Global Vision

One of the reasons why I fight so hard against the ideas of religion is because I see religion as detrimental to human progress. Religious thinking divides people, focuses people on ancient mythologies, and gets in the way of our global vision.

Religion is a holdover from tribal days in which various tribes championed the own deity. It is certainly true that nations and nationalism does this same thing and I don’t want to ignore that, but religion does it in a more fundamental way. The idea of faith and loyalty to God is much stronger than loyalty to one’s country of origin. This is the primary reason why during the 1950s, there was such a push to knock down the Jeffersonian Wall. The best way to insure loyalty to the state is to link the state to religion. We see that even today.

It is certainly important to think about the past, but only so far as we can learn from the past to forge a better future. The problem with the Abrahamic religions is that they don’t care about the future at all. They not only dwell on the past, but they live in the past as well. Often times religious believers have to be dragged into modernity kicking and screaming. It wasn’t all that long ago that the Catholic Church finally apologized to Galileo. Unfortunately, Galileo has been dead for a while so he couldn’t accept that apology. How many millions of religious believers still reject the science of evolution because it doesn’t agree with their interpretation of their holy book? What about global climate change?

That brings me to the most important issue — our global vision. There was an awesome video that circulated on the interwebs which featured former astronauts talking about their experience viewing the Earth from space. The realization many of them had was that human beings aren’t separate from nature, but rather we are a part of it. We are all on this planet together we have to help maintain our home in order for us to continue to be able to live here.

We aren’t mere stewards of the earth; we are inhabitants of the Earth. It isn’t that we need to tend the land for our feudal lord, but rather we have to keep our home in good shape so that we can still live here. Right now our house is falling apart and we have religious believers telling us either that it isn’t falling apart at all and that we are just imagining it despite the fact that the roof is clearly leaking or that it’s okay that it is falling apart because God knows what he is doing and it is just part of his divine plan.

What we need to do is reject religion and work together not only to fix our planet, but to work towards exploring new planets because we can. It’s a great big universe out there and it is waiting for us to explore it together. We just need to get our act together and stop focusing on ancient superstitions and petty border disputes.

Now check out this awesome video: