Message of Support for Pakistanis

I am British and I really want to support Pakistan. You people won your independence from the repressive British regime and had to struggle for independence and freedom from India, and you need all the support you can to ensure that this freedom is not lost to religious extremism that will result in more injustice, more suffering and more control fro the ordinary, everday Pakistanis on the street.

 

I believe that above all things, God wants us to be free and while I am not a muslim, I believe that this is what Islam really represents… a society where freedom from control and freedom from suffering is achieved and maintained. Obviously, whether they are muslims or not, this is not what the Taleban respresent, and I implore everyone who reads this to never give in to people who say that they have the right to control you based on their interpretation of God. I cannot understand why the Taleban inflict so much suffering on the people where ever they seem to be, and I cannot understand why they think that their mission is to send as many martyrs to heaven as possible by creating a living hell on earth. Our collective responsibility as followers of God (incidentally, I am not Christian, Jewish or Muslim, but I do believe in God and all of His Prophets…. see my blog if you want to read more about my beliefs at www.absolutetruthzero.wordpress.com) is to rty to spread the diea that if we all tried to ensure that everyone is free to live their lives as they see fit, if we all refrained from controlling each other and if we all tried our best to relieve suffering wherever we find it in our daily lives, then collectively we would be able to bring heaven to earth.

 

I pray to God that Pakistan achieves the changes that it needs to to establish a just society for all the people that live in Pakistan. If this means government reform for democracy, or government reform for a more religious state, or the introduction of Shariah, then that is an absolute right of the Pakistani people to be able to FREELY choose. The fact is that the Taleban are just a group of people who see religion as being something that peoiple should be forced into, and that people should be judged on whether they are Islamic and forced to observe certain traditions and certain religious practices. Religioin should not be entered into compulsively because someone is frightened of the consequences of living their lives in the way they see fit. Pakistan is a country that cannot be allowed to descend into the chaos that has been inflicted upon Afghanistan and Iraq…. you must be the rock that your neighbours can lean on as they rebuild their nation after nearly three decades of war, rape, murder, control, tyranny and opression. Pakistan is a country that, as it stands, has the capacity to show the rest of the world how Islam can conquer any adversity, and show the USA and western governments currently in Afghanistan the real means by which extremism from the Taleban and Al Qaeda can be defeated…. by the compassion, riighteousness, intelligence, knowledge and understanding of Islamic society, whether it be under a democracy or any other from of administration. I pray that every Pakistani will stand up and declare that, just as they won their freedom from Britain and India, they will not cede it to the Taleban or to the injustice of corruption and greed. I believe it is God’s will that Pakistan will emerge from this period of terrible uncertainty as a beacon of the kind of freedom that the west simply doesn’t think Pakistan is capable of. Every last one of you deserves it.

 

Operor non exerceo imperium tautem primum non nocere,

 

Absolute Truth Zero

 

www.absolutetruthzero.wordpress.com

My letter to Obama about the “War on Terror”

The letter below was written by me to President Obama on Wednesday 20th May 2009.  I hope that it outlines what I think needs to be done in terms of addressing the fundamental problem with the war that is being fought.  I frequently write to politicians and world leaders, although this is the first that has been sent to a US President. 

 

It does not matter whether what is at stake is land, rights to settle, issues of vengeance, issues of justice, oil and money, or nationalist fervour… the fact remains that the devotion of people to their causes and the preparedness of people now to fight to the death, to endure unimaginable suffering and hardship, and to inflict such unimaginable suffering and hardship is due to the fact that so many people have nothing of value in their lives.  People have had no option but to watch those that they love in their families and communities suffer without respite that they choose, by virtue of their own free will, to fight for what they have been led to believe is what God wants. 

 

An interesting article in The Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6345231.ece) was printed last week about the increasing religious motivations of young Israeli troops, and this has been promoted as being a negative development.  I think that it simply shows that radicalisation is the product of uninterupted fear, threat, torment and suffering, and just as muslims have been radicalised by being so completely disempowered in this world, so young Israelis have walked down that road, because they understand that unless the hatred towards their jewish identity stops, then they cannot afford to become the disempowered. 

Please read this and see what you think, and remember that I strongly believe that no one on this planet is any more special, any more sacred and any closer to God than anyone else.  If we all live by the two principles laid out in this letter, then I feel that we will no longer need to fight, and therefore would not be at the behest of the kind of people who always emerge as leaders during times of war:  People who seek control, and who are prepared to cause as much harm as possible to achieve it. 

 

Operor non exerceo imperium tautem primum non nocere. 

 

Absolute Truth Zero

——————————————————————————-

 

Dear Mr President [Obama],

 
There exists a huge problem with the war on terror that I feel needs to be addressed.  It concerns the issues of power and control, over which all protagonists in this war have been fighting.  In reality, this means that the war is not about God, but how to use the concept of God in order to justify the holding of power and the exercising of control over others.  In this regard, the war should really be called the “War of Legitimacy” as it is really a war of justifying our “understandings” of religion and of God.  Recruitment for all sides relies on the ability of those with authority (i.e. those who have power and control) to demonstrate that their “understanding” of God is the most accurate.  Recruitment from one side to the other should, therefore, be fairly easy to achieve where arguments can be presented that convince a person that they have chosen a path that leads them away from God, despite any previous understanding that such choices were made in worship of God.  However, a process of changing people’s minds about not only what they are fighting for, but the manner in which they fight for it, can never come from the people against which they fight:  The USA will not win the “hearts and minds” of muslims by changing their governments any more than Al-Qaeda will convince US citizens to freely convert to Islam by carrying out atrocities.  I feel that the previous efforts of the US Government in dealing with Islamic extremism means that your administration now faces an intelligence war, or a war of understanding, with multiple protagonists (the US and it’s allies including the UK and Israel, Islamic nations, Al-Qaeda and other extremist/terrorist groups) who are all pointing the finger at each other as being the causes of their own particular sufferance.  Intelligence wars are wars where people fight for a true understanding of what is actually happening, and what people should actually be doing with their lives. 

This war involves most people on the planet because it will not end until such time as an understanding can be developed that prevents people from automatically taking decisions based upon their understandings that mean that if they feel they need to act upon their understandings, then that inevitably means that they will sign up for courses of action that allow them to be a party to acts designed to take control and exert power over others.  The whole world is yearning for change, and people are taking it upon themselves to bring about that change, but it is the misunderstanding (hamartia) of religion and of God that is leading us to the creation of hell on earth.  Fear consumes freedom and ensures that the choices we all make, be we Muslims, Americans, Israelis or whether, like me, we are people who are tainted with being different to the point of losing our human identity, are made as a result of that fear. We should be able to make choices that are free, that are not based upon a need to address imbalances of power, and which are never made because we believe that our faith or belief in God confers upon us a right to impose our beliefs on others. I can challenge Al Qaeda on this basis, and indeed, it is the only basis upon which they can be effectively challenged. To do so, however, means that I must also challenge the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Israel, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and our current understandings of God Himself. I hope you are prepared for that. I hope you are willing to concede that to blow Al-Qaeda out of the water will in turn mean that the precipitating waves will affect all those around. Whether I achieve this, or someone else does is irrelevant. Someone will, because they have to. The war will continue until such time as this happens, and I believe that Al Qaeda’s strategy is to keep fighting until the end time prophecies of Islam come true. It has to be someone, and if one thing is certain, it will be the person who tries. I am going to try.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would like to enlighten you to two principles. This email is also being sent to some of the other people that I have been engaged with over the past few months and years, but is addressed to you because I believe your recent approach to the issue on torture within the US intelligence community clearly demonstrates that, while you may not see such principles with the same context as I do, you are aware of them, at least on a subconscious level.

The two principles are, as such, what constitute the value of the Ark of the Covenant. Principles in biblical times were represented by rocks and solid foundations upon which people would build their homes and live their lives. When Moses came down from the mountain, he had 10 divine rules that should be followed. Rules, within this context, are simply derivated means of controlling people who do not have a good understanding of the principles upon which the rules have been based. To put it another way, rules exist because there will always be people in society who cannot, for whatever reason, deduce from principles the subsequent behaviours and actions that they should commit to in order to allow such principles to be properly manifested in their lives. The rules are, as such, safeguards which ensure that any society that allures to follow God has a minimum level of acceptable responsibility towards God an towards themselves and their fellow human beings. In the case of Moses, the 10 Commandments were based upon two principles (which are represented in the story by the two stone tablets). Adhering to the principles, not the observance of the Commandments, is what brings one closer to God. In reading this, you should consider carefully just how total the ignorance of these principles is in our world at present, but also how easy it would be for people to simply stop breaching them. If I cannot convince you to respond to this letter, or to concede that these principles and this argument may be worth promoting and disseminating, then how much of a chance do you think I stand of convincing Al Qaeda? Still…. I am going to try.

 

 

The first stone tablet relates to the first principle, but it is not the most important principle. This principle can be broadly defined as being “you should never exert control over another person.” I studied law at university, so I think that representing these principles in latin as legal maxims is the most suitable way of going about it. Thus, the first principle should be:

 

 

 

 

 

Operor non exerceo imperium (Do not exert control)

 

 

The second principle, however, is the one which should always take precedent in any behaviour or action. In my view, it is never acceptable to breach the first principle unless one is exerting control as a means of preventing harm from being inflicted. However, it should be understood that principles are heuristics, and anyone who frequently subjected others to control on the grounds that they were upholding this second principle should then be subject to a review whereby they are subjected to the question of cui bono? The imposition of control, where it benefits the person doing the controlling, is an indication that the motivation for control is not the upholding of the second principle, but the promotion of the self interest of the person or group that seek to absolve themselves of the responsibility of upholding the first principle. It should be noted that, before I introduce the second principle, that the motivations of groups like Al Qaeda and the Taleban are that they are taking control for the benefit of the people so that on the day of judgement they will be saved. In actuality, they are only using God as a means of justifying their own control of everything around them. Like all tyrrants, they do not hold themselves to the same standards as they impose on eveyone else, so challenging them involves not only a physical defiance of their power politically and militarily, but also a challenge to their interpretation of religion. The second principle, here, is what everyone who believes in God knows and understands in their hearts and minds to be true:

 

 

 

 

 

Primum non nocere (First, above all things, do no harm).

