new atheists’ battle against agnosticism

A lot of atheist on the internet have been condemning agnostics lately by saying that agnostics don’t understand the definitions of the terms “atheist” and “agnostic.” The argument goes that the term “atheist” isn’t an either/or term. Rather, it refers to how strongly you believe that God doesn’t exist. So no matter how wishy-washy you are, if you don’t expressly believe that God exists then you are an atheist to some degree. It goes on to say that gnosticism refers to the degree to which you know something is true. So anyone who doesn’t know for a fact that God exists is technically an agnostic…except for those who claim to know for a fact that God doesn’t exist. In that case they’re a strong atheist. For a more detailed explanation of this theory you can go to  http://www.update.uu.se/~fbendz/atheism/definitions.html or just do an internet search for “atheist agnostic” and find plenty of sites explaining this position.

This theory is flawed for two reasons. The first reason has to do with the idea that the only true meaning of words is their original meaning. Up until a few years ago it was commonly accepted that if you believed in God you were a theist. If you didn’t believe in God you were an atheist, and if you refused to take a stance then you were an agnostic. Then somebody dug into the linguistic origins of the words and told everybody the original definitions are the only right ones and the commonly accepted definitions are wrong.

There are good, academic intentions behind this movement, but if we made it a moral imperative that we only use the original (maybe even archaic) definitions of words then we would have to change how we use thousands of words. One single example is that homosexuals could no longer call themselves gay because “gay” originally meant “happy.” Would you really condemn homosexuals as ignorant for calling themselves gay?

The second problem with rolling back the definition of the word “agnostic” is that nobody can know whether or not God exists. We can claim to know one way or the other, but ultimately we can’t know for sure. That means everyone is either agnostic or delusional.

We might be able to accept that on it’s own, but the situation gets more confusing if we continue to stick by the original academic definition of “atheist.” Remember, the original definition states that every agnostic is actually a closet atheist. Now, since nobody can know if God exists then every atheist is also an agnostic. You see the confusion this creates?

Everyone is either an agnostic-atheist or a theist. This forces people who absolutely refuse to concede that there may be a God and people who absolutely refuse to concede either way to fall under the same labels. This is inefficient, and that’s why the original definitions got buried by linguistic-Darwinism. The original terms are too cumbersome to be useful to anyone but a small number of technical scholars.

It’s not stupid to say that if you believed in God you were a theist. If you don’t believe in God you’re an atheist, and if you refuse to take a stance then you’re an agnostic.  Distinguishing between ideologies that way is more efficient and more useful. This evolution in language should not only be acknowledged but respected.

deconstructing the celestial teapot

Spend enough time with atheists, and you’re going to hear the argument known as Russell’s Teapot (because it was written by Bertrand Russel) or The Celestial Teapot, which states:

“If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.” – Bertrand Russell

I want to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of this argument. We’ll start with the strengths.

It correctly suggests that if someone says something exists then the burden of proof lies with them to prove that it exists. Nobody else has to disprove its existence in order to prove that that thing does not exist. This is a wise categorical imperative that researchers follow in every field of science. We can’t assume everything anyone says is true until disproven. Our court system doesn’t work that way. The medical profession doesn’t work that way. Physics doesn’t work that way. Nothing empirically reputable does. Ideas are considered baseless theories until proven to be true…or at least true enough to be useful. If science worked the other way around we’d end up believing in preposterous falsities, and we’d never get anything done because we’d be too busy debunking preposterous claims.

Bertrand Russell also correctly points out evidence of human fallibility. When an idea becomes popular enough people tend to accept it as truth. Once an idea has been accepted as true people tend to reaffirm their beliefs to themselves and defend their beliefs against opposition. Psychologists call this cognitive bias. Furthermore, once people latch onto a belief and define their reality by that belief they’ll tend to hold onto that belief even after they’ve been shown evidence disproving their belief. They make mind bending excuses and shut themselves off to reason to protect their reality even though doing this only twists their reality further. Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance. Probably the best example of cognitive dissonance in human history is organized religion. Countless lives have been wasted, destroyed and ended as a result of organized religion pushing preposterous falsities on society and refusing to amend their ways even after their position has been disproven by reasonable evidence.

