Hello everyone! My name is Beymer and I am the author of the newsletter “Figuring Things Out”. I just completed eight articles related to music composition and although I have much more material to present, I believe a better medium for this is YouTube. So, I’ll revamp the articles here and continue on with the new material with that medium. The next series of articles on Substack will be about another subject, which just like music, is something I know nothing about. The new subject, religion, is something I also want to understand how it works; but unlike music, I don’t want to compose any religions … I do believe there are plenty of religions out there for just about any lifestyle you may have. My hero, Donald Trump, was a godsend for lazy, budding, wannabe authors, like myself. The truth is irrelevant; what matters, is what people believe. There is no longer any truth: There is only belief: Anything that conflicts with a carefully crafted belief is quickly labeled as fake news. Write whatever you want to write, whatever you believe. Don’t waste time researching for the truth … there is no truth … there is only what I and you believe. The truth be damned! Being a Libertarian, who votes mostly Republican, I must say I am very unhappy with his usurp of the Republican Party, but as a wannabe author, thank you Trump! A famous saying about statistics: There are lies, damn lies, and statistics! Perhaps an addendum to this saying is in order: There are lies, damn lies, statistics, and then there is trump! OK, before you bombard me with hate mail, let me state that all politicians are by nature purveyors of “fake news” … didn’t really want to label them as liars … that wouldn’t be nice! I’d say that all the presidents, democrat and republican, for the last 60 years fall into this category. Trump is a more recent example and perhaps one of the meanest I can remember. Perhaps the only exception to this would be President Jimmy Carter. Unfortunately, to the nation, he was perhaps the worst President we’ve had in modern history. Maybe he would have been more effective had he been more of politician and less of a moral man. Of course, as far as I know, he was the only President to admit to lusting and committing adultery (a sinner) in his heart many, many times! I don’t believe Kennedy and Clinton ever admitted this. Of course, they did much more than just thinking about women other than their wifes! OK, I think I’ve done enough of a disclaimer here, but let me explicitly say about my knowledge and understanding of religion: “I see nothing, I know nothing, I hear nothing, and I feel nothing!”. However, I choose to be the monkey who says something about religion!
First of all, what is a religion? I googled “religion” and found this on “Dictionary”:
“The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power. A particular system of faith and worship”.
I googled “belief” and found this on “Dictionary”:
“An acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists. Trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something.”
I googled “worship” and found this on “Dictionary”:
“The feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity. The acts or rituals that make up a formal expression of reverence for a deity; a ceremony.”
I googled “faith” and found this on “Dictionary”:
“The complete trust or confidence in someone or something. Strong belief in a deity or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.”
The key descriptions here are faith, belief, worship and deity. Now, compare this to the definition I got from “Dictionary” for science:
“The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.”
The key descriptions here are intellectual, practical, systematic study, observation and experiment. Now, these two things (for lack of a better identifier), religion and science, are often pitted against each other as opposing armies. Often, you read or hear a practitioner of religion donning a hat of science in an attempt to recast religion into a more intellectual thing. Such attempts are of course futile … belief and faith can never be associated with an intellectual pursuit of knowledge, based off observation and experiment. In fact, any questioning at all of religion or religious practices can lead to in the extreme case the deaf of the questioner of a religion!
Must science and religion be at each other’s throats? I say no! Is there anything wrong with having beliefs? I say no! Is there anything wrong with having faith in someone or something? I say no! Is there anything wrong in believing in a deity or a collection of deities that have influence upon the world and your life? I say no! So, what do I “believe” the source of the struggle between religion and science? Well, the struggle occurs when a religion expounds an idea that has been shown to be doubtful based off common sense, observation, and/or experimentation. I think the biggest problem is that those who wrote the religious texts lived in a time when much, much less was known about life and the world around them than we know today thanks to science. As a result, they wrote things in their texts that are in direct conflict with what we know today. This is a source of major internal conflict with fundamentals, who believe such texts were written under control of a deity and hence must be true. If it is written by men inspired by God, then it must, each and every word, be true. Fundamentalists get around this by forming a protective shell in their brains that shields their religion from the attacks from science, while simultaneously enjoying the fruits of technology made possible through scientific (not religious) endeavors.
So, what am I saying here in this first of a series of articles on religion? Well, purveyors of religion need to chill … they need to stop pushing ideas that directly contradict what is commonly accepted today. Faith, belief and worship, by nature, do not need to be proven or cloaked in scientific garments. If believing in some deity helps you to live a better life, then that’s great! If following a particular lifestyle makes you feel better about yourself, then that’s great! But this is your choice, and you shouldn’t judge those who disagree with your lifestyle. Doing so subjects you to being judged and the resulting stones that are exchanged may be more damaging to your home than theirs! What about those purveyors of anti-religion, you may say? Well, they need to chill, too. I believe much of this anti-religion activity is motivated by fundamentalist activities that use force and violence against those who disagree with them. The anti-religion activities are motivated by those who have grown tired of passively tolerating views flaunted upon them that make no sense to them. It’s ok to have a lifestyle or belief that deviates from common acceptance or common sense; however, when such ideas are flaunted upon someone, well, that’s not ok.