The Messiah

"..a man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?" - Robert Browning

To me this sums up an entire philosophy. Religion is clearly man made. A large part of relgion is the concept of heaven. This I think is the crux of the world problem's. Whilst we consider the concept of a heaven to be in the domain of the supernatural our perfect place will remain forever out of the reach of this world. It follows that the vast majority of the world's population aspire to live in a place they will only see when they are dead. Further, science is starting to put real doubt into their blind faith which shakes the security this place has been offering for most of their lives. No wonder there is so much conflict.

From what I understand of Game theory and how that translates to behaviour mankind has an instinctive need to co-operate. Life is not a zero sum game and our ancestors knew this and co-operated in countless ways for mutual gain. The critical requirement of co-operation is that cheating can be identified and recorded. In the very large groups we live in, the idea of an ever watchful God was the method used by leaders to ensure that people felt the cheaters would be punished. Consequently vast groups of people continued to co-operate without evidence of co-operation. In the abscence of God people are acutely aware that cheaters (corruption, stealing etc) are not punished and this could ultimately lead to anarchy.

Religion has been useful and still is so for precisely this purpose. If athesim seeks to dismiss relgion it will have surplant something equally effective if chaos is to be avoided. So I think we really do need to start thinking about what heaven is, so that we can constuct some philosophy that will allow us to live in harmony in the abscence of God.