance does not make them feel better. Maybe in some sense it does make them feel better (mostly a holier than thou feeling) but these devout fundamentalist inherited beliefs also seem to make any holder angry and intolerant. For the most part, these are not fun people to be around. They always seem to seek opportunities to go after 'heathens', of course in the name of God, and they have a long list of people they want nothing with which to do. This kind of mental state is just further proof of how delusional their purported personal relationship with God. To the best of my knowledge there is no documented evidence that these people who claim such a close relationship with God ever suffer less from disease, accidents, victims of crime,divorce, social or career success than the general population. Thus, there is no reason to think their purported relationship with the Creator has given them any advantages or protections in their earthly life. I guess they might reply that, "well I am going to heaven, you are not". My guess is that it would be useless to press for any evidence from them for such a statement, other than to get their reply, "It is true because I say or feel so".
At any rate I assert here it is reasonable to believe a Creator exists for the logic expressed above. If I have the ability to create or make something and I don't like what I make, I destroy it---discard it. What I like I keep. It seems reasonable to assume God likes His created evolutionary system of life. I include the word evolutionary because there is plenty of reasonable scientific evidence
for evolution. Believing both in God and evolution as well has a reasonable basis. The limitation to using reason as the basis for religious beliefs is obvious: there is far more to reality than what is accessible to our senses. Still, the alternative is to guess, to simply feel, to inherit beliefs, or----even worse---generate beliefs which promote your own welfare or justify your own advantages in life at the expense of others existing without such benefits. Of course, it is not so unreasonable to insist "only I count, that others do not, that the goal is to simply make sure my own existence, as ephemeral as it is, is as pleasant and rewarding as it can be". But can a person really be happy in life with such a selfish focus? I tend to keep a respectable distance from those motivated in life by materialism, wealth, power, control over others, etc.---all the goals which promote the welfare of self at the expense of others. I have always kept a certain distance because my own observation has been that these sort of people are not happy campers and I have been around, in varying capacities, a small army of them. Every time I allowed myself (it isn't always avoidable) to get caught up in their world, life became unpleasant---filled with pressures, competition, endless manipulation and pre-empting, revenge, outsmarting, etc---all of which make life unpleasant. Thus, to me, there are reasons why one can elect not to promote the welfare of self at the expense of others, and it is a selfish reason---it does not lead to a state of happiness. If this is true then why do so many go down that road? Well, it is really an addiction just like other addictions. Addictions rarely lead to any state of lasting happiness. All addictions lead to highs, then it takes a greater level of addiction to get a good high and each high is followed by unpleasant lows; the greater the highs the greater the lows---and boom just like that your life is wrapped in a roller coaster of increased misery. Be careful for what you wish.
Part 2 to follow at some point.
