135 Life Principles: Life in America from a Different Point of View

RELIGION

Aren’t we fortunate to have a god like Apollo?

Man is by his constitution a religious animal. Edmund Burke.

Man is a spiritual being. Arnold Toynbee.

Man, God’s latest image. John Milton

So God created man in his own image. Genesis, 1-27.

Man has arbitrarily created a concept of a god in man’s own image. He has done this to satisfy certain wants and needs that are basic to him. Dale Stewart.

It is a well known fact that to avoid controversy, one must never discuss religion or politics. Therefore, Mr. Politically Incorrect (Dr. Stewart) is going to start these essays with my opinion of religion. Many of the principles discussed in later essays will be pertinent to conclusions that are drawn in these next paragraphs.

It has been estimated that since the beginning of time there have been some 10,000 religions established. Many have seen the light of day and passed into the shadows of oblivion eons ago while many of course are still with us today.

Since cave man days to the modern computer age the purpose of religion has stayed the same. Man has created a god or some gods, a system of religion if you will, to satisfy two basic needs. Man is the only animal who knows he is going to die some day. I strongly suspect many animals know they are going to die on the day of their death, or maybe the day before. Elephants will go to the elephant graveyard to die. Cats have been known to go to a dark hideaway to die. I am sure many other zoological examples can be given. But man is the only animal that knows he is going to die 50 or 60 or even 90 years before the event. And the bottom line is that we human beings just can not handle the thought that we must die someday.

How many so call atheists when personally encountering the grim reaper have put all past rhetoric aside and sworn that they have truly believed in God all of their life?

One recalls the famous line from a sermon to the American troops on Bataan by William Cummings: There are no atheists in foxholes. To put it bluntly, man is scared to death with the thought of his own death. So we have assuaged that fear of death by inventing a system of religion and gods (or god) that promises us life after death. Now that we have eliminated the fear of death, we can go on with our every day lives content with the knowledge that we (or at least our soul) will live forever!

The other purpose of religion is to explain natural phenomenon in the world around us. How did such a complicated machine such as the human animal come to be here in the first place? Simple. God made us.

Religion can satisfy many other needs of man over and above the two needs just stated. These can vary from one community of man to another and from one religion to another. But the two cohesive factors uniting every religion are a promise of a life after death and an explanation of the natural world that surrounds us.

Karl Marx told us that: Religion— is the opium of the people. Of course in Marx’s day there were only two classes of society, the very rich and the very poor. And the poor were indeed very poor. And there were a lot of them. There was no middle class. The poor led truly wretched lives. Often on the brink of starvation, in poor health, subject to every disease and illness that happened along, their life expectancy was all too brief. No better description of the life of the poor before modern social welfare systems were put into place has been written than Victor Hugo’s famous Les Miserables.

But the Opium, i.e. the Catholic Church, did provide a modicum of distraction for these people. No matter how distasteful life was, they were always comforted by the knowledge that there was a better life awaiting them when this earthly life was over. And for a few minutes each week they could forget their horrible existence here on earth when they were surrounded by the gold and glitter and incense and pomp and ceremony and glorious music of the Church.

Pomp and ceremony and strange looking implements were not the sole possession of the Catholic Church down through history. Consider the poor soul in the middle of the South American jungle. Same promise of a life after death, same ceremony led by a man adorned with feathers and animal teeth instead of brocaded robes and even the same music! Well at least the rhythm of the drums; you get the idea. The natural world was also a product of the gods for our jungle friend. The sky, the earth and the animals he hunted for food. All were products of the gods.

A perfect example of this ridiculous concept of gods creating our natural world can be found with the Roman God called Apollo. The Romans had no concept of the earth spinning in the cosmos creating the illusion that the sun actually moved. As far as they were concerned Apollo, the sun god, rose every day in the east and drove his fiery chariot across the sky and then disappeared in the west. Today we know better. We look back at the Romans and are amused at such quaint thinking. Ralph Waldo Emerson probably summed it all up with this famous quote: The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.

Today we laugh at the Romans for thinking that the natural phenomenon of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west was the work of a god. And then in the next breath we attribute natural world occurrences of today for which we do not yet have an explanation to a god. Of course today most of the world’s religions have thrown out the concept of the gods and have just settled on one god. They call him God.

There are two questions concerning natural world phenomenon that modern man contends with. First is the old creation vs. evolution question. How did modern homo-sapiens come to be? How did a barn owl come to be? How did a jelly-fish come to be? Etc. Almost everyone in the civilized world with a little bit of education and a little bit of common sense understands Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. How we human beings have evolved over eons of time from a simple single cell animal to the complex animal we are today is explained in a logical, orderly, stepwise fashion using Darwin’s principles. Can we explain every single step in the evolution of mankind? Of course not. Not today at least. Tomorrow? Who knows?

The second question concerns those parts of nature for which we still do not have a complete understanding. As we delve deeper and deeper into gene and chromosome research, there are many questions unanswered—well, unanswered to date.

The creationists, and a few scientists, simply say: God did it. Tomorrow, we will have figured out that question and no longer can we attribute that particular complicated problem to a god.

However, tomorrow will probably bring some new question about nature as a result of answering the first question. This new question will be no problem for the Creationists. They will simply say: We thought that old question was something that God did. But today it looks like the scientists have figured it out. Maybe we were a little off on that one. But now we have this new question. This new question is so complicated that surely only God could have done it.

Many years ago most biologists agreed that the more they learned about the biological processes that they were studying, the more they discovered what they didn’t know. Today with the completion of the human genome project, this may no longer be absolutely true. Yes every day we discover new things that we can not understand, but the world of the unexplained continues to become explainable in a slow, methodical, scientific, step by step pattern. Will we ever know everything? Will we ever be able to explain all that goes on in the world around us? That’s a possibility, but more than likely the answer is no. We shall probably never be able to explain everything that we observe in our natural world. But the point to remember is that for years many of the best and brightest of the Roman world bought the idea of Apollo driving that chariot across the sky. Just because they didn’t understand it, they attributed it to a god. No difference today. Just because we don’t understand something, we attribute it to God.

It must be pointed out however that not all Romans bought the Apollo concept. There were non-believers then as there are now. But the majority of people were very comfortable with the concept of a god being responsible for something that was otherwise unexplainable. It seems like religion was the opium of the masses two millennia ago also.

Life after death. This is the number one promise of every religion. We are on this earth for just a few years and then it is onward to a much better life, free of want and lasting to eternity. The Christians promise that you will be able to walk with Jesus himself. The Muslims promise 72 virgins for every martyr. I always wondered what Islam promises to Muslim women martyrs? Probably to never have a Taliban type of fundamentalist Muslim with his shaggy beard, long hair, dirty turban and reeking of body odor come near her. The Jews are probably promised to no longer be persecuted? The promises go on and on.

I’m sorry folks. I’m here to tell you; it ain’t gonna happen. All living things are born, live a life and then die. Some insects complete the whole cycle in less than 24 hours. A lucky Galapagos Island giant tortoise might make it to 150 years. A Sequoia redwood tree can live for two thousand years. Unfortunately Homo Sapiens only gets around 75 years, more or less. And this brings us to the main thrust of this book. You and I and everyone else on earth only get 75 or so years. Let’s squeeze as much as we can out of every one of those 75.

Man somehow has bestowed upon himself this concept of being different than all the other creatures in the animal kingdom. This is an absurd conclusion. We are all animals. We are no better or no worse than any other animal from a starfish to a walrus to a giraffe. Certainly other animals can jump higher than we (impala) can run faster than we (ocelot) are stronger than we (elephant) or can stand extreme temperature better than we (polar bear) The only thing we have that is bigger and better than any other animal is our brain. Of course by using this brain we are able to manufacture tools that allow us to jump higher than any other animal (helicopter) run faster than any other animal (automobile) be stronger than any other animal (fork lift) or withstand extreme temperatures better than any other animal (heating and air conditioning.) The next time you go to the toilet, or eat a meal, or have sexual relations, just remind yourself that you’re just another animal doing what comes naturally.

Our bigger brain that brings us such a high intelligence level also brings us another quality that sometimes works in our favor and sometimes works against us; our emotions.

We are thankful for the emotional part of our brain when listening to a Beethoven symphony, or looking at a Renoir painting, or petting little Fido, or kissing someone near and dear to us. But we must recognize the fact that all too often we allow the emotional part of our brain to overrule the more pragmatic decisions about life. I’m talking about decisions concerning the death penalty, abortion, stem cell research, prayer in school; all of the hot buzz word topics of contemporary life in America today. This is where I hope I can assist my fellow Americans to make informed, sensible decisions using the basic principles espoused in these essays.

I want to recount for you a very small part of the Dale Stewart genealogy. Ten generations ago, my G-8 grandfather (for all non genealogist readers out there, that’s the word grandfather with eight greats in front of it) was a Huguenot living near Le Mans, France, in the 16th century. A Huguenot was a protestant living in Catholic France. One night, in 1563, a bunch of Catholics attacked his home. They dragged John De La Fontaine out of the house and cut his throat. They did the same with his wife who happened to be pregnant at the time. A man servant living with the family suffered the same fate. His son, my G-7 Grandfather, who had the same name of James De La Fontaine, was 14 years old at the time. He managed to escape and took his younger brother and somehow, as a teenager, made his way to La Rochelle on the west coast of France which was a Huguenot stronghold and a safe haven at the time. Three people lost their lives because they did not worship the correct god.