So, if you wish to win a religious war against fanatics whose primary means of population control and recruitment into action (i.e. recruitment into terrorist activity) is fear, force and the ofference of salvation on the day of judgement, then you simply need to present an argument that explains what the Ark of the Covenant is truly about. Having direct contact with God does not come through the observance of religious traditions, or through the rigours of faith that are followed blindly. Everything within monotheistic religion is there to help people remove the need for control and governance, and to build a society where control is not required because people should take decisions based upon the principle that they will not interfere with the sovereignty of God by resorting to force or coercion in order to control their fellow human beings, and where harm is never propagated as a result of their actions. The ten commandments are there because they give an indication of the kinds of thoughts and behaviours that are not just likely to give rise to suffering, but which actually guarantee it will take place. The Kingdom of Heaven is a place where transgression of the principles cannot take place, but the purpose of having free will on earth for every human being is so that we can try to bring heaven to earth purely from the choices we make. The principles, however, must be followed by virtue of free will, because any commitment made on the basis of coercion or force does itself give rise to suffering, and thus breaches the second principle. The battle of good over evil, in the biblical context, is the battle that rages until every person can see that if everyone committed themselves voluntarily to observing these two principles, then we would collectively achieve a virtual heaven on earth. I’ll now try and explain how this might allow the defeat of Al Qaeda by the destruction of it’s rhetoric and philosophy and by directly challenging it’s religious authority.

You can see from the current strategy of Al Qaeda, that their strategy is one which demonstrates that, in my opinion, and in light of the principles which I have laid out here, they are not in any way shape or form representative of God. I am not a muslim and therefore it is not my place to say what is or is not Islamic, but it is my place to challenge anyone who says that their interpretation of God is one that should deny me the right to make up my own mind, and which should subject me to the observance of religious actions which I do not make by virtue of my own free will. It is clear that an Islamist interpretation of God confers abhorrent suffering upon people around the Islamic world, and that this suffering is almost impossible to interrupt because the fanaticism that drives it is one which actually tries to legitimise the suffering that is propagated. People in Islam are no different from people anywhere else: they wish to be free. What we need to demonstrate to the Islamists such as Bin Laden, Al-Zawahiri and the extremist elements who would have us all beheaded for the smallest sign of disrespect to their interpretation and their control is that we (and by that I mean everyone together who lives their lives by the two principles, from Jews to Christians to Muslims to atheists and beyond) is that Al Qaeda claims that it is sending martyrs to heaven by convincing young men to leave a living hell in their wake for all those who are left behind and that it is attempting to create a society on earth that is reflective of what God wants. I (along with many others) want to bring heaven to earth, and I think that many of the young men that are fighting for Al Qaeda believe that they are fighting for God without the understanding that they are fighting for their own free will to be denied to them in any Al Qaeda society (like the Afghan Taleban) that Al Qaeda may succeed in establishing. They are fighting for the right of those who appoint themselves as the holders of religious authority to subject us all to control, and to inflict suffering for what they see as transgressions of God’s laws. Laws are merely the simplification of the principles that our societies must have in place to minimise suffering and to hold people to account when the breach principles and to ensure that where we have free will, our use of free will does not impinge upon the free will of others. Again, I cannot say whether this would be an accurate interpretation of Islam, but I am certain that the majority of muslims would say so, simply because I live alongside so many of them. It was Moses, not God, who wrote the laws on the tablets. Islam has it’s own law based upon the Word of God, but it is impossible for me to comprehend that Al Qaeda’s interpretation of this could be correct. The best way of looking at this is to consider the following question: When a person adheres to the law, is it because the know all the laws like the back of their hand, or because they are adhering to the principles upon which those laws are based?

Furthermore, I would like to say that fear is the principle means by which people are controlled by others. Fear is the means by which coercion can be used in place of force. We all need to stop being afraid of whether our lack of commitment to religious practices means that our belief in God has been compromised. Education and understanding of the world in which we live means that we no longer need to rely on such strict religious observances, and that we can adhere to whatever principles we choose to adhere to. My interpretation of God is that God is alive in everyone, and that my belief in God is as a result of all the knowledge and understanding I have about the world in which I live. I feel that when my conscience talks to me, that it is God’s way of communicating with me. I do not wish to make everyone else hold this belief, but I do want to be able to communicate my beliefs to people so that they are free to make up their own minds as I feel that anyone and everyone else who sees themselves as having a good understanding about God (from the Pope to Bin Laden to former President Bush) do not care about God’s creations as much as they do about their own interpretations and their own ability to dictate what is and is not Godly. To these people, suffering is justified for anyone who commits sin, despite the fact that they misunderstand what sin is (read my blog at www.absolutetruthzero.wordpress.com if you want to find out more about my interpretations). My beliefs are as a result of living in a western democracy where freedom of thought, speech and action are taken for granted, and where I have the right to question everything, and I believe that it is this kind of freedom that should be available to everyone. Such freedom, however, is dependent upon all members of a society broadly accepting and observing, in their own free ways, the two principles which I am talking about here.

The two principles, for the reasons that I have laid out in this letter, are the ones which I adhere to no matter what. I will not exert control, and I will not cause other people harm. If I do so, it is because of a shortcoming, and is something that can never be justified, even where an explanation of the circumstances that led to such a breach of principle may mitigate against blame. I am accountable for everything that I do and for everything that I allow my government to do on my behalf, and for the actions of the governments in whose causes I choose to support. This means that in supporting the USA, in supporting Israel, and in supporting the Islamic people (although not necessarily their governments) to achieve that which they seek to achieve, I would have to hold myself accountable for the actions that they take based upon the kind of support, actual or perceived, that such governments receive from myself and from people like myself. Therefore, I want you to know and understand that I now feel the need to challenge extremism within religion directly, because I feel that the USA, Israel, the UK and the Coalition of the Willing that your predecessor talked about have proved themselves so completely incapable of challenging the extremism of groups like Al Qaeda, and have actually harboured, at various times, their own forms of extremism by taking actions which demonstrate that they too seek only control over others, for which they are prepared to tolerate suffering in order to achieve. I hope that you understand that challenging Al Qaeda means that I must also challenge you.

Freedom is the only thing that God wants for us, a fact made abundantly clear in Exodus. That is why God does not intervene to stop suffering, because to do so would absolve us all of our free will. It must be by our own volition that we seek to end the suffering, not just of our own people, but of those people whom we class as our enemies, and who class us likewise. If we are to bring heaven to earth, we are all, by virtue of our own free will, required to uphold the two principles upon which the commandments are based. We should not have to do it by virtue of force, nor by virtue of being fearful of the consequences that might arise if we choose to ignore these principles: We should do it because, whether we believe in God or not, we know that the abolition of suffering and the absolution from the need for control is what drives us all. We should all, individually and collectively, be motivated by the common understanding that if we exercise our free will by refraining from controlling, and by refraining from inflicting harm and suffering, and where we promote the idea that freedom and justice for all, without prejudice of any kind, is rooted in the simple and straightforward observance of two fundamental principles, then groups like Al Qaeda will not need to send martyrs to heaven, because we would already be living on a heaven on earth. In any event, promoting the two principles would allow us to “turn” Al Qaeda members over to our side. I think that you need to realise that the worst thing about the war on terror is that the fighters of Al Qaeda have no exit strategy. You don;t have to convince them all that Al Qaeda is not worth fighting for. You only have to convince them one at a time. They may even martyr themselves against Al Qaeda if they felt that the argument came from the right source.

I want to try. Do you? Do any of you?

Operor non exercio imperium tautem primum non nocere,
 
 
Absolute Truth Zero
 
Juncta Arma Decori
 
www.absolutetruthzero.wordpress.com

Mujahedeen & Jihad… The fight for freedom?

I want to speak to the Mujahedeen.  This is not to say that I want to speak to the leaders of organisations such as al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood or any of the many organisations that collectively take up arms against the west, and against those, like me, who are not Muslims.  I don’t necessarily want to speak with Osama bin Laden or Ayman al Zawahiri, Abu Qatada or Abu Hamza al-Masri, although I must admit that I think engaging in dialogue with such people is essential for the aims and objectives of all sides in religious conflict to be addressed, because my opinion is that people on all sides (Mujahedeen, the US and the West, as well as Israel) have all adopted the process of inflicting suffering and killing their enemies as a means to stop their enemies from doing the same to them.  Fight fire with fire is the rhetoric we often hear from leaders, no matter what side of the religious or political spectrum we come from.  And it is with this that I question the leadership you are under, in terms of the men that are guiding you all in the war you are fighting.  I know you fight for God, but I think that you have all been misled by men who purport to know more about God than others, or who claim they have an authoritative understanding that confers upon them the right to impose control on those around them.  In saying this, I think that everyone who is trying to live their lives according to what God wants is misled by anyone who purports to be the authority on God:  Judaism and Christianity preach in one manner and practice in another, and I feel that the actions that people from these faiths take in the name of God is sometimes abhorrent, and is often the antithesis of what God wants us to achieve for ourselves and each other.  If these two faiths are liable for corruption by people and institutions that seek control over the masses, then the question must be asked as to whether Islam has the same capacity to be corrupted.  Said Qutb certainly seemed to think so, and even said that it would take place without question.  What I would like to explore here is my understanding of corruption within religion whereby a corrupt religion is one where men control people rather than where people control themselves as a result of their beliefs and understandings. 

 

Muslims, however, have always talked to me in a completely different manner to any followers of the other monotheistic faiths because Islam has not simply scripture and the testament of God by His followers to base its teaching on.  Islam has the very word of God itself.  In that respect, I feel compelled to write this open letter to all Muslims and all Mujahedeen to ask you to consider my perspective, and to consider whether the men that position themselves as your leaders and who directly advocate for the killing and the suffering of people in my society and my community (as well as in Islamic society and in Islamic countries) have led you away from God by teaching you things which mean that you can no longer be considered to be the same person as you were when you were born, when God created you.  I believe that in my life, although I have at times held beliefs that were not correct and which were not in accordance with a good understanding of God, I feel that I have never allowed my misunderstandings to change or corrupt me into being something different to that which I was when I was born.  I believe that, most importantly, my belief in God, coming from the fact that I have challenged the teachings and preachings of the Church, and challenged the ways of those who claim to be religious and living their lives the way God is intending them to do, I have reached a level of understanding about God which I feel is a result of the free will that God has granted me, and which is granted to every single one of us.  My understandings about God are never decisively influenced by the teachings of other men, but are reached by a process of considering what the prophets and the scripture of Christianity says about God and the subsequent interpretation of these perspectives within the context of my own lifetime.  I consider the views of other people, but really my understandings are defined by what I truly believe in, no matter how opposed they may be to the accepted dogma or prescribed interpretation. 

 

Of course, in my struggle to understand God I consider the perspectives of anyone and everyone who claims that they follow God (as well as those who don’t), from Jews to Catholics, to Protestants and then to Muslims, all of whom I have the chance to interact with directly because living in the UK I am in the luxurious position of being able to discuss freely with anyone I choose about whatever we choose to discuss.  It is this freedom that, I feel, gives me the freedom to consider which approaches are right, which are wrong and where such judgements depend upon the context of a situation. 

