No “God” Needed… or Wanted!
Religionists believe “God” provides meaning, purpose and morality. Without “Him,” everything falls into meanness and meaninglessness. Are they correct?
Nope. They are not. They are absolutely, positively, wrong. Let’s discuss.
This week I watched a college basketball player explain that the team’s 3-point shots were falling because “God was directing them.” This statement of sincere belief, a conviction, indeed, that obviously was centered at the core of the very selfhood of this talented player, seemed a tad incongruent, given the fact that his team needed but one free throw to secure the win, but, alas, that shot did not fall in. His team lost!
It is likely no coincidence that this player plays for a university that is affiliated with a large Christian denomination. Still, how to square that “God” was directing certain shots to go in but the biggest shot of the night did not, and the team actually lost the contest… to, gag!, a godless “state” university? If “God” is micromanaging the Universe to the fine degree of guiding individual shots into a basketball net, what supernatural “power” decided, at the wire, that the team-of-state was the more deserving winner than the school of the Lord? Was it “God” who changed his mind? Was it a “lesson” that “God” wanted to impart? Did “God” momentarily take “His” eye off the ball to attend to a wayward galaxy? Did the Christian team’s fans not pray hard enough to secure the win? I duly noted that while “God” was lavishly praised for the shots that went in, no blame was ascribed to “Him” for the misses or the loss. Did a demon, perhaps old Beelzebub himself, snatch that free throw off the rim and into the hands of the enemy? If he was wondering, himself, the player did not let on about it. He ignored the quandary altogether. So, too, it seems do all others who praise their Lord for the good things in life but never assign “Him” blame for the bad.
There is an unlimited array of supernatural scenarios that could potentially explain this phenomenon, including the Flying Spaghetti Monster tickling the free throw shooter’s nostril hairs just at the moment of release. Or perhaps Thor’s hammer coming down hard somewhere in Denmark shifted the Earth’s momentum just ever so slightly that the free throw went awry. Or we could, if we have to, fully explain the matter with plain old physics and statistics. I know. Not as fun and fanciful, it doesn’t feel as good, but is likely more attuned to… reality.
Seems the 3-ball shooters, having practiced for years, are pretty good at their craft, though forty percent success rate (which means a 60 percent fail rate) is considered excellent in that regard. Meanwhile, the free throw shooter is making around half his tosses from the stripe, which is decidedly not a good ratio. In both the hits and misses, the players were playing well within their average performance standards.
To me, the product of a state university, there is no mystery here. No supernatural force at work. No fickle deity fiddling with flying spheres. No divine being manipulating, even breaking, the laws of nature. Those basketballs sailed as true as the math of each individual sphere’s trajectory and momentum allowed… no different from what the planets are doing right this moment in their varied pirouettes around the Sun.
Now some would claim that having “faith” in pure science and the natural order robs humanity of the meaning and purpose and wonder and mystery and beauty, and even morality, of a connection with the “sacred,” which they take to be concentrated in a Big Daddy in the sky. There are many of us (more and more every day) who think the opposite. The “sacred” is the whole Shebang. Everything. The ALL. The Universe and all its constituent parts. Every mote infused with wonder, meaning, purpose and beauty. Sure, there must be some “Source” of all of this, and (unlike religion) science is hot on the trail to discover more about this phenomenon. It has unraveled some of the mystery all the way back to the Big Bang, beyond which veil we can’t quite peer… yet. The intricate workings of the Universe are knowable (well, if you are a nuclear physicist, molecular biologist or some such… the rest of us can get in on the gist), dependable, predictable, and this is what actually infuses them with meaning, purpose, wonder and beauty, with still plenty of mystery to keep us on the quest to learn more.
Conversely, from the scientific vantage, “faith” in any of the thousands of “gods,” including the “One” who (at least in the West) apparently killed off all the others and now stands alone in representing irrational, emotional clinging to a patchwork of Bronze Age guesswork and fairytales by “prophets” and “sages,” not to mention unknown editors, who could not tell you one single thing about how the world actually works. Religion has its myths, and it is sticking to them, no matter what modern science reveals. These myths were written by the ignorant for their even more ignorant “children,” i.e. flock. Without a clue, to secure authority, they still needed “explanations” for how the world works, preferably tales that would help reinforce clan identification, calm and control the rabble, and concentrate power. A supernatural daddy figure (or, originally, mommy), works exceedingly well when trying to inculcate and control children. It really is as simple as: “Listen here children. Behave and you will get a treat. Misbehave and you will be punished.” This is every religion in a nutshell.
Man was not made in “God’s” image; “God” was made in man’s. And man’s image was made by living for tens of millions of years in the forest. We are apes. If “God” really does look like a human, then there must have been some primeval forest in which “He, Apeman,” dwelled and developed before his later handiwork on the “Creation.” No such forest is mentioned in the Bible. Just the dark and deep. To those of us who revere the real, the natural, the world we actually live in, this mode of belief, of “faith,” is the opposite of sensible. It is brainwashing. Did it ever help cultures to survive? Perhaps. But in our modern world, it is counterproductive, indeed a severe negative. We can perfectly well see how divisive religion is. Wherever religion is the strongest, there be oppression and strife. And because it is inherently, deeply untrue, there is nothing actually meaningful, purposeful, beautiful, wondrous or sacred about it.
Science has probed all the way back to the Big Bang, the very “dark and deep”… and no “God” has been found, certainly not the micromanaging “God” of most sacred texts. No evidence of a pre-Universe forest has been found either, which makes sense, as a forest requires an already formed world plus hundreds of millions of years to emerge. But what science has found is once the Big Bang clanged, the Universe created itself. The stars and planets created themselves. Life created itself. This is the stunningly magnificent, real Greatest Story Ever Told, that religion has the evil audacity to reject. Imagine that. The religious systems that so adore “God” so as to be prompted to slavishly “worship” this supposedly all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, father figure, really don’t want to learn anything of the forces and particles and elements and molecules of this Universe that are powerful clues to the actual quality and character of the Source of it ALL. They are content to believe what they are told, to know what they know… which is… essentially nothing. Religionists enjoy and encourage being as ill-informed as were those ancient scribes.
Yes, seven billion religionists can all be wrong. And the proof of that is that they, themselves, can’t agree on much of anything. This legacy of disagreement goes on and on, all the way back into prehistory (though it seems if you look back even further, before institutionalized religion, the more grounded were clans in actual reality). Disagreement is how religions form. It is what they are based upon. It’s their reason for being. It is what differentiates one sect from the other. This wouldn’t be so bad if they were arguing tiddlywink strategies, but they are not; they are battling over how to believe and behave regarding the most important facets of human life; they are imposing mindsets about the totality of life, and swallowing down specific dogma biscuits they are willing to kill and die for. Meanwhile, there are Catholics who despise the pope. There is Christian vs Christian war in Ukraine. There is hatred between Muslim sects. Ironically, tragically, considering their own holocaust, Zionists are committing genocide in Gaza, that, come to think of it, reminds of their own historical rampage against Canaan. There is persecution of Muslims by Buddhists of Myanmar. How about American “Christians” slaughtering Indians, enslaving Africans, and these days hating gays and trans and immigrants and liberals, attempting to force their backward beliefs on all the rest of us, and perfectly willing to swoon over a transparent charlatan who seeks to overthrow our democracy? Religion is the solution to nothing. As a component of wider conservatism, it is a malicious virus in our human affairs.
There is Another Way. An infinitely better way… in every way. Accept science. Follow its lead. Love the Earth and the Cosmos. Embrace these actual facts as astoundingly beautiful hints about the real nature of nature, of which we are a part. Appreciate the amazingly wonderful story of how this all came to be, how we came to be. Whatever the Source is, everything in this Universe is a shard of it. Thus, we can objectively state that every particle is sacred. Certainly life, the crowning glory of the Universe, is precious and sacred. It took nearly fourteen billion years to create you and me! THAT’S THE STORY! This poofing of everything into existence by Big Skydaddy is by contrast not even a comic book, it’s a strip cartoon, abjectly incomplete and inferior to our authentic saga. The scientific facts describe the human journey as the most profound achievement in the history of the Universe! We are shards of the Source contemplating itself! Conversely, religious tales depict humanity as the plaything of the gods, pathetic pawns in a not-so-divine comedy. Clinging to the hoary old tales and stubborn rejection of our authentic history is absurdly dangerous and damaging to any hope of humanity coming together in peace and harmony. The human family could potentially agree upon a rational, science-based spirituality; it will never come together over any religion. World War III starting over religion is far more likely.
A few days after the basketball game, two things happened.
A tornado swept through the South, ripping a town to pieces, people were killed. A survivor praised “God” for sparing the lives of her family. No discussion ensued of who or what steered the tornado straight through their little community.
Then, a meme came across my feed. It was a gorgeous photo of a moment in time in the North Cascades of Washington. A shimmering turquoise lake stretched toward jagged mountain peaks, with dark clouds and a rainbow embellishing the painting-like scene. The caption read: “God’s artistry.”
Really? “God” just poofed this place into existence? “Poofing” things into existence is the default explanation of those who actually have no idea about anything. Only the totally uninformed but fully indoctrinated would conclude that this scene emerged from “God’s” artistic genius; “He” imagined this beauty, and then set it so? Many religionists, in emphatically supporting this claim, would further insist it was done so in the last six thousand years. What a ridiculous self-achieved lack of knowledge. What paltry imagination. What utter baloney. What foolish nonsense. What divisive dogma. What an insult to Mother Earth… to skip right over her obvious handiwork, and bow instead to a figment of barbarian imagination. What harmful to person and society bullshit!
Just as with the basketball shots, no “God” is necessary for the explanations of the tornado or this majestic landscape. The tornado is a function of basic dynamics and angular momentum. The storm funnel is created by climatic conditions and is guided by wherever the prevailing weather system will pull it. It notices no person or town in its path; just like a basketball it’s just following the path it must. Same-same for the pristine Northern Cascades view. Mother Earth created this place, using basic physics and the atoms gifted to her from the wider Universe. The mountains were created not by a grey-bearded Dude in a heavenly bathrobe, but by scalding tectonic violence deep inside the planet, then thrust into the sky, then slowly but surely carved into their present condition over tens of millions of years or more. The sculptor of those stone teeth in the sky was not some slacker deity who needs a rest every seven days, but quadrillions of drops of water, along with mile deep glaciers and however many tornados and lightning strikes have battered the range in said millennia. Likewise, the lake and clouds are products of the wondrous and delightful bonding properties of the elements hydrogen and oxygen, flowing and pooling where they must on their incessant impulse to go downhill. The rainbow is an optical phenomenon of light rays reflecting and refracting within individual tiny droplets of water vapor, which are visible to us because of the seemingly magical capabilities of evolution, which by dogged trial and error created and re-created the eye many times over, and in many different designs, again over a time span of hundreds of millions of years. Every thing of astounding beauty and wonder in the Universe CREATED ITSELF with local materials and processes… and it is this story that our awe and reverence should be focused upon. We cannot yet know much about the ultimate Source, but we can know and love and protect the Creation. It, and only it, is the true “scripture,” and the only way to know anything about the Source or Creative Force. We non-religious observers can at least agree with the Bible that is is very, very good for us. This is “spirituality” to more and more people. We give credit where credit is due. All the world, and certainly all of life, is good, beautiful, sacred. The creators of religion knew none of this. Nobody did back then (though Eastern thinkers were more attuned to the goodness of nature and the concept of Oneness). But to live in the time of this astounding flow of stupendously profound and wondrous information, and still choose to be as ignorant as people were over two thousand years ago is simply farcical. Religion is the seller of this intractable stupidity.
But it’s worse than stupidity, religion is destructive. In its zealous determination to “worship” a false, actually non-existent “creator,” it also neglects, exploits, even despises the myriad things of this world. It dotes on fictional “miracles” that assault the laws of nature, while displaying no respect, much less love, for those very laws, the ordinary, the real. It actually disparages the Earth and all of its fabulous multiplicity of dimensions in favor of a make-believe afterlife where the good children get their reward and the bad children are punished…. forever. Real paradise, this planet, is sacrificed on the altar of a fake paradise promised after you are dead! Considering that both the miracles and afterlife tales are complete and utter fiction, there is no actual bond of friendship, much less kinship, between the religionist and reality.
The praise for “God” when things go well coupled with the lack of blame when things do not, is a curious phenomenon of its own. So “God” has a plan for everything in the entire Universe. But this “plan” can potentially be changed by prayer, or by free will. (In a previous essay, we took a look at prayer: “In Epic Social Experiments, Prayer Fails!”). So “God” guides basketball shots and crafts incredible scenes of nature, but is not to blame for five-year old children getting brain cancer.
