There’s no doubt the most divisive force to the human community on the planet is religion. Perhaps it’s because so many of them all claim to be the true one, and so their adherents are less willing to back off, which in turn creates fertile ground for conflict. But how could every religion exclusively hold the truth? The answer might be found in the study of Noetic Science.

Noetic Science is basically the study of mind over matter, but more specifically its the study of how the mind’s perception creates realities. Drawing its authority from Quantum Physics, it proposes the universal consciousness permeating the energy field that is the universe allows all living things, as observers, the capability of creative perception.

In other words, how we perceive things makes it real for us. Collectively, we all see the galaxy, our world in the same basic way because, through time we’ve been programmed to see it that way. So if someone mentions a pine tree, or a cloud mass, everyone gets pretty much the same picture in their mind.

But individual experiences in our world can alter perception of specifics and thus give different people various views of the same thing.

For example, a group of people may gather below a building, gazing up at an image on a glass window. To them it could be a sign of proof that the Virgin Mary is visiting with a validation of their Catholic beliefs. For others, it could be merely an appreciation of the amazing ability of how condensation can paint beautiful pictures in the strangest places. Or still others could perceive it as a ghostly image, validating their belief in the paranormal.

A poet once wrote, “Two men looked through prison bars. One saw mud, the other saw stars.” How we perceive things makes our world either wondrous or miserable, so why would it be so hard to comprehend that our perceptions could make certain things real for us?

When we believe something, that which we believe in begins to solidify in our mind. We reason how it fits with our present reality, and thus accept it as true. Once this happens, all events or other occurrences will tend to validate what we believe, and thus make it more solid to us. Then, the more we participate in life with these beliefs solidly fixed in our perceptions, the truer they become until we’re willing to stake our.

Couple that with the sense of community when several million believe similarly, and you have a remarkably solid set of perceptions that aren’t easily questioned, let alone quickly abandoned when faced with oppositions.

But in the end its all based on perceiving our world based on personal experience and occurrence. Any belief can become true if it fits, and if enough people share the same perceptions.

So which religion has exclusive rights to claiming its the true one? In light of Noetic Science, it would have to be all of them, because like beauty, truth is in the eye of the beholder. Yes, believing IS seeing and as long as there are observers with their own life experiences, every observation would therefore be true to those who see it that way.

If humanity could only understand beliefs are personal, and thus truth is also an individual reality, perhaps then we could live in peace without fear of our realities being threatened.

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Technorati Tags: belief, beliefs, noetic science, realities, reality, Religion, truth

When Christopher Columbus landed in the New World, his most important discovery was that the people he met were, in his words “in dios,” or like God. They had no tenets or moral codes to follow, but rather were naturally inclined to living a peaceful, hospitable life. When explorers go into the Amazon region, they too meet up with indigenous people who have no inclinations towards hostility or savagery in any way. So we need to ask ourselves, have indoctrinated morals replaced the natural inclination of humans, and is this a good thing?

It may be interesting to note, while Columbus and his crew came from a society with a strict moral code imposed by the Church, they had no problem taking advantage of these so called savages. These peaceful people were almost immediately subjected to brutal treatment like slavery, rape, murder, their homes were claimed for the crown, their resources exhausted, and were left for dead when Columbus finally decided to leave.

It seems then, the concept of living by a moral code, imposed and enforced, becomes an inclusive entity that demands comparison to other moral codes, or a lack of one. The level of authority that set a moral code in place also tends to imply class distinction and a greater abhorrence to anything “other” a different group may be governed by.

Columbus noted the indigenous people had no moral code when it came to nudity, thus they were “lesser” in his eyes. They had no army, and thus were weaker. Had no currency, and so were poverty-stricken, helpless creatures.
All of this, observed through his own moral code gave him the impression of “sub-human” when he viewed the habits of these people. His perception of superiority was a direct result of his having a code of morality instilled in him from the society he lived in. It gave him the authority and justification to act harshly.

On the other hand, the indigenous people certainly must have seen these visitors as strange and very uptight people. Hostility was a foreign concept to them, and history shows that it took quite some time before they even realized they should be protecting themselves from it. Their natural inclination was to share, claiming no ownership to anything. So in their eyes, Columbus and his crew must have had a great need, otherwise why else would they be taking everything?

So while it would be a natural thing to have two people, separated by an enormous ocean, find themselves with totally different lifestyles, an established moral code proved to be the most divisive element between them. And we can clearly see how different moral standards among the people of the Earth remains an extremely divisive force. More than 95% of all wars fought throughout history have been caused for religious and moral reasons.

But could we as a society live without imposed morals now? Would we be better off to just let our natural inclinations take over? Or would that, as some suggest, create chaos and anarchy?

Perhaps we’re all too far gone to go back. Or perhaps the world is slowly beginning to see the artificial aspects of a morality written down in a book, yet rarely lived.

Technorati Tags: morality, morals, morals vs. natural inclination, natural inclination, Religion, Society

Robert Wright over at the Dish has a great conversation going about the “God Gene,” and how religion fits into society.

He writes:

The trouble is that the context of the biological evolution of human nature seems to have been hunter-gatherer societies. And certainly all the anthropological evidence suggests that religion had emerged in hunter-gatherer times, before the invention of agriculture. So I attribute the moral character of agrarian religion to cultural evolution, not biological evolution.

My take in all of this is, (and in many ways I agree with Robert’s take), the argument is omitting the real base of religion, namely the sense of the spiritual. If you add spirituality into the mix, then it can clearly be seen that in hunter-gatherer societies, a religious or spiritual occurrence would be more of a personal thing.

Now “spiritual” doesn’t necessarily mean something paranormal or supernatural. I mean it more in the way of the hormone-induced emotions one would feel when awed or inspired. In those times it wouldn’t take much to awe somebody, i.e. the poor fool who happened to be in the right place at the right time to see lightening strike a tree and produce fire.

Over time, these personal spiritual experiences may have been added to a collective and drawn upon by the community as a whole. This spiritual power then would come in handy as they moved more toward the agricultural, and thus needed something to protect their fields from both animal and human marauders.

In today’s societies, a sense of spiritual can still be felt in just about any experience from belonging to something with a clear path to success (religionism), to coming to the realization that we are basically alone and have the right to choose our own path (atheism).

But no matter what position we take, or where we draw our spiritual power from, its still a personal thing. Our leanings create our realities, and what awes us personally gives us the hormone-induced sense of the spiritual.

Who we choose to share this power with becomes our community and validation.

Technorati Tags: god gene, hunter-gatherer societies, Religion, spirit gene, spirituality