 

I cannot ever say what Islam is, or should be, because although I believe in God and I have some beliefs that are in line with Islam (for example, I believe that Mohammed was the final prophet of God, and I believe that Jesus Christ being called the “Son of God” is a contextual misrepresentation of what I feel Christ was), I have not read the Qu’ran in detail, and I have not taken shahadah.  In the same way, I cannot ever say what a Judaic interpretation would be on any given matter, nor a Christian interpretation because I have come to reject Christianity, although not Christ himself.  The understandings that I have about God does not come from my submission to God, so to speak, but from my challenging of the dogma of the religion that I was brought up in (Protestant Christianity).  What then follows is more of an offerance of oneself to God, on the proviso that I will always retain my free will and will  never be coerced by dogma into thinking or acting against my free will or better judgement.  In challenging religion and the understandings of clerics and preachers, I also, in a way, challenge God because I am not content to ever simply accept the literal interpretation of scripture, but consider how it applies, and whether or not it is a trap set by God to really test my understanding of Him.  I believe that the Bible advocates every possible form of thought, behaviour and action and gives rise to endless contradictions about how one should live one’s life.  The test for me is to develop my understanding of God to the point whereby I can challenge some of the things that have been set out in scripture and say that some of them are, without a doubt, merely traps set so that God can catch out someone who merely declares that they follow Him and uses that declaration to justify actions which are inherently against God.   It seems clear to me that the times we live in make it no longer permissible to simply declare that we follow God while we continually miss the mark in terms of actually achieving what God wants us to achieve.  We must not miss the mark.  We must all struggle to be followers of God that God is deserving of.  We must do God justice, and it seems to me that the struggle that many people are embarking on to be closer to God is not a struggle that is intended to bring them closer to God in this lifetime, but only to assure that they will meet Him in heaven.  This, to me, is an absolute absurdity.  Why are you so committed in sending yourselves as martyrs to heaven when it seems so clear to me that the reasons why you are fighting is not because there are no Muslims in heaven (indeed, heaven must be full of Muslims) but because Muslims are being forced to live in conditions on earth that are more representative of hell.  The reasons why you fight are because you are forced to watch your families disenfranchised, your lands stolen, your relatives tortured, maimed, killed, your children slaughtered, your communities raped of any shred of decency trampled upon and where those who have the capacity to prevent this simply stand by and watch and let it continue.  It is this exacerbation of suffering that is the reason you take up arms, but what I don’t understand is that if your motivation is to deliver your families from this living hell why do you then commit to assisting the west to bring hell to earth when you could so easily lead the west into bringing heaven to earth?  Why send one martyr to heaven when you can guarantee heaven for every person by bringing it to earth?  Islam and Muslims have the Word of God, so I know that it is pointless to write a letter to Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri or Abu Qatada:  they are not your leader.  God is.  The question must be asked then:  Why are you corrupted by the interpretation of God by men such as these?  In following men, one cannot follow God:  a man cannot serve two masters.  These are the things that I would like everyone fighting on earth today to consider, but I think that every individual Muslim, and especially every Mujahedeen has a fundamental advantage over all other people simply because, in the language of Arabic, you have the Word of God (I do not believe, incidentally, that English translations of the Qu’ran carry the same effect… they lose much in the translation.  Every Muslim I have ever spoken to have said the same thing).  Therefore, you have the advantage:  You can read the Word of God and consider for yourselves whether the things that I am about to say are true, and whether they would change the manner in which you struggle and fight to become closer to God.  I have written letters to various politicians in the West looking for them to change their approach, but I feel that it is precisely this that tis the problem:  we are always trying to convince the people who are in control to change their approach.  What we should be doing is convincing each other that if we refuse to exercise control over each other, to compete for control or to submit to the control of those who seek to have power over us, then we are truly able to exercise the free will that God grants us all.  In a way, this is how to win any war where both sides say that they are fighting for freedom:  Refusing to be controlled is what sets us free.  It is this understanding of freedom that I feel would allow the Islamic world to challenge the arrogance of the west by challenging the fundamental concept of the word “freedom.”  Freedom is what we both individually and collectively decide we want to achieve in our lives.  Freedom, therefore, will be fundamentally different for people in various parts of the world, but I assert that there are two principles, based upon my understanding of religion and of God, that if we can follow them, then we will be able to attain freedom and justice… for all.

 

The Absolute Truth

 

There is another reason based in science why I chose the blog name Absolute Truth Zero (which I will go into on a later blog), but I do believe that the absolute truth of our universe is that it came into existence by virtue of the free will of God.  If you do not believe in God, then you have the freedom to make up your own mind as to the answer of this question.  I hope that the explanations of my understanding of religion which are written below convince you that the people in this world are being assaulted from every direction by men who claim that they are the true believers of God and that they alone hold the key to becoming at one with God.  The message of these people, whether they claim to be Jews, Christians or Muslims, is that the want control because they are entitled to it by virtue of being the true believers in God.  What I want to illustrate to you now is that God does not want you to be controlled by anyone except yourself.  If God wanted to control a person, surely he would not have any need for an intermediary to force someone to observe a religious tradition, or to convert to a specific religion.  If God wanted control over a person, then He would control them directly.  God grants us free will, and as such, at all times, wants each person to control themselves and never to be controlled by another person.  When a person acts, the gift of free will ensures that the person acts by virtue of their own understandings of themselves and the world in which they live, and if they believe in such a thing, then God as well.  This extends to people who don’t even believe in God, because a belief in God is the culmination of one’s own understanding.  The gift of free will means that people are, in essence, free to believe in God and free to refuse to hold such a belief.  Many people would say that their belief in God is not something that they “choose” but something which they feel a calling for, but in my opinion, we all choose whether or not we believe in God or not because that choice is the culmination of all our understanding about ourselves, the people around us and the world in which we live as much as any understanding of scripture.  It is from this culmination of understanding that we form our belief about whether God exists or not, so in reality, we make a choice by extending our knowledge and then furthering our understanding of that knowledge.  It may seem that a belief in God is imposed upon us, but the choice of whether to submit to that belief and whether to commit one’s life to it, is very much a choice.  For that choice to be denied to someone is a crime both against the person and against God as it steals from the person their ability to exercise their gift from God of free will, and it steals from God his ability to receive the benefits of His gift of free will to each of His creations.  In this light, it is one thing to not have enough knowledge and not have sufficient understanding to be able to exercise a choice about whether to believe in God:  Anyone in such a position would most likely embark on a quest, or a struggle, to gain knowledge and understanding in order to be able to exercise their free will, although they would equally be free to simply accept their place in the world as someone incapable of understanding themselves or the world in which they live.  It is quite another thing, however, for someone who declares not only that they believe in God, but also that their interpretation is supreme over that of others, and who subsequently prevents another person from embarking on the same quest and undergoing the same struggle, even where the intention is to help that person get closer to God or to encourage believers that if they carry out certain acts then they will guarantee themselves a place in heaven.  Such an act would constitute the imposition of control, and as such is, in my opinion, fundamentally against God.  If guaranteeing people a place in heaven is the top of one’s agenda, then I certainly feel that trying to bring heaven to earth, instead of contributing towards a hell on earth, will guarantee many more people will enter heaven when their physical life dies.  This is because if one dies in heaven, one would most certainly remain there in the afterlife. 

 

For those of you who haven’t read my previous blogs, I would encourage you to do so to consider further my perspective on why we should never allow ourselves to cause other people harm.  Harm gives rise to fear in people who observe it or who even hear that it has taken place.  If a woman hears that she will be flogged or beaten because she reads a book in an effort to further her own understanding about herself and the world in which she lives, and as a means of ensuring that the choices she makes vis-à-vis believing in God are as free as they can possibly be, then the fear that she is suddenly consumed with is a means for the people inflicting the suffering of controlling her ability to exercise her free will.  Where a man is put in fear of not being able to protect his family unless he grows a beard or unless he agrees for his daughter to marry a Taleban Commander (or controller, as the case may be), then his free will is hijacked by the people who put him in fear of the consequences for either himself or his family.  Fear is what gets a person to surrender their free will, and any submission they make whilst living in a climate of fear is not a submission to God because God only wants people to believe in Him by virtue of their own free will.  Indeed, people who are oppressed pray to God for freedom and liberation, to be free from harm and the fear of harm because they know that this is what keeps them from being closer to God.  People who are fearful in situations like these are not fearful of God, but fearful of those people who control in His name.  That is why my faith in God is based on two principles:  Operor non Imperium at Primum non nocere.  Do Not Control but first, do no harm.  (Note – Please contact me if you think that this latin is incorrect, as I have been advised that it may not be).

 

I hope that the real message behind this open letter reaches everyone who is struggling to better understand themselves, the world in which we live, and how we will eventually all be able to exercise complete freedom of will and freedom of choice over our own individual lives, being free from the fear of harm and the threat of harm.  It seems very clear to me that young men from across the Muslim world are becoming Mujahedeen simply because they themselves have to live in fear of suffering by virtue of the fact that they are simply trying to exercise their own free will, or who are suffering not because they are being harmed themselves, but because their loved ones continue to suffer abhorrent treatment both from within their own society and from foreign an non-Islamic powers outside of their community.  I feel that it is understandable that many will simply not tolerate this from continuing unabated.  I do ask everyone to consider though that it is my strong opinion that if you are all trying to re-build society for the honour of God, then you should give some serious contemplation and reflection in light of my argument about allowing people to exercise their own free will (and also consider the blog post on “The Religious Scaffold”). 

 

Afghanistan is a place where a whole generation, perhaps even two, have known nothing but perpetual war, suffering, fear and control.  I would absolutely guarantee that if the Afghani people and the Mujahedeen who have settled there as they have fought alongside them could have the opportunity for every individual to be able to exercise complete free will and freedom of choice as to the extent to which they wish to observe the traditions of their religious faith, then Afghanistan would become one of the most pious and peaceful places on earth overnight.  The same would be true of Iraq, and would, in my opinion, assist the Palestinians in realising their homeland.  In my opinion, true religion and the true followers of God are free to do as they wish, and the measurement of how close to God someone really is can be decided on the basis of whether they exert control over other people (usually because their arguments are so weak that they cannot convince anyone of the potential benefit and they resort to controlling other people through fear), but above all things, people who follow God do not inflict harm upon others.  This is because harm gives rise to fear and fear compromises free will. 

 

Of course, these views and opinions are simply my perspective on religion and God.  I suppose what the readers of this blog post need to decide is firstly whether they agree with me, and secondly, whether they would choose by virtue of their own free will to try and stick to the two principles that I have outlined above.  I do believe that there is great importance in observing religious traditions and demonstrating a belief in God, but more than anything else, I believe that a persons freedom to make their own choices and to be free from any form of control other than that which they use to control themselves is the right which God confers on us all.  We must uphold that right:  It is sovereign above all others. 

 

Operor non Imperium at Primum non nocere.

Trying to play God is the ultimate “temptation” that all religious people seem to find impossible to resist…

 I think that any person who follows a religion needs to examine his or her own desire to control others or have power over others.  Religious leaders such as the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Ayatollah Khameini, the Saudi Ulama set the precedent for groups like Al-Qaida because of the way in which they have controlled the masses hrough the centuries and in modern times.  I believe that organised religion is guilty of providing us with the child of Extremist Islam, which is the only possible consequence of a world where people firstly are subjected as a matter of course to religious control, and secondly to such terrible social deprivation, perpetual war and suffering that could be so easily tended to if it were not for the fact that greed and the inequality of wealth keeps relief from suffering from the finger tips of those who need it most.  I wish people could see that it is not our mission to send people to heaven or hell as either martyrs or unbelievers, but to bring heaven to earth by struggling to gain even more knowledge about the world in which we live, and the people around us, and then by developing our understanding of the ways that we can interact so as to provide a world in which we can all live.  How we do this is, in my opinion, by preventing ourselves from giving in to the ultimate temptation:  That insidious requirement to exert control over that which we do not wish to tolerate, or which we do not understand.  My strong view on the concept of control is that if God does not directly control us, but wishes us to make our own decisions based upon havng Free Will, then surely someone who follows God (a Jew, Christian or Muslim…. comments please from any followers of these faiths!!!) cannot be a genuine believer unless s/he resists the temptation to force or coerce others into following the same religion.  All which follows is simply my opinion as someone who believes in God, believes in all the prophets from Abraham to Mohammed, but does not subscribe to any of the monothestic faiths principally because they all call for the imposition of control upon those whom the cllergy deem to be against God. 

Religious belief, in God or in any higher power, was never meant to be used as a system for exerting control over people.  The concept of “one , all powerful God” was the concept that was responsible for setting the Hebrew slaves free, and in that message I find that having one God is meant to be a concept that liberates us all from the need to be controlled by people within society who deem themselves to be superior, but rather for us to govern ourselves as individuals and to at all times adhere to the principles that would allow us all to be treated by others in a manner which we would want to be treated ourselves.   The meek, it is said, will inherit the earth.  My understanding of the word “meek” is that it refers to those who do not wish to exert control. 

 

The problem seems to me to be that religion has not been able to purge our society of those people who see themselves as superior in one way or another, either physically, or by virtue of their beliefs:  the lesson that all men (or humans) are created equal seems, like many of the other lessons that monotheistic religions have for us, to have fallen on deaf and uninterested ears. 

 

Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taleban are really just organisations that mimic the more legitimate religious institutions that secular society in the West (and increasingly in the East) has done away with, because it has become apparent to us all on the subconscious level that although we may attend worship in order to worship God, in actual fact we are all just submitting to the interpretation of one person or a group of people who have managed to shape the religious practices, and have stolen from us the freedom and free will that God has given us as a birth right by dictating to us what traditions and observances we should adhere to, which are only minor transgressions, and which are tantamount to blasphemy and should be punished by the immediate extra-judicial infliction of suffering and harm. 

 

The war that is currently being waged between extremists of all denominations (from Islamists to Christian Creationists to Jewish Zionists) and the rest of society (which are really a disparate gorup of people from the west and the east who may or may not believe in God, but who are all united by their single aim of being able to live free from the threat of control – I think we should call ourselves something because we need to take a united front against religious control) is to settle the argument pertaining to “who owns God, who has the keys to heaven, and who amongst us is superior to the extent that their interpretation of God is correct.” 

 

Finding God is essentially a journey that takes us all of our lives, and which involves many wrong turns because no one has a map guarantees arrival at our final destination.  In fact, the journey upon which we embark is not necessarily to find “God”, but is to find ourselves and where we fit into this vast universe.  Ultimately, the questions arise “who are we?” and “who or what created the universe in which we live?”.  The answers for these two questions will have different answers for each individual that asks them, and to impose one perspective on someone is both arrogant and indicative of the fact that the person doing the imposing is less concerned with “God” and “freedom” and more concerned with imposing their perspective on those whom they see to be straying from the path of righteousness. 

 

Religious extremism is therefore simply about who has the authority to define God, and who amongst us has the sole right to define who is a follower or believer in God, and who is falling short of the mark. 

 

I believe that freedom is something that can never be imposed on someone, that freedom is something which someone must always find for themselves.  In this regard, freedom, in essence, is the continual and uninterrupted right to consent to all the thoughts that one is permitted to have and all the actions that one has the right to take.  Following God, for me, is simply living one’s life where, in achieving freedom in certain areas of life, or in achieving complete freedom and complete enlightenment by absolving oneself of social constraints and being able to think, speak and act with complete and total freedom of will and consent, a person seeks never to prevent a fellow person from achieving that for themselves, and indeed, assists others in their own struggle to achieve a life where they are never forced into doing a non-consensual act. 

 

Control is the antithesis of God, in my considered opinion.  Although I have no right to legislate what God might be from the perspective of Judaism, Christianity or Islam, or have the right to dictate a definition to anyone at all, it is my firm belief (and I implore you  to reply to this post if you agree) that control is the absolute opposite of what God wants someone to be subjected to.  If God wanted us to be controlled, then God would control us directly without the need for religious zealots to flog women for acts of sexual immorality, for having an alcoholic drink or taking some drugs, or for a priest to put us on a guilt trip every time we make a decision that goes against dogma in some way, even where it causes someone else no harm at all.  In observing the actions of those who claim to be the most pious and the most reverent followers of God, aside from the fact that most do not practice what they preach and do not subject themselves to the same strict laws that they force upon others, they are usually solely opposed to the actions of others which their religion gives them the “power” to effectively take control and where they have the means to control through the infliction of suffering and the imposition of fear.  Where the Taleban restrict the freedoms of people, and thus take people further away from God (Afghani women still pray to Allah, although I dare say that they pray to Allah for the freedom of Allah to come, and not for more control by the men of the Taleban), while George W Bush says that he will impose freedom upon Afghanistan and Iraq by the use of force.   Freedom is God.  We all want it, but some people want to be have control over it:  theologically, I hope the reader can see what I am getting at.  People who restrict freedoms are denying us access to God; that is my opinion, plain and simple. 

 

God is freedom, and freedom is God.  For us all to be free, and for God and heaven to finally come to earth, we must all accept that religion is not a belief system that requires clerics, priests preachers or religious police to enforce, but is a belief system that requires us all to have the self-discipline to implement in our own lives, and in no one else’s:  indeed we must resist the ultimate temptation of appointing ourselves the guardians of God’s will, and the controller of access to God .  In the west we have individual freedom that is countenanced by governments that are increasing legislation of social control and turning our beautiful democracies into “nanny states” where we may have freedom of speech, but lack the freedom to be able to discipline our children or walk around without a state identity card, or keep personal information to ourselves.  In the East there are societies that are governed so that individual freedoms exist only in the minds and dreams of their citizens, and where freedom can only be achieved by submitting to the control of certain people by conforming to their interpretation of what God, and thus freedom, really is.  Defining God and defining Freedom is the hardest task that anyone has… and which one we spend our lives trying to define tends to rest solely upon the decision we make as to whether or not God exists.  My definition is that Freedom and God mean different things to different people depending upon the context of their own life, and that one broad definition reached by one person would deny another the freedom or the realisation of God that they are searching for.  One man’s freedom is another man’s prison.  What I will say is that both freedom and God are concepts that, ultimately, every person on this planet really wants for themselves, but would probably sacrifice it for themselves if their loved one’s could all have it.  That is the beauty of freedom and of God:  the search for it brings out the best in us, and always makes us think of others before we think of ourselves.  I, for one, would far prefer myself to never have freedom if everyone else could truly have it:  but I think for everyone to truly have freedom, and thus to be able to realise God, then we must all want it for others before we try to achieve it for ourselves. 

 

So where does my opinion leave me in terms of the ultimate temptation?   If I were to fall foul of this temptation and dictate to others what they should and should not do in order to be a true follower of God, what would my dictat be?  It would be the exactly the same tas the principles which I stick to myself, and which I use to govern my own life, because I would never ask anyone to do what I was not fully prepared to do myself.  My dictat would look like this, and you would, of course, be compeltely freee from any use of force or coercion to take it up, so it would really be a dictat, but more of a case of me being on my knees begging everyone to try this approach:

 

“If you worship God, then you should only do so by virtue of your own Free Will.  If you don’t, then you have reached that conclusion by virtue of the fact that you have free will.  Either way, the freedom of choice that governs whether we believe in God or not should not end when we declare that belief either way.  Freedom is something that is perpetual, and although I believe in God, I am at war with those who seek to use religion as a means for imposing social control upon others.  They are simply trying to usurp the authority of God, which will only ever mean that the cycle of the inhibition of freedom continues until such time as we can all just stand up and say that in order to live freely, believing in what we all individually freely choose to believe in, then in our actions we must declare that above all things, we will cause each other no harm.”

 

If we all did this, then we would ensure freedom for others, and the ultimate consequence of it would be freedom for ourselves. 

 

Primum non nocere

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Constitution

“My Constitution” is the fundamental set of values that sets the tone for me, the way I view religion and God, and the way I try to live my life (I don’t always succeed though… everyone falls short of the mark sometimes).  It is a tool that can be used to decide which teachings of religion should be used in any given context.  It is also the means by which I try to illustrate the absurdity of fundamentalism and extremism, and to show that many people who claim that their violent acts are in accordance with religious doctrines are actually committing acts which are the antithesis of what, in my opinion, God stands for.  “My Constitution” however is a secular declaration in the sense that it does not require the person to believe in God, or to subscribe to any religious beliefs.  It is a document that outlines how I will conduct myself in every day circumstances.  The constitution is something that someone would subscribe to and hold themselves to without exception.  It is not something intended as an alternative to religion, but a useful way to think of it is like this:  If religions are maps that show the way that leads one to being closer to God, then I see “My Constitution” as being a compass… it helps me get my bearing during times where difficult decisions need to be made.  After a while of adhering to the constitution, I have found that it very quickly becomes second nature and allows fro easier decision making, a little like doing mental arithmetic where using the metric system is easier for me that using the imperial system. 

 

Everyone has a Conscience that tells them when something is intrinsically right or wrong.   This Conscience is the way which God communicates his will to individual people, and is how God tries to influence the decisions we take and the actions we carry out in our lives.  When we ignore our Conscience, we are effectively ignoring God.

The difficulty here is that where people act in ways that other people find questionable, offensive or abhorrent, they often try to partlty justify their approach by saying “… my conscience is clear.” 

 

Osama Bin Laden may say he has a clear conscience after 9-11, or after blowing up a building and killing hundreds of people.  George W Bush may say he has a clear conscience after it emerges that over 100,000 people have died in a war that he initiated on the grounds that Iraq was harbouring Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Indeed, it is notable that most actions involving the killing of people and the infliction of suffering on others, especially when these actions are committed for religious reasons, or are done for reasons that are driven by religious conviction often solicit explanations from people that require them to state that they have a clear conscience. 

