We’re in a series on the values necessary for civilization.
These, which summarize the Ten Commandments, are honoring God, life, family,
truth, and property ownership. Part I was why valuing life is essential. Part II was on truth. Part III was on property ownership.
Honoring God and family
are even larger, so I’m giving them more than one part a piece. Part IV was on God and Freedom of Religion. Today we’ll cover
the baseline definition of a civilizing religion and compare that to a savage
religion. We’ll take a third day on God to talk about how a civilization can
get back to being civilized—societal conversion, or repentance.
The material is from the Spherical Model website, the Civilized vs. Savage section, which I wrote between about a decade ago.
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Religion of Civilization
While America’s founders constitutionally protected us from a
state religious ruling sect, they did understand the need for basic religious
principles that were expected from all free people, in order for freedom to
thrive.
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| The Ten Commandments at the Texas Capitol |
In The 5000-Year Leap, author/historian W. Cleon
Skousen summarizes the five necessary tenets of religion in a free society:
1. There
is a Creator who made all things, and mankind should recognize and worship Him.
[first 4 of the 10 Commandments]
2. The Creator has revealed a moral code of behavior for happy living which
distinguishes right from wrong. [the rest of the 10 commandments]
3. The
Creator holds mankind responsible for the way they treat each other.
4. All
mankind live beyond this life.
5. In
the next life mankind are judged for their conduct in this one.
These were the basic beliefs of the founders of America.
Arguments about slight differences in their religious affiliations or personal
philosophical persuasions don’t change that these tenets were very nearly
universal among the signers of the Declaration of Independence as well as the
Constitution. And these beliefs were nearly universal among the citizens at the
time as well. Forty years after the ratification of the Constitution, these are
the beliefs that Alexis de Tocqueville described in his Democracy in America.
The republican form of government they established was possible because it was
put in place by a basically religious and ethical people.
Religion of Savagery
There are correlative beliefs that correspond with
savagery. These are:
1. Degrading
the position of God the Creator, often seen as agnosticism or atheism, or more
often as replacing deity with a human, as seen in ancient Egypt, Babylon,
Greece, and Rome. The corollary is degrading those who believe in and honor God
the Creator.
2. Devaluing
human life, often by elevating the value of animals above human life, seen in
worship of animals and often leading to human sacrifice to animal gods.
3. Doing
away with free will and consequences: Belief that sun, moon and stars—or
something totally out of the reach of a person’s influence—control humans’ fate
and actions, removing free will and thus responsibility for actions.
Degrading Position of God
It’s a bit astonishing how often we see versions of these
beliefs in our modern world. The tendency to degrade believers as
unsophisticated or ignorant is common. The insistence that believers are
intolerant if they express their beliefs publicly is another indicator of the
first rule of the religion of savagery. Oppressing the believers can’t possibly
be a civilizing practice; the only alternatives, then, are that oppressing the
believers is neutral or negative. When people have their God-given natural
right to worship freely taken from them—a hallmark of tyranny—then you can see,
by placement on the spherical model, that must be negative for society as a
whole. Depending on the intensity of the persecution, society then resides
anywhere from just below the freedom zone all the way down into savagery.
The most common occurrence of this repression in the US is
insisting that religious symbols and practices be removed from public places.
Disallowing schools from having prayers, so as not to make nonbelievers
uncomfortable, is a gross distortion, not only of the Constitution’s freedom of
religion clause, but of the idea of “separation of church and state” mentioned
in a letter by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists. Jefferson wrote to
assure them that the “free exercise of religion” mentioned in the First
Amendment was not a declaration that the right was granted by government, but
that it was inalienable, and that there would not and could not be a religious
sect favored by the US government to the exclusion of the others. It is simply
wrong to say that Jefferson believed religious people should allow only their
secular beliefs to be expressed in public. Jefferson, along with the other
founders, valued religion and encouraged its practice in its various civilizing
forms, to the betterment of the nation.
Devaluing of Human Life
The distortion from human beings as the sentient caretakers
of the earth to evil overlords over the innocent animals is also common in the
savage religious belief system. One evidence is summarily taking of people’s
property or use thereof without due compensation, simply because some animals
would have to relocate. A further distortion would be claiming we must give up
technology that produces the naturally occurring substance carbon-dioxide
because using it in the southern US could cause the death of polar bears in the
arctic. [Notice the requirement for sacrifice for the sake of the animal or
earth god.] Care for the environment and the wildlife are often elevated well
above the well being of human life.
Likewise the idea that domesticated animals are deprived of
their free life is fallacious, because the vast majority of those animals, if
undomesticated, would not be living at all. While it is a mark of civilization
to avoid unnecessary cruelty to animals, it is not required of human beings to
starve themselves for the sake of preserving other species. No other species
chooses such a sacrifice. And no other species has suicidal delusions that the
planet would be better off if its species had never been given place here.
Wherever you see human life devalued below animals or parts of nature, you can
be certain those beliefs are part of the religion of savagery.
[Note: The current fad of buying and selling of carbon
offsets looks suspiciously like the anachronistic religious practice of buying
and selling indulgences—paying to sin. It doesn’t prevent the unwanted
behavior; it just makes it more acceptable for the rich to commit it than the
poor.]
Doing Away with Free Will and Consequences
Astrology has been around for millennia. Its purpose has
always been to excuse people from responsibility for their actions. After all,
if the alignment of planets on the day of one’s birth is the cause for what a
person does or accomplishes, then it’s pointless to put effort into improving,
since individual effort is futile. Similarly, if one has a tendency to do evil,
and one believes that behavior is caused by an inborn trait or accident of
birth, then why try to overcome the inevitable? Removal of free will is always
an excuse for negative choices.
A more common assertion in our culture is the excuse that
“society” is to blame for a person becoming a criminal. There is considerable
difference between a single bad family or a bad section of an inner city
contributing to the criminal tendencies of a person and saying the family or
society as a whole is the criminal, and that therefore the actual perpetrator
of the crime should not be punished. Creating behavioral “illnesses” such as
sex addiction, drug addiction, alcoholism, or even impulsive ADD behaviors
doesn’t help civilize. Finding ways to help people overcome bad behaviors is
good, but that can’t be done to the exclusion of holding wrongdoers
accountable. The solution is helping the wrongdoers see the consequences of
their choices and find ways to overcome their evil urges; the solution is clearly
not giving them a pass while blaming society. That is a mark of savage
religion.
We’ll take an addition part of this series about valuing God
to talk about how a civilization can get back to being civilized—societal
conversion, or repentance.
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