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Evangelizing Reality
Spreading the Good News about the Real World
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How do we spread the word? How do we convert people to Realism? What kind of reaction should we expect when talking to people about reality? How do we get people to accept reality as their belief system? These are not simple questions. To people like me and many of you reading this, it's confusing to us that everyone isn't a Realist already. To us it's "Reality - Of course! Duh!" But to others it is a much more complex problem because they too think they believe in some form of reality, but it is often a narrative taught to them from early childhood that they have come to rely upon and accept as their world view.
Belief in fictional deities is one of the root axioms that they have built their awareness around and for which a lot of their personal world view relies upon. If they were, for example, to realize that God is fiction then it would change their entire world. Many of their friends will reject them. They might not have a place in their church community anymore. They would have to endure the stigma that other religions have put on Atheism as something that is evil, or a disease, a form of mental illness, something that must be cured. This is a very big step for most people who rely upon the comfort of their place in society and are not willing to put their social position at risk.
The first purpose of the human brain is to survive, not to process logic.
The human mind is not a computer. It is the result of an evolutionary process over billions of years. It's primary purpose is to help ensure the survival of the human species. We are the descendents of those who managed to adhere to that purpose. Those who survived and evolved and reproduced are our ancestors. Those who didn't are not. Thus our minds are biologically programmed for survival, to find food, to defend against enemies, to reproduce and ensure the survival of our children so they too can reproduce, to form societies for the mutual benefit of our mutual survival. Logic and reason are side effects of this neurological process. So the concept of reality might make instant sense to a computer, to a human it's often a difficult concept to grasp.
When you look at the brain as a biological organ rather than a computing device, a lot of human behavior is more understandable. We are a bag of chemicals, not a robot. Changing religions isn't like wiping a hard disk and installing something else. The mind is a living system and it requires more of a migration plan. You can't usually just rewrite everything a person believes in instantly unless they are in some crisis and already looking for an instant change. Change may take time, a lot of time. It might just be gradual over years. It might take centuries. But the process begins now and it is up to us to understand it as best we can so that we can put the world back on a reality based footing and avoid being the victim of some other religion's Extinctionist fantasy.
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What we are up against in fiction based religions is that using the name of God they can promise you anything. They have everlasting bliss in Heaven, 70 virgins, omnipotent intervention, an inflated sense of self worth, a loving community, ego treats, a sense of some grand purpose, and of course, burning in Hell forever for those who fail to believe. One thing that religions understand is that they start brainwashing their children early because they understand that the earlier they establish mental patterns the harder it is to change them.
Like the tricks that the tobacco industry uses to make cigarettes as addictive as possible, religions have evolved techniques to make their religion as addictive as possible.
Conversion to fiction based religions is easier than reality based religions. If a person is in an emotional crisis and someone comes along offering them a solution to their problems, they might just go for it. After all, it's so easy. All you have to do is believe and an omnipotent protector is going to intervene on your behalf and take care of you forever. What a deal! People want the quick fix. Reality often isn't a pretty picture. If someone is in a real bind then they have to do hard work to get out of it.
If they have lost someone they want to believe that they will be reunited with their lost loved one in some afterlife. We want to believe that when we die that we are going to go to a better place, or at least something other than ceasing to exist. We want to believe that our total existence is more than 75 years and then we are gone. And it's really easy for religions to create false hope because there aren't any dead people out there who have come back from the afterlife to talk about it. If the dead could talk a lot of religions would be in big trouble.
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Rarely is a person likely to instantly convert from a strongly theistic religion to Realism. Perhaps if they just had a traumatic experience where they were really burned by a religion and just realized that what they thought was real was fiction, then they might be ready to instantly embrace reality. But if people are comfortable in their beliefs and they are socially integrated into their religious culture, then there's no strong motivation to accept reality. Some people will even admit that. They will tell you that it doesn't matter if it's real or not as long as it makes them happy.