Maybe they subconsciously feel the need to state clearly that, although they have broken Commandments and have gone against the principles of love and respect that all religions teach, they have a clear conscience, or to piut it another way, they have still acted in ways which God would find acceptable under the circumstances. 

 

I would now like you to consider more closely the concept of a clear conscience.  Sometimes we do things when we know they are wrong, and our conscience screams out to us, but we continue.  These acts do not sit well with our conscience because we know that they, in principle, are in contravention of what we understand is our obligation before God.  Going against one’s conscience is a hard thing to do, but is something that every single person does from time to time, and is something that we can become used to.  Going against one’s conscience often means doing things that will end up causing detriment to someone else.  When someone acts in a way that inflicts detriment or suffering on others, their conscience will inform them of whether their actions are right or wrong, and whether they should try to seek out an alternative course of action.  Some people seem to me to take decisions that their consciences could never approve of, and would require some form of bypassing of the conscience for that person to proceed upon a course of action. 

 

September 11th, for example, must have required the perpetrators to have developed a mindset where they do not see their victims as being worthy of the attention of their conscience, to the point that they effectively bypass their conscience.  It is impossible for someone to inflict harm on another person unless they see that person as being sub-human or inferior to themselves (as in the case of the Holocaust against the Jews) and not worthy of their consideration.  In the case of September 11th it is apparent that Al-Qaeda saw their victims as being “unbelievers” or “infidels” who were against God, and therefore their conscience did not apply (or more accurately, God does not apply).  If we consider this, then we must also consider the fact that Osama Bin Laden cannot have had a clear conscience in respect of the victims of 9-11, but rather that his conscience in respect of these people was absent.  In this context, Osama Bin Laden had an absent conscience, not a clear conscience, and from this I draw the conclusion that I can never consider Osama Bin Laden or any of his associates, or people who commit similar attrocities to be people who are acting on behalf of God.  They may claim to be from God, but in my reality, they are as far from God as they can possibly be.  Killing a person and then saying that it is justifiable because that person did not believe in God is morally perverse and ignores the principle that God loves everyone irrespective of the beliefs they have.  It is only by ignoring one’s own conscience, by ignoring God when he is trying to communicate the evil of one’s intentions, that one becomes capable of killing another person or inflicting harm on others.  Al-Qaeda, therefore, is not an organisation blessed by God, but is an organisation that masquerades as God-sent, but in reality is a source of suffering and detriment that warps and perverts people’s concepts of religion and God.

 

In the case of George W Bush, he says that his conscience is clear over the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent carnage and suffering that has been visited upon Iraqi people.  If you interpret this in light of my perspective on what the conscience is (God’s way of talking to you), then you can only draw the conclusion that George W Bush believes these people to be expendable in the pursuit of his own aims:  whether his own aim is revenge for 9-11, the invasion of Iraq for oil, or even if he was genuinely looking for WMD, he clearly believes that God cares more about his aims than God cares about the lives of the people who may die in the process of achieving them.  If George W Bush felt any different, then he would say that his conscience weighs heavy with the deaths of so many people and the suffering of those left behind, even though he felt that he took the best possible course of action. 

 

When someone says that their “conscience is clear” what they are effectively saying is that they have committed an action which, with all their knowledge and understanding about the way the world works (including any religious understandings that that person has, and any faith that that person follows) they feel that they have committed to the best possible course of action and that the action is justified within the context of their beliefs and values.  In terms of actions that are based upon religious ideologies, or that are committed on behalf of nations that are involved in conflicts with religious dimensions (such as the War on Terror, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) then one must always act in accordance with one’s own conscience.  Where someone says they have a clear conscience, yet have committed an act which is clearly in contravention of the principles and values of their religion, they must concede that they have acted without allowing their conscience to influence their decision.  Their conscience isn’t clear… it is absent. 

 

Telling the difference between the two is something that we all need to learn to do, and to bring this section to a close, I will say that under My Constitution, every single human being on this planet is a creation of God and deserves the attention of my conscience.  I feel that for me to ignore my conscience and commit an act which causes detriment to someone would never be justifiable in any circumstance, although it may be excusable if it could be shown that I caused detriment because I based my decision to act upon a misunderstanding rather than being neglectful of my own understanding of the difference between right and wrong. 

 

 

1.     Primum non nocere:  I will never commit an action which I know will result in the suffering of others, or permit myself to be party to an action where others suffer as a result.

 

2.     The purpose of human Life is the abolition of suffering; something that can never be achieved but which can be achieved in many different ways..

 

3.     God informs me through my conscience whether my intended action will result in the suffering of others, and whether my intended actions are justifiable or not.

 

4.     Misunderstanding is the source of most of the suffering in this world, and my duty before God to abolish suffering can be achieved by furthering my understanding of the world in which I live.

 

5.     I must not only understand the world from my own perspective, but must understand it from the perspective of others.

 

6.     I must never give rise to misunderstanding via my actions or words.

 

7.     I will never hold power over other people or try to exert control over other people, or try to impose my beliefs on other people.  If people are to adopt My Constitution, they are to do so via Free Will and by reading and listening to my perspectives.

Does anyone reading this think that this is a good set of principles to hold oneself to?  Can you see how much easier it makes interpreting religion though?  With the first principle alone, it becomes impossible to actively break any of the Ten Commandments because breach of all the commandments result in suffering and harm being inflicted upon someone.  Even coveting another man’s wife will give rise to emotional turmoil within oneself, so I hope that readers can see my point. 

Juncta Arma Decori

The Religious “Scaffold”

I have gained an understanding that religion is like a scaffold with which we construct an honourable, loving and understanding life.  Scaffolding is something that we use in the process of building something and for making reparations and improvements where required.  It is a particularly suitable analogy to draw with religion and the way in which I understand religion:  scaffolding is not something that would be used to destroy or demolish a building.  A religious scaffold shares this quality:  it is something that should be used to build one’s life, and to make improvements and modifications where life demands it.  It is categorically not something that should be used in any way to destroy someone’s life, to kill someone or to have an effect on someone’s life that they feel is detrimental or causes harm.  Primum non nocere…  the latin maxim that doctors sometimes use is particularly suitable for describing my approach to religion and the reason why I compare religion to a scaffold:  It means “First… do no harm.” 

 

As our life is built, we need to rely less on the scaffold and pay more attention to the uniqueness that it allows us to build.  Some people live their lives worshipping the scaffold, saying how wonderful it is and that we should all bow down below it’s authority and that we should not improvise with the traditional ways in which we employ the scaffold to build our lives.  Scaffolding used in the traditional way may mean a life which is readily identifiable with certain cultures, nations and religions.  For example, the Salafi tradition is a very traditional way of interpreting Islam, and is strongly associated with Saudi Arabia more than other Arabic nations. 

 

Some people would take the opposing view and say that they don’t need scaffolding, or that they can use it in new and interesting ways to build a life for themselves.  Some people choose to leave their scaffold up, to be highly visible followers of a particular branch of a religion and to wear traditional religious dress.  I choose to take my scaffold down and to only use it where I feel I need to further develop and build my life.  I am not highly visible as a religious person, partly because I think that it is not my place to impose my beliefs upon others, and partly because I have not felt ready to share my perspectives with people until I am sure that I have something worthwhile enough to share… until now, that is. 

 

The choice of whether to use a scaffold or not, and then whether to identify with tradition, or to implement creativity and innovation is, in essence, the hallmark of freedom.  It is this kind of freedom that I am interested in spreading.  When someone is building their life, they may want to identify strongly with a group and may decide to base their life on the blueprint of the lives of other people.  They may have role models and inspirational people around them that they wish to emulate in some way, or they may decide that they want to build a life that is totally orginal and unique.  Religion, with this in mind, is something that should only ever be applied to one’s own life.  Using your scaffold to build someone else’s life is not within a person’s own jurisdiction.  Parents will bring up their children using the scaffolding that they choose, but once a person has come of age, they should be free to decide to what extent they wish to carry this on, and which scaffold they would like to use to further build their own life.  I have chosen to use various different scaffolds at various different times oin my life, and I believe that the main benefit of My Constitution is that it allows me to have my own distinctive architecture to my life which is strongly influenced by the principles of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but which also takes into account some of the principles of atheistic religions like Buddhism, and polytheistic beliefs structures such as that of the Ancient Greeks.  Overall though, My Constitution allows me to have an absolutely steadfast belief in God and a firm knowledge and understanding that people like Al-Qaeda, George W Bush, the Pope and others who claim to be on God’s side actually act in ways which cause detriment and harm to God’s creations and misrepresent God to people who are influenced by them. 

Juncta Arma Decori

Control & Free Will

Most people accept that Free Will is the what defines us as human beings.  All religions require the believer to believe in the teachings of that religion by virtue of Free Will, where people believe in God by freedom of choice, and who worship God because they have made the free choice to do so. 

 

Equally, for Free Will to exist, people must have the choice to choose whether to believe in God or not.  People must be free to follow the religion that they choose, and subsequently must also be free to interpret their religion in any way they choose.  Where people are forced to believe in God, to convert to a particular religion, or to worship in a particular manner or observe a particular tradition against their will, then that person is denied their Free Will, and is denied their fundamental right to Free Will. 

 

My problem with religion, and the reason why I do not choose to declare myself a follower of any particular faith, is that I feel that once we have made the free choice to believe in God, religion actually starts to dictate to us how we should go about expressing that belief.  In essence, in the modern world, I believe that religion has become hopelessly corrupt because they are essentially seen as systems whereby once a person has declared their absolute belief in God, and has chosen a religion to follow, then that religion actually requires the person to sacrifice their Free Will. 

 

he extent to which this corruption can affect a person is wide ranging.  A Christian, for example, who does not attend Church might be declared by some Christians to not be a true Christian because they do not observe the tradition of attending Church.  Creationists say that believing in the scientific explanations of how the universe cam into being is in conflict with the teachings of the Bible, and therefore anyone who believes scientific theories such as the Big Bang Model of the Universe, or Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, cannot be a Christian.  Creationists therefore prevent someone from exercising their Free Will to believe in God, to believe in Christianity and to have the Free Will to also believe in the scientific theories of life.  Creationism teaches, therefore, that Free Will is not permissible, and that in order to be a true believer, one MUST adhere to a particular interpretation of the Bible.  In the case of Creationism, this means that the only people who are true believers in God are those who believe in God, believe Jesus was the Son of God, and who subscribe to Creationism’s literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis. 

