Original Message
From:    "James Morrow" <jc.morrow@btopenworld.com>
Date:    Wed, May 25, 2005 10:26 pm
To:    Webmaster@wfb-hq.org

Dear World Fellowship,

I greatly admire your unwavering commitment to peace, reason, morality
and moving society forward.  Consequently, I believe (and hope) that you
will find the following to be of interest.  If you do find it to be of
value, please feel free to use it in any way you see fit in the cause of
peace, reason and tolerance.

Whilst I am not a religious man (I'm an agnostic), I do believe in the
essential goodness at the heart of Christianity.  Further, I recognise
that other faiths - such as Judaism and Islam - also have an essentially
good heart but that, for reasons which I hope will become apparent as
you read this email, their followers can at times act in ways which may
be construed as aggressive, bad and even evil.  Questions which this
email tries to address include: "Why were (are) some believers prepared
to go to any lengths to protect the faith from unbelievers?" "Why is the
youngest major religion also the most aggressive against unbelievers?"
"Why, when reason and learning have often been a central part of the
Jewish, Christian and Arab worlds has there been an edge of terror
against what is perceived as irrationality?" "What is the relationship
between reason, unreason, rationality, irrationality, sanity, insanity,
belief, faith and truth?"  I hope that you find this information to be
of value to you.

As I'm sure you are aware, many claim that science is the new religion -
and indeed there are more than a few people "who should know better" who
treat it as such.  However, what can we achieve if we keep the two
separate, but try to use science to better understand why, despite the
inherent goodness of religion - and the many positive things that the
major religions have given to this world - religion has also at times
led to bloodshed, torture and terror?

We know that, starved of reason, meaning or information, most people
will fairly quickly begin to exhibit signs of what we call mental
illness.  Nowadays, science provides us with pile upon pile of evidence,
beautiful theories to explain that evidence and the universal education
to access it.  Rational thinking has it easy now, yet still there is
irrationality and insanity, and the violence, and terror that often then
ensues.

Try to imagine having been a rational person thousands of years ago,
before any theory and before all our corroborating evidence, when
language was a new tool and writing was only beginning.  Your tribe has
many stories handed down through the generations, through language, of
the horrors and madness of mixing with other tribes with different sets
of beliefs, even completely different languages.  Of how order and
reason must always be maintained, at all costs.

As a uniquely questioning animal, with a language that has evolved
rapidly from simple family-based communication to a much more powerful,
general purpose tool, with an extremely powerful pattern recognition
system in our heads which demands a firm framework within which to
operate, all are searching for answers.  However, in the absence of a
fully objective, independent, agreed and verifiable mechanism for
finding those answers it is imperative that every member of a tribe must
accept the findings of their wisest men as truth - otherwise the whole
thing will break down into chaos.

It is likely that each tribe will come up with different versions of the
"truth", and so when the believers (of your tribe) interact with the
unbelievers (the other tribe), with no way of combining their evidence,
one truth must prevail.  Therefore, you must convert them, they must
convert you or you must attempt to destroy one another.  Today, we can't
even reason constructively between faiths when we have a common
language.  In the absence of common language, members of different
faiths will generally appear to be completely mad, evil, dangerous,
irrational, barbaric, devilish, unreasonable, etc. - and of course, they
will be thinking exactly the same about you.

In a terrifying parallel to natural selection, over thousands of years,
the original rational heart of each religion will, by necessity, be
surrounded by a protective structure designed to maximise the chances of
survival.  Thus, whilst the core beliefs might include "love your
neighbour as yourself" and "love your enemies," the survival mechanism
majors on propagation, strength, developing the technology of war,
totally denying the validity of the beliefs of others, trying to convert
where possible but otherwise destroying, etc., and any internal dissent
- even the slightest risk of dissent - must be annihilated.  When it
comes down to it, individuals don't matter, only the growth and
preservation of the religion matters, so structures which encourage
members to fight to the death if required, and to fight no matter what
might be the personal risk to themselves, can only be good.  Whether
there is only one G-d or not, all members of each religion must worship
"him" in exactly the same way, because dissent is too dangerous.
Similarly, even if all the religions are worshipping exactly the same
G-d but in different ways (dictated by how they came to know "him"),
they cannot come together and agree because the precise way of
worshipping is vital rather than the fact that "he" may be the same,
one, G-d.

