Science-based Religion
By Mark Leo Collins, Ph.D.
Smashwords Edition 2011
Formerly: Namian Christianity: Less is More
And before that The Gospel of Jesus and Mary
Copyright 2006 by
By Mark Leo Collins
e-book ISBN-13: 978-0-9832040-1-5
e-book ISBN-10: 0983204012
A companion lecture to this book, entitled “Science-based Religion: Popular Lecture Series 2,” is available for free download from Smashwords at
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mljczz
This is a work of literary, historical, and science fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Abbreviations used: GR, Golden Rule; 3GN, the Greatest Good for the Greatest Number; ROI, return on invested capital.
Table of Hyperlinked Contents:
Introduction
This book brings to life an apparent contradiction, a religion based wholly on science, using a fictional story of the teachings of a Jesus-like figure on another planet, inhabited by people like us called “namians,” pronounced nahm’ e ns.
Chapter 1: The namian Jesus’ humble origins
Jesus was born in Bethlehem in a barn because his parents could not afford a room at the hospital. No kings showed up to pay homage because no one knew this child was going to be special. As contemporaries believed in science, there were no claims of portents or of a miraculous virgin birth. The idea of “Immaculate Conception” would make namians smile ironically, as that would “maculate” conception.1
Well-trained in the empirical science of biology, namians are not ashamed of sexuality in any way. They see sex simultaneously through the eyes of trained scientists, poets of love, and lovers of nature and nature’s ways. There is no shame in loving one another in nature’s way.
While they also recognize violence as natural animal behavior, they affirm that it has no place in a civilized society. Such lack of self-control is dishonorable.
Mary, Jesus’ mother, was a homemaker, who knitted for extra income, and his father Joseph was a jobbing carpenter, and was unemployed for almost six months at the time of Jesus’ birth. In desperation, they wandered from town to town.
Jesus’ parents had no formal education beyond the sixth grade and were poor throughout Jesus’ childhood. Despite this, their happiness was well above average. Jesus considered himself “lucky” that he was not born with two silver spoons in his mouth like Plato, who naturally enough opposed Athenian democracy as an inferior form of government, an affair of the rabble. Good-humored, Jesus observed that noble birth would have been a handicap to anyone trying to discover the ultimate basis for democratic ideals.
Joseph and Mary taught their son the Jewish law, which was grounded in the monotheism of Moses, and he respected it even as he transcended it. He considered monotheism a qualified intellectual advance over the polytheism that dominated Middle Eastern thinking for several centuries of recorded history before. Not wanting to make waves, he appeared to live the highly regimented lifestyle prescribed by Jewish law. However, Jesus was a gifted and happy child, freethinking, empathetic, and curious. What a combination, as the world would discover.
A chance event changed his life and their society forever. A rich man, Joseph of Arimethea, hired his father to work on a third vacation home, his grandest, but just another investment to Joseph. Namians savor the delicious irony of the observation that Jesus’ anti-vain, radical egalitarianism owes a serious debt to the vanity of a very rich, snobby person.
Flashing that winning smile that everyone loved, Jesus often observed the same thing. Our complex world gives birth and a happy, long life to such scrumptious ironies. Through Joseph, Jesus befriended a scholar who lent him translations of the works of the great minds from the West and the Far East. Jesus immersed himself in study and his father indulged him by shouldering more of the carpentry burdens, although his parents worried about the direction of his thought, fearing corruption by the Gentile thinkers.
Much to his parents’ surprise, Jesus learned many things from Plato and Aristotle, Buddha and Confucius. From Plato and Buddha, he learned the importance of simplicity in society. Simplify wants, needs, and desires. Simplify thoughts and goals. Control senseless spending by buying only what one truly needs and truly adores. Most people buy what they merely like. Consequently, they buy too much, regret it, and thus have cluttered and dusty homes.
Smiling as he read this from his tiny desk and uncomfortable wooden chair in a most uncluttered room, Jesus was so poor he had no choice in the matter, but he could see the wisdom of society’s not spending its money and resources on luxuries. This reduced spending focuses production on what is needful, increases leisure (as the same number of people have less to produce), reduces pollution, slows the growth of landfills, and lessens the inevitable competition for limited resources. Reduced spending saves money, which accumulates by the power of compounding.
Joseph was a fine example of this. Tight-fisted on discretionary spending, lavish only in entertaining his business associates, he enjoyed the simple life while he became one of the richest men in the world. By saving and investing, Joseph compounded his early inheritance an average of twenty two percent per year over fifty years, enabling him to help Jesus become Jesus and improve the world forever.
After Joseph’s death, his will directed that his executor continue to invest his fortune aggressively (like our venture capitalists), and the earned income continued to support the new “ecumenical religion” of Jesus to one triumph after another. Their world would never be the same. It owes a huge debt to a realist, who for many years failed to improve himself morally, gave up the effort, and gave up on improving the namians as a lost cause. However, this capitalistic materialist had a soft spot in his heart for bright, enthusiastic, “realistic idealists” like Jesus, who dreamed of making the world a better place for all namians (and all other beings), one small step at a time.
All four of the sages taught Jesus that the purpose of life is to achieve a lasting and honorable happiness, and in the process create as much happiness for others as possible. Put differently, an honorable happiness (not wealth) is the best empirical measure of a successful life. Good, thought Jesus, for I will never have Joseph’s wealth. Though I am very poor, even Joseph acknowledges that I am happier than he is.
Moses did not agree with these four sages. In particular, Moses never mentioned the importance of honor, rational intelligence, skeptical inquiry, and empirical approaches in the passionate search for knowledge. Moses was the odd man out, so to speak. Thus, in Jesus’ mind, Moses was either wrong or he alone was right by being the sole recipient of divine revelation.
To Jesus, if a skeptical empiricist finds the firmest ground, he will probably reject Moses’ unempirical ideas. Plato did not fear anyone using his intelligence to question Platonic concepts. Skeptical himself, he repeatedly invited it. Consequently, Plato’s ideas are worth pondering and developing further.
Jesus also wondered why monotheists never praise honor and how they, who outwardly honor god so much, can dishonor themselves, who are supposedly god’s creation.
It occurred to him that monotheists have a safety net called “god’s grace.” The theist thinks, Who cares what other people think of me? If god forgives me, why not acquire riches and fame by clever and covertly dishonest means? Most likely, the fools will never detect my dishonesty. More power, fame, and money to me. If they catch me, I am covered, because I daily pray to god for forgiveness. “All is well that ends well.” If I end up in heaven, what difference does it make if I lived like a saint or enjoyed life by living wickedly at others’ expense?
As absurd as it may seem, one can admit sinfulness and pray for god’s forgiveness even while continuing to wrong others. One says that one cannot help it—it is just our sinful nature. “I would stop if I could, O Lord, Most High.”
The thought of the four Gentile sages does not contain this amazing lacuna. Moses is again all alone. In the namian Plato’s thought, honor is so much dearer than life that he never once mentioned mere life in the same paragraph with honor, rarely on the same page. To the sublime Plato, if you dishonor yourself, you dishonor yourself forever. There is no safety net, no forgiveness, just the passage of time. Fortunately, namians are kind people and they eventually forget those few who dishonor themselves.
Even their historians barely keep a record of such dishonorable acts (only if they are relevant to the direction of subsequent history). Namians have a lot of moral fiber. They do not reveal their secret admiration of law-breakers by eagerly giving them free press. Honor-lovers do not want to hear of dishonor. Plato would cover his ears when anyone mentioned anything dishonorable about anyone, even a foolish rival. Honor-lovers do not puff themselves up because of their superior behavior. They pity and forgive the dishonorable ones.
Four people independently said the same thing. Jesus thought like one trained in probability theory, though it did not yet exist. How could they all be wrong? Unlikely. Jesus was ahead of his time in asking whether the namian mind could believe in the absurd. No, he thought, faith is over-stressed because the deeper mind is forcefully rejecting the dogmas. Consequently, “believers” are finding little comfort from religion.
Unfortunately, Jesus thought, divine revelation fails simple empirical tests. Thus, Moses was wrong. Costly intellectual errors reduce happiness. People mistakenly take love, money, power and leisure as meaningful goals in themselves. No, they are but means to greater happiness. We make money so as not to burden others with our care. If we are as successful as Joseph, we have the duty to help others. Daily, we use our power, energy, love, and leisure to help others. If all people help others, the world advances toward happiness together. To the degree that all people pursue their own selfish ends, narrowly conceived, the world is miserable, because the vast majority of people are losers in this struggle.
In addition, there is pain from the conflicts and frustration from the cancellation of the competing efforts. Even winners are miserable to the degree that they are empathetic. Joseph admitted to Jesus that he feels terrible when he sees those whom he has crushed in business, and even worse about their stubborn pride that will not let him make it up to them, even by employing them.
Endless frustration results from this mind-numbing, dog-eat-dog type of competition. Worse, optimal products cannot be made without pooling good ideas, including those from smart competitors, Gentiles and foreigners.
Friendly competition is fine to stimulate the creative juices. However, when it is time to optimize the product, people must put blind egotism aside for the greatest good for the greatest number. Long before utilitarianism, Jesus’ thought had picked up its thread, but it was not so narrowly focused. Rather, his broader-based ideas shaped his utilitarianism.
From Aristotle, Jesus learned that species evolved by natural selection of the fittest specimens. Namians share a common ancestor with the gentle vegetarian giant, the gorilla.2 God did not specially create namians in his image. Though sincere, Moses was flattering people to hook them, while telling a pious story.