Bertrand Russell was correct in these observations. However, his celestial teapot is often used as a closed-case argument against the existence of God. When his observation is used for that purpose it becomes a weak analogy argument at best and a straw man argument at worst.

It would be one thing if I were to propose to you that a celestial teapot, leprechauns, mermaids or unicorns existed and dared you to disprove my claim. I couldn’t do it. However, the fact that I can’t disprove their existence isn’t proof that they don’t exist. In fact, scientific thought demands that I leave open the possibility that they exist until proven otherwise. Anything less would be close minded. Does that mean then that I go about my life searching for and worrying about leprechauns and unicorns? No. That would be preposterous. I’m going to go about my life as normal, dealing with the realities of my life while keeping an open mind to the fact that new evidence may one day be presented to me which will change my perception of reality.

At any rate, the analogy to celestial teapots, leprechauns and unicorns don’t even compare to the question of the existence of God. I’ll address this with an analogy of my own.

Suppose two men are standing in front of a fence. We’ll call them Mr. A and Mr. T. The fence is infinitely tall and stretches infinitely to their left. It ends just to their right so that they can’t see behind it. As they’re standing there a ball rolls out from behind the fence.

Mr. A turns to Mr. T and says, “What do you suppose set that ball in motion?”

Mr. T replies, “I don’t know. Maybe a person pushed it.”

Mr. A replies, “Can you prove that there’s an invisible teapot in the sky or leprechauns or unicorns?”

Mr. T replies, “No.”

Mr. A Replies, “Then a person couldn’t possibly have set that ball in motion. Therefore, the only logical solution is that some force of nature such as the wind pushed the ball.”

Now, an inanimate force of nature may indeed have set the ball in motion, but the existence of an invisible teapot has nothing to do with determining the cause of an observable phenomenon. The only way to understand an observable phenomenon is by reverse engineering the cause and effect chain of events that led up to the event in question.

The universe exists. Something set it in motion. Intelligent life forms materialized out of the inanimate matter the universe is made out of. If you can believe that inanimate life arose from inanimate matter, is it really any more of a stretch to suggest that inanimate matter arose from a living source that predated it? No. It really isn’t. And even if it were, orbital teapots, leprechauns and unicorns would still have nothing to do with reverse engineering the cause of abiogenesis any more than they have to do with explaining why water freezes. So comparing the issue to orbital teapots, leprechauns and unicorns would be using a weak analogy at best or a straw man argument at worst because those things are stand-alone theoretical situations and the issue of God (from an objective agnostic’s point of view) refers to an explanation of a known phenomenon that is equally as plausible as the improvable explanation presented by atheists.

the science of thought

One of the first things you have to understand about the universe if you ever hope to figure anything out is that there’s a logical explanation for everything. If something seems mysterious it’s only because you don’t understand it.

If this is true then how do we explain emotions, creativity or inspiration? You can’t put them into a bottle and study them. So how do you make sense of them? You do it the same way Galileo determined that the earth is round and orbits the sun without traveling around the world or being able to look at the solar system from the outside. You analyze what you know and formulate a theory that most reliably, simply and elegantly explains what you’ve seen and predicts what will happen.

Put my theory on the science of thought to the test, and you’ll find it is much more useful at explaining and predicting emotions, creativity and inspiration than the cop-out answer that they’re mystical, magical and unknowable.

Though follow the same rules of science as chemistry and physics. You can’t get a new thought from nothing. In order to have new ideas you either have to learn them from a source outside yourself or combine existing thoughts in new ways. Your thoughts will continue on the same trajectory until acted upon by a new thought.

Ultimately, thoughts are nothing more than mathematical equations. Every event that happens to you is a new variable for your brain to calculate and find a solution to, and there are so many variables involved in doing something as simple as crossing the street that if you gave your full attention to everything you did you’d never make it out of the house in the morning, but that’s okay because your brain is a cosmically powerful computer and can take simple tasks such as crossing the street and calculate them practically subconsciously. It can do other tasks, like beating your heart completely subconsciously.

Now look at how elegantly these simple concepts make complete sense of the mysterious concepts of emotions, creativity and inspiration.

