MONOTHEISM IS FALSE

Николай Атанасов

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I respect the Jewish concept of a sexless and unknowable "god", because it is very close to the contemporary scientific consensus, that the void is the obvious creator of all matter in the multiverse. However, astrophysicists have already suggested, that this void is not an intelligent entity, but a force they cautiously name "dark energy", which is pulling our universe apart in all directions. And the final result of this process will be the end of intelligent life, because all matter will freeze after stars burn out. 

No creationist "god" would freeze his crowning achievement for all eternity after the stupendous effort of a "big bang". Is our Lord an evil alien? Why are we plummeting after a dying star in the frigid hell of space-time? 

All religious leaders in positions of institutional power have to finally admit to themselves, that the closest phenomenon to the concept of divinity they can ever insist on, without losing integrity, is life. Not an abstract deception, but the real succession of temporary, accidental "gods" on habitable planets. Because "immortality" is only possible as a lifeless eternity for the void, and because "reincarnation" only succeeds on molecular level. 

So I respect the Jewish tradition of hopeful mysticism and I admire the healing practice of confession, but every solar system falls apart in the end. And I would never convert to a religion, which prescribes a death penalty for me, only because I am incapable of sexual attraction to women (Leviticus 20:13). Instead, I would dare to argue, that the birth of Judaism became a still birth, when the inclusion of the Book of Leviticus detonated its core. 

And I wouldn't even consider the youngest monotheistic tradition of Islam, because it is entirely derivative, irrational and dehumanizing.

Conversion to most forms of organized religion leads to an inevitable end of personal integrity for numerous reasons, as important as justice for homosexual citizens, who are still persecuted in almost 100 countries. In this respect, the most reasonable religion for gay men is Christianity, because it incorporates the Gospel of Matthew with the prophetic classification of the ancient eunuchs, and because the criminally misinformed legacy of the apostle Paul does not include death penalties.

King David is not a homosexual character (certainly not a eunuch, he does not represent the bottom of the spectrum of human sexuality) and the Old Testament offers no consolation for men, who are only capable of same-sex desire.

Here is the most common delusion of religious doctrine - we are not made in the image of an interventionist "god", because no carbon-based entity can produce and survive a "big bang". We are made in the image of our biological parents, who are the real "gods", because they have the ability to affect other forms of life.

All living creatures are dangerous deities, especially when they destroy other lives, because their actions replace the personal "god" of the victims.

In other words - violence refutes monotheism.

I don't believe our universe is a cruel experiment, conducted by meta-alien intellect, because cosmic vacuum seems to be inherently limitless and inescapable. There are very convincing arguments against the hypothesis that we live in the simulated prison of a hologram. And the argument on top of my personal list is the reality of extreme physical pain, which would never be a conscious creative choice in a holographic project with an intelligent design. In addition, a supreme being would not waste time on sadistic persecution of all accidentally manifested life. If String theory turns out to be correct, then no level of self-awareness can control matter beyond the point of manifestation, when energy waves intertwine and harden as elementary particles. Any plausible deity is powerless beyond this point, which renders its intent a chaotic failure. It cannot be an interventionist subject. We cannot define divinity with this initial push of energy manifestation, because creation requires one primary, universal condition - self-awareness. And "nothing" cannot maintain self-awareness.

Astrophysicists already know, that our hypothetical and impossible "maker" has not interfered with evolution for many billions of years, as if he never cared about results. And the results are not indicative of a deliberate design - the vast majority of space-time is extremely cold and most carbon-based forms of life can only meet within the same solar system, if their star has produced two or more planets in its habitable zone. So it's easy to conclude, that interstellar travel for the purposes of colonization is not the universal rule - it is the rare exception. And even if our creator is a parallel alien race, and we accept it as "god", then we also have to accept the same definition for every single form of life. Animals also procreate, practice primitive forms of speech and use tools for survival. Birds surpass our human inability to fly. Trees live longer. Plants communicate with chemical signals and some of them eat insects. Evolution is painfully and dangerously self-evident.

I believe in the discouraging reality of chaos and in the struggle to tame it. I am deeply convinced, that the very first living beings in cosmic history were single-cell organisms, because our universe in its incomprehensible entirety is not preceded or controlled by any entity we can declare "god". On the contrary, chaos will determine even the fate of our own creator - the sun - when it runs out of resources in a few billion years. It will start to expand slowly on its way to becoming a red giant and the first massive wave of solar flares will burn all life on Earth, as if it never existed. We are locked in a deadly embrace with our parent star, which will scorch us at the end of its life, in order to get rid of any evidence, that we ever deserved to be remembered. The proverbial omnipotent power has devised the perfect master plan to forget us forever, but we have already evolved to understand, that it does not deserve the title "intelligent design".

No matter how we approach the definition of the divine, we always have to concede, that monotheism is false, because the void supporting regular and dark matter is not self-aware, and because evolution has followed a chaotic path without traces of "designer" interference. If "intellect", "immortality" and "infinity" are the basic criteria in our search for the real "god", then this void fails to meet at least the first two. It is not intelligent, because it doesn't pursue order in the process of particle manifestation, and it is not immortal, because the absence of substance is never a state of being alive. It may only be infinite, because the lack of particle content is by default a lack of limits. 

Our human race has been staring at the irrefutable presence of this void for a long time now and it looks like nothing can contain or manage its omnipotence, certainly not a carbon-based entity. 

This is it - our final frontier is an endless vacuum, which behaves like a senile alchemist of lethal chaos. There is no creationist "lord" or meta-alien master plan and the impending incineration of Earth by our parent star is not a cruel joke on our itinerary. We may never be able to explain the natural causes of the primordial explosion of our universe, but we can be certain, that the force of this explosion does not originate from an intelligent source. 

So organized religion can no longer be exploited as a weapon for mass intimidation and control. No authority can justify the persecution of entire classes of citizens with abstract ideas of deities, which are nothing more than camouflage for power-hungry demagogues. 

Only the cosmic diversity of life can be described as an incalculable multitude of "gods", blinking in and out of existence, because the formation of liquid water allows them to do so. Jesus Christ, according to the canonical gospels, was right about the most fundamental reality - he was "god" as a human being. Just not the only one. 

So in the end, the Buddhist concept of divinity remains infinitely more accurate than Judaeo-Christian and Islamic dogma. We are all Christ figures, because Jesus is Buddha, but some of us can put together an empirical case in support of a personal claim to transcendence. 

© Nikolay Atanasov
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© E-magazine LiterNet, 07.11.2017, № 11 (216)