Like a utilitarian, Jesus believed that there was no point fighting science. Moses’ mistake implied that the “divine revelation” was bogus. As animals, we namians do not have an immortal soul. When we die, we die. Importantly, however, our honor or dishonor lives on and thus, honor is dearer than life. A life without honor is not worth living. Dishonoring people dishonestly is worse than killing them. Doing both is unspeakable, as the victims must rely on others to restore their honor.
In addition, after we die, our contributions live on. Most importantly, the happiness we create lives on through others. Jesus realized that this is namian immortality. However, it is selfish to do good with this in mind. One does good for goodness’ sake3 for others. Immortality is the unsought for beneficial consequence of altruistic action. A “realistic idealist,” Jesus understood that there can be no pure altruism. Doing good leads to the expectation of receiving good, as ingratitude is rare, but to the degree that one focuses on this, one’s altruism is compromised.
Jesus thought that selection operates at all levels in society. Selection of ideas is based on workability and utility in promoting what people desire most (happiness).
Unfortunately, this selection works against our better interests as well. Ideas that flatter, appeal to laziness, and manipulate with fear and guilt also work with people to the degree that they are vain, lazy, craven, guilt-ridden, and foolish.
Rarely is such manipulation for people’s own good. Jesus asked thoughtfully, “Would god teach people by word and deed to follow flatterers? No, that would have tragic consequences, whenever a flatterer was skillful and his message evil.4 Would god teach people to be lazy? If he did, he does not love people, as lazy people rarely lift a finger to help one another. Would god teach people to feel guilty about their biological natures and then appeal to laziness to assuage the guilt? No, that would be cruel. No, to all of these questions.”
Anyone claiming that god would act dishonorably is wrong. In fact, god would inspire us to greatness by example and by appealing to the higher motives. Smartly, god would teach us how to laugh at flatterers, how to work hard at helping others while ignoring appeals to our innate inertia, and how to laugh loudest at those who would make us ashamed of our own biology.
Jesus thought, if these ideas triumph, it counts for nothing unless it is honorable. Though lowborn, Jesus resolved to appeal to the higher, nobler motives, just as the sublime, highborn Plato had done. He will throw down a challenge without calling attention to himself, which would draw attention away from the ideas.
He wanted the truths to seem to come out of the ether. This was never about ego. It is about truth, Jesus thought. If this is not the truth, then it is right that it should be ignored, my ego and hard work notwithstanding. If there is a vein of truth, let others mine the gold. Let them get the credit. Who cares? The truth hurts those who have long believed in flattering falsehoods, yet we must experience this pain on the way to true happiness.5
From Aristotle, Jesus also learned that animal behavior is by nature aggressively selfish. Aristotle challenged scientists to find one example of purely altruistic behavior among animals,6 including of course namians. No one has. To rise above the animals, which all “great-souled” (per Aristotle) namians want to do, we must become more altruistic. Thus, given the definition, goodness is the highest ideal, science suggests the empirical definition, goodness is measured by degree of altruism.
Jesus noted some empirical observations that were consistent with this. The most admired people are the most altruistic, happily sacrificing themselves for the greater happiness of many others. Teachers, librarians, and doctors are the best everyday examples among the namians. Chronically underpaid, they selflessly dedicate themselves to help others. Since doctors even risk their lives to do this, namians love and admire them most.
Namians least admire selfish people who sacrifice the happiness of others for their own pleasures. They despise bombastic fools, greedy, immoral lawyers, and overly aggressive business people, because they are self-centered, showy, and materialistic. Their generosity is but an egoistic show. Losers, they despise themselves and other people. They mistreat others because they have the power and enjoy wielding it. Such people do not create worthwhile ideals because their selfish focus is too narrow to catch even a fleeting glimpse of the larger purposes.
From Confucius, Jesus learned how to deal practically with everyday ethical issues, including how to manage difficult people and sensitive egos. “A common error of humbler people,” Confucius said, “is the underestimation of the power of the ego of others.” Contradicting Moses, Confucius also said to forget useless prayer. Take action based on proven precepts.
Jesus did not have the time to achieve a lasting synthesis of Eastern and Western thought. No matter, others did. However, just when the namians needed it most, he distilled and grounded their common truths.
By studying the rudiments of science, Jesus learned the skill of passing on this wisdom in a workable form, as Confucius had somehow done before science. The most significant challenge is finding what works on a worldwide scale. There is no instant salvation for the world merely by believing in simple tenets. That appeals to lazy people, just as the “power of prayer” appeals to those whose egos need stroking.
We achieve worthwhile goals when a sound plan composed of small steps is coupled with “hard work.” Less work per person is required if more people are involved and their efforts are vectorially aligned. Somehow, if everyone pulled in the same direction, the burdens would be minimal and the gains maximal, Jesus thought. How can we find the right direction and get everyone pulling that way? Existing methods are untenable because they prey on weaknesses.
Jesus focused his energies on the relationship between personal and societal happiness. It appeared that namians (even the most obtuse) are so social and empathetic that personal happiness depends greatly on societal happiness. This means that altruