Hello everyone,
I am already a member/donor of Atheist Republic, and this is my first post on the public forums. First and foremost I wish you all well and hope to begin a discussion on what I find to be a principle humanitarian problem - that is one of "belief" and how it is used to identify/define a person, body and/or 'state' such that if the "belief" is undermined (if even altruistically), the individual(s) subscribing to that "belief" either take it personally and/or as a directed attack and thus respond in kind as if. This is creating nothing but perpetual conflict - the root of which I will end with.
I encountered the problem of "belief" after meeting a friend who was a "believer". At this time I did not know anything about their religion, and was myself not religious. They told me about traumas they suffered first when they were very young and as well as while they grew older, and I became upset such that I wanted to understand how such a person could have endured that kind of abuse. Ultimately, I found the answer - it was "belief". At the time I believed it was a particular "belief" (ie. to a particular religion) but after we went separate ways, I asked the question 'from whence (all of) human suffering?' and have been working privately for approx. four years to this end, and will be launching my findings on Thinkspot when it goes live. I have learned enough Hebrew to read the book of Genesis to circumvent the religious claims that the Bible has been altered, thus starting from scratch, and have researched enough of the Abrahamic religions and their histories to make my case undermining "belief" as having any virtue in it such that persecutions on the basis of lack of "belief" are absolutely criminal. This in response to the ongoing persecution of "unbelievers" for not "believing" assertions that are certainly false, while the persecutors claim to be the ones persecuted (backwards). There is a great deal of this happening - blaming others for one's own crimes and having "believers" condemn and attack the wrong people for it, based in ("belief"-based) hatred.
The problem of 'from whence human suffering?' certainly derives from the problem of "belief" in that a being can obviously "believe" something to be absolutely true, but in reality, it is absolutely false and/or dead wrong. After contemplating the Edenic problem, I came to understand: if a dichotomy of good and evil does exist (ftsoa), then certainly "belief" would be the agency required to confuse good with evil and/or evil with good (ie. a "believer" "believes" evil is actually good, as opposed to "knowing" evil is evil). Without objectively defining what good and/or evil are (an act I equate with the eating of the forbidden fruits) and letting them be according to a higher intelligence, "belief" would *still* be the agency required to confuse one with the other. This brought me to the problem of knowledge and how it might be distinct from "belief" in distinguishing correctly what is good from evil.
I recently went to the philosophy forums and raised this problem of 'knowledge', and according to philosophy as a body (as I gather) it treats all knowledge as "belief", but not all "belief" as knowledge. I argued against this and provided a working solution which reconciles good with evil as well as a solution for the original sin. These posts were removed without explanation despite a request for one, and I was later banned without being provided an explanation as to why. I will reproduce these solutions on Thinkspot if/when the time is right for myself and everyone else.
I realized that I had inadvertently stumbled upon the Edenic problem itself: there being two "trees"; one leads to life (everlasting) and the other death. Certainly: a "belief" can be designed to appear good, be pleasant to the senses (ie. sounds good) and any promise to bring one closer to 'god' would be desirable. Unfortunately, such "beliefs", while appearing as such, might actually be rotten from the inside-out and have nothing but suffering and death in them. I will attempt to explain this as best as a can, so please indicate if anything needs to be clarified.
Any "belief" taken as 'true', but is actually "false" that collapses into:
GOOD vs. EVIL
"BELIEVER" vs. "UNBELIEVER"
US vs. THEM
etc.
necessarily manifests death. This only comes about if/when a person designates something/anything as 'objectively good' (ie. a god, an idol etc.) and/or 'objectively evil' such that the person polarizes *for* their own "belief" in/as good and/or *against* their own "belief" in evil (of others). In other words, "believing"to know one begs the other, and vice versa. If a person designates something as evil, they will likely end up fighting against it. This mentality needs to STOP - it is precisely the activity warned against in the Edenic model - to "believe" to know good and/or evil, as it begs conflict.
However, that does not mean one can not 'know' good and evil - if one knows it, it is known (not "believed" to know) and there is no problem so long as one is not wrong and merely "believes" to know. The problem is if one "BELIEVES" to know it and is wrong, as an internal polarization occurs here based on that ignorance. This actually creates an inversion over time: evil appears as good, and good appears as evil such that if a person "worships" a "belief"-based lie, whatever is actually 'true' appears to them as a lie such that they become hostile and/or even are filled with hatred when confronted with the truth. As a result, they will tend to blame whoever is speaking the truth as spreading "hate speech" despite it being *them* who is hating. This occurs a lot when indicating that certain holy books or idols are not actually holy. Speech has the ability to stir the hatred in others, but the problem is not the one who stirs, it is the one who hates. They blame the hatred on the stirring because they can't face it in/of themselves. They must blame it on others.
