Unreasoning belief, and the believers.

The believers, in all the monotheistic religions, and even that religion-without-a-god, communism, seem to have common characteristics, as do those religions.

All seem to suggest that religion is a very bad idea, and that religions, and especially their believers, will do certain unpleasant things.

In order to combat this pernicious mind-rot, I’m proposing some falsifiable tests for religions, and some suggestions as to what rational people should do about it.

A set of testable Propositions

1. No “god” can be detected - OR - God is not detectable
2. All religions are blackmail, and are based on fear and superstition.
3. All religions have been made by men.
4. Prayer has no effect on third parties.
5. All religions kill, or enslave, or torture.

What do those religions (including Marxism) actually DO?

How are they structured?

Never mind what they claim – what are their real, testable parameters?

For example, Marxist governments murdered millions in the name of their patent version of Marx’s holy truth – which was wrong, because the revolution was going to come to the most developed countries first – which was completely wrong …… Which sounds like a religion in its operating parameters to me.

From these propositions, certain corollaries, additions and comments arise. Let us examine each proposition in turn, and look at some of the implications and details.

1. No “god” can be detected.

{ - even if that god is supposed to exist. }

Not detectable directly or indirectly. No events or causations exist that are not explicable in the normal course of natural causes and random occurrences. This includes, most importantly, the information-flow that must pass to and from any "god", so that he, she, it, or they can themselves observe, or intervene in "their" universe. If there is any god around, then that information-flow will also be detectable. Where is it?

Please note, even if only for the point of argument (!) : - NOT "God does not exist". That is the viewpoint of the committed atheist, who believes an unprovable(?) negative, with as much evidence, or lack of it, as any deist believes in any sort of god.

This applies equally to any god at all: Marxist, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, etc….

Religions fulfil certain criteria. One of the most obvious is that of unalterable belief in the holy words of the prophet(s), whose word may not be questioned, and whose sayings must be learnt. People who do question these teachings will be persecuted, and possibly killed. This leads towards points 2 and 5.

Monotheistic religions, in particular, are mutually exclusive. A maximum of one of them can be "true". Their central beliefs and tenets make this so, and this also leads to points 2 and 5. The attempt by ecumenicals to blend or blur the distinctions between major faiths and sects, or to say, as they do: "We worship the same god under different aspects", will not wash. This is because the central core beliefs of each religion in the divinity or the divine revelation of their own leader(s), and the secondary nature of "other" prophets make them incompatible. What these relatively enlightened, but deluded people are looking at are the common ethical rules that should govern any civilised society. It is not a good idea to kill, lie, steal, or otherwise make one's self obnoxious. But, one does not need any god, or religion, to have these rules.

Believers appear to derive comfort from the statement that science cannot prove the nonexistence of god. They describe any attempt at such proof as an arrogant mistake. We are supposed to infer that an equal weight is assigned to the alternatives of existence and nonexistence, and that a believer is no less reasonable than a non-believer. It is amusing to extend this line of argument as follows by examples. Can a scientist, in his laboratory, perform an experiment demonstrating that there is no such creature as the mystical invisible pink unicorn? No. Can he deduce that conclusion from quantum mechanics, relativity, or the theory of evolution? No. Thus, is a belief in the mystical invisible pink unicorn intellectually respectable? No. Advocates of the science-cannot-disprove gambit are opening the door to unwelcome guests. The mystical invisible pink unicorn is only one example; don't forget the tooth fairy, or the Ming-period vase orbiting the Sun in an oppositional orbit, or …

2. All religions are blackmail, and are based on fear and superstition.

Religion offers a supposed comfort-blanket, or carrot to the believers, and waves a stick at the unbelievers.

“Do as we say, and you’ll go to heaven, don’t do as we say, and you’ll go to hell.” What they conveniently leave out here is the unspoken threat, which is only made manifest in those societies which are theocracies: “If you don’t do as we say, we can make sure you go to hell really painfully, and quickly.”

Thus all “priests” are liars and/or blackmailers. They may not be deliberate liars, but nonetheless, they are telling untrue fairy-stories.

Fear of exclusion from the community, in one form or another, is a standard part of the power-structure of any religion or cult. Excommunication, anathema, banishment, exile, fatwah, etc, … Fear of entry being refused in "the next world", or "the community of saints", or "the party". Fear of real physical punishment by the "secular arm", the NKVD, the Saudi religious police, or whomsoever the current set of spiritual thought police happen to be. Hence:

Corollary: 2a ] Marxism is a religion.

I believe Bertrand Russell was the first to note this, but the behaviour of both individual Marxists, and marxist organisations conforms to classical religious behaviour. For example: people read a set number of Trotsky’s saying each day, just as if he were Jesus, or Mahmud. Or appeal to “the historical inevitability of the revolution” etc …

A note on: "Mystical experiences", "Voices", and "Visions".

