How do Religions work?

The naïve interpretation of religions is that they are literal and factual. Nothing wrong in that everyone has to start somewhere. Usually Scientific criticism of Religion falls into this naïve bracket. 

Equally naïve is the interpretation that religions are metaphorical or allegorical. Adam and Eve did not literally exist and there was no actual Garden of Eden it's just a story to explain how human life became so hard and how we obtained the power of choice especially when we wield it to ignore God. Alternatively it could be seen as a myth representing the transition from Hunter Gatherer to Farmer (one I've supported in this blog). But actually for religious purposes this is as naïve as the literal interpretation.

To illustrate the workings of religion consider that one of the main ideas of Buddhism is actually wrong. Famously Buddha observed an old man, an ill man and a dead man and learned that life was not a simple pleasure garden. All beings he says suffer from old age, illness and death and so began his journey to liberate us from these sufferings and the tragedy of existence.

Had Buddha been a biologist he may have known that many animals do not get old or die. The common Beadlet Anemone being one. 

Modern science understands that old age and death are actually genetic instructions held by higher animals but are not a necessary. Getting old and dying are actually adaptations presumably to free the world of old organisms and make way for their children. For sexual organisms this is not just a simple replacement of old with young, but the young are genetic recombinations of their parents and provide variety and the opportunity for evolution. So sex, age and death all go together into the process of evolving which appears to have been so important that it itself evolved over a billion years ago at the very start of life.

Another adaptation in the sex story is error prone DNA copying. You can make your DNA very accurate as some organisms do. But then there are no errors and no variety. Children are like their parents. Alternatively you can make your DNA inaccurate and while this gives you the diversity from which new adaptations can grow, it also litters your DNA with bugs and bad mistakes. Without sex and cross-overs to mix the DNA up it would be impossible to separate the good and bad DNA and allow selection to eliminate the bad DNA and promote the good DNA. Obviously Good/Bad here are not readable from the genetic code, they depend upon the benefit of the characteristics they encode, and that we can't know until organisms have lived and either succeeded or failed. But this would be impossible if the DNA could not be mixed up to give what will become beneficial DNA the chance to get away from what will be costly DNA.

So actually Buddha gets this wrong. Old age and death are not certain, they are programmed, and they can be unprogrammed technologically. And this has led scientists to start to research how to turn off aging and dying genes in humans presumably so that in the future we can be immortal human beings. Not science fiction this is a fact.

Ah think naïve people, we don't need Buddhism then. We just tweak our genes get good medicine and we avoid illness, old age and death.

But this was never Buddha's aim. The goal of religion is so much greater than this. The "illness, old age, death" is just a story to get us to reflect on life and what it is really like. Most importantly its to get us to reflect on our bodies and how ultimately we are not our bodies. Getting ill, old and dying is actually really useful in showing us we are not our bodies. When we become immortal we will just lose this tool! When our bodies let us down we curse them. It all shows us we are not our bodies!

So while the scientists are messing around with bodies we leap into the "spiritual" realm, free from messy mortal existence. But a little more investigation shows us we are not soul or spirits either.

And so it goes on like an onion. At each stage we find that our chosen target does not belong to us.

Perhaps we get to consciousness and think we are consciousness, or perhaps we are higher levels of consciousness. But alas no, all these like bodies are not us.

Now Buddha warns of a stage where we think: if we are none of these then we are nothing and we leap into belief we are nothing. We start to deny existence, enter some void and disappear into a nihilistic state of avoidance.

We are not this either. The point as laid out in the previous post is just to let go of this unnecessary need to be something at all. If we take all of existence together it is quite perfect as it is without injecting "us" in there at all. All those thoughts and feelings and memories and beliefs and desires and wishes and actions and choices are all happy without anyone.

Religions are designed to get us to let go be that via Buddhism, or Islam. Someone once said to me that all religious people have the same quality: equanimity. They have an even hand in the world, able to suffer as easily as to rejoice. They take what life hands then and they accept this. This is liberation. That is the only thing religions guide us to pursue, but that prize is so much infinitely greater than any other path can give us.

So the modern obsession with Science is fine. But it has one dangerous side, that it encourages us to stay bound to the world and settle into the idea that we actually are what we think we are (whatever that may be).

And then we get into the even more ridiculous idea that we can chose what we are. If we can chose what we are then who is doing the choosing? This appears in the transgender debate right now. If I think I am female then I am female goes the debate. Which I suppose is okay but then the female person wants to change body sex. But how does the person know what the sex of the body is? Presumably they know the sex of their body the same way as everyone else does by looking at the genitalia. But if they need to look at the genitalia then how do they know the sex of the person? A person does not have genitalia only a body has genitalia, and if they can decide their own sex without genitalia then why can't they do that for the body? At the root here is some idea of choice. The person has simply decided that they are a particular sex, regardless of their genitals. In fact what has probably happened is simply that they reject their body. Now this is obviously very distressing, rejecting something as closely related to us as our body is never going to be a happy place. But actually we could look at it as a blessing because we are on to something. WE ARE NOT OUR BODY!

However the distress felt by transgender occurs because out of the victory they clutch defeat. The transgender rejects their body and then invents an inside fantasy body of opposite sex. Now we are in trouble and we are expressing deep desires here that we need to be careful with. Take a long hard look at this situation something is wrong. If you are not your body, then you have no sex! Only bodies have sex! Basic fact.

In Buddhism sex is one of the 10 illusions. It does not exist. If you see a man and a woman side by side on autopsy slabs and start to dissect them you will amazed how much is similar. In fact you won't find much different. Perhaps bones are slightly different sizes, and breasts are more developed in women, and clitoris becomes a penis in the male and scrotum evaginates and becomes the vagina and ovaries leave the body and become testis yeah sure there are differences but then there is blood and heart and lungs and brain and muscles and 2 arms and yeah they are the same.

Now Buddhism says a lot of things don't exist. The point is that while the words ate Black and White the reality is not like this. There is nothing in a woman you can cut out and go there you go the "essence" of woman and there is nothing in a man you can cut and go there it is the "manness." The difference is broad and covers the whole entity and yet the difference is not so different. You take a mans arm and a woman's arm and you'd struggle to find differences while similarities fill the page from mitochondria to hairs.

So what exactly is the transgender going on about? It's simply are result of not looking closely (which to be fair most people don't) and then tripped and getting confused.

So its important to look at what is there, not invent stuff. But perhaps we want to invent stuff because what is there is not very clear and has surprising results like men and women not being so different after all. And our bodies are not ourselves.

Liberation is a very tricky thing to do, and its so easily missed as an option. We tend to stick with what we know and what is simple and we don't have to challenge and look again carefully. Its just easier to carry on like we always have and not stop and double take. But that is what religion is for. Stop, look again. Take that time in church to contemplate Jesus and what he did for you, and consider whether you are ready to carry a cross for someone, and whether you are ready to meet God yet and ask for forgiveness for what you have done. Take it all and smash it up and look closely at what is there, especially when we resist it, can't be bothered, avoid it, are too busy or tired. That is when we should look even more closely. This is religion.