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Baba Brinkman
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Imagine
Like John Lennon I can imagine a world with no religion It's a world you can visit, just get a ticket to Denmark, Norway or Finland I can imagine a world without religion even if religious is adaptive And religious rituals are designed to elevate, bind, and enrapture us Nature is full of adaptations that fill us with a sense of admiration From the peacock to the leopard asleep in the treetops, it's all so amazing Which means religion is also amazing, incentivizing cooperation Building civilizations and building trust among strangers in congregations And building walls of separation between competing factions Religion enhances and also entrenches human interactions And yeah, I can imagine a world with no religion; it's not so far fetched In fact, that world has been imagined already; it's called 'Star Trek' And yes, I too dream of a unified human race exploring space But for that to happen we'd have to see the end of wars over faith Or maybe just the end of faith, but this view of religion is an antidote It's the evolutionary view, which every human on this planet should know Even if they don't agree with it, don't agree with it! That's fine, just try to comprehend it If everybody could at least comprehend it, religious violence would be all but ended This vision begins with every human being as part of one species An African ape that expanded its range, but we can still interbreed with ease We all share a common ancestor a couple hundred thousand years ago And we all share a set of instincts that are known by the label 'spiritual' A set of practices that assisted our ancestors in becoming ancestral But that doesn't mean religion today is either benign or beneficial
Things done changed! There's more information out there for the curious And scientific findings are contradicting varieties of religious experience And today belief in the supernatural isn't necessary or sufficient To live a meaningful life, Find more lyrics at ※ Mojim.com but it does carry some nasty baggage with it
Like homophobic scriptures, sectarian divisions, karmic victim blaming Pernicious guilt, fear of hell, taking infidels into slavery Treating women shamefully, and trusting the gods instead of changing things If everything happens for a reason, those reasons could use some explaining So yeah, I can imagine a world without religion, but that's not my vision My vision is a world with religion, in which religion is naturalistic It embraces the path we've been on, and the fact that we're naturally selected And celebrates our place in the cosmos, and the planet we're inhabiting in it But with no supernatural, no superstition, no miracles breakin' the laws of physics And no religious justification for the mistreatment of conspecifics With the supernatural gone, we can still experience transcendence We'll get it from dancing and meditation, we'll tap into compassion without limits We'll get it from music and moving images, from shared moments as audience members We'll get it from nature, from being intrinsically part of it instead of separate But most of all, we get it from connecting with our fellow citizen humans From that feeling of expansion that's endowed in us by evolution So join me in imagining religion entirely naturalized In which communal rituals and stories still survive to enhance our lives In which we live to improve this world, 'cause there's nothing after we die Imagine how good that could be, it's easy if you try
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