Humans are dangerously ego- and Earth-centric!

 

There was a time when claiming that the Earth revolved around the Sun was deemed blasphemy, an insult to God Almighty. Scientists/astronomers were killed for positing it.

Consider this:

 

The three major religions (in alphabetical order: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) all originated on a tiny piece of land in the Middle East populated and controlled by sexist, nationalistic, misogynistic  patriarchs.  During the same time frame, the rest of the earth was populated with indigenous tribes and nations throughout the world:

Native Americans in the Americas (north, central and south)

Africans in Africa

Asians in Asia

Etc.

 

Many of the other places had female goddesses as their divine progenitors.

 

But male Middle Eastern humans  (not a one of them Caucasian/white; no one in the entire Bible is White or Christian, by the way– Jesus’s first disciples for more than a hundred years were olive-skinned Jews) proclaimed (egocentrically) a long time ago that one small spot on our globe was Ground Zero for the presence of God (Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh, etc.) Who had created ALL THIS for His glory and handed it over for male humans to have dominion over.  (Not as compassionate shepherds, as embodied by Jesus, but as dominators!)

 

We see how that is panning out after some 2000 years of “interpretation” of the  Holy Bible: with our planet despoiled, and all “others” (women, refugees and — for the past number of centuries, ever since “race” was created as a concept by white male Europeans, all people of color) marginalized and/or destroyed in tribal or nationalistic battles, and with all sides raising some sort of religious flag to virtue signal that they are waging widespread wrath for their God, who apparently hates the same people they do and who even takes sides during their sporting events.

 

Now look at the entire universe  

Look at where Earth is in the known universe. (Click on the link.)

 

Yes, it appears Earth is still the center of the known universe, but that’s because earth is our vantage point, and we can only see so far outward in each direction.

 

Our vantage point is just ONE of multiple BILLIONS of vantage points!

 

Our vantage point does NOT suggest that we are the center of the universe, or that we possess the supreme, sole “knowledge” of God/Source from billions of years of evolution of alien other beings throughout the known universe.

 

Now, compare the wee thumbprint location of our three major religions to the known universe. Does what you see even remotely suggest that we should consider ourselves of major or sole  concern to any being who (if there is one) created the entire universe?

 

I find that concept incredibly hard to believe! (But not impossible, because my EGO desperately wants to believe we’re really all that special and beloved to Someone who has “the whole world in their hands.” Like Mark Twain said, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” I have FAITH that the chair I’m sitting on right now will continue to hold me up, but no PROOF,  just BELIEF!)

 

WHAT IF…?

 

What if aliens came here from other places and seeded us here to see what would happen?

Or what if they sequestered/imprisoned some of our earliest ancestors because they were considered too primitive to be able to live amicably in the universe with beings of light and love, as some Europeans did when they sent their “incorrigible criminals” to Australia to remove them from civilized society?

Or what if we’re being observed under a huge microscope in some extraterrestrial species’ science experiment or in the same way Jim Carrey was in the movie THE TRUMAN SHOW?

Any of that seems more likely to me than the claim that we’re divinely and uniquely of primary concern to some deity.

 

AM I A DEIST, AN AGNOSTIC, OR AN ATHEIST?

 

I am none of the above. I simply don’t know enough with dead certainty to belong to any of those groups/tribes. I have studied the Bible (for ten years under a masterful theologian and pastor), and I have studied texts debunking the Bible, and I have to say I’ve come down in the side of “the Bible is most certainly NOT the inerrant word of God.” The Bible was written by Middle Eastern men living in a patriarchal society many thousands of years ago. They had neither the scientific knowledge nor the ego-less insights necessary to identify a god as opposed to an extraterrestrial being who possessed what they considered “supernatural” powers.

 

CASES IN POINT

 

During WWII a plane flew over an island in the South Pacific which had never been flown over before. The people on that island witnessed the plane and immediately created an image of it using brush and other available resources, and then they began to worship it, to signal to the “gods” in the air that they had seen its miraculous craft and would henceforth bow to it.

 

People (even atheists and agnostics) have been miraculously healed (even remotely, without contact) after being  prayed over or commanded to “heal” by people they considered extraordinary in some way. Touching the hem of Jesus’s garment isn’t the only time something like that happened in history. It happens often enough even today that doctors (those with and without faith) are frequently gob-smacked by “impossible” remissions, immediate removal of addictions,  or the removal of internal or external maladies that threaten a patient’s life.

 

WE DON’T KNOW WHAT WE DON’T KNOW, SO WE FREQUENTLY FALL BACK ON “FAITH”, MYTH, BIGOTRY OR SUPERSTITION

 

I think that, instead of religion, we need a large dose of humility. We need to counter our ego with insatiable curiosity and compassion.  If we do that, we’ll do more for humanity and other beings than any religion has ever done for us anywhere in the world.

 

We need to CONCENTRATE MORE ON REALIZING WHAT WE DON’T KNOW, INSTEAD OF PRETENDING TO KNOW MORE THAN WE ACTUALLY DO.

 

God is a construct, something humans devise (or adopt as part of their cultural training) to try to make sense out of a world that often seems senseless. When we can’t put our finger on a cause or a situation , our first response should NOT be, “Well, maybe that was God!”  or “God only knows!” Although these are comforting thoughts, there is no rock solid proof that they have actual merit.

 

Bottom Line: We aren’t the apex Mind in the universe. (If we are, “God” help us!)  There are other Minds out there we haven’t met yet, and perhaps — just perhaps — they are the “gods” our ancestors encountered and proclaimed divine because they could perform miracles that no terrestrial human at the time could do.

 

I DON’T KNOW. I’M JUST SPECULATING. OTHER POSSIBILTIES EXIST BEYOND, “THAT WAS GOD.”