CONTROL BELIEFS IN THE LIGHT OF MORALITY

A control belief controls and co-ordinates how you look at the evidence and how you interpret it.

Believers in moral code always start with what they want it to be and then they interpret the evidence to fit their belief.

A control belief can be conscious or unconscious. You may not be aware of how you treat something as probably true.

To avoid and minimise the damage and risks of control beliefs you need to know what the default beliefs are.

Take morality.

Is human nature moral? Is it hypocritical which is a kind of homage to moral? Is it immoral? Is it amoral?

The default position is to assume that human nature is hypocritical. Just because you feel sincere does not mean you are sincere. The hypocrite Jesus condemned in Luke 16 felt he was sincere and Jesus said the feeling mattered not one iota. God was angry with the hypocrite.

The fact that priests and nuns are looked up to as moral though they honour a book replete with the fanaticism and violence commanded by God as the word of God shows the power of hypocrisy. They are so used to tricking people into honouring a God who commanded murder that they think nothing of it.

"Liberal" Christians pick and choose out of the Bible what they want to believe which is usually the nice and saccharine stuff. Why should anybody pick what they pick? What not take the nastier bits as inspirational? Most people believe the world is red in tooth and claw and you have to be ruthless to survive. They think morality and life can be nasty business so religion can be nasty business too. They would be happy to be edified by the Bible tales of this blood-drinking God who commands murder and genocide. The liberals have no right to criticise those who do that. They indirectly give them permission and encouragement to do so though they would prefer to forget that. They cannot say that Christian terrorists for example are not representative of the Christian religion. The Bible advocates religious violence so they are representative.

Liberal Christianity is just a heap of man-made religions. Each group has its own views. It is a form of fundamentalism and idolatry to be part of a religion like that. Idolatry is a form of fundamentalism and fundamentalism is a form of idolatry. God believers say it is awful to adore as God what is not God at all. But what about themselves? If there is no God they are mistaking nature and their own imagination for God! Idolatry can be condemned by the atheist too!

Fundamentalists don't have impressive evidence for their cocksure creed being true. Liberals have even less and so are really no better. Their system makes no sense because they end up making very big claims on slender evidence. For example, they might say that the virgin birth is just a metaphor for Jesus having been sent by God as the supreme teacher. But because they don't take too much of the Bible that seriously they end up with the same attitude as the fundamentalists which is that reason and science must be sacrificed in the interest of faith. Liberals are just fundamentalists with more popular and fashionable beliefs.

The God concept is inseparable from fundamentalism. It is always fundamentalist to believe in God or to say he exists. If God exists he deserves to be put first. The only way we can be sure we are doing that is by doing good at great sacrifice and personal suffering for all eternity. If God asked you to suffer forever for others and in love would you do it? The answer is no.

Belief in God makes you less moral not more.

There is enough to disagree about and to give people an excuse to argue and discriminate against people about without religion. This includes liberal religion. It causes division and trouble we could do without. Liberals may still say things like, "Jesus showed us what God was like," and "God is love and he loves us all". Fundamentalists will feel their own fundamentalist and extremist faith assisted by such teachings. They will feel, "Even liberal scholars agree with me that much so I can be totally confident my faith is true."

We want happiness for its own sake. It is an end in itself. We will do what helps us all to be happy together. We don't need to believe in God for any of that. God is irrelevant. It is not God we want but happiness. Christians admit this and stop lying to yourself and to us.

There has never existed a person who put say money before all things. No - that person thought money would buy happiness so it is the happiness he wanted.

Finally, we need our defaults. We only want other beliefs. That is why control belief mechanisms are inherently oppressive.