This paradox is explored in one of the most remarkable books of the Bible: Job. This book has an entirely different, quite superior, writing style from any other. You may recall some kind of demon makes a bet with “God” that it can make one of the deity’s most faithful believers turn against him. “God” thinks this will be good fun. So the demon sets to torture Job. He is made ill. Job remains faithful. His flocks are killed. Job remains faithful. His wealth is destroyed. Job remains faithful. His friends are killed. Job remains faithful. His family is killed. Job remains faithful. Finally, very perplexed and angry, Job accuses “God” of injustice, and demands an explanation. This is one of the very few instances in the Bible where a moral human dares to challenge “God,” in whom Job, despite the whirlwind of misfortune, is still faithful. Job, rightfully, logically, wants to know “What gives here?” “God” appears to Job in the midst of a storm. “He” essentially says, “How dare you question ‘Me!’ I’m ‘God!’ I created everything! You understand nothing compared to ‘Me!’ You have no power compared to ‘Me!’” “God” then goes on to describe how “He” micromanages everything (without evidencing any knowledge of how all of these natural phenomena are actually effected). Except, it seems, the job to job Job, which was given over to a naughty demon, while the all-powerful “I Am” looked on with some humor. The victim of this divine joke, who never wavered in his “faith,” is scolded, demeaned, belittled and shamed for complaining, and essentially told to shut up and suffer. Job, still refusing to be unfaithful, admits that he is in error, and must now “despise myself.” Good job there, Big Daddy! Oh, but there’s a happy ending. The “Lord” takes pity on Job, and gives him even greater wealth, a new flock, new friends and a new family. He lives another 140 years. This was written before the “heaven” concept was fully concocted, so when Job dies, he’s dead, nothing more. But the story serves as a lesson to keep the “faith” in “God” no matter what, do not question why, do not look behind the curtain, just believe and it will all work out in the end. Until then, shut up and keep suffering if that’s the “plan” “God” has for you. Quite coincidently, I’m sure, this system works out exceedingly well for oppressors.
But just as with Job, it often does not work out well for for the suffering. In the past two thousand years, how many people have felt like Job, that “God” has abandoned them, or worse, sent a demon to torture them? Why does “God” hate them? What about that five-year old with brain cancer and their families? What about the accidents and sudden heart attacks or strokes or viruses or criminality that snatch away a just blossoming life or, indeed, any of the innocent? The believer is left to wonder why would “God” send this pain, this anguish, this heartbreak to us? The answer from religion, “God works in mysterious ways.” Which is to say, “Hell if I know.” This is an admission that it doesn’t make a lick of sense. This is not meaning. It is not justice. It is not love.
Job never got his original flock or friend or family back. They were sacrificed to the capriciousness of “God.” So, too, literally, are millions of lives by this very same “God” in other books of the Bible. Notably, “He” tries to destroy ALL LIFE on Earth at one point. How to make sense of any of this? Job tries, and is thrown into questioning the worth of his own personhood. In the Judeo-Christian religion, Job stands for someone, perhaps like you, who desperately wants to believe but has completely natural doubts. If you know what’s good for you, put away all doubt, and get back into full compliance and conformity.
How many other millions, perhaps billions, of believers have been likewise psychically wounded, or actually killed, by this very same doubt, anxiety and shame? How many other real people have been sacrificed to the fallacies of religion? How many have been murdered outright, or lived, and died, in confused fear and trepidation? How many have had chronic anxiety and nightmares about themselves or their loved ones burning in Hell? How many have been, like Job, shamed and beaten down just for having very normal human thoughts and emotions and impulses… that, according to religionists, “God” implanted in us? To live in this belief system is to accept, indeed revel, that your life is subject to the whim of a deity. The jealous, easily-angered, wildly unpredictable god of the Bible, no less. You are a pawn. Everything you do, everything that happens to you, is micromanaged by a “God,” and if it is even possible to deviate from the “plan,” you may then be courting ETERNAL SUFFERING! Wow… if that is not a diabolical concept, what is?
Mother Earth, who provides the real “paradise,” is surely looking at us and thinking, of all my children you are the most clever… and the most confused… and because of both, the most dangerous.
