[vinnomot] Humanism and Spirituality: (Intro 2): Rejection of fictional supernaturalism

 

Developing Human Potential Without Religion

 

Part 2: Humanist rejection of a fictional afterlife

It is a fact that there is no sound reason for the acceptance of the existence of an Allah or God. (The 19th Century Deists believed that a supernatural power might have created the univrse but that such supernatural power doesn't run day to day affairs of the world, otherwise there wouldn't be such horrors and evils as we see in wars, crimes, genocides, earthquacks etc ; notwithstanding all this,  if such a supernatural power did exit and did create the universe if at all, such creator is not necessarily the Allah of Bedouins Arabs and Muslims or the God of Christian or Jews. However, if a creator is really necessary for everything,  then who created such an Allah or God. Moreover, one cannot base all one's real « Faiths and Beliefs, Philosophy of life, Ethics and Morality » on the blind assumption or presumtion of the existance of a fictional supernatural power; notwithstanding the fact that all religions have their own respectives Allahs or Gods who not only do not agree with one another on anything essential in their religions but ever so oftern inspire their followers to staret « The Clash of Religions », and Religious and Sectarian Warsculmionating in mass-murders and genocides. Humanists, therefore content themslved in matters of life after birth and before death, and base their Faith, Belief, Ethics and Morality and their Philosophy of life/Lifestance on solid and real facts of life like the real human beings, the solif physical world and the universe, and mind you the Humanists are more ethical, moral, rational and reasonable than the fundamentalist, extremist, narrow-minded, women-hating and illiberal believers of any religions as we know them). Therefore, theree is no sound reason for the acceptance of a fictional life after death. (As long as we are alive and have  our senses, death cannot come to us ; when death comes, we have no senses to percieve, sense or feel anything ; therfore the very concept of a life-after death is absurd, it is the life-before-death which is real and which really matters.) For the whole point of belief in an Allah or God is dependent on providing answers for the problems of imaginary existence beyond the grave. (However, the religions do not provide answers to the problems of innocent suffering and the reasons why the evil in life remains unpunished). Take away belief in an fictional afterlife, and the case for an Allah or God would collapse. Secular Humanism believes in the monism of the human self; that is to say, it does not believe in the concept of dualism of soul and body, or mind and body, but that the two dimension are essentially two qualities of the same one physical body-Monism. When the body dies, there is nothing that remains that can survive except the menory of our relationships amd deeds that may be called our spirit or soul. This is a belief that prevents any speculation to the discussion on the human existence being projected to another imaginary after-life. It asks of each human being the courage to face life's problems in the here and now, the courage to supply necessary answers and remedies. Happiness is of one's own making in this very world, not in any heaven "above the bright blue sky"-as the blue sky doesn't really exist, it is only the limit of our vision, the blue color being dus to gasses in the between us and the infinity. The people who believe in a an Allah, God or Goddess (or gods and goddesses) with whom they can have a personal (?) or impersonal  relationship are theists. They had been believing since long that that only Allah or God knows the answer to the problems, (while humanists through their struggle and insight have found solution of a lot many problems); similarly theists believe tha only Allah/God knows about the problem of innocent suffering and that rewards are in an imaginary heaven for those who follow the Church / mosque teachings like supporting the Roman Catholic Nazi Hitler's  mass-murdering of Jews, Blacks and Liberal Europeans, or killing Jews because it is written in the Islamic Holy book Quran!. To a humanist this is an anathema, an evasion of facing life itself: putting one's eggs in an imaginary afterlife basket to evade solutions in this life. According to traditional Christian belief you can do as much good as you can, give as much love to your fellow human beings as you can, but you will never benefit from this until you die as a devout Christian. (Islamic belief make some concession for good deeds but try to link it to the faith, anyhow). In Christinity, Islam and many other traditional religions, your rewards come after death. This means that Christianity, like Islam, is death-optimistic, but is wholly pessimistic about the reality of this very life. Some Christians are told that they ought not be self-assertive; they should, visibly, be humble in order to reap their rewards in some fictional heaven. But it might be claimed that the idea of personal reward in some imaginary heaven promotes lack of interest in this world and creates an egoistic self-righteousness, self-interest and elitism of being the chosen people; the good deeds one may perform is for one's own rewards. This evil is to be confronted both individually and collectively. The Roman Catholic theologian Teilhard de Chardin once described the Christian as "by right the first and most human of men (by which right ?)" (Biblio) , while Protestant Christians are told by Luther that that Jews are no longer the chosen people, ay they