What we have to offer is reality the way it really is. It may not seem as robust as the world of fantasy but it is real, and I think that if reality is fully explored that it is as robust if not more so that the world of fiction. Certainly it is more robust than the fictions that most religions are offering today.
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Realists and Atheists are not the same thing although Atheism is a reality-based position. Our slogan as realists is, "If it's real, we believe in it." Atheism can perhaps be summed up in the statement, "If it's not real then we don't believe in it." While it is true that God doesn't exist, Atheism doesn't go beyond that. Once you prove that God doesn't exist, then what? What fills the vacuum? What do Atheists believe in? How do they define right and wrong? How are we supposed to live our lives? What is our purpose? If there is no God then does morality go away?
You can't replace something with nothing. Even if the something is merely the illusion of something. Other religions are about what people believe in. Atheism is about what people don't believe in. That gives religion an advantage in any debate because something generally beats nothing. It's not an argument of equals. That's where Realism comes in. Realism is about the belief in reality as it really is. Realism is about what you do believe in, not about what you don't believe in. Realism is about what is real, not about what isn't real. It's a positive position rather than a negative position.
The difference between Atheism and Realism is that Atheism is about what isn't real. Realism is about what is real.
Religions assert a belief in deities. Atheism asserts there are no deities but stops there. Realism directly challenges other religions on the basis of what is real. Whether God exists or God doesn't exist is the wrong debate. Why waste our time arguing about fiction when there's all this wonderful reality around us to explore. When it comes down to it, Atheism isn't any more relevant than Theism because both sides are focused on the unreal. But who is there to talk about what is real? We are. We are the Church of Reality and we are here to explore reality as it really is. We are here to answer the tough questions, to explore the big issues. We are here to do the hard work of making reality work in the real world.
A person is defined by what they believe in, not by what they don't believe in. You are defined by what you are, not by what you aren't.
Realism is about something. Atheism is about nothing. Yes it is true that there is no God, but so what? There are a lot of things I don't believe in that don't exist so why is not believing in God any more important than not believing in Spider Man? God doesn't exist and God is therefore not important. Atheists are doing important but limited work in making the point against a very big myth but Atheism is at best just the first step in awakening to the wonders of reality.
We live in an amazing world. The more I learn about it the more amazing it is. I'm interested in what's real. I want to learn about space-time. I want to learn about quantum theory. I want to know what happened in the first billionth of a second after the Big Bang. I want to know how organic molecules were first formed on this planet. I want to know how they organized into early proteins. I want to understand the origin of life and how it evolved on this planet. Who are we and how did we get here?
Once you figure out God doesn't exist, what do you do next? The next step is to figure out what does exists. Realism is the next logical step in the evolution of Atheism.
But after the history is over, what I want to know is what are we doing? What is our mission? How are we supposed to live and what is the rationale behind society? What are we evolving into? What will our future be like? We are at the point where we can control our own evolution. We can choose what we as the human race will become. What will we evolve into? Now that we can change our genetic structure, when will we start building better replacement parts for our bodies?
As we expand our minds using computers and technology to see back to the moment of the beginning of time, as we discover new particles, as we figure out how to change matter into energy, and back into matter we ask what are we and what do we want to become?
We do not focus on fiction. We focus on what is real. We do the hard work of answering the big questions as best we can. We are a people who want to learn. We want to make life work. We want to create solutions in the real world. So I say to all Atheists reading this, why waste your life focusing on what isn't real when you can focus on what is real? Christians and Atheists are alike in that they both focus on a fictional God. One asserts that God does exist, the other asserts that God doesn't. Realists don't focus on God. God is a waste of time. God is irrelevant. Reality is relevant. That's why being a Realist is better than being an Atheist. Being a Realist is about something. Being an Atheist is about nothing. I choose to make my life about something.
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Newsflash |
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The IRS has approved the 501(C)3 tax exempt status of the Church of Reality. |
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Evangelizing Reality