Photo by Lukas Meier on Unsplash
We need to invent a new word. We need a word for people who realize there are certain things we’ll never know and who are willing to admit it.
I’m not an atheist — I don’t pretend to know there is no higher power. In fact, it’s obvious there is. Humans certainly aren’t in charge of the universe. We’re just the ones destroying it by ignoring the lessons of Mother Nature and behaving as if the planet is here for our personal benefit.
I’m not an agnostic because I’m fully committed to the belief that man invented God and not the other way around. I’m not willing to admit to the possibility that the God of any religion exists anywhere but in the minds of men.
It’s not that I don’t want to believe in God, it’s that my brain won’t let me.
I attended a Catholic University, so I was required to study religions of the world. My takeaway from that experience is that every religion was customized to fulfill the needs of the societies they served. The hypocrisy of religious zealots and the tendency to wage war in the name of God only substantiates this belief.
Religions were invented (except Scientology, and perhaps Mormonism) when people knew little about the natural world. They provided answers to questions that everybody asked but nobody could answer.
What is the purpose of life? Why are we here? What happens when we die?
Surfs, slaves, servants, the disenfranchised, the poor, the sick, the forgotten have all been given religion to sustain themselves in the face of man-made miseries. If you believe God gave you your place in life and being a better person in one life will reward you with a better next life or eternal life in heaven, it’s easier to tolerate the unjust existence of this life.
If this life is all there is, that could be very depressing.
Religion is also a control mechanism. It creates a hierarchy so the perpetrators of it can maintain their power. It creates rules so the masses don’t get uppity, and it gives people a sense of security and hope — hope that no matter how miserable their lives are, they will eventually die and go to some version of heaven where everything will be perfect.
This is how religious leaders ensure the people they control won’t rebel — if they do, they forfeit their chance at heaven.
Religions also give (not past tense here — look at the British monarchy today) so-called ‘royalty’ a claim to power via an assumed divinity that allows families to pass down power and wealth to their offspring. If we look at it from a biological perspective, it’s not a great system because inbreeding is not good for humans. And yet, historically, royal families relied on it to keep their system of power and privilege. As a result, those ascending to the throne were more susceptible to various mental and physical health issues.
The irony is that royalty was treated as superior beings when in fact, they were generally less robust than the rest of us.
There was a study done by some researchers at Berkeley, Stanford, and the University of Maryland back in 2003. Like most research papers, it’s filled with jargon so it’s cumbersome and difficult to read, but the essence of it is that people with a conservative mindset can’t cope with uncertainty so they need to make stuff up to fill the void. This explains why conservative people are generally more religious than liberals — they have trouble with ambiguity.
This also explains why conservatives are so susceptible to conspiracy theories — they provide answers. Q understood this. Something else Q understood is that unhappy people desperately want to feel like a part of something important. (For an insightful look at how this works, check out the podcast American Radical).
With every post, Q provided clues to mysteries the reader could solve — like a game — one that gave his followers a sense of accomplishment. By creating their own pages to distribute Q’s missives, Q’s followers were also able to develop the sense of community they had been lacking.
When he created the evil liberal baby-eating pedophile conspiracy, he reeled in additional followers who were seeking a purpose in life. They were going to save children for crying out loud. This is heady stuff.
Q used a time-tested formula for manipulation and control of the masses. How could he fail to succeed when basic human weakness and desire were pandered to so directly and immediately?
All religions are cults to the degree that they require people to follow leaders who profess a closer connection to God than their followers have — it’s how they gain control. The only difference between Q and organized religion is in the case of Q, the connection wasn’t to an established God, but to a single source of truth.
Q didn’t need God — he replaced him (as did Elron Hubbard, the inventor of Scientology).
Once people stop thinking critically and accept whatever they are told by someone who purports to have a divine connection to God or a monopoly on the truth, the control mechanism is firmly established.
Whether you believe in an accepted religion or follow a cult, like QAnon, the process and the result, are the same.
An interesting phenomenon that can sometimes upend this system is when an individual follower believes that he/she has a personal link to God and is receiving direct orders from the deity.
Recent research in the field of psychology has led to some interesting findings around personality development that help explain this phenomenon. The term for it is IFS (Internal Family Systems Therapy). It explains how people can develop different ‘parts’ to their personalities that can become isolated from their consciousness. These parts are responses to events (usually during childhood) that are difficult to understand or are traumatic.
The theory is that a part of someone may take on behavior or even an entire personality as a response to something their conscious mind can’t grapple with successfully. The problem is that the lack of integration into consciousness means they continue to manifest these negative unconscious parts into adulthood and too often they are destructive. They are also impossible to eliminate unless they are somehow brought into consciousness.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” — Carl Jung (from Atomic Habits, pg. 62)
The book Under the Banner of Heaven, by John Krakauer, tells the story of two Mormon men who murdered a woman and her baby girl in the name of God — believing God was giving them direct orders to do so. He may well have been directed by a part of himself he never reconciled into his consciousness.
One thing I hope we can all agree on — he wasn’t talking to God.
I’m not here to tell anybody what to believe. If religion provides comfort, guidance, hope, community, and a feeling of purpose, then so be it. What I hope to do is motivate critical thinking.
We all have a right to believe whatever we want to believe. But what will help us be better people, I think, is understanding ourselves better. That requires introspection, critical thinking, and a willingness to admit when we don’t know something.
When I feel uncertain and look for answers I can’t find, I visualize the world as a cube and I think of the planet we live on as one face of that cube. I can’t see or touch the rest of the cube because I’m limited by my consciousness and physicality here on earth — but that doesn’t mean this is all there is.
I’d like to believe there is a benevolent force guiding us. Sometimes, I almost feel like there is. But the truth is, I really don’t know.
I do feel that I want to be a force for good in this world and I am guided by something internally that promotes that. I just don’t know where it comes from.
And I’m not willing to pretend that I do.