Driven to Satire.

Recently (like... yesterday) and elsewhere (like... in another blog) I wrote:

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News at eleven. God Resigns!

In a shock event, God appeared in a boiling cloud of light today and delivered a statement resigning from the position of deiety. Claiming that he was only ever intended as a stop-gap measure to comfort evolving humans until we developed the technology to discover physics and germs and continental drift to explain our existence and life's hardships, he's quoted as saying "It's entirely obvious that I'm doing more harm than good now, so the decent thing is let you all know that I'm bowing out." When God was asked whether he felt guilty about depriving so many people of the core of their belief systems, he said "Well, thanks to your state of scientific advancement, they have Prozac to turn to."
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The reason I wrote that is because with all the religion-based conflict in the world, I feel it's time god ceded to science in all things practical and logical. Personal beliefs? Wonderful, everyone is entitled to them. But when bickering over intangibles not only causes harm, but uses so many resources that we become incapable of recognising or dealing with other genuine issues, it's time for a reality check.

I look at religion in the modern world and it disturbs me. What does it do? What is it's function? Can we cull the destructive parts and keep the useful bits? Or are the destructive parts just too useful a means of rationalising our bad behaviour to ourselves?

I've said before and will undoubtedly say again, that I believe that sapient beings have the capacity for unsubstantiated hope to provide us with a higher meaning in a world where we can often logically see only ultimate futility. I feel that our evolution has changed modes from from biological to cultural - improvements in education and discovery now racing ahead of any Darwinian physioloical development. We've needed a sense of the mystical to give us hope, to explain the things that go bump in the night, to give us confidence to strive where others have failed, to justify our choices when they harm others. It's a very neat if dangerous trick.

But I'd like to think we've outgrown it.

We have education on scientific and philosophical matters. We need no Atlas to hold up the world. Or turtles, for that matter. Thor has been displaced by electricity. There is no need for a retributive god to terrify us into following peculiar rules and edicts from powerful indiviuals or select groups of rulers. We can behave ethically of our own accord - as long as a critical percentage of the population also does so.

The hard-wired irrationality that has allowed us to believe in metaphysical things to enable our species to develop to this point has always been dangerous. The capacity to believe in things we have no evidence of is inherently unstable. I believe that once you acknowledge that rationality is compromised, you'll notice that it's a matter of degree. And there is no compromise between sets of irrational absolutes. Christianity clashing with Islam is one example of such an impasse.

I'm so frustrated! We've moved beyond the point where our cultures must rely on ignorant, thousands of years old, superstitious, hand me down, word-of-mouth (or book) for our beliefs, behaviours and aspirations. Religion is no longer hiereditary as it essentially was in the dark ages. We can choose what to adopt as our higher meaning or life aspiration based on far more reliable sources. I'd be far happer if extremists, instead of vowing to kill people who hold different beliefs than they do, would devote their lives to working toward preventing species loss or similar. Heck, I'd be happier if they devoted their existence to playing poker for fun and profit, but you get my point.

But... no.

So in my opinion, God's gotta go.

Humans can identify what is going on with the whole religion thing and sort it out or we're all doomed, I tells ya.