 

I, on the other hand, believe that in order to believe in God, I must at all times be able to exercise my Free Will.  I believe in God, but I do not believe that Jesus was the Son of God, and I certainly don’t believe in Creationism’s interpretation of the Book of Genesis.  I believe that Jesus is the example to which we should all aspire, and to be someone who was just a normal person who achieved more of his potential as a human being (as a creation of God).  Through my Free Will, I also believe that the Prophet Mohammed of Islam (may Peace & Blessings be upon him) is the Final Prophet of God, and that after him, nothing new about God can be said.  However, I will not take Shahada because I do not want to exercise my Free Will by subjecting myself to traditions which I do not agree with.  I believe that it is not essential to make the declaration to be a Muslim in order to achieve oneness with God.  My non-Muslim interpretation of Islamic teachings is that being a Muslim is the only certain way to be a follower of God, although it is not the ONLY way.  I have been told by some of my Islamic friends that I am, in effect a Muslim, because I believe in One God, and I believe that the Prophet Mohammed (may Peace & Blessing be upon him) was his final messenger.  My Islamic friends have said to me on occasions that I could take Shahadah at any time, but I am quite content with the fact that I am exercising my Free Will to resist this at present.  The reason why I resist this is because I do not wish to put myself in the position whereby I can then be told by other Muslims that I am not a true Muslim because I drink alcohol, because I do not pray 5 times a day, because I have no intention of embarking on Hajj, or because I have never been to a Mosque.  I do not wish to be told that I am not a true believer because I do not wear certain clothes, or because I have had sex outside marriage, or that I occasionally eat bacon, or that I do not observe the Sabbath.  In essence, I will not join any religion that interferes with my ability to exercise Free Will, and I do not wish to be associated with anyone who tries to force or coerce or pressurise fellow believers (either fellow Jews, fellow Christians or fellow Muslims) into worshipping in a certain way.  All things, it has been said, are permissible. 

 

This is why I have designed a Constitution for myself.  I believe that it is the cornerstone of my Free Will to be able to say that, by virtue of my belief in God, I will never allow myself to be the source of suffering in anyone of my fellow human beings, irrespective of whether they hold the same belief, whether they are Jews, Christians, or Muslims, or whether they don’t believe in God at all.  My Constitution is a way of ensuring that in all actions I participate in, and in all words that I write or speak, I shall endeavour to never give rise to misunderstandings and to never impose my the perspectives that I hold, by virtue of my own Free Will, upon other people.  Essentially, it is my commitment that where I am afforded the right to Free Will, I am under an obligation from God to ensure that other people, no matter how different their perspectives may be or how opposed to their interpretations and actions I may be, are never forced or coerced by me into adopting any beliefs that I hold.  Anyone who declares agreement or disagreement with the perspectives I hold should do so as an act of Free Will.  In achieving this, it is my belief that I would be meeting the obligations that I believe I am required to meet as a believer of God.  In reality, what this means is that I can be a supporter of the Jewish faith, a supporter of the Christian faith and a supporter of the Islamic faith whilst at the same time being someone who directly challenges the doctrines of religion that limit a person’s right to exercise their own Free Will. 

 

This is why I am fundamentally opposed to regimes which use religion to force people to worship in certain ways.  A regime such as the Taliban, I believe is against God, not because of the interpretation of religion which they hold, but because they are prepared to force other people to observe certain religious practices, and where the Taliban coerces people into observing such practices by using violence to instil fear in people that unless they comply, they will suffer.  What I would say is that where people observe religious doctrines because of the fear of non-compliance, then they are coerced into demonstrating such a belief, and are therefore not exercising Free Will.  They are submitting to another person’s interpretations of religion, and not being afforded the right to exercise Free Will, meaning that they are not offering themselves to God, but are submitting to the tyranny of people whose aim it is to use religion as a tool for control.  In Christianity, there are many sects, Churches and organisations that operate in the same way.  Creationists force people to adopt certain interpretations of the story of Creation, and brand anyone who does not share this interpretation as a non-believer.  Islamists (such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda) are not proponents of the right to Free Will, and therefore, from my perspective, can never be representatives of God.  Even the Catholic Church requires people to sacrifice their Free Will in order to become a Catholic, so I don’t believe them to be any more representative of God than Creationists, the Taliban or Al-Qaeda.  Whether these groups are terrorist organisations or not is not really the issue here.  None of them can be representatives of God because none of them allow a person to maintain their ability to exercise Free Will. 

 

I believe that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all belief structures that allow the spirtuality of a person to become manifest in everything they do within their lives.  I also believe that to be part of an organisation that imposes certain interpretations of God, of religion, or ways in which to worship and where that organisation seeks to brand certain people as “unbelievers”, “non-believers” or “infidels” by virtue of the fact that they do not adhere to the organisations (or certain Clerics) interpretations of how to be a good Jew, Christian or Muslim then that organisation, no matter how fundamental their belief in God is, is an organisation that prevents people from worshipping God.  This is because the worship of God is only possible whereby someone has the right to exercise Free Will. 

 

Finally, I would say that religion, in this regard, is a test for a person.  Religions always allow scope for taking decisions that allow for the punishment and infliction of suffering on an individual.  Where a person is on constant touch with their conscience, and takes actions based upon what their conscience encourages them to do within any given situation, then that person, I believe, is acting in accordance to God.  I believe that the test we are all set is to develop ourselves to a point whereby our conscience is “tuned”, so to speak, to always encourage us to interpret religion in such a way as to help people understand themselves and the world in which they live, and to seek solutions to problems that prevent the propagation of suffering.

 

All monotheistic religions allow suffering to be inflicted upon a person in certain circumstances, and on occasions for someone to be killed.  I thoroughly believe that this is a trap.  Monotheistic religion is very clear through the Ten Commandments and through it’s entire narrative that killing and the infliction of suffering is forbidden.  Certain organisations, however, hold the killing and infliction of suffering on people as their central tenets, and use various religious scripture, doctrines and the teachings of God to justify such actions.  I believe that such people fail to discharge their duty towards God because they are so ready to take actions which are the antithesis of the kind of world that they are trying to achieve.  A Jew promoting the idea of Israel cannot do so unless they are observant of the Ten Commandments, and I believe that until every Israeli observes the Ten Commandments without compromise, then Israel can never be established other than in the form of a country which bares it’s name.  I also believe that the Islamic Caliphate can never be established until those fighting for it understand that under a certain system they would be responsible and accountable for the well being of both believers and non-believers, and until they demonstrate an understanding that people living under such a regime would still have the fundamental right to exercise their own Free Will, then such a regime would not be that which they have been promised, but would be a regime which simply bares the name of that which has been prophesised. 

 

I believe that Free Will is what must be maintained and defended by people who believe in God.  I believe that this would allow Jews, Christians and Muslims to achieve the things which they are destined to achieve, and to receive the things which they have been promised.  I believe that God is capable of fulfilling all the prophecies which have been made, even where such prophecies such as the establishment of Israel and the establishment of the Caliphate seem to be in contradiction to one another.  I believe that the only way that these things will ever come to fruition is where the followers of the respective faiths defend, first and foremost, the Principle of Free Will, and where the concepts of “force” and “coercion” are never used to further the religious aims of people who are trying to bring about the prophecies.  It is my steadfast belief that these things will only be achieved when all people, irrespective of whether they believe in God or not, and irrespective of which religion they follow, in practice live in accordance with the Ten Commandments, and refuse to use religion in conjunction with force or coercion.  Religion is not about control, but is about ofference of oneself to God by way of exercising Free Will.  In light of this, I believe that the Religious conflicts in the world, especially the Israel-Palestinian Conflict is something that can only ever be solved if people on both sides sign up to an agreement whereby all people first agree to adhere to the Ten Commandments, and then agree to resolve any further problems that are not at once solved by this agreement. 

 

Juncta Arma Decori

 

Misunderstanding and Sin

My definition of Sin is extremely simplistic and is based upon the concept that “Sin” means “to misunderstand.” 

 

How we interpret religious scripture and teachings is entirely dependant upon the definitions we assign to certain words.  I submit to anyone reading this that, over the years, the meanings of some words have either been lost in translation or have been misinterpreted by people, which has led to an understanding of religion that is false and which misrepresents the nature of God.  

 

The word “Sin” is often written in the original Greek texts of the New Testament as “hamartia” which directly translates as “to miss the mark.”  The word “Sin” itself has been used in English translations because it is derived from an old English word that means to “be guilty” within the context of a court:  the old English word “Synne”.  I need to emphasise that I think that this translation is something that has harmed us all on an almost incomprehensible scale.  Many people currently interpret “Sin” as being an offence towards God, and being something which indeed does have connotations of guilt.  A “Sin”, many people believe, is a thought or action that means that someone has done something which is in opposition to God’s will, and which is itself intrinsically evil. 

 

I have no such understanding of “Sin”.  I believe that Christ was trying to illustrate to people in his time that there is no such thing as an offence towards God, but that where people do things that give rise to suffering then they can be said to have “missed the mark” or “fallen short of what God demands.”  In this context, a “Sin” is essentially a misunderstanding, and a misunderstanding will always lead to some kind of suffering.  “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” is Christ’s way of saying “Let he who is without misunderstanding cast the first stone” or words to the effect that “The person who should cast the first stone should be someone who understands everything about the world in which we live and what has lead this person to misunderstand.” 

 

From this, it is easy to see that our interpretations of religion might be fundamentally different if we use different meanings for the word “Sin.”  The process of absolving oneself of sin is essentially the process whereby we learn about the world in which we live and the perspectives of other people that share our world.  We build up a body of knowledge in our lives, and we try to understand that knowledge from as many different perspectives as is humanly possible.  Knowledge, in the respect, is like a human body, while understanding is like the blood that runs through it and which keeps that knowledge alive.  Where we fail to understand a piece of knowledge, then that knowledge effectively dies and need to be re-discovered.  The Eucharist is something that the Christian Church holds as is central tradition and doctrine.  In my eyes, the Eucharist is alluring to the relationship between knowledge and understanding:  Body of Christ, Blood of Christ.  My understanding of this is that the Eucharist is telling us that Christ was someone who had a fundamentally thorough knowledge of the world in which he lived, and a thorough understanding of it.  In my opinion, it is this knowledge and understanding that sets Christ apart from everyone else, including the other Prophets (may Peace & Blessing be upon them all).  Christ, in my view, was just a normal man who observed the world he lived in and struggled to understand it, and then tried to spread this understanding and address the suffering in the world that resulted from the misunderstandings that others held.  This is a way of saying that Christ cleansed himself of all his misunderstandings (sins) and then sought to relieve others suffering by helping them to understand God and the world in which they lived to a better extent.  Christ challenged those people who were the source of suffering of others, and attacked those who purported to represent God whilst propagating misunderstandings and tolerating suffering.  Christ understood that anyone who was representative of God would not tolerate suffering, and could never allow themselves to be the source of it. 