Our emotions are the product of our brain subconsciously calculating all the variables in our life. Falling in love seems so mysterious, but when you take a step back and tally all the variables it makes logical sense. The logic might not add up to a responsible decision, but when people who make bad decisions it’s because they don’t have enough knowledge in their brain to calculate their decisions correctly. However, to them it appears logical because they’ve come to the most logical conclusion based on the variables they have.

This is why psychologists have a bad reputation for asking people questions and never giving answers. If the ‘patient’ knew all the variables in the first place they wouldn’t have a problem because they could find the solution on their own. If the psychologist were to give them the answer the ‘patient’ would reject it because the correct answer doesn’t add up using the limited amount of variables they’re working with. So the only way for the psychologist to get the patient to see the correct answer is to walk them through the problem and let them solve it for themselves.

If you need more evidence that emotions are subconscious logic then look at your own dreams. Psychologists are sometimes able to interpret dreams because they’re a logical representation of the variables in our lives even though they’re almost entirely the product of our subconscious. Sometimes the logic is obvious such as when a soldier has nightmares about war. Sometimes they’re mysterious, but even when they’re mysterious we know it’s not because they’re magical it’s only because we don’t fully, consciously understand the variables in the equation.

Creativity is just a matter of combining variables in innovative ways. Sometimes the logic is obvious such as in the case of artists like M.C. Escher. While Norman Rockwell and H.R. Geiger may seem whimsically creative, if you walked through their childhoods you could identify all the variables that led them to develop the styles they chose. And neither of those two artists could have possibly arrived at the other’s style because the variables in their lives didn’t add up to the other’s conclusions.

Inspiration is the simplest of all. Whenever we all of a sudden have a brilliant flash of insight it’s because something caused us to combine the exact two thoughts in the exact way to come to a logical conclusion that we were previously missing a vital variable to arrive at.

Now let’s take this a step further. The sum of all your knowledge (aka variables) and thinking skills (aka formulas) is your identity and your philosophy on life. The more (significant) variables you understand and the better your thinking skills are the more of a true individual you’ll be and the more successful your philosophy on life will be. The less you know, the less you can think and the less you have thought about the equation of life the more incomplete of a person you’ll be and the worse life skills you’ll have.

the tip of an iceberg isn’t what sinks ships

I’ve been railing against the injustices in the world ever since I was old enough to find politics and philosophy interesting. Year in and year out I’ve screamed into the wind, but in all that time only two things seem to have changed. I’ve grown weary of screaming, and the wind has gotten stronger.

Let me explain quickly what I’m talking about without using metaphors. The minority of world population who control the majority of the world’s political and economic power have consistently exploited that power to exploit the majority of the world’s population. Worst of all is it’s happening right in front of us. Every single bit of it has been analyzed in fine detail, the root  causes of the problems inherent in our world political system have been identified and solutions have been worked out and are publicly available. Yet none of those solutions are being implemented. We’re just sitting by bitching about our lives being devalued and exploited waiting for our turn to die.

There is one thing changing, but I can’t say if it’ll be a change for the better or the worse. The general population is learning that the people controlling the system are exploiting and killing them, and they’re getting angry. Real angry. The world is turning into a powder keg, and if/when it ever explodes I’m afraid the general population will be burnt more than the powerful minority.

Over the years I’ve been getting more and more angry at the powerful minority. There have been days when I’ve been so angry I thought my head would explode, but I came to a realization several days ago that deflated my anger.

Yes, the powerful minority are exploiting and killing people, but remember, they’re only a minority of the population, and they aren’t even getting their hands dirty. They’re sitting in ivory towers having meetings and signing papers. All the real work is being done by the general population.

It was the general population who bought more than they could afford. It was the general population who bought wasteful crap they didn’t need. It was the general population who bought the name brand goods made by children in sweat shops. It was the general population who put handcuffed their fellow men for victimless crimes and threw them into prisons to be raped and beaten while being watched over by the sadistic, apathetic eyes of guards…who came from the general population. It was the general population who campaigned for their corrupt leaders, funded their political campaigns and voted them into power. It was the general population who fought unjust wars for corporate profit. It was the general population who has been turning the gears of the system. It was the general population who refused to do anything meaningful about the problems in the world. It was the general population who chose to watch mind numbing television instead of reading and researching. It was the general population who neglected to use their brains to find solutions to the problems affecting them and chose to rely on the solutions offered by corrupt sociopaths.