Killing people because their god was not the correct god leads us to ask just how many people over the eons of time have been similarly executed. From the Romans throwing the Christians into the arena with the lions, to the Inquisition in the 13th century, to the so called Wars of religion in France in the sixteenth century (involving my Huguenot ancestor) to the Salem witch trials, to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, right down to the present day situation in the Middle East, the number of people killed for not worshipping the correct god is staggering. And all of this for such an arbitrary issue.

Getting back to Karl Marx’s —Opium for the masses. In America today more and more people are elevating themselves out of the masses. In other words our affluent upper middle class is getting larger every day. For the most part this is due to education. True there are self-made millionaires today with only a high school education or even less, but their numbers keep dwindling every year. As a general rule it can be stated that the more education, the more affluent the individual. And it can also be stated that with more education, religion becomes less important in the lives of these affluent people. Are they atheists renouncing the concept of a god? Not at all. As the years pass by, more and more highly educated people just can not buy this concept of a god and heaven and life after death and everything in the natural world being created in one fell swoop. But for the most part highly educated people still consider themselves religious to one extent or another. They accept the fact of evolution, but at the same time they still think there is a presence or some supernatural force behind everything. They will go to church occasionally, usually Christmas and Easter and possibly a few more Sundays in the year. If asked directly: Do you believe in God? They will respond with a yes. What they mean of course is their own personal concept of a god.

Personal concept of a god. This brings us to one of the main points of this essay. Every man has his own personal concept of a god and this should be respected. A major criticism of American Catholics is that they pick and chose which part of the Catholic party line they wish to follow. It goes without saying that the majority of American Catholics approves of birth control and makes use of it every day. The use of birth control in Catholic France is found everywhere today and even in Italy, home of the Vatican, birth control is spreading rapidly. The Church is very upset about this, but I say hurrah. Educated, self thinking Catholics, world wide, are conceiving of a personal concept of their god and acting accordingly. Again; hurrah for them.

I think one can generally say that as the amount of education goes up the religiosity goes down. Certainly there are highly educated men and women with advanced degrees—with multiple advanced degrees—who are extremely religious. But I say they constitute a definite minority. Occasionally there even surfaces a scientist with a PhD degree who believes in Creation! The so called Christian Right loves to trot these people out before the public and have them speak their conscious espousing Creation. What the Christian right does not tell the public is the number of PhD scientists who believe this way. Why I’ll bet there are at least two or three of them!

It takes intelligence to earn a PhD degree in any subject. But intelligence and common sense are two entirely different things. Most of the time highly intelligent people have common sense also, but this is not necessarily always the case. I’m no fan of George Wallace the former Governor of Alabama, but I remember during his campaign for President in 1968 when he made several references to people who were very intelligent, but didn’t know to come inside when it was raining outdoors.

Intelligence and common sense are not the only factors involved in making decisions about religion and a deity. Another factor is the so-called herd instinct pattern of activity of man. Down through the ages history has taught us that there are always a few men who rise to the top and become leaders. Most people never do this. Most people are not leaders, they are followers. They follow the herd. The herd instinct taken to the extreme results in what we today call an addictive personality. Why does most of society drink alcohol and never become addicted to it. Same question about narcotics. Yes there are a few—very few—people who can use heroin on a sporadic basis and never become addicted to it. The addictive personality leads an individual to become addicted to something that he finds extremely pleasurable. This can be alcohol, narcotics, gambling, sex, religion, etc.

Later, as the person matures and begins to think for himself and asks himself questions about religion, other factors begin to be more influential in his decision making. If he belongs to the majority of people, to the masses, to the herd, then no doubt he will not waiver from the religion of his parents. This may change however with increasing intelligence, increasing education and decreasing herd instincts. It takes a combination of all of these factors to make a final decision about what religious path to follow.

Besides upbringing, intelligence, education, herd instinct and addictive personality, there is one more factor that we must bring into the equation for making a decision on what religious path to follow. For lack of a better name I shall just call it, Inner Strength.

As we quoted near the beginning of this chapter: There are no atheists in foxholes. When the chips are down and man is staring at the grim reaper eye to eye, many an agnostic and I am sure several atheists too, will avow faith in a deity, just to make sure. All