It is said that “God” is love. But there is actually scant evidence of that, not only in the entire Bible, but also in the vast historical swath of behavior of those who purport to believe it. Quite the opposite. The more fundamentally they believe (i.e. the more conservative), the worse that behavior seems to become. It is true that Jesus emphasized love… for all of “mankind.” “Christians” have made a real artform out of ignoring this essential part of his “ministry,” right along with his disdain of wealth and even possessions. But this abject failure, occludes the failure of Jesus, himself. Human to human love is about the best the Christ could manage. Love for nature? Love for the world? Love for the Universe? Not so much. You would think the “Creator” who had suddenly appeared in human form might be enthused to inform people about how much actual time and toil was involved in creating this world, commanding them to shape up and take care of it. Even animals know not to foul their nest. These do not seem to be concepts that ever occurred to Jesus. The vast and majestic splendors of nature are stage props to him. In a pique of irrational anger, he killed a little tree that wasn’t bearing fruit (out of season), and in another incident flung “demons” out of a human and into pigs. Really? Demons into pigs? Why should the pigs have to suffer? Couldn’t a “god” just as easily throw the demons into a black hole a thousand light years from here? The biblical story smacks of being written by someone who had never heard of black holes! Hmmm…. a tiny hint of the “divine” veracity of the verse?
Though Yeshua pleads (ineffectively, as the history of his religion turns out) for love for one another, overall the “love” in religion is unidirectional, flowing from the believer directly to the “God.” This is much easier for “Christians” and other religionists to achieve, or fake. Love for something real is evidenced by something tangible, notably bonding and nurturing and defending. Yet you can “love” “God,” or claim to, without any evidence that anything about this “relationship” is based in reality. You can claim a “bond” with “God” but you are just as likely to receive “His” treatment of Job. Love for “God” goes into that black hole. Religious “love” goes to “God” to die. Since there is no evidence whatsoever that the “God” of religious texts actually exists, this “love” essentially goes… into the ether…. to nowhere. Unlike the light rays of the rainbow, it doesn’t reflect and refract and emerge as a wondrous thing to behold. Bizarrely, in the minds of “believers,” the lack of evidence, the dearth of cause and effect, is not a bug in the religious system, it’s a feature. This glaring failure of religion to adequately explain anything then requires “faith” to surmount. Religious “faith” — belief outside of rationality — becomes the coin of the realm in the religious community, a self-reinforcing indoctrination. “Faith” itself becomes the “answer.” And into this dark illogic of belief fall billions.
Meaning, purpose, profundity, beauty, law, justice cannot be based on this flimsy, actually diabolical, strategy! It’s not just inane, it’s quite insane. The whole “God” thing, including the entwining dogma of “His” human guises and emissaries, is a ridiculous platform upon which to build a worldview, a philosophy, and certainly a “morality.” Indeed, beware the courthouse where the Ten Commandments are flaunted and barbaric Old Testament “justice” may be enforced. A raft of crocodiles is more “moral” than most of the vicious, “God” worshipping tribes of human history. And the fact that so many victims of these nonsensical systems have been coerced or brainwashed into joining them is beyond inane. To name a few, what are indigenous people doing in the church of the white oppressor? To go back a little further, what are descendants of once nature-loving Europeans doing in the temple of desert Semites?
The war on nature is a hallmark of almost all religions. We see that continuing on today as the planet is crying out, species are disappearing, ice sheets are melting, the world is on fire and drowning, and the religions of the world are AWOL. In the day of all of humanity facing its worst-ever catastrophe, the dominant American religion is currently… up in arms about transgender kids! Here again, the contradiction, the hypocrisy is on full display. The “love” for the Creator in no way, shape or form extends to the Creation. Even the most famous Bible story involving animals, Noah’s Ark, which begins by trying to account for the continuing existence of the species of the world as “God” prepares to kill everything, concludes with “Him” revoking his own law dating back to the Garden of Eden which banned eating animals. Post-flood, “He” gifts humans the green light to eat anything they want. How convenient! Once again, “God” shows scant regard for the sanctity of life itself. Most religionists have not spent a second worrying about any non-human species since, and have freely and viciously exercised the Biblical mandate of “dominion” over the planet, which however some wish to spin the term has meant domination and destruction in actual practice by Bible believers.