Most, if not all people who have these experiences, are merely sick unfortunates who are suffering from the physical diseases of Epilepsy or Schizophrenia (Ref. Saver & Rabin of UCLA Neurological Research Center). It is almost certain that Saul/Paul, Jeanne d'Arc and Mohammed were such cases.
Research initiated by Dr. M. Persinger, and now being undertaken by others as well, has clearly shown that religious experiences and visions can be artificially induced and stimulated under controlled laboratory conditions. Thus, religious experiences of this nature are reproducible natural phenomena, which can be produced or replicated on demand. There is zero mystical, religious, or any other form of otherworldly content. "Religious" brain activity is centred in the posterior superior parietal lobe - ( Newberg & D'Aquili of U. of Pennsylvania Nuclear Medicine division.)

3. All religions have been made by men.

Men, almost solely. Very rarely women, and hardly ever in recent times. The invention and continuation of religion seems to be the almost exclusive prerogative of males. Those women who have aided and supported religion seem to have done so either for their share of the power that religious authority seems to confer, or through external "conditioning".

It could almost be one of the tests for: "Is it a religion?". Does the belief-system not only kill large numbers of people "in the name of god", but also treat women as second-class citizens? It can either be explicitly, as in Islam, whose very name means submission, or by custom, practice, and the development of doctrine to that effect, as RC Christianity does.

4 Prayer has no effect on third parties.

(Ref. F. Galton; "Statistical inquiries into the efficacy of prayer."; 1872. )

I originally wrote that: “This should be given further examination, and fresh tests should be devised and performed”. This is where experimental, falsifiable scientific tests can be made, as they can for proposition 1. But, now attempts have been made to do double-blind tests over a reasonably large number of subjects. The results so far certainly seem to show that prayer has no discernible effect whatsoever.

Note that religious believers always say that both: (a) "prayer works" AND (b) "It doesn't work like that, and cannot be tested."
Why not? If prayer has any effect, or works at all, then that working or effect will be measurable.

Thus: (i) Prayer will affect first parties: those who are doing the praying. In the same manner that any organised directed thought by an individual may, and usually will affect the actions of the person thinking those thoughts.

(ii) Prayer may, and probably will, have an effect on second parties. People who are being prayed at, or over. Thus, even if the effect is to increase the resistance of the victim, it will have an effect. Typical examples would be: A group of Scots' evangelicals praying at / over a woman who has had a baby out of wedlock, or the condemnation of Shostakovitch for musical formalism in 1948

(iii) Third parties, who are not present, will not be affected in any way, provided they are not informed of the prayers. In other words, provided they are kept in ignorance of others' intentions. Some double-blind trials of this, similar to those used in medicine and experimental psychology have now been performed. The results are being carefully ignored into the ground by the believers.

Corollary: 4a ] There is no such thing as "Psi".

Similarly, any so-called "Psi" forces and supernatural powers have no real effect, or existence.
If these had any reality whatsoever, consider the enormous evolutionary advantage that such a talent, skill, or ability would give to any person, or any other animal, so endowed. No such advantage has ever been seen, or noted. The simple reason is that "Psi" is not merely a myth, but a possibly comforting lie. It is also a source of great exploitation of the gullible by stage magicians and unscrupulous fraudsters.

All of the above applies to "miracles" as well.

Thus ; superstition: - "If you pray hard enough, you can make water run uphill. ……… How hard do you have to pray? ….. Hard enough to make water run uphill, of course!" ( R.A.H.)

Hence, prayer is superstition.

5. All religions kill, or enslave, or torture.

To verify this, one need only read a very little history, or contemporary newspaper reports.

At this point, an excuse is always presented by the 'believers':

"They are ( or were ) not PROPER Christians / Muslims / Marxists / etc. …. We're different!"

Oh, yeah?

O.S.D. is still part of the Roman Catholic church, isn't it? Is Ian Paisley a Christian minister, or not? Are the Persian and Taliban ayatollahs clerics, or not? Were Stalin, Mao Zhedong and Pol Pot Marxists, or not?

Besides which, if these, and similar cases, are, or were not "proper believers", why do those proper believers never, ever do anything about it, except whinge?

So, we have another Corollary: 5a ] The bigots are the true believers.

There is a dangerous trap here. By fighting and studying the evil dragon of their opponent(s) and/or oppressors, a group, sect, or religion can easily become its' own evil mirror-image. Three current (2005) cases will suffice. I am sure any intelligent reader will be able to supply their own additional exemplars.
[I] Virtually everything Ian Paisley and his followers say about the RC church and its "evil" are true, and correct. But they have failed to see that they have also become a narrow, bigoted, bloodstained and oppressive reflection of the thing they most despise and fear.