 

I challenge you to read any passage of the Old Testament or New Testament and re-interpreting the word sin as “misunderstanding,” instead of having the meaning of “guilt”.  Every time you read the word “sinner” replace it with the phrase “people (or person) who misunderstand.”  What it shows to me is that people who take action in the name of God that results in the suffering or killing of others fundamentally misunderstand the religion that they say they are faithful to.  To clarify here, I would say that an offence against God is one where someone knows and understands that what they are doing will cause suffering and carries out that action regardless.  Someone who does this is simply a criminal, but where they inflict suffering knowingly, and in the name of God, then my perception is that such a person is a heretic, and is engaging in evil acts.  Evil people still have the capacity to be good and the capacity to change, but I am definitely of the belief that anyone who subscribes to ideologies such as the Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda interpretation, or the Catholic use of the Spanish Inquisition in the past, or any other use of religion as a justification for the infliction of suffering then that person has become, for the time being at least, evil.  I know this is a judgement call, but I believe that I have thought long and hard enough about this that I am able to make that judgement. 

 

It is also very empowering to interpret the word sin in this manner.  When I learned about this perspective, I felt that in order to make amends fro my sins I simply had to learn more about the world in which I live… to gain knowledge, and then to try and understand the knowledge I have in it’s entirety.  I now try to look at conflicts and problems in the world that concern religion from the various perspectives of the people involved, and that means that the knowledge I have can give rise much more understanding than initially seems possible. 

 

In the last few years I have written papers about String Theory and Gravity and what interests me about this is that Stephen Hawking has said that “he who solves the Theory of Everything  would know the mind of God.”  Essentially, what he means is that the person who makes the breakthrough in physics that would solve the fundamental problem of gravity and quantum mechanics would develop a problem solving approach that would enable that person to understand anything.  That person would be able to learn new knowledge and instantly be able to understand it within the context of what he already knows.  I like to think that this highlights the fact that science and the pursuit of knowledge is something that is actually funadamental to one’s belief in God.  I would say that science is a part of my religion because science is about accumulating quantifiable knowledge that can be passed on to each successive generation.  Once we have the knowledge, we then have the task of seeing how it fits in with what we have previosuly known, and how it affects our understanding of the universe.  But the most interesting aspect of Stephen Hawkings statement is that the person who solves the theory of everything, within the context of my approach to religion and My Constitution,  would be a strong candidate for the messiah because they would have absolved themselves of more misunderstanding. 

 

Apocalypse.

 

Apocalypse literally means “to lift the veil.”  My understanding of the apocalypse is that it will be an event or a period of time where the misunderstandings that shroud this world and prevent us from seeing the true nature of God and our world is lifted.  The lifting of the veil, therefore, relates to a time when we will, collectively as a global community, absolve ourselves of the fundamental misunderstandings that cloud our judgement and result in the suffering that is present in our lives.  The apocalypse, therefore, is not something that is to be feared, but will essentially be a time where people can collectively address their misunderstandings (where people can collectively absolve themselves of their sins) and where the suffering that is the result of our misunderstandings can be exposed and addressed.  The collective struggle of people throughout the history of humanity will therefore come to an end as we develop an understanding that allows people to live in tolerance of each others approaches to religion and life, and whereby the guiding principles are those which seek to abolish suffering and ensure that everyone takes responsibility for their own actions so that their actions no longer result in the creation of suffering.  I would close in saying that the final result of the apocalypse would be that it would bring an end to the use of religion as a tool for justifying the killing of innocent people, and as a reason for committing any act that itself imposes suffering or gives rise to misunderstandings.

 

\Juncta Arma Decori

The Concept of Primum Non Nocere…

My opinion is this:  No one is any more special than anyone else in the eyes of God.  We are defined, not by what we claim to be, whether that be Jewish, Christian, Muslim or otherwise, but by how our beliefs result in the way that we treat those around us.  My perspective is based on the concept that God wants us to treat each other based upon complete freedom of action, where such actions are a totally honest reflection of the beliefs and perspectives we hold.  It seems clear to me that God will never exert control over us, and wishes us to control ourselves on an individual basis, using religion as a means of self discipline and never as a means of disciplining others.  God wants our actions to be a true reflection of our beliefs and the principles that we hold, as well as the laws that we hold ourselves to.  As a way of ensuring that we make a free choice in terms of how to behave and how to treat each other, God says through scripture that anything is permissible.  While this is true, it is simply an assertion that it is only permissible to inflict harm and suffering, to kill and to break the 10 Commandments because if it were not permissible to do so then God would have no guarantee that we were refraining from doing so by virtue of our own Free Will.  While these things are permissible, they represent the antithesis of what God wants from us.  God’s way of differentiating who truly understands the universe in which they live, and who merely wishes to use their declared belief in God to exert control over other people is to provide religions that present people with a Free Choice based entirely in their own Free Will to reject the things that are permissible that lead to pain, suffering, death and the temptation to control others around us, and to embrace those things that are permissible that lead to societies where we treat each other with compassion, kindness, empathy, understanding and where we refrain from exerting control over other in order for them to conform to our understandings. 

 

God, above all things, wants us to be free.  Whether we kill each other, inflict suffering on others, torture others, abuse and oppress others or force other people to do things to demonstrate that they are conforming to what we believe God wants (such as wearing certain clothes, praying at certain times, refraining from sex, refraining from watching TV etc), or whether we permit people to make their own choices of whether to believe in God or not, and how to express their belief in God, it must be understood that God will never force or coerce us into doing certain things in order to prove to Him that we believe in God.  The proof of our belief lies solely and completely in God’s observance of us throughout our lifetime, and I believe that we are judged solely on whether we treat each other with kindness and compassion and allow other people to live their lives free from any kind of coercion and control, or whether we subject people to either direct physical control or coerce people by making them fear the consequences of non-conformity. 

 

In essence, my judgement of whether someone else is a follower of God is in no way based upon what someone claims to be:  That is just an indication that they are trying to follow God.  My judgement on whether someone is a follower of God is based upon whether they use religion as an excuse to exert control over people within their communities and in wider society, and whether a person feels that their beliefs give them a justification to either inflict suffering on another person, or to kill them.  Any person whose beliefs allow or require them to do these things is not, in my judgement, a follower of God, but is someone who has hijacked religion and who uses it to subject people to nothing more than a form of totalitarian social control.  The fact that they use God as the principle means by which they avoid any questions about their approach is neither here, nor there.  God does not exert control over us, and therefore, in my considered opinion, would NEVER require any person to control another person on His behalf.  If examples of this exist in scripture, then it must be considered that they exist simply to require the believer to make a true choice.  For every example in scritpture that appears to justify and legitimise control of others, their is a contradictory statement which says that believers should never exert control over another.  Anyone who chooses the former simply fails the test of Free Will that God is subjecting us to, and in my opinion, is judged by God to be found wanting.  Why then does God not intervene to prevent people in this world from controlling others and using their belief in God for a jsutification fro this?  Because he wants us ALL to individually and collectively, and by virtue of our own Free Will, to follow the fundamental principle that governs all actions of someone who follows God, no matter what the consequences of their belief may be for them personally:  Primum non nocere. 

 

In plain, everyday English, the meaning of this statement is one which I hope resonates with every single person who reads this page, and which, whether you believe in God or not, you feel that every single human being has a duty to uphold this principle:  First… do no harm.  It is my assertion that religion and the perspective that people have on God in thsi day and age is that a belief in God now automatically means that we should submit to being controlled by other people who claim to have a deeper and a better understanding of God.  People who claim to be more in touch with God tend to be those who advocate and promote punishments.  If we do not wear the right clothes, we should be punished; if we do not attend the right church, mosque or temple, we sould be punished; where women do not obey their husbands every command, they should be punished; where women are raped, they should be punsihed; where people question why they should do these things, they should be punished; where people refuse to carry out punishments, then they in turn are punsihed; where people are denied education so that they may be subjugated and prescribed the “truth”, which if they do not accept, they are punished.  All along, however, the people who appoint themselves as those responsible for judging and punishing others do not hold themselves to the same requirements.  All this conspires to give such people control over others because once it can be demonstrated that the prospective punishments are both severe enough and are given out without any form of judicial process (i.e. these “divine” punishments are given out in an extra-judicial manner), then control is achieved because people are so fearful of breaking the supposed “laws.” 

 

What I see when I look at the world is that religion has become a mechanism for the control and subjugation of people by those who have no moral compass whatsoever.  Where religion was a flickering light for us, it has now become a dark, bottomless pit.  People who claim to be ultra religious and committed to God are those that deem themsleves prepared to do anything in the name of God.  The fact of the matter is that God wants us to be prepared to refrain from any action that results in the occurence of suffering to the point that we would be prepared to sacrifice ourselves in upholding this.  Refraining from killing someone or from making them suffer, especially in the circumstances under which some people have to live in this world, in my opinion would require infinitely more strength than it would to just go ahead and do it. 

 

If you are reading this, then you are obviously curious about religion and what will happen in the world over the next few years.  Forget for a moment your nationality, the branch of religion you follow, your community, your friends, your teachers, your role-models and any actions that you have taken.  Just for a moment think only about yourself and your relationship with God: 

 

What does God want you to achieve? 

 

Who does God want you to harm in the process? 

 

Do you think that God treats you any differently from anyone else?

 

Do you think that religion is something to be used to control people, or to set them free?

 

Do you want to control other people?

 

 

Juncta Arma Decori

Religion and God need to be taken back for good people…

This blog will be used to communicate my perspectives on religion and has the primary aim of getting ordinary everyday people from every religious background, whether they be Jewish, Christian, Islamic, atheist, agnostic, or whether they believe in other religions like Sikhism and Hinduism, or other belief structures and philosophical discourses such as Buddhism.  Along with lay people, I also want to attract as visitors and readers of my blog academics and the intelligentsia of the world who are concerned with political and critical theory, psychological disciplines and theology, as well as journalists who are engaged in reporting the religious, civil, military and political events that are shaping our world today.  Ultimately, I would like to attract the attention of the politicians, leaders, clergy and the antagonists in the ongoing “War on Terror” as I feel that the are falling massively short of the mark in terms of what is needed to bring stability and security to the lives of the people who are most directly affected by the events currently taking place.  The real objective of this blog, however, is to enable me to qualify some of my views and opinions on religion, and to allow any person reading this blog, no matter what their status, position or capacity is in the world, to consider my reasoning on why EVERYONE is fundamentally missing the point about religion.  From Osama bin Laden to Pope Benedict, from Israel to Hamas, from the average secular westerner to the most observant and fundamental Muslim in the wilderness of Afghanistan, I believe that people are trying their hardest to understand God, to understand religion and are trying to live their lives in the way that they think and feel God wants them to live it.  From the most staunch atheist like Richard Dawkins to the ulama of Saudi Arabia, the ever present conscience that, as humans, we come under pressure from when we look at the state of the world today pressures us into taking certain views whether we declare that we believe in God or not. 