Many believe in the absolute truth of the Noah story. Such children’s stories extolling a human-like “God” usurp the vastly superior scientific saga. Our kinship and common origin, the ONENESS of the world, the elegant magic of evolution, the most beautiful discovery of all time, are all derided, debunked by the stark division between humans and humans, as well as the separation of humans with all other life forms that religion is insistent to promote. The essential preciousness of life, all life, is rebuffed and refuted by the all-about-the-humans fables of old. How different would the world now be if religion had extended its love outward to the world, rather than laser focused on a fabrication? Religion has had millennia to get its story straight, sort out its differences and bring healing to the human family. It has utterly, spectacularly, violently, tragically FAILED!
Heaven knows, it’s well past time for a change of course.
We, the free-thinkers of humanity, glimpse a totally different possibility. What if we bring our belief system into accord with modern facts and figures? What if science, itself, is our guide to what is real on this planet and beyond? Most actual scientists don’t realize it, but science is spiritual to the core. Like spirituality, science is seeking the truth. Like science, spirituality is not bound to hidebound tradition or dogma or self-serving priests, pastors, rites and rituals. Science is peering into the how and why and when of reality itself. Spirituality is keenly interested in this, as well. Spirituality does not have its own telescopes, microscopes, experiments and mathematical formulae, but it relishes the insight these bring to light. The spiritual thinker/feeler can then process this information to levels of meaning and beauty beyond what the rote scientist cannot seem to muster. Science and spirituality could easily work together to help our cultures to evolve toward wisdom, peace and love.
What if we embrace the Creation as not some unknowable, meaningless, value-less, vast, dark, dangerous, scary behemoth that threatens to demean and crush us into oblivion (so we might as well plunder what we can while we can), but as our rightful birthplace, our womb, our sustaining organism that somehow, seemingly magically, created this place, this paradise, for us out here in the suburbs of a spiraling galaxy? What if our “creation” story begins not with “poofing” but stardust? A supernova, a “grandmother star,” had to be born, shine for hundreds of millions of years, and then die in a titanic explosion to provide our component atoms. What if we recognize and ennoble the process of evolution, from Big Bang to the swirling creation of Mother Earth to the beginning of life to our own growth and development from physical to emotional to intellectual to spiritual, as the key to understanding how everything actually works? Instead of the silly, needless shame and “sin” evoked in the fanciful Adam and Eve tale, what if our human story lovingly recounts our long ancestral journey through myriad types of life forms — beginning with bacteria — all of these our actual kith and kin, sharing our DNA, transforming into more and more complex creatures, ceaselessly changing, evolving, never quite perfectly adapted to our environment, until at long last we find ourselves apes in a primeval forest “Eden” for millions of years, there developing our arms and legs and fingers and stereo-vision, only to eventually find ourselves kicked out of the forest, not by sin but by stronger neighbors, and having to reinvent ourselves once again out on the dangerous African savannah, where as the result of stern and novel challenges we perfect standing upright, and a very strange, unprecedented thing occurs… over more millions of years, our brains become larger and larger, and we invent human culture?
What if we put our “faith” in nature, which is our real benefactor, our real sustenance, our real air, water, food, shelter, grounding and balance? What if we don’t ever have to think or worry about volatile gods, or heavens or hells, but can concentrate on living our best life here and now, having faith in the probabilities and predictability of the laws of physics? What if we perceive that we do have a special meaning and purpose in this vast cosmos, and that is to fulfill the grand experiment of how the Universe can create a species that seeks to know about itself, evolve into its highest potential, and embraces the role of caretaker of this beautiful jewel of a planet? What if we take it to mind and heart that love is our highest calling, love for the entire world, which certainly includes all people?
We don’t need, or want, any “god” for any of this. We don’t need, or want, any religion for any of this. Minions of fictitious “gods” know nothing of any of this. This is not their aim. Their aim, if any beyond self-empowerment, seems to be to draw in at least enough dupes to perpetuate the scam of their particular flavor of Kool-Aid… or to simply wait in heady anticipation until the End Times when this awful, filthy, dangerous, sinful world will be destroyed and people like them will be able to gloatingly ascend to heaven. This is meaning? This is purpose? This is beauty? This is morality? No. It is not.
What a stark difference in perceptions. Meaning and purpose and beauty and mystery are woven into every particle in the Universe. Spirituality is its own way. As the “Golden Rule” suggests, morality is basic to human cultures, and even to other advanced life forms. No god, no religion, is needed. Indeed, we can clearly see through history that gods and religions are anathema to these higher, more intelligent, more truthful, more moral, more loving ways of being.