Natural selection forces the most successful cults to use their wisest
members to develop many positive things - more powerful language,
writing, technology, world models, and so on, at the same time as many
things that we would consider barbaric and even insane.  Yet just as
some things in nature can seem unbelievably cruel to us, the necessity
for survival has crafted much that could be viewed as evil and cruel
into religion.  The rational heart is still there but the protection
mechanisms which have been honed for maximum efficiency over millennia
are there also.  If religions had labelled these two parts accordingly
perhaps we would be getting further ahead now, but unfortunately it's
all just an amorphous lump at present.  Achieving an agreement from the
major religions to work at disentangling the two would be a major step
forward - not least because it is likely that the positive, rational
hearts of most effective religions will be quite similar when separated
from their protection mechanisms.  . and I guess that it would also be
discovered that the heart came first .

Looking at the Spanish Inquisition within this context, for example, we
might see that it was not about the guilt or innocence of the individual
but the perceived risk of dissent.  Identify potential dissenters, use
all means possible to get them to expose any collaborators and then make
sure that nobody else even thinks of wavering from the truth.  It
doesn't matter whether you are guilty or whether you are innocent; if
there is the slightest hint of dissent it has to be cut out.  If you are
dead you cannot attack the faith.  Similarly, it doesn't matter whether
or not the people you might name under extreme torture as collaborators
are innocent or guilty, because the risk of dissent is so great.  All
risk must be eradicated.  Of course, in this context, maximising agony
in the pursuit of eradicating dissent makes sense, because the lesson
that has been learned through century after century is that dissent
risks the descent into hell on earth - and having tortured numerous
people in the defence of faith the men of religion have a fair idea of
the kind of things that that might involve .

The positive part of religion is all about reason, making sense of the
world, etc., but in a world without modern science, instant
communication, universal literacy, numeracy and training in rational
thinking, etc., the negative, protective parts were, unfortunately,
necessary - or we would have never got to the science and technologies
we have today.  Of course there are questions which science cannot
answer, but probably its greatest strength is in explaining things -
that is what gives the theory of evolution its power, for example.
Instead of judging religions I believe that we will get much further if
we explain them.  If we can show that there is reason behind the
apparently irrational parts of religion, recognise the worth of the
positive parts of each - their place to play in modern science and
literature, etc. and that belief in G-d or otherwise does not have to be
a sticking point (after all, science can never prove that there isn't a
G-d, and there are questions that it may never be able to answer,
anyway).  Hell can, at last, freeze over.  Imagine that.

Currently, those of religious beliefs have a schism in their world
models (the model that the mind uses to make sense of and interact with
the world) and so they see that division in the world around them.
Those who truly belong to one of the major faiths and simultaneously
claim to be scientists, ironically, have an even more fragmented mind -
which could be one of the reasons why they have often bought into new
religions so enthusiastically.  It is possible to be both rational and
believe that there is some sort of higher being, and if we can find a
convincing, non-threatening, non-disrespectful path from all current
faiths to that we will have achieved a great deal for mankind and the
world in general.

Anyway, these are some initial thoughts for you.  Please don't hesitate
to get in touch if you have any comments or questions.  . and keep up
the good work!

Best regards,

James (Morrow)

Hello James,

Thank you for your letter, I have answered in context below:

J: Dear World Fellowship,

I greatly admire your unwavering commitment to peace, reason, morality and moving society forward.  Consequently, I believe (and hope) that you will find the following to be of interest.  If you do find it to be of value, please feel free to use it in any way you see fit in the cause of peace, reason and tolerance.
 

A: Hello James,

First, as webmaster I apologize for the great delay in answering your letter.   I may be wrong, but when I received it, I thought it held very detrimental views and some condescension towards other religions, almost apologetic at times.  This does not seem to work towards peace and harmony with other beliefs, rather the contrary.   We at the WFB would rather have a peaceful forum and discuss the common positive sides all religions have that contribute to peace and harmony, such as the Buddhist five precepts, most of which agree with the basic teachings of most religions.  To me this seems to be a more practical method.
 

J: Whilst I am not a religious man (I'm an agnostic), I do believe in the essential goodness at the heart of Christianity.  Further, I recognize that other faiths - such as Judaism and Islam - also have an essentially good heart but that, for reasons which I hope will become apparent as you read this email, their followers can at times act in ways which may be construed as aggressive, bad and even evil.  Questions which this email tries to address include: "Why were (are) some believers prepared to go to any lengths to protect the faith from unbelievers?" "Why is the youngest major religion also the most aggressive against unbelievers?"  "Why, when reason and learning have often been a central part of the Jewish, Christian and Arab worlds has there been an edge of terror against what is perceived as irrationality?" "What is the relationship between reason, unreason, rationality, irrationality, sanity, insanity, belief, faith and truth?"  I hope that you find this information to be of value to you.

As I'm sure you are aware, many claim that science is the new religion - and indeed there are more than a few people "who should know better" who treat it as such.  However, what can we achieve if we keep the two separate, but try to use science to better understand why, despite the inherent goodness of religion - and the many positive things that the major religions have given to this world - religion has also at times led to bloodshed, torture and terror?

We know that, starved of reason, meaning or information, most people will fairly quickly begin to exhibit signs of what we call mental illness.  Nowadays, science provides us with pile upon pile of evidence, beautiful theories to explain that evidence and the universal education to access it.  Rational thinking has it easy now, yet still there is irrationality and insanity, and the violence, and terror that often then ensues.

Try to imagine having been a rational person thousands of years ago, before any theory and before all our corroborating evidence, when language was a new tool and writing was only beginning.  Your tribe has many stories handed down through the generations, through language, of the horrors and madness of mixing with other tribes with different sets of beliefs, even completely different languages.  Of how order and reason must always be maintained, at all costs.
 

A: Buddhism stresses living in the present, studying the ultimate realities that appear, trying to think about dhamma explanations, which are the truth according to the Buddha, but not to imagine something we could never prove one way or the other.   Things also happen according to conditions, and nothing is everlasting, therefore there is nothing that "must always be maintained, at all costs".  Even the dhamma would one day no longer be taught in this world by whatever tribe, after the saasanaa ends, according to the Tipitaka.
 

J: As a uniquely questioning animal, with a language that has evolved rapidly from simple family-based communication to a much more powerful, general purpose tool, with an extremely powerful pattern recognition system in our heads which demands a firm framework within which to operate, all are searching for answers.  However, in the absence of a fully objective, independent, agreed and verifiable mechanism for finding those answers it is imperative that every member of a tribe must accept the findings of their wisest men as truth - otherwise the whole thing will break down into chaos.
 

A: Perhaps in other societies, not in Buddhist ones.  In the times of the Buddha not everyone believed his teachings, yet the religion continued to grow for centuries before it began to decline.
 

J: It is likely that each tribe will come up with different versions of the "truth", and so when the believers (of your tribe) interact with the unbelievers (the other tribe), with no way of combining their evidence, one truth must prevail.  Therefore, you must convert them, they must convert you or you must attempt to destroy one another.  Today, we can't even reason constructively between faiths when we have a common language.  In the absence of common language, members of different faiths will generally appear to be completely mad, evil, dangerous, irrational, barbaric, devilish, unreasonable, etc. - and of course, they will be thinking exactly the same about you.

In a terrifying parallel to natural selection, over thousands of years, the original rational heart of each religion will, by necessity, be surrounded by a protective structure designed to maximise the chances of survival.  Thus, whilst the core beliefs might include "love your neighbour as yourself" and "love your enemies," the survival mechanism majors on propagation, strength, developing the technology of war, totally denying the validity of the beliefs of others, trying to convert where possible but otherwise destroying, etc., and any internal dissent - even the slightest risk of dissent - must be annihilated.  When it comes down to it, individuals don't matter, only the growth and preservation of the religion matters, so structures which encourage members to fight to the death if required, and to fight no matter what might be the personal risk to themselves, can only be good.  Whether there is only one G-d or not, all members of each religion must worship "him" in exactly the same way, because dissent is too dangerous.

Similarly, even if all the religions are worshipping exactly the same G-d but in different ways (dictated by how they came to know "him"), they cannot come together and agree because the precise way of worshipping is vital rather than the fact that "he" may be the same, one, G-d.

Natural selection forces the most successful cults to use their wisest members to develop many positive things - more powerful language, writing, technology, world models, and so on, at the same time as many things that we would consider barbaric and even insane.  Yet just as some things in nature can seem unbelievably cruel to us, the necessity for survival has crafted much that could be viewed as evil and cruel into religion.  The rational heart is still there but the protection mechanisms which have been honed for maximum efficiency over millennia are there also.  If religions had labeled these two parts accordingly perhaps we would be getting further ahead now, but unfortunately it's all just an amorphous lump at present.  Achieving an agreement from the major religions to work at disentangling the two would be a major step forward - not least because it is likely that the positive, rational hearts of most effective religions will be quite similar when separated  from their protection mechanisms.  . and I guess that it would also be discovered that the heart came first .
 

A: I do not think that natural selection applies to religion, most people are still more concerned with day to day survival, making a living in this world, indeed most people become interested in religion when they are more aged.  Some of my friends tell me that when they retire they would try to learn more about religions, at the moment they are more preoccupied with more pressing matters: work, family, friends etc.
 