The powerful minority pointed us towards the cliff society is barreling towards, and they should be held accountable for that, but it’s the general population who are stampeding over that cliff. We don’t have to overthrow any government to solve all our problems. We just have to think and act responsibly. We just have to stop supporting corruption.

Until the majority of the population ceases to act irresponsibly it won’t even matter if we can manage to dispose of the powerful minority who are acting irresponsibly because we won’t have solved the root of the problem.

prophets and cognitive dissonance

Christians are hypocrites. I don’t say this to be mean or smug. I say this because I want them to think critically about what they believe so that they can free themselves from the oppressive cult they’ve been mislead (albeit with good intentions) into believing. Anyone working in the mental health field will tell you that if you have a problem, the first step to recovery is admittance. So in order for Christians to snap out of their destructive habit of cognitive dissonance they need to realize that they’re being hypocrites.

The specific aspect of their hypocrisy I want to talk about right now is their acceptance of prophets. Consider everyone throughout history and around the world who have claimed to be prophets but weren’t/aren’t accepted by traditional Christians: Joseph Smith of the Latter-Day Saints, Muhammad of Islam, the Dali Lama of Buddhism, L. Ron Hubbard of Scientology, David Koresh, Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, etc., etc., etc.

Why do Christians discredit these false prophets? Is it just because they weren’t mentioned in the Bible? Yes and no. “Yes” because if they had been mentioned in the Bible then Christians would believe in them. “No” because they all fail the test of reason. Christians understand that common sense tells you their stories were fabricated.

If you haven’t dwelled on this point at length it probably still crossed your mind the first time you heard about these false prophets. In fact, their stories are so transparent that it only takes a semi-conscious half moment of thought to size them up and dismiss them for the fantasies they are. But let’s take a look at them again anyway. Consider what all the false prophets have in common. They each made outrageous claims about being specifically chosen by God to deliver a special message from God to humans (which conveniently always resulted in the prophet receiving copious amounts of adoration, and/or power, wealth, and sex). Furthermore, most of them claim to have been literally visited by magical beings, witnessed magical events and were usually given some sort of magical power.

In short, all the prophets’ stories are scientifically impossible based on what we know about how the universe operates. It’s obvious God didn’t give Joseph Smith some magical golden plates. It’s obvious God didn’t reveal Himself to Muhammad on the road to Medina. It’s obvious the Dali Lama wasn’t reincarnated. It’s obvious L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer desperate for a paycheck who wrote the most profitable fantasy story he could think of. Why is it obvious? Because God told us? No. Atheist and Christians alike all over the world have figured out that those stories were bullshit because we put them to the test of reason and evidence, and when we did that we found those stories lacking.

We know these things to be true, and yet when Christians look at their own religion they don’t practice what they preach. Take the apostle, Paul for example. Paul was smitten with the image of God on a journey from one place to another just like Muhammad. Afterwards magical scales formed on his eyes until he made it to the end of his journey where they were miraculously removed. Afterwards he was imbued with the authority of God and angels helped him along his way.

The double standard is obvious. Paul’s story is full of magical events that are impossible. Not only that, but his message is full of the same kind of culturally relative social standards that betray the humanity of other false prophets. God may be unknowable, but common sense tells us that the creator of the universe would never command us to kill the infidels anymore than he would tell us that women aren’t allowed to speak in church.

The case becomes even worse when we apply Christian standards of prophet-judgment to Jesus. Think about it. We can’t prove that anything Jesus did actually happened. We can’t even prove Jesus actually existed. Based on what we know about how the universe operates we know that all the magical events that supposedly happened to and around Jesus couldn’t have happened, and even though there was some wisdom in the words attributed to Jesus he also promoted a lot of culturally relative social standards as well. What if Muhammad approved of slavery? Wouldn’t that betray the fact that he doesn’t speak for God? Well, Jesus approved of slavery. What if Muhammad started out his career as a prophet advocating racism and then halfway through his career said, “Wait a minute. Maybe racism is stupid.” Would anyone believe that God’s only prophet would be so daft? Well, that’s what Jesus did with the gentiles.

