Copyright 2011, John Manimas Medeiros

Here in the land of bravery and freedom, one is inclined to believe that there is some respect for a "free thinker" or for a person who has a genuinely different viewpoint, or for a thinker who argues that the history of western civilization is based on a mistake. Whoops! We were sort of with you until that last phrase "the history of western civilization is based on a mistake". We Americans are receptive to a new topping for pizza, a "sparkle" or spice or color added to our chewing gum, or condoms, or a new way to increase the cost of a car with no genuine improvement in transportation, but, disturbing ideas suggesting that we don't know what we are doing are severely not welcome. Text that as: NINNA "New Ideas Need Not Apply."

What am I saying? Just being bitter because I don't have a million superficial "friends" on Facebook? Not a big Tweet on Twitter? Just a grump whose "weird" viewpoint does not strike a flashy, gimmicky cord in the mass market? All these arrows could be slung at me, but none of them can penetrate. The truth is, the reconciliation of science and religion is an "enemy doctrine" in the land of "freedom" that would have profound economic results. There have been two major Big Businesses in human civilization since around 1500, the two mega-businesses that employ vast millions of people, elevate their social status and inflate their incomes, and maintain their comfort embraced by the privileges to which they have become accustomed: Science and Religion. What kind of chaotic disaster would arise from a sick miscegenation of these two separate races of professional experts, what anarchy of the human fabric, torn to ragged shreds by the insane idea that science versus religion is the cosmic act of warfare that sustains the human economy? How can anyone ask us to change our strictly segregated categories of knowledge? How can anyone ask us as John Manimas does, to participate in the painful and mentally impossible contortion of changing the Gospel message from the ancient and honorable category of "religion" into the lucrative, and credible category of "science"?

The real reason the reconciliation of science and religion, or arguing in defense of the scientific content of religion, is forbidden territory is because people categorize knowledge and one who proposes a change in the category from "religion" to "science" is deemed to be confused and emotionally troubled. Science is "science" and religion is "religion" and it makes no sense to mix them up. What I say the world needs to do is take a look at the evidence that we do not really live in a world where science does battle with religion; we live in world where old religion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc.) is in ongoing conflict with a new religion called "science." For clarification, the new religion is not really "science," meaning "knowledge," but rather "technology" meaning I do something to you, or for you, and you pay me. The scientists who enjoy defining "science" as a way of thinking that is opposed to the "irrational superstition" and "unverifiable beliefs" of religion are actually defending and sustaining the religion of "materialism" and "secular humanism," which is okay, but still they are defending a religious viewpoint. The fundamentalist "religionists" of our modern times attempt to discredit science, with little meaningful success, by defining science as being diametrically opposed to moral and religious doctrines, against God, against virtue, against morality, against patriotism, against believing that good behavior is rewarded in heaven and bad behavior is punished, eternally, in hell. (If your grammatical sense tells you that "hell" should be capitalized, as in "Hell," then I insist you give the same credibility of place to "Heaven.")

What I propose, from my first reading of the New Testament Gospel in 1958 when I was fourteen years old, through fifty years of both formal and self-directed education, is that most if not all of the social, political and economic problems of western civilization, and possibly the entire world, arise from the ERROR of the doctrine imposed on virtually everyone that the Gospel message is about moral behavior, and not about any scientifically factual information. What the original disciples of the Gospel teaching did, regardless of what or who one believes is the true source of that teaching, is to continue the fearful religious viewpoint that is so old it is legitimate to describe it as being "pre-historic" that after people die they live on in another world where the good are eternally rewarded and the bad are eternally punished. This fundamental interpretation is imprinted on the minds of children and anyone who is introduced to Christianity or Islam as an adult. And, it is never questioned. The Gospel -- and the Koran -- is categorized, CATEGORIZED in libraries and universities and in everyone's mind as moral philosophy, usually listed under "myth and religion." Whether one deems that moral philosophy to be sacred or the word of God is not the issue. Whether sacred or just historical, or just an interesting philosophical or ideal moral viewpoint, the Gospel message is identified as being about morality and this viewpoint is cast in stone, in iron, in the even more solid and immovable composition of the authoritarian human mind. How can any sane person suggest that this could be wrong? What is the result of such a wild new viewpoint that the Gospel message is science? Does it dissolve all of our religion into the sea, burn morality like a piece of paper to become light, gray ash that floats away and turns to dust, disbursed by the wind and never to be recovered?

No, it makes the Gospel message more credible. And it makes sense. It actually makes the Gospel message entirely consistent. No more of the craziness of saying that the Gospel message can be interpreted however anyone wants to. It is a coherent, scientifically factual message that tells us what we need to know in order to survive and thrive as a species on Earth: Survival of the good steward is survival of the fittest. The parables of the good servants and bad servants, and about what the kingdom of Heaven "is like" are all telling us that the process of evolution will apply to us just as it applies to all living animals. We can survive indefinitely or become extinct, and we can facilitate our extinction and bring it on faster by being "bad servants" of the life-supporting environment.

