Surviving WELL The Collision; Where Religion and Rationality Clash and Fail

 
The bright and beautiful side of organized and since-ancient faiths.

The visual and auditory aesthetics.

The psychological lure of culturally rich stories.

The warm-blanket-effect of comforting hopes.

The way those stories offer a quick and easy "seat"; a sense of resolution. "This is me. This my people. This is our path. We walk this path with purpose, power, beauty; together."

A reassuring and empowering sense of personal and collective identity.

Capitalizing, richly, on remnants.
Remnants of neurological wiring. Powerful mental roads; paved by parents in our infant, toddler, and single-digit childhood.
- That familiar sense of "My parent knows what's best; even when I can't understand their reasoning. They will take care of me".
--
I do NOT stand against spirituality.

Nor do I insist that FACTS and LOGIC always have greatest available utility.

The main problem I have with such faith-path-systems is this: They are systems of control, where predators project their own will as the voice of "God".

They have learned, over time, to find backdoors into our psyche; open gates for parades of trojan horses.

They smuggle in psychological devices meant to anesthetize, puppet and exploit child-minded dependents.
They teach "learned helplessness" as a virtue.

They falsely claim that their groups are the true origin and pinnacle of every human ethic.   
They blatantly employ coercion
but then claim it's a friendly "warning".

They manipulate vulnerable souls into displacing themselves.

They shift people into an external locus of identity, 
as a means to create
a deep and perpetual dependence. 

Dividing people from their own selves
is the most insidious form of
"divide and conquer" I've ever seen. 

It's selfishness dressed as altruism.

It's wasteful destruction masquerading as a beautiful act of "new creation". 
     
But it does ALSO have true power, beauty, and utility. 
That's not the same as saying it's "true". 
It's not true.
But it does provide useful untruths. 

Secular ideals have greater philosophical merit. They speak TRUTHS to power, Crucial truths which few "people of faith" have ever tasted on their lips. But there are things people deeply crave and greatly benefit from ... which science, rationality and thoughtful ethics just can't offer.

Harsh realities have great but limited utility.
Beautiful realities can compensate for much of what harsh realities fail to provide.

But humans harmonize more deeply, richly, and durably when they share a blissful dream.

This is why getting atheists to harmonize and cooperate is like "herding cats";' a fact they commonly confess and lament.

Progressive, mostly-rational skeptics
WISH humans could maximize their collective potential without credulous fantasies. But it's a wasteful wish.

Our species is thousands of years away from that collective milestone of growth.
But our species won't be here. 
There won't be time.
 
So it won't really matter how much beauty might be lost, in trade for our maturity. 

What matters is finding a balance between beauty and function
in our own lives
here, now, and for however many days we have left. 

Meanwhile,
many of the loudest voices who call for growth
have overestimated their own. 

They have grown;
but not even nearly so far as they imagine.

Time and time again
I've seen people band together in othering-tribes; 
in their fight against othering and tribes. 

I've seen every helper-monkey with a wrench 
trying to "fixing the machine";
by screeching at it. 

And this is EXACTLY where "liberal" thinking fails.

They let an IDEAL (idealism) become an ironic fantasy; in which they get lost.

They get so caught up in "what should be" that they lose sight of how things really are.

Example:
They get so caught up in the need to rush into low-carbon energy production ... that they overlook the NECESSITY of carefully patient stages where we take one step at a time. We need fossil fuels to be gradually replaced. But they rush in with this "RIGHT NOW! Completely!" rhetoric, and then seem confused when they aren't taken seriously.

The same is true when it comes to our need to replace harmful religions with something-else that isn't harmful.

Secular humanists don't really have a complete-enough package to replace religious-fantasy-systems with. Nor do they have a realistic plan for making that process happen any faster than it is. Overall, they speak many truths to power. And they perform many effective actions. It's enough maturity to delay extinction. But it's not enough to prevent it. So the process of maturing society CRAWLS forward. Reality is a paradoxical by nature.

Globally, and even nationally, our species cannot do what it needs to.

Granted, Steven Pinker is right. The "Better angels of our nature" are winning overall.  This is great news. 
Globally, the human condition IS overall getting healthier
However, leading experts in a wide range of fields are also correct. It's not fast enough.

It's too little; too late. 

We are looking at the final few generations of our species.

So what I advise for everyone is this. FIGHT and CLAW your way into the most secure life you can; for yourself and a small handful of "family".

Prepare to weather coming storm; together.
Stop having kids. Because nobody should be FORCED into such a perilous existence; especially not for our own selfish interests.
At an ever-quickening pace, 
mother nature is going to be kicking our collective asses. 

Large parts of the world will be made homeless from climate change.

Fishing lanes and farmlands will be decimated. 

Crucial swaths of land will be swallowed up by oceans. 

Droughts and floods will conquer even more territory.  

Millions of desperate survivors will be turned away from refuge.

Nations will increasingly fight over remaining resources.

Global food and fuel shortages will destabilize the global economy. 

Predatory corporations, political leagues, religions will rush in to "help".
But the ratio of help-vs-harm will be hard to quantify 
and ultimately irrelevant. 

The 6th Extinction has already begun. 

But the near-end of humanity's story
doesn't have to be ours.  

Individually,
we can live a rich full life;
if we prepare for it. 

Stop trying to save everyone else from themselves.
Live in the moment;
but spend ENOUGH of those moments planning ahead.

Master the modern practical sciences.
 DIY
off-grind energies,
autonomous renewable food production,
security, construction, and transportation. 

Chance
favors the prepared mind. 

Be a leaf in the wind;
but with carefully crafted wings. 

LEAN HARD, whenever you must, in every direction that matters.
Accept full responsibility for matters within your power.

Accept, in peace, the reality of all things beyond our control.

Build physical refuge.
But don't stop there. 

Haven is not life.

Haven is where a durable garden of life becomes possible. 

Within yourself, 
and with the people you love.

Find the place
where
sunbeams
and mists of dreams  
share space without time. This is where without meter or words together is shared the truth of all being; no chapter, no verse; together we rhyme. "To the journey!" Here's to making it count.