Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

Beyond The Mirror – A Bill Allin Column

April 13, 2007

What Is The Truth? (Part 15)
by Bill Allin

[Caution: What follows may be offensive to some people because it is based on fact, reason and probability, not on an established belief set (religion). If you are offended by anything that does not support your belief set, you should choose to not read this article.]

Religion and Superstition

How can we distinguish between the religion we believe in and superstition? It’s quite easy. What we believe is religion and what others believe is superstition. What we believe is true and what others believe is distorted, if not actual hogwash.

Anyone should have no difficulty in amassing mountains of evidence that the belief sets of other people who do not agree with our beliefs are superstition. One dictionary defines superstition as "an irrational belief arising from ignorance or fear." Every belief set has that, both ignorance and fear.

The trouble is that your belief set combines many fundamental beliefs on which it is based that a large majority of people in the world consider to be irrational and created out of ignorance or fear. It doesn’t matter what your beliefs are is this case.

Is your belief set (religion) nothing more than superstition then? By definition, if what you believe is based on ignorance or fear, it’s a superstition. No matter what may be true and factual about your belief set, if ignorance and fear are part of it, it’s more superstition than true religion.

All religions began from ignorance of how the people and the world began, what position we have in the world and what we should do with our lives. Superstitions were created/devised by ambitious individuals who gained great favour and power among their people by giving answers to unknowable questions.

Moreover, that power did not come from physical strength, military might or intellectual wizardry, the power base standards that are more recognized even today. It was granted by ignorant people who deemed as holy those who claimed to have answers that they claimed were given to them by God. If these holy people claimed to have seen a vision, their power base was secured and assured.

The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) took up the challenge of finding fear, making God a jealous and fearful deity and threatening non-believers and those who would not submit to the will of the religious leaders with eternal damnation in Hell. Hell was a concept they conveniently devised as a way to threaten doubters and non-believers with the worst kind of prison the human mind could imagine.

In fact, it seems entirely possible that the concept of eternal life after death was dreamed up after the concept of eternal damnation. After all, the good people had to live in joy at least as long as the bad ones had to live in the torturous underworld.

That is not to say that humans will not have eternal life after the death of their earthly body. It is to say that the various concepts of heaven were created to offer the most wondrous beauty and peace that the human mind could imagine, just as hell was to offer the worst.

Most of any religion was devised out of superstitions to attract the faithful to its beliefs and threaten the "others" with a fate worse than death. What is true and good about any religion—every religion, almost—it has in common with the others.

Islamic terrorists are taught that if they die in the war to save Islam (a.k.a. suicide bombing) they will be greeted by 72 virgins who will be at their service for all eternity. Obviously nonsense, but ignorant and fearful people believe it. They may be educated, but that doesn’t mean they are without fear or ignorant of essential facts about their religion.

Christians are taught that they will receive wings in heaven, an interesting concept because no one is certain why entities that are pure energy would require physical (decidedly corporeal) wings. They are also taught that the streets of heaven will be paved with gold. Gold too is a solid material known on earth and valued by humans because of its beauty and it special properties, not characteristics would lend themselves well to a world of energy components.

Jews are uncertain about heaven, though they seem to greet warmly the possibility of its existence. Their holy books tell of prophets who ascended into heaven, but they are not clear about what goes on there or who will be there.

And what will the residents of heaven do? Interestingly, nothing, according to any holy book I have read. Except perhaps to go for walks on those golden streets. And meet with their dead relatives, friends and spouses. Christians who have had more than one spouse apparently get to choose which they will reunite with in heaven. Those who hated their parents or relatives will get along with them in heaven. The teachings about religion about heaven get more absurd than that.

My impression of heaven is that it would be the most boring place I could imagine. There would be nothing but joy all the time (in which case we would fail to appreciate it after a while, a common human frailty) and nothing to do but vegetate.

Do you see how people with creative minds have filled yours with just enough things that are considered temptations on earth that you can do to your heart’s content, forever? Gold, unbridled sex, even flying (wings, remember?) are all sinful desires of earthly humans. In heaven they become the rewards.

Few seem to see the hypocrisy of that. What is sinful on earth is a reward in heaven. If, as Einstein said, God does not play dice, and if heaven is as the clerics of Islam and Christianity have declared, then God certainly must have an illogical mind.

Not so. The superstitions are illogical. Keep what you believe real and rational. As you read earlier in this series (and can read again on my web site), eternal life is real, proven by science. It’s simply not the nonsense we have been fed about what life will be like after death. That nonsense could not possibly be real because it doesn’t make sense within its own context.

You may not know for certain what the future holds for you after death. But you know that your physical body will rot or burn. So what is left must be energy. What you do with your energy while you are on earth may well determine what your energy will be doing after the death of your body.

The physical body you have on earth is a mere carrier for your energy (or soul, spirit, essence, whatever you want to call it). If you want it to be useful after you no longer have your physical body, then have it use your physical body while you are on earth to do things of value.

Don’t wonder what joys you will have in heaven. Get busy with the joys you can give to others while you are here. The joy you give to others while you are here on earth will give you greater rewards than the happiness you seek in other ways.

Leave the important decisions about how your spirit will be used after you die to…you know.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a book about real and inexpensive solutions to personal and community problems most people think are inevitable evils of modern society. They aren't. We just have to look in the right place.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Contact author Bill Allin at turningitaround@sympatico.ca