J: Looking at the Spanish Inquisition within this context, for example, we might see that it was not about the guilt or innocence of the individual but the perceived risk of dissent.  Identify potential dissenters, use all means possible to get them to expose any collaborators and then make sure that nobody else even thinks of wavering from the truth.
 

A: I think most of the time it was also financial gain, the acquisition of wealth that came with the elimination of its owner that made the Inquisition, especially applied to the American Indians and their gold, so hideous.  Of course the wealth they got from the persecution of Spanish Jews was just as horribly acquired.
 

J: It doesn't matter whether you are guilty or whether you are innocent; if there is the slightest hint of dissent it has to be cut out.  If you are dead you cannot attack the faith.  Similarly, it doesn't matter whether or not the people you might name under extreme torture as collaborators are innocent or guilty, because the risk of dissent is so great.  All risk must be eradicated.  Of course, in this context, maximising agony in the pursuit of eradicating dissent makes sense, because the lesson that has been learned through century after century is that dissent risks the descent into hell on earth - and having tortured numerous people in the defence of faith the men of religion have a fair idea of the kind of things that that might involve.
 

A: Again, there is historical evidence that the defense of the faith is not the only reason.  When Roman Catholics attacked the Byzantine Catholics of Constantinople, both were Christians and the one still sacked the others and carried back the spoils to their own cities, witness Venice and its treasures brought back for the misdirected crusade.
 

J: The positive part of religion is all about reason, making sense of the world, etc., but in a world without modern science, instant  communication, universal literacy, numeracy and training in rational thinking, etc., the negative, protective parts were, unfortunately, necessary - or we would have never got to the science and technologies we have today.  Of course there are questions which science cannot answer, but probably its greatest strength is in explaining things - that is what gives the theory of evolution its power, for example.

 Instead of judging religions I believe that we will get much further if we explain them.  If we can show that there is reason behind the apparently irrational parts of religion, recognise the worth of the positive parts of each - their place to play in modern science and literature, etc. and that belief in G-d or otherwise does not have to be a sticking point (after all, science can never prove that there isn't a G-d, and there are questions that it may never be able to answer, anyway).  Hell can, at last, freeze over.  Imagine that.
 

A: Buddhists love explanations, but more so when it is about realities that present themselves to be proven by the experiences through the six senses.  Imagination is generally associated with lobha, dosa or moha, while the dhamma can be proven from moment to moment, as one lives in the present as much as possible, with sati.
 

J: Currently, those of religious beliefs have a schism in their world models (the model that the mind uses to make sense of and interact with the world) and so they see that division in the world around them.  Those who truly belong to one of the major faiths and simultaneously claim to be scientists, ironically, have an even more fragmented mind - which could be one of the reasons why they have often bought into new religions so enthusiastically.  It is possible to be both rational and believe that there is some sort of higher being, and if we can find a convincing, non-threatening, non-disrespectful path from all current faiths to that we will have achieved a great deal for mankind and the world in general.
 

A: I do not pretend to know what you mean by "fragmented mind" or how one could " be both rational and believe that there is some sort of higher being", but our teachings present another common grounds with most religions:  no one is perfect, if we were we would not have been born at all, since arahants are never reborn and only they are perfectly free from lobha, dosa and moha.  Since we are none of us perfect, we all could improve ourselves, by trying to follow basic rules such as the five precepts or the four brahmaviharas.  All major religions teach basic rules not to kill, lie, or steal etc,  and Buddhism teaches friendliness and assistance as well as feeling happy for others in their good fortunes, etc.  Instead of imagining all kinds of things, might we not better serve the world with helpful attitudes and actions, not just think but perform good deeds towards one another?  If no one kills could there be wars, or Inquisitions?  If no one steals or covets other's properties would there be contentions and crimes?
 

J: Anyway, these are some initial thoughts for you.  Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any comments or questions.  . and keep up the good work!

Best regards,

James (Morrow)
 

A: Again, I am sorry for answering so late.  I would like this to be not only a Buddhist forum but one where all religions could come together and work towards a better world as well.  However, we would like the methods to be more basic and accessible to all: not just to argue about abstracts but to share our common goal to work towards a general happiness and well being for everyone, as much as possible.  Therefore, anyone of no matter what faith could please feel free to share with us your thoughts of how to promote well being for all, and not just their own personal prosperity at the cost of others'.   The best achievement would also be happiness for all as well,

Thank you for your letter and best wishes,

Amara Chayabongse,
Webmaster, WFB-HQ.ORG

November 4th, 2548 [2005]
 

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