Of Traitors and Religion

 'Sup? RSI's galore. Why does this body of mine lock up so fast?

Music:  Skyfall by Adele

I had a strange thought today. Hard to put it away, however, especially given my sci-fi bent, so I figured I put it down here.

Eseentially, the question is this:

Could those who worship a God be considered traitors to humanity?

The answer depends on what you deem the nature of God to be and, to a lesser extent, what his/her/its motives are.

For example, if you believe God to be the anthropormorphism of nature then, of course, there is no issue. God is essentially a metaphor and a metaphor can't, in and of itself, harm anyone.

But most people, and especially most church/mosque/synagogue goers, tend to believe God is a real, actual, physical--albeit intangible, invisible--being. They have to, otherwise what purpose is there to frequent a place who's sole existence is for the worship of such a being? And they believe it with their heart despite generally not thinking through the following questions:

Where does God live? What are his affiliations?

As a physical being, the answer in our hearts is not satisfactory as that's essentially another metaphor, like saying Elvis resides in our hearts. A more telling answer is everywhere, so let's think on that.

Everywhere essentially implies the entire universe, or Earth and everywhere else. Although this would be incredibly challenging for any organic being, dependent on the true nature of the universe of course, it could be possible for an immensely old machine. But that's irrelevant. The real issue here is that more of God is out there than is here on Earth, simply by scale and vastness of the universe. That is, there is no reason to consider that God has any particular loyalty or affiliation to Earth.

I am, of course, making the assumption that the bible maybe inspired by, or even written by, God, but there is no reason to believe it is the absolute truth of life and everything [see my last post An Open Letter to Christians].

So, God is not a human, and resides mostly in the wider universe or elsewhere, and we have no evidence to believe that He has put any particular stock in the future well-being of humanity. In fact, even the bible suggests that He has been particularly kind to us in the past. So, whether by track record, or logical extrapolation, we conclude that, at best, God would be indifferent to our plight, and could, given provokation, be hostile.

Why Support/Worship God?

Given that we know very little of His motives, His whereabouts, or even His nature, why do so many humans worship Him?

Some will suggest it's love. Thank you for creating us and everything else and all that. And for some people this is probably true. For many others the answer is fear. The fear of God's wrathful vengeance, the fear of eternal damnation in the afterlife, or the fear that he will wipe out humanity. In other words these people want to be on the winning side when God comes down hard on us.

Think on that for a minute. These people willing side with a foreign power against their own.

Now if, for example, I replace 'humanity' with 'American' and 'God' with 'North Korea' then most people will immediately see that an American siding wth North Korea to bring about the destruction of the US is a traitor to America. So why is it when we see a fundamentalist gleefully proseletizing about God wiping out humanity, we just grin and ignore it? Well, my own view is that most people, religious or otherwise, don't really believe in God as an actual being, they just think they do. But that's for another post.

Traitors then?

So I propose that, in many cases, religious fundamentalists could easily be considered traitors to humanity. Of course, following that reasoning, those who love and worship God to court His favour would be considered patriots, with the following caveat. A superior power may rule for a time, and courting favour for survival is a fine and useful end when necessary, but it does a great disservice to your species if you begin to believe the rhetoric and forget that you too can achieve great things.


Also please remember that this has just been a thought experiment. I find it interesting to follow to conclusion some of these ideas and who knows, they may find their way into a future novel. But for now...

Insight and longevity.