EARTH MEANDERS God Pollution Irrational belief in ghosts and gods detracts from ecological and evolutionary science based solutions required to sustain creation
Earth Meanders by Dr. Glen Barry, [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://earthmeanders.blogspot.com/ April 16, 2008 I am an atheist. And I believe strongly that irrational worship of invisible ghosts and absent gods impedes humanity from taking responsibility for and fashioning a just, peaceful, equitable and sustainable world. By finding comfort and an all-encompassing worldview in bizarre millennia old illogical cults, humanity rejects ecological science and re- emergent intuition of the need and how to protect their Earthly habitat. Reading Richard Dawkins' book "God Delusion" has made it abundantly clear to me that there is no god and religion is evil. Personal spirituality seeking the sacred is one thing, mass cultural mind-washing that insulates from ecological and other truths quite another. I share an equal disdain for worship of all false ancient long dead prophets whose myths have lead to conquest, war and misunderstanding of the human family's logical and truthful place within the world. Rituals that connect us with observable reverence for nature are more defensible as they are grounded in observable reality. The history of the world's organized religions is one of genocide and ecocide. Contemporary religious mediocrity stifles progressive policies worldwide required to reduce population, deforestation and carbon emissions while equitably feeding, educating and meeting other basic needs for all. Evolution and ecology are fact, gods are unknowable make believe, and their belief is pollution stifling truth and killing the Earth. For the past few hundred years tremendous progress has been made in understanding the cosmos, biosphere and panoply of life within which we live. Yet despite benefiting materially from science, most humans continue to depend upon a dizzying array of medieval superstitions to guide their lives. Why bring this up now? Because truth matters. Either there is a god or not. Either we need ecosystems to live or not. Either humanity will evolve and reject false beliefs obscuring truth or not. Either we will change to sustain ecosystems or not. Superstitious worship of mythological beings hinders protection of the Earth and knowing reality, providing false comfort as the world is faced with hunger, war, abuse and an end to human and Earthly existence. Weak-minded and often bitter believers in ghosts and fairies, embracing conflicting unknowable faiths, each having their own book of literal truths, are destroying the one very real and critically threatened creation -- the biosphere and ecosystems that demonstrably exists before our very eyes. If anything, I have a propensity to worship or at least connect spiritually with creation because any logical free-thinker interested in truth can see there is no creator other than evolution, and our dependence upon ecosystems for our existence makes them the ultimate truth. Religion has made apocalyptic Earth a self-fulfilling prophecy. Too many people of faith take the end of the world as a given and indeed rejoice in the myth they will then be whisked to paradise. A belief in ghosts and angels, and particularly the inevitability of the end of the world, hampers identification and implementation of sufficient responses required to embrace global ecological sustainability. This belief in mythical beings and pious expectations that the world will end, and embracing this as being desirable, makes addressing current ecological and social crises nearly impossible. I have made some pretty dire predictions here concerning ecological crises and inevitable collapse. But I hope I am wrong and am working very hard with others to escape this destiny. Now is a time for cool, rationale thinking based upon all knowledge and learning ever gathered and yet to emerge, rejecting religion in favor of science, and a deeper first- person intuition of the meaning of life including survival of our and other species. We must not depend exclusively upon millennia old writings and antiquated belief systems from another time and place that have been translated and transmitted orally for so long that they are virtually incomprehensible and simply bizarre. There is nothing truthful or holy about a religiously foreordained end of the Earth. Destruction of the Earth's ecosystems is entirely human caused and need not be so. Even medieval people sensed the world was changing, and made these predictions. But they are not ordained by god, they are caused by our societal and personal decisions. God pollution is destroying being. There have been times in my life where it would have been nice to have irrational faith. Growing up in a family rife with childhood sexual abuse and as a survivor myself, I saw little of god. But I find similar comfort in knowing and speaking observable, knowable truth. The Earth is alive, we are part of the Earth, yet our actions are destroying her. Another such truth is there is no god. Now let's get on with saving ourselves and our habitat. ******************** Dr. Barry is founder and President of Ecological Internet; provider of the largest, most used environmental portals on the Internet including the Climate Ark at http://www.climateark.org/ and http://www.EcoEarth.Info/ . Earth Meanders is a series of ecological essays that are written entirely in his personal capacity. This essay may be reprinted granted it is properly credited to Dr. Barry and with a link to Earth Meanders. 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