This pathology of blaming others for ones own internal state is captured by the general expression 'psychological projection' wherein a being projects their own nature (to be condemned) as if belonging to another. In geopolitics, this is a conscious process that requires "believers" to "believe" that the accuser is somehow *not* the accused:
A is guilty of x.
A accuses B of x and convinces C to "believe" B is guilty of x instead of A, who is guilty of x.
If C were a "believing" witch mob,
and B were a political adversary to A,
A would use C to destroy B for crime x
even though A is guilty of x.
And this is one of the major problems of "belief" - it is the stuff needed to attack nation-states from within using their own people. This kind of warfare tactic is owing to a particular religion which would have no power on the planet if not for "belief" as I find their most principle "belief"-based claim regarding a certain book to be certainly false.
And so my finding that "belief" is the agency required to confuse good with evil (and vice versa) demands an alternative: to 'know'. One can know who, what, where, why, when, how and/or if *not* to "believe" in something or someone. These two possibilities, I find, reflect the two Edenic trees. I know not to "believe" that either the Torah/Bible or the Qur'an are the perfect, inimitable, unaltered, inerrant words of any god. These books are absolutely manhandled and the latter is particularly destructive because it perpetuates the above discussed dichotomy:
"BELIEVERS" vs. "UNBELIEVERS"
such that it will not stop waging war against "unbelievers" until all beings are "believers". The problem is, they use "belief" to have as many as they can "believe" that they (ie. the "believers") are the ones being persecuted at the hands of the "unbelievers". The opposite is actually true: it is the "believers" who are actively waging war against "unbelievers" while forcibly suppressing criticisms of itself and the idol it uses as a model to be emulated by the idol worshipers. It need not be said explicitly that this particular religion is the *real* root of fascist socialism, but they will blame it on Jews as Jews are the perpetual "scapegoat" for this religion. The religion is pure idol worship and a (dead) man is used as a model which justifies such things as polygamy, pedophilia and genocide. It is a complete inversion of good and evil, and "belief" is the agency required to do it.
I therefor find the root of all conflict in "belief" (ie. "us vs. them") being used as a force/agency to conceal what is true. The "belief"-based idolatrous religions of the world that advance male central figure idols are absolutely guilty of this, despite claiming to not worship idols. That certain religious idols have blood spilled over them should be the indicator that the idol/man is being worshiped. Spilling blood over dead men indicates idol worship and it is certain that hundreds of millions are already dead between Jesus and Muhammad alone - perhaps many hundreds of millions more if humanity does not sort out this problem of worshiping books and idols by holding them as infallible and/or protecting/shielding them from scrutiny. The root to fascism would be uprooted once enough eyes are on the latter - both Muhammad and Hitler used the power of the state against their political adversaries and later used it to commit genocide against Jews. It's the same force behind the attacks to AR, behind the social media censorship and behind geopolitical instability, including the global migrant crises and attacks against the U.S. from within, as well hatred generated for POTUS who obviously stands against this threat.
It all reduces back into "belief" in authority as truth, rather than "knowing" truth as authority. I know (not "believe") the root of this fascist mess, and do not mind calling those responsible out because I also know they are the ones afraid (understanding fear is superior to suffering it). They brand people racists, bigots, "Islamophobes", white supremacists etc. but these are all projections of what their own house is (accuser is the accused), and psychological projection, when understood, reveals everything one needs to know about such a body who blames, blames and blames in an ongoing state. When the finger comes toward them, they deflect, distract, slander and harass etc. and please rest assured I will always stand for the freedom and sovereignty of humanity and am not afraid of these people or to call them out for their crimes against humanity - beginning with the women whom they target and exploit first, as they always go after the most vulnerable.
To close: a quote from A'isha the "favourite" (?) wife of the so-called prophet.
"I have never seen anyone suffer like the believing woman."
After 1400+ years, there is still more truth in these words than in the entirety of the Qur'an which, despite being "believed" to be the perfect, inerrant, unaltered (and "final") word of god, is actually a man-made bloody mess - and doesn't it show.
Please feel free to discuss the problem of "belief" here - thank you and godless bless (just from me).
Subscription Note:
Choosing to subscribe to this topic will automatically register you for email notifications for comments and updates on this thread.
Email notifications will be sent out daily by default unless specified otherwise on your account which you can edit by going to your userpage here and clicking on the subscriptions tab.
Pages