Why are you writing this?
Well, the world is suffering from mass delusion. The situation is getting critical. If we don’t wake up and realize the true nature of reality, the future of humanity may end.
How are we deluded?
We have to think back in time. All the knowledge we have acquired has come from those who came before us. Most of that knowledge is based on our mental faculty of imagination. We saw the world around us and invented explanations for their existence. Ancient man was a fearful being and he imagined an all-powerful deity that caused all kinds of calamities. The deity had to be pacified through various rituals. Hence, religion came into existence. And the belief that you had to fear that all powerful deity followed.
There have been great disruptors throughout history who have challenged some of that knowledge. They used the mental faculty of reason to show the existing paradigm was wrong. It was not an easy transformation but eventually people realized their imaginings were wrong and reason was right. Copernicus used reason to prove the earth was not the center of the universe. Einstein proved that the speed of light and time cannot both be constant. We use the scientific method, or reason, to confirm or deny those ideas that come from the imagination.
So, are you saying we are deluded about god?
Well, I’m saying that you don’t need to be afraid of god. She doesn’t expect that of you. But you have to ask the question of who benefitted from our fear.
So, who benefitted?
I think we have to step back a bit and ask some other questions first. The most important questions revolve around the concept of truth. Are there things we know that are true based on reason without someone else trying to convince us they are true?
And are there things we can all agree are true?
Well, you have to acknowledge most of our information is external and tainted. You need to dig deep internally and ask yourself if there’s anything that’s pure and untainted knowledge.
Here are a few I came up with:
1. I am alive.
2. I am aware.
3. I am part of the universe.
Now I believe every living human on the planet can agree on those although we can certainly argue about our level of awareness in 2.
OK, I can accept those as true.
Well, if you believe those to be true, they lead to certain conclusions that must also be true.
1. The universe is alive
2. The universe is aware.
I know there are people who will not accept those because they have the idea of ‘accidents’ in their deluded imagination. But reason shows there is no such thing as an ‘accident’ outside of human interaction. I’ll explain more in a minute. But, first, look at this picture.
(source: https://hubblesite.org/contents/articles/hubble-deep-fields)
This is a picture taken from the Hubble space telescope. This information was not available to humans before 1990. We made up all sorts of delusions about our place in the universe but this picture tells us much using reason. This is one miniscule portion of space and yet it is full of galaxies as far as the eye can see. Scientists estimate there are at least 100 billion galaxies each with around 100 billion stars. The number is mind boggling and almost incomprehensible but is critical to our understanding.
