God damn it, where has my weekend gone? I spend all week just hanging on for these two days when I can get some rest and then they just fly past leaving me more tired than I started. Have to get some writing done, my publishers are waiting, (how good does it feel to be able to say that 
) so this will have to be a quicky I'm afraid.
Thought I'd use the momentum of the last couple of days to lay out some other thoughts about religion. In the post before last I described how I thought religions got warped over time and I'd like to give some, well three, examples of what I mean. Despite my ultimately negative view of religions I do recognise that they include some great and valuable concepts. The following examples demonstrate both this and how these concepts become corrupted:
The Garden Of Eden
I've written about this one before. It is my belief that the story of the garden of Eden is actually just a record of a story passed down verbally from a much more distant past. Forget god and sin, this is about the evolution of mankind from hunter gatherer to farmer and from ignorance to awareness.
It's fascinating in so many ways, not just that it describes one of the most fundamental transitions in our history but also the fact that it demonstrates how knowledge could be maintained over vast periods of time even before written language.
Of course now it's considered, at best, a metaphor for sin and punishment and guilt. At it's worst it's considered as a factually accurate and historic record of mankind's origins. A great and important idea that gives us an insight into just what makes us what we are has become a blunt weapon with which to compel the masses to subjugate themselves.
Karma
My main problem with the concept of Karma is that it rests on the assumption that individuals are distinct beings each with some special significance in the wider universe. I'm afraid I really can't get on board with this, the idea that each human is so special as to each have their own cosmic scoreboard is just too self absorbed for me.
My own view is that we are just parts in a machine, cogs in the human machine, which is in turn just a cog in the Earth machine, which is a cog in the Sol system machine etc etc. I do believe however that what you give effects what you receive.
If you walk about with a frown on your face, knocking into people and being generally anti-social and obnoxious, you're going to piss people off. Now some of those people will express their new found bad mood in the same way and thereby pass it on.
Being nice and friendly is likely to put people you encounter in a better mood and make it more likely that they will be more positive in their own lives. So if you do something good you won't necessarily get something good back personally, like some commercial transaction, but rather if you contribute to the greater good you'll probably, and indirectly, reap the benefits.
The main difference between traditional Karma and what I'm talking about I suppose, is the guarantee. In order for a religion to be successful it has to offer people something, it has to sell itself and it's very tempting to believe that you can somehow dodge bad fortune and unhappiness by following certain rules.
If Karma was described as I see it, ie. being a 'good' person will improve things for everyone but is no guarantee that you won't get shat on, isn't dogmatic or attractive enough to enthuse people into a life long commitment. Karma is basically an observation of life that could prove amazingly useful but has been twisted into a fairy tale in order to get more people 'in our gang'.
Reincarnation
Now I've spent a fair amount of time mocking the US Christian right for their literal interpretation of the bible but it should be remembered that they're not the only ones making such an error. The concept of reincarnation is, I feel, a hugely significant one that can make a real difference to people's lives.
As I've mentioned over the last post or two, the idea of individual forms, people, objects etc, is an illusion. There is only energy and the infinite number of forms it changes through. Now the basic idea of reincarnation expresses this, form is not important, we are all one and none, an incredibly powerful perspective on the world.
Again however, we see the folly of man, as someone somewhere has chained the abstract down with a basic animal perspective thereby losing the essence of the idea. Instead of reincarnation being a way of understanding how everything in the universe is connected, it becomes another personalised game show like the cosmic Karmic scoreboard.
Despite the heart of the thing being about the illusion of the isolated form, reincarnation has somehow absorbed the illusionary importance of the individual. Depending on how you behave in your life you will return in another form, as if you are some distinct and independent being.
So there you have it, some snacks for thought if you will. The metaphor is a very human concept, relying as it does on an ability to consider things that aren't real in order to gain insight into things that are. They can be incredibly powerful and, I think, provide the only way to approach some things.
Unfortunately they can also be particularly tricky to get your head around. Working successfully with metaphors requires both practice and free, unrestricted thinking. The process of religious indoctrination, by it's very definition, does not lend itself to these and so it's not surprising that people have fallen short of understanding their own metaphors and instead have translated them back into stories of the physical that are easier to grasp.
Anyway, I can't sit around here talking to you lot all day, I've got work to do! 