Even if you have faith in Paul and Jesus, you have to admit that believing in their stories doesn’t just require having passive faith that improvable events happened but requires you to actively believe in events that contradict reason and evidence. Not only that, but in order to believe those implausible stories and nobody else’s you have to exercise and even celebrate cognitive dissonance. To put it bluntly, you have to be an ignorant, close minded hypocrite. I’m sorry, but it’s true.

Again, I don’t say this because I want to bash Christians. I want to point out that the Bible obviously isn’t the word of God so you can stop worrying about it. Do something enjoyable and productive with your life instead of prostrating yourself before the contradictory and oppressive dogma of a couple of manipulative megalomaniacs from a foreign culture who have been dead and gone for thousands of years.

a vote to criminalize sin is a vote to legalize oppression

My favorite hobby (followed closely by drinking) is problem solving, but I find little joy in solving theoretical logic puzzles in books you can buy at a major book chain. The real hunt is in solving real world problems…even if I just solve them on paper and none of my solutions ever become a reality…which is another problem I’ve been trying to solve. Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because I’m about to criticize religion again, and some of you may be wondering why I’m so hard on religion (Christianity in particular).

The reason is because I grew up in the Bible Belt of America, and I saw Christianity cause more problems for society than gangstas. I’m not one of these militant types who believe religion is the root of all evil. In case you’re wondering, I believe ignorance is the root of all evil. But I will say that religion is definitely in the top ten causes of needless pain and suffering in the world, and I’m about to point out another reason why.

Religion invented this horrible concept known as sin. The concept of sin is noble in theory because it attempts to point out behaviors that are destructive to society. The problem with sin is that it’s not based on a scientific deconstruction of society that attempts to determine what kinds of behavior will most help a global population survive in a diverse range of environments that are consistently changing while providing people the most room to grow to fulfill their potential as an individual as well as a group. What it does instead is reflect the behaviors of one group of ignorant, ethnocentric, theocratic, tribal, murderous, superstitious, chauvinistic goat herders from a backwards time and place in the world. The early Hebrews who gave us the concept of sin were basically an ancient Middle Eastern version of America’s red neck country bumpkins. Not the best people to take lessons on morality from.

In fact, the modern world has dismissed most of what they had to say about morality such the need to allow the church to rule the government, the right to own slaves, ownership of women, beating/murdering women, children and slaves, not eating certain meats, not wearing clothing with mixed threads, not cutting your sideburns, etc. However, despite the fact that we’ve thrown out those commandments there’s still a large portion of the world which still believe the parts from the same book that commanded all that retarded shit where it says fun and pleasure (especially the sexual kind) is immoral…even though God (if it does exist) made sex pleasurable and designed us to be addicted to it.

So now, thousands of years later we have all sorts of laws against gambling, alcohol consumption, drug use, prostitution and other victimless “crimes.” Granted, any of these behaviors can be destructive when taken to an extreme, but outlawing them is like outlawing candy because eating too much of it will make you fat.

Ultimately, all these laws really accomplish is taking away people’s personal freedoms to enjoy life and punishing them for victimless “crimes,” which ruins their lives with fines, jail time and criminal records. If we took these laws off the books the same people who are already doing them are going to keep doing them. The same people who aren’t doing them are going to keep not doing them. The only thing that would change is we wouldn’t be oppressing our fellow human beings for no reason, and people would be happier, more able to fulfill their potential, and the government would have more resources to combat society’s real problems.

But we’re having a hard time legalizing these victimless “crimes” because the religious population views legalizing sin as supporting sin. So out of blind fear they choose to continue to oppress their fellow human beings because they think oppressing people will please God more than helping people and leaving the judgment to God.

A vote to criminalize sin is vote to legalize oppression. And the religious population has voted by an overwhelming majority in favor of senseless oppression. That’s just one more reason why I hate religion.

religion 101: final exam

Something that really bugs me about religion is that each religion says their book is the word of God, but they also tend to agree that God is unknowable and the wisdom of man is foolishness. Ironically, all the books that claim to be the word of God were written by men and are probably the best example in the world of the foolishness of men.

