On religion…

A way to explain the unexplainable.

Soren Kierkegaard opened my mind to the fact that articles of faith are impervious to reason. We have faith in many things we can never prove.

“More harm has been done to the collective human psyche by religion than by all the fucking and cocksucking since the dawn of time.”

~ George Carlin

The very idea of creating heaven here on Earth has turned the whole world into hell.

See ‘Notes on Religion’ and ‘The Universal Essence’

Also see Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) Chapter II

Most all religions and science are saying the same thing. There is an entity <insert> (god, Tao, nature, entropy, universal spirit, etc.) which forms/controls/manages/laughs at the universe and when man dies the <insert> (soul, spirit, aura, atoms, etc.) returns to the universal energy and continue existence in some form.

Science is saying basically the same thing.

We are all limited by our language. Some people use the word God because we don't know what other words to ascribe to these ideas or experiences.

Since ancient history, excellent source of power, validation of rule and effective form of societal control.

Organized religion usually involves dogma brainwashing and is thus philosophical suicide.

“But one can do more than that; one can try to re-create the world, to build up in its stead another world in which its most unbearable features are eliminated and replaced by others that are in conformity with one's own wishes. But whoever, in desperate defiance, sets out upon this path to happiness will as a rule attain nothing. Reality is too strong for him. He becomes a madman, who for the most part finds no one to help him in carrying through his delusion. It is asserted, however, that each one of us behaves in some one respect like a paranoic, corrects some aspect of the world which is unbearable to the construction of a wish and introduces this delusion into reality. A special importance attaches to the case in which this attempt to procure a certainty of happiness and a protection against suffering through a delusional remolding of reality is made by a considerable number of people in common. The religions of mankind must be classed among the mass-delusions of this kind. No one, needless to say, who shares a delusion ever recognizes it as such.”

~ Freud

“Religion restricts this play of choice and adaptation, since it imposes equally on everyone its own path to the acquisition of happiness and protection from suffering. Its technique consists in depressing the value of life and distorting the picture of the real world in a delusional manner — which presupposes an intimidation of the intelligence. At this price, by forcibly fixing them in a state of psychical infantilism, by forcibly fixing them in a state of psychical infantilism and by drawing them into a mass-delusion, religion succeeds in sparing many people an individual neurosis. But hardly anything more.”

~ Freud

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

~ Voltaire

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

“In choosing your god, you choose your way of looking at the universe. There are plenty of Gods. Choose yours. The god you worship is the god you deserve.”
~ Joseph Campbell

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

~ Steven Weinberg

“He who possesses science and art also has religion; but he who possesses neither of those two, let him have religion!”

~Goethe, Zahme Xenien IX

This saying on the one hand draws an antithesis between religion and the two highest achievements of man, and on the other, asserts that, as regards their value in life, those achievements and religion can represent or replace each other.

~ Freud, From Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Ch. 2

Psychiatrists are the least likely of all physicians to be religious.

When Jung was asked, “Do you now believe in God” he responded, “I don’t need to believe…I know”.

Panpsychism for me?

The perceived material world is conscious in varying degrees and rudimentary consciousness a fundamental property of matter. I believe every electron is conscious, not that it has emotions, but it has the experience of what it’s like to be an electron. The more complicated structure these atoms make, the more complicated the experience/consciousness. I don’t believe cells can magically create a nonphysical world of experience; consciousness has to be a fundamental law of the universe created at the same time as the big bang. Therefore, it’ll still be there once we die, albeit not like anything we could possibly begin to imagine experiencing.

Articles of faith are impervious to reason.