If one looks for statements about what is the core message of Christianity and of the Gospel message, one will find that all the "experts" in the Catholic and Christian clergy, all of the theologians who have earned their piece of paper that declares they know something about Christianity, proclaim that "Jesus died for our sins." That's it. That is the crux (cross) of the Christian Religion. Jesus' suffering and death at the hands of religious and political authorities occurred as expiation for our sins. This idea is most suspicious. First, both the Apostles' (Nicene) Creed and the prophecy say that the Messiah will suffer in Hell for three days. Pardon me, but Good Friday from noon to three is the identified time of his death on a cross, and from Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon is one day, and from Saturday afternoon to Easter Sunday is a second day. Where is the third day? Let's not quibble. Let's say Jesus spent seventy-two hours in Hell (during a period of 48 hours), so that all of the sins of the world could be forgiven by his Father, God. I have a problem with this concept. I have to ask, as sacrilegious as I may be accused of being, which interval of that seventy-two hours was taken up by the weight of your sins? While you are fumbling with your calculator, let's also consider the sins of Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, the Green River Killer, Attila the Hun, the unnumbered priests who used their positions of authority to have sex with boys who went to church looking for God, the drunken men who beat their wives, the mothers who betrayed their children, the children who killed their parents, the parents who used their children sexually, all the warriors who raped and killed women, including pregnant women, who also killed young children but took the older children captive to use for labor and sexual services, all those who used their business to steal from their neighbors, the nobility who worked serfs or slaves or uneducated employees to death, and we have taken only our first small step in compiling our list of all the sins of all the humans since we claimed that title. This has to be done in a manner that is consistent with the Christian concept that if I kill someone or steal my neighbor's horse, or his wife, or if a woman steals a neighbor's husband, we will therefore burn in Hell forever. There is an obvious breach of logic here, defended perhaps on the grounds that the suffering of Jesus is limited because of his nobility of character. This would be consistent with the conservative practice, found even in the world's greatest democracies, that the rich and noble of character are not to be treated the same, when charged with a crime, as the common rabble who are known to be criminal by nature.

Allow me to laugh in your face, if you really want to defend the ridiculous proposition that three days is sufficient suffering for the sins of the world. Are you nuts? What if we agree, as is claimed by Christian theologians, that prostitution is a sin? What if we agree, as we hate to agree, that a man who hires a prostitute has committed a sin? How many seconds of that seventy-two hours was effective for forgiving all the sweaty couplings of men of noble character with women of ill-repute? Oh, I see, it was just a "metaphor." So that's what your Christian religion is, a metaphor. My Christian religion is not a metaphor. My Christian religion is about the real, physical kingdom of Heaven.

I could go on at length, which I do in my book, The Primacy of Stewardship, but here it was my intention to be brief. Therefore, I will make use of the one parable that is most brilliantly not a moral argument but rather a statement about the reality of life in the universe and how the universe works: The Parable of the Sower.

The parable about the farmer who sows seeds is the "dead giveaway" that the Gospel is not speaking in ordinary terms about morality. This farmer is a random sower. This farmer does not plant seeds on his own property or leased farmland. This farmer, Jesus says, is "like the kingdom of Heaven" or more precisely Jesus begins this parable with the common phrase "the kingdom of Heaven is like." The sower behaves like a crazy farmer, planting seeds on dry, parched ground, on stony ground, among thorns, even in a roadside ditch. Awaken, my friend! I am not asking you to believe what you do not see. Look and believe what you do see. This parable is not about a normal farmer on Earth. This parable is a beautiful story of how the real, physical universe works; this parable is a scientifically accurate description of panspermia. Life is disbursed throughout the universe. Some seeds fall on poor ground and perish, but when seeds fall on good ground (a good planet) -- such as a stable environment with liquid water -- some planets yield thirty-fold, some sixty-fold, and some a hundred-fold. But you may ask, why has this never been mentioned in church? Because the Church, all the churches, have been fixed in loyalty to the basic and unquestioned doctrine that the Gospel is about moral behavior and about the exclusive authority of the Christian Church. Therefore, what Christians hear always and everywhere (except in my book) is that the seeds are a "metaphor" for the teaching of Christ, and the good ground and bad ground are the minds and hearts and souls of people, people like you and me. And if you are "good ground" meaning a good person, the seeds of Christian doctrine and the exclusive claim to spiritual authority, will sink in and you will be saved. You are promised eternal happiness in Heaven because you joined up -- please just sign here and empty your pockets into the basket which is for the poor of course. And don't ask any witty questions. It's a mystery.

So you see, if you want to do something really cool, even better than drugs or free sex or dancing under a strobe light, or tweeting or texting or riding a snowmobile into the woods and terrorizing what little nerve-jangled wildlife is left behind, just ask yourself this question: Who says that if God talks to us he is going to talk about morality? Couldn't God, who cares about us, use his time to tell us what we need to know? Tell us that if we want to survive for a long time we have to be good stewards of the life-supporting environment? It's in there. It is all there in the Gospels, consistent and logical and perfectly compatible with a messenger who is telling us what is truly important to us and what we might not understand until it is too late. All you have to do is smack your brain with a hammer and tell it that it is going to examine the Gospels in a new way. You can do it. Why should you not do this? How important is it for you to examine the Gospels in this new way? If I say that the history of western civilization is based on a mistake, how important is it for you to be absolutely certain that I am wrong? That there is not even a Holy Ghost of a chance?