[II] The previous Pope (John-Paul II) faithfully opposed the cult of Nazism, (or did he, really?) and the Stalinist version of Marxism. And, he became dragon too. Nowhere as evil as Adolf, or Joe, but a narrow, oppressive, censorious dictator, opposed to freedom of thought, reason, or logic, nonetheless. The current Pope (Benedict II), beautifully parodied by the magazine “Private Eye” as “Cardinal Ratpoison”, is even worse. His rampant homophobia, his apparent joining of the Hitler-Jugend before it became compulsory, his authoritarianism … need one go on?
[III] Persia / Iran, where opposition to the rule of the late Shah has produced a classic theocratic state. Of course, as always happens, an even more extreme movement, the Taliban, appeared in Afghanistan. Both these states have automatically enslaved half of their own populations - the female half. These are true "communities of saints", as were Calvin's Geneva, Cromwellian England, or Stalin's Soviet Union. Perhaps the best example of a total theocracy, where even when the personal representative of the people's enslavement dies, they mourn, rather than celebrate, is North Korea.

Some more thoughts on this topic.

If one looks at the actual record and behaviour of Christian "saints", or their equivalents in other belief-systems, one finds that most of them were complete egotistical bastards.

"Saint" Cyril of Alexandria ( Inventor of the doctrine of virgin birth ), Bernard of Clairvaux, Trotsky, and Joshua are all classic exemplars. People like that oddly matched pair, Saladin the Kurd, and Francis of Assisi are the exception, not the rule.

There is a relevant, subsidiary question.

What is a religion, what is a cult, and what, if anything, is the difference?

The only discernible real distinction is in the numbers of their followers, and the physical and political power that any one movement can wield. That apart, there appears to be no difference at all, particularly given the nature of the irrational rubbish purveyed by the major religions. An approximate measure has been humorously (?) suggested by the late J. L. Chalker: "When a cult converts more than 10% of a population, it is to be considered a religion."

Cults can, of course, arise as subsets of established religions or orders.
Current and past examples include:

The "Toronto blessing" and similar fundamentalist lunacies in Protestantism, Opus Dei, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the Hasisheen, the orders of flagellants or the stylytics, etc. …

It is very curious, that in most forms of Christianity, the teaching of Thomas Aquinas is official doctrine, but is almost never followed. Namely, that if the recorded "bible" says one thing, and careful experimental test and observation shows something else, why then, the "bible" is wrong.

In spite of this, in various faiths, we have all the usual irrational nonsenses. Concerning evolution, they say it is wrong, geocentric universes, female inferiority, the dictatorship of the proletariat, virgin birth, listening and writing down the words of angels reciting, etc.

How can you tell if it is a religion?

1: The body-count. If a large number of innocent people are killed in the name of the “holy cause”, whatever it is, then it is a religion, no matter what that particular set of true believers aver to the contrary.

2. Does it treat a sizeable section of the population as inferior? It is usually women who get this one in the neck, but not always or uniquely so. Think of “unclean” or “low-caste” or “kulak” as well.

3. Does the mention of Darwin or evolution send the fundamentalists into paroxysms? It is not just the more obviously brain-dead ( and therefore more faithful) christians who fulfil this test. Fundamentalist muslims will have no truck with evolution, because of the passage in the “Recital” about god creating man from drops of blood. (Blood origin, species, type, etc are unspecified.) The teachings of the priests of Krishna also try to rubbish evolution, and the ultra-orthodox jews believe in a “recent” creation. Marxism passes this test as well – the torture and death of Vavilov and other Darwinian geneticists in the Gulag being the example.

What to do about it? Suggestions for action?

Do not "oppose" in the traditional manner. This will only produce more religion, slavery, bloodshed, and the death of rational thought.

Against the dangerous and seductive lies, and organised blackmail of religious belief systems, and their simultaneous insistence on the partial, if not total suspension of ones' logical faculties, there are three effective remedies. They also apply to the exaggerated and hysterical demands for respect and reverence applied by all religions. This last demand, for “respect” is growing again, and is especially pernicious – the followers of Mahmud are waving this one in everybody’s faces at present.

FIRST:
The exercise of clear thinking and experimental test. Hence these five points. They have been deliberately framed as falsifiable, testable, experimental scientific hypotheses. Unless and until they are disproved, they must be assumed to be true, as the simplest explanation fitting the available facts.

SECOND:
Ridicule and "blasphemy". Systematic poking at the lies, mysticism and general nonsense purveyed by religions is the one thing they cannot stand. This, of course, is why the ridiculous idea of blasphemy exists in the first place.

After all, an omnipotent, omnipresent god does actually need protecting from a few rude remarks by mere humans. (?)

THIRD:
Never resort to violence, except in self-defence. To do otherwise lowers one to the level of the religious believers.