Even if we assume there is a God, and even if we assume that God is technically unknowable, there are still some common sense conclusions that any layman can come to about what God is not and what God would not do. For example, even though we can’t prove it, we can all agree that God is not a flying spaghetti monster, and God did not release Thetans that live in our bodies which cause us grief .

Any Jew, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu can agree with that without even having to check their holy book because it’s common sense. Well, since we’ve established that common sense is a reliable tool to determine what God is and is not, then let’s put a few religions to the test and see how likely it is that they represent the true word of God or merely represent the foolishness of man. Click on the link below. I promise it’s not a spam or virus site.

Religion 101: Final Exam

saints and sinners

Saints and sinners are motivated by the same thing: the calculated payoff…

this year’s ode to christmas

Christmas is big business. Business is war. War is hell. Christmas is hell.

is god a lover or a fighter?

You only have to take a quick glance over the world’s major religions to notice they all share certain similarities. Obviously, they all contradict each other on many issues, but then again, it’s equally obvious that they contradict themselves on many issues. This makes religion extremely difficult to understand and extremely easy to manipulate.

One of the most frustrating topics to find clarity on is whether or not God is an angry, authoritarian God or God is a loving, laissez-faire God.

Something really interesting happens when pick out the parts from each religion that talk about both interpretations of God. Even though religions contradict themselves wildly over these two interpretations of God, they’re pretty uniform when compared to other religions. In other words, anytime any religion speaks about an angry, authoritarian God they tend to say pretty much the same thing, and anytime any religion speaks of a loving, laissez-faire God they tend to say pretty much the same thing.

Having made this curious observation I decided to condense each version of religion in order to attempt to clarify them. Granted, this is based on my interpretation of various religious texts. You could say that I interpreted them wrong, but I could point to all manner of sects and denominations built on these two models. So if I interpreted them wrong then so did half the world.

At any rate, the individual details aren’t as important as the point behind it all, which is to ask, why are there two versions of God? Which one is supposed to be the true version? How could we know which one is the true God? And could it be possible that these two opposing viewpoints are really just opposing philosophies created by men and not actually opposing models of the universe at all?

THE ANGRY GOD

God is a sentient being who has no physical body yet exists everywhere. God is the creator and sustainer of everything.   God is all powerful, all knowing, unknowable, unchanging and perfect in every way.

God created humans separate from Him so that we may have the free will to either accept or reject Him. If we accept Him we get to live in paradise after death. If we reject Him we will suffer for eternity after death.

Humans are inherently disobedient and perverse. Every human has chosen to walk away from God. Humans are like dogs that bite their master’s hand. Humans are filth in God’s eyes and deserve to suffer for eternity.

God is willing to forgive us and accept us unconditionally as long as we meet a few conditions:

1. You must believe in God’s existence.

2. You must not call God any other name except “God.”

3. You must honor and obey God’s spokesmen.*

• We are all equal in God’s eyes except for His spokesmen, who are more equal.

• The only humans who can know God’s will are His spokesmen.

• God’s laws are perfect and unchanging. The only people who can change His laws are His spokesmen.

• The only humans who have the authority to pass God’s judgment are His spokesmen.

4. You must never question God’s spokesmen.

5. You must give all your money to God’s spokesmen.

6. You must never harm anyone unless commanded by God’s spokesmen.

7. All pleasure is forbidden.

8. You must never have sex except to make babies.

9. Suffering and subjugation is the highest form of worship.

10. You can get closer to God (but never all the way into His presence) through prayer and rituals.

And that’s really all there is to the religion of the angry authoritarian God. Now let’s take a look at the religion of the loving God.

THE LOVING GOD

God is a sentient being who has no physical body yet exists everywhere. God is the creator and sustainer of everything.   God is all powerful, all knowing, unknowable, unchanging and perfect in every way.

Humans are God’s children, and God loves Its children more than anything.

God created humans separate from It so that we may have free will, which gives meaning to our choices. All humans were/are/will be created equal and have equal access to God. There are no spokesmen for God.

God wants us to grow to behave rightly because being a good person is its own reward, and that reward will continue in one form or another after death.

The way to be good person is as follows:

1. Grow in knowledge and self awareness.

2. Treat others as you would have others treat you.

And that’s really all there is to the loving God’s religion.