have been claiming but that « they, the Protestant Christinas, were the chosen nones » ; while Muslims are told by their fictional Allah that they happened to be the best nation on the earth. On the other hand, for the Anglican Christians only the Anglican Christians count as human being. Others are for colonozation, slavery, and masss-murders (see what these Christians did with the Auistralina Aborigines, American Red Indians, Africans. People of Inca and Maya Civilizations, and the Indians of the Indian sub-continent : Genocides, mass-murders, slavery, loot, plunder, inferior treatment etc. etc.). Such exclusive and elitist thought would not be rare in the thought of many Jewish, Christian or Muslim people even in the twenty-first century, each of whom have been told by their respective Allahs, Gods or Yahwehs that they were the chosen people and so they have been fighting and killing if not mass-murdering one another on this « Justification by Faith » ! To Humanists, this world is more important than the fictional hereafter one, for, if human beings do not know how to find values in life, then death will end all values. In the more secular world of today, there is perhaps less concern with the rewards that may be reaped in the fictional heaven, and more hope of a national lottery win or paying off a mortgage here in this world. But there are many who maintain the elitist view of reward in the imaginary heavens (whatever and whereever these may be), if the vicissitudes in this life can be faced with equanimity and blind-eye acceptance. After all, Monsieur Jesus himself, although concerned for the Jewish poor, the Jewish sinners, and the Jewish sick, had an irresponsible tendency to encourage amongst his followers to homelessness and poverty as swell as a rebellious political hatred towards Rome-the sovereign political power of his time, polotical rebellion being, a political/religious crime for which the Romans crucified him. Even when the Parousia, the imaginary "second coming" of Jesus, failed to materialize, the fictional the next world, rather than the present one, remained the more important than the real world ; what a nonsense ! Secular humanists reject this kind of negative view of the present existence, along with the concept of life in a fictional existence beyond the grave. The rejection of an anthropomorphic Allah or God who, after death, rewards and punishes those who worship or reject him respectively, is obviously bsurd and incredible medievalism. (Anthropomorphism is the attributing of human characteristics to a divine being, an animal or an object). Some Eastern Romanized religions believe in reincarnation. Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs call it samsara (pronounced sun-saa-ruh). In their view life is dictated by karma. Karma is the eastern religious "law" of action and reaction, cause and effect, by which an individual's actions combine to produce related results for that individual in the present life and the lives of future offsprings. Karma is both good -- resulting from good actions -- and bad -- resulting from bad actions. Such karmic causes, according to Eastern religions, stem from actions, speech and thought. Each individual is constantly making causes that will formulate into specific effects, and these effects will dictate the kind of personality, physical body, nature of class of birth and the whole life of an individual in the next generation existence. So everything that happens to someone is the result of past karmic actions (as in medieval religious thought of the West, the offspring of a man inherit the effects of his good or bad actions). The super-self i.e. the superego then, according to Eastern religions, is the very thing one has to lose in order to end the cycle of reincarnation of the results of evil deeds.  And since it was obvious to the Indian mind that individuals always seem to retain their individual psychological selves, each individual is believed to be trapped in samsara for aections before becoming free: the number of reincarnations is infinite. The corollary of such views may be  an enormous apathy to life. The Roman-induced class system of India is a religiously based one, and is related to the theories of karma and samsara. For only those with good karma are born in the higher of the four religious classes. Those who are not so good are born into the lowest, servile class, and the really evil ones are born outside the four-class system altogether. These are the Untouchables, who used to be called Pariahs, and Harijans. Although the Indian government has made Untouchability illegal since long time, those outside the class system continue to be the victims of Roman and Christianity induced religious prejudices, which were dully reinforced by the racisat and tribal, ignorant Arab Bedouins who later conquered and colonized Indian sub-continent. This is especially so in the rural areas, which are so prolific in India. How deeply rooted such prejudice is can be evidenced in the case of Sikhism. Sikhism is the newest of the established religions emerging from India in the fifteenth century. Its religious leaders condemned caste prejudice outright. One of the most sensitive areas of such prejudice lies in eating with someone from a lower caste. The founder of Sikhism instituted a communal meal called langar to be shared by rich and poor, and people of all castes. It is a custom that still exists in Sikh places of worship today. And since an Indian surname will tell a fellow Indian exactly what caste someone belongs to, all Sikh men were given the surname "Singh," or "Lion," and females, "Kaur," or "Princess." These, too, are retained today. And yet, caste prejudice is rife in Sikhism! High-caste Sikhs will generally not eat with low-caste ones; their places of worship are heavily caste based, and the surnames indicative of high castes are retained alongside Singh and Kaur. It would also be deeply offensive to the honour of a family if a son or daughter married outside his or her caste. These issues of religious class (called varna in India), and one's social birth or caste (called jati) do not uphold the dignity and value of each individual. It would be possible to develop one's skills and potential only in the context of one's class and caste. While it would be wrong to think that all Dalits are poor and all Brahmins_the Ramans or the Romans (Decendants of ancient Roman religious class in India who reached their through Alexandria during the time of the Ancient Roman Empire and are priviliged to be of the highest class) are rich. Indians generally see individual suffering, low status in life, poverty, or being bornas lower caste person as the karmic consequences of individual past life. There is little or nothing one can or should do to help someone else. All that can be hoped for is a better existence in the next life. So deeply is the reincarnation theory entrenched in Indian minds that even atheistic Buddhist strands like Theravada or Nichiren Buddhism accept both karma and samsara. That's why defining religion as belief in a divine being isn't possible, and why the humanist definition of religion as « belief in supernatural ideas and phenomena that lie outside the human realm is more relevant ». And belief in reincarnation is supernatuaral………. ……………………………….It is non-natural. We have no memory of past lives, we have no recollection that those we know lived with us before -- any more than it could be claimed someone has been to heaven to describe it for us in a travel brochure! Secular humanism believes that this life is all that we have, and we should therefore be optimistic about what we wish to do in it and what we are able to do in it. It is a positive view of life, with high expectations for individuals within it. Rewards are not in some fictional heaven; they are on earth, and they are necessary both for the individual in his or her own realization of personal goals, and for broader, societal and global benefit. What greater reward can a person have in life, than to know that he or she leaves behind at death some contribution to a better world? If there is no life after death one has to re-assess life in relation to the present. Death is final, and that makes life more precious. To have lived and lived well, experiencing the beauty of nature, love, hopes matured and hopes lost, the myriad opportunities that life offers, the complexities of interrelationships with other human beings, success, failure, the vicissitudes and joys of life -- these are the values the humanist sees as part of human self-development and experience. So death is the end of one's life and humanists contend that there is nothing beyond it except the memory of one's deeds; physical immortality is merely a myth. It is often a fear of death that makes people cling to nonsensical religious belief. The terrible thing about death is that we miss people who have died, but it usually helps to know that those who have died have led a full and fruitful life -- important dimensions of humanism. If there were no such thing as death and we could live forever, would we need to believe in an Allah/God? If fear of death and belief in Allah/God serves to make an individual put all his or her hopes in an afterlife instead of into this life, then that individual is only living in an illusion, merely a half of a life. Humanists face death rather well; indeed, it is somewhat easier to face death if there is no "long dark tunnel," no rebirth, no assessment and punishment of sins -- just, instead, non-threatening nothingness. The atoms of which we are composed exist in combinations only for the brief span of life that we have. When we die, those atoms are recycled for use in another form, and then in countless other forms in the evolutionary process. We are, during our life time, part of the nature, of the universe, and we become part of the nature after our death. Humanists believe that we do not need something supernatural outside our humanity to make sense of death. Death is a common denominator for all humanity; it cannot be ignored. But the best way to put it in perspective is to ensure that the life-before-death is full, fruitful, dynamic, self-evolving, and self-assertive in ways that not only enhance an individual life, but that also serves to enhance the society within which one is placed. As individuals we have so much potential. To be really humanist is to strive to realize, in one lifetime, as much of that potential as we, as human, can. There is only one life for each individual to live, then when the end is reached, it, the life, should have been fulfilled in whatever dimensions are right for any individual, and for society as a whole. There should be few regrets, and assurance that, while there may be some potential unfulfilled, the best possible efforts were made to develop as a full human being. The human being is an independent agent, one not dependent in any way on a divine agent for existence, for the way in which life is lived. Since there is only one life, and no fictional Allah or God responsible for the way it is lived, human beings have the potential to stand on their own feet and view existence and their role in it now, in the present.

 

 

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