 

I believe that nothing new can be said about God than has already been said through the ages by the Prophets who have told of God’s existence.  I will detail my personal beliefs on this site over time, but to summarise, I was raised in the UK a Protestant Christian and had a typical secular upbringing.  I do not consider myself to be a Christian, Jew or Muslim, but I believe in One God, I completely reject the concept of the trinity and the notion that Jesus was the “Son of God”.  I believe that Jesus was born no different than anyone else, and that he was just a human being born with the same potential as anyone else.  I do, however, believe that Jesus fulfilled more of that potential than anyone else, and that as Christ in his later years, he achieved a closeness and oneness with God that represents, in my opinion, the highest form of enlightenment that a human being can achieve.  I also believe that Mohammed (may Peace and Blessing be upon him) was the final prophet of God, although I am categorically NOT a Muslim and have no wish to take shahadah:  This is simply because, although I believe Islam to be an enlightened path to God, I believe that it is not the only path to enlightenment before God, and I do not wish to be constrained by a method or a way of life which I do not feel is necessary for me to adhere to.  I believe that all human beings are created equal in terms of their spiritual capacity for love, kindness, empathy and compassion, and I believe that when we are born, we are uncorrupted by the way in which survival in this world tends to lead us away from these qualities and virtues. 

 

I feel that prior to September 11th 2001 I had allowed myself to become morally corrupted by the world, albeit in a very socially acceptable manner for a twenty-something young man in the UK.  My struggle (and it has been a monumental struggle with my own mind, with my environment, my society and my perspectives on the world) since 9-11 has been to furnish myself with knowledge and to purge myself of misunderstanding about the ways and means of the world I live in.  At times I have held some bizarre and strange beliefs, and at times have become emotionally distressed to the point where I have neared mental and spiritual destruction.  The problem that I am now confronted with is that I feel that I can no longer keep silent against the people in this world who are espousing all kinds of untruths about religion and who are effectively using the interpretation of their respective religions to justify first the control of those who say they share the same religion, and secondly the destruction of those who are seen to be either not worshipping God from the right perspective, or who do not worship God at all.  This, on the face of things, may seem to be directed against the “Islamism” of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban and other similar jihadi groups, but I am keen to stress that my objections extend as much to the Catholic Church and the Church of England, other Christian groups and Jewish groups (including Israel as a nation which I believe has not achieved realisation of the biblical concept of “Israel”). 

Also, I include within the sphere of my targets to challenge the psychiatric community, which because of my first hand experience of the psychiatric system, and of the understandings of psychiatric medicine I have attained over the last 6 years, I see psychiatrists as the true clergy of atheism and of secular society because once one has been judged to be not of sound mind, the effect of psychiatric treatment is essentially that one has become a “health heretic” or someone whose beliefs must be caused by an erroneous malfunction (in this case, a chemical imbalance in the brain replaces the concept of “possession by the devil” which was used by the clergy before the advent of science.  Iin other words, a doctor, rather than being a physician acting with the consent of the patient, becomes a self directed entity who can inflict suffering and harm upon a person under the guise that s/he is providing medical treatment and acting in that person’s best interests because they do not understand what they are doing by virtue of having an illness of the brain that in turn affects the mind in a detrimental manner.  A doctor, without any judicial oversight or means of appeal for the patient, can make a judgement, without any kind of objective evidence whatsoever, that the thoughts of the person are not in keeping with what that which psychiatry deems indicative of a person who has control of their mental faculties, and as such, that person ceases to be a person and becomes a subject upon whom certain constraints can be placed in order to “correct” or “police” the thoughts of that person and get them to conform to a certain way of thinking.  Where a person is judged to be psychiatrically ill, irrespective of whether they have committed any offence under law and without their thoughts and perspectives ever being investigated in any detail at all frequently have their freedom taken from them, are injected with chemicals which feel like one is being subjected to a personal spiritual annihilation, slowly and with no concern given to the suffering that we endure.  The BIG misconception about psychiatry is that a person’s thoughts will be assessed in detail by a psychiatrist:  This is absolutely untrue.  As soon as certain behaviours have been observed in a patient that give a psychiatrist the ability to say that a person conforms to a certain criteria, the actual content of their thoughts are completely ignored by a psychiatrist unless a person discloses that they might be considered to be a risk to either themselves or another person).  An explanation of my experiences of psychiatry will, at some point, be published on this blog, but I feel that the parallels between psychiatry and religious extremism is unnervingly close for comfort, and I feel that western society, before it points the finger at human rights abuses in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Israel, should open it’s eyes and look at little closer to home:  in every city and every town in the western developed world, a hospital ward containing  the lepers of the modern age; those whose suffering is not only legitimised, but is actually inflicted and exacerbated by the psychiatric clergy who cannot offer any explanation for what causes such thoughts and do not have any proof whatsoever that symptoms (such as hearing voices, hallucinations, delusions or racing moods) are actually part of any objectively identifiable illness, much less how to treat them. 

 

Before I begin my bogging proper, I would like to start by stating with absolute conviction a fact which I see as beyond all doubt about religion:

 

Religion is the art of setting one’s spirit free, and as such is something that a person should approach with absolute and complete freedom.  The very second that religion becomes something that is forced, coerced, or is entered into by virtue of it being a “social norm”, then my view, unequivocally, is that such a person is not practicing religion and is not worshipping God, but are merely being subjected to a form of social control by someone else who is using their interpretation of God to achieve a position of power and control over others.  Wherever a person is forced, coerced or frightened into conforming to a religious ideal, then they are categorically not doing so because they freely choose to do so.  Belief in God, in my view, can only be achieved where the person “chooses” by virtue of their own free will to believe, and where acknowledgments of such a belief, either by observing certain religious practices or traditions, must also be carried out completely by virtue of a persons freedom of choice.  Where a person is forced, for example, to pray at a certain time, to abstain from an education that they wish to partake in, is refused an office which they aspire to hold (such as becoming a Catholic Priest), or is told that in order to believe in God, they must refrain from drinking or having sex, then where the free choice of that person is that they believe in God, and their subsequent freedom of choice is denied them by the religious establishment where they live, then that person is denied their right to worship God by living their life in the manner which they see best to live it.  Choosing not to believe in God is a choice which does not necessarily take people away from being, in practice, what I would deem to be close to God.  In this blog, I hope to demonstrate that an atheist can (and indeed, many are) become much closer to God that any person who declares that they believe in God and who then also engages in certain actions, particularly those which result in the suffering of others. 

 

Believing in God should be something that each person decides to do by virtue of their own free will, and without any pressure from anyone else.  However, the notion that once someone has declared that they believe in God is then constrained by beinjg forced to adhere to practices and make decisions that go against their own free will means that religion, in the modern age, is something that evidently seems to deprive a person of their own freedom of choice and freedom of thought.  This, I believe, is the antithesis of what religion is.  God does not want us to do anything specific, except that we should be able to do it by virtue of our own free will.  If you could do anything by virtue of your own free will, what would you do?  It is one’s actions that categorise someone as a good person, not whether they do those actions because they are trying to worship God or not. 

I wish to state that I believe that God speaks to every single person in the world directly irrespective of whether that person believes in God.  I do not expect anyone to agree with me on this (especially atheists), but it is something that helps me everyday to strive to be the best person I can be, and which ultimately means that I can no longer refrain from challenging those people currently espousing themselves as the “true believers”.  I believe with all the conviction that I have that my conscience is the way that God communicates with me.  I believe that when I watch a news story and see young children in Palestine dead or dying, or whether I look at the people who I have shared rooms with on a psychiatric ward who are begging for a change in medication levels, but to no avail, or where a parent talks of a missing child, my conscience screams at me to do whatever I can to help absolve those people of the suffering which they are forced, by virtue of the misunderstandings of those who see it as their place to have control over them, to continually endure.  That, to me, is how to understand what God wants. 

God just wants us all to be free, and to never subject each other to control.  Society is necessary to legislate against the fact that there will always be people who either misunderstand this notion, or who understand it all too well and just don’t care.  Religion, then, in my eyes, is a system of setting the spirit within us free, and is thus a system of self-discipline, and not a means for disciplining others.  Punishments that have been advocated in religions, whether by God, or by the Prophets themselves, have always been of one ilk:  a punishment that prevents a person with a tendency to take control of others from taking control.

Remember this:  God does not take control of us, but gives us the gift of free will.  Therefore, anyone who tries to exert direct control over another person is stealing from that person their free will, and is also stealing from God God’s ability to give that person the divine gift of free will.  In practice, we can be actively controlled (slavery being to most obvious example, blackmail being another less obvious but equally viable example), or passively controlled, such as where a father is prevented from educating is daughter in Afghanistan because he has witnessed the killing of an entire family for such a “transgression”, or where a Palestinian father provides information on his brother in law’s activities in transporting goods because he does not want his house to be bombed, potentially while his five children might be sleeping in it.  Remember:  All these acts are carried out is the name God, but are actually (in my opinion) the antithesis of what God wants us to achieve for ourselves.  We need governments to manage our economies, and to provide security against those who wish to harm us.  Where we get governments, either our own, or those of others, who subject us to fear and control, or where this is achieved by extremists who say they are the “true believers”, the result is that we are dragged kicking and screaming further from God than we have ever been before.  Even watching this happen to other people results in a person being subjected to control, because that feeling of helplessness and powerlessness means that we sometimes question our own faith, and sometimes we lose it altogether.  I refuse to be controlled any more.  I am a follower of God, and I don’t care whether you are a Jew, Christian or Muslim or even an atheist:  if you are a good person who believes that no one should be subjected to control unless it is to prevent them from harming or controlling others, then you, in my eyes, are a true follower of God.  

Along with this, which I will also discuss in my blog, the exists one principle which I adhere to in everything I do to the best of my ability.  I have stolen it from the doctors who claim that it is one of their principles, but which my experience of being a psychiatric patient has given me the knowledge and understanding that psychiatrists in no way observe this principle:  Primum non nocere.  The translation which I prefer is “above all things, firstly, you must do no harm.” 

So there you have it.  In my eyes, those who are the true followers of God are those who will never inflict suffering upon another person in anything they do and who do not tolerate the suffering of others, and who see religion as something which enriches them and allows them to become closer to God by virtue of making free choices in their lives, and by refraining from controlling others or impinging on their free will.  In this light, I declare war on all those who use religion in order to gain power and control over others and who see religion as something which justifies their innate need to inflict suffering in others and kill, thus inflicting the worst kind of spiritual destruction on the families of the dead.  My name is Absolute Truth Zero.  My weapons are words, because that was all there was in the beginning, and in the end, that is all that will remain.  Listen to your conscience within the context of the words that I have written here:  can you here God speaking to you?  What emotions does your conscience give rise to now?  Do you think you could join me in challenging the religious murderers and those who cause suffering in the name of God?  Can the good people of this world find the strength to stand up to people like those who say that God want some of his creations to suffer, and others to die?  Can we together achieve freedom and bring heaven to earth?  There are so many questions and so many possibilities.  What is absolutely certain is that if we do not try, then we will never succeed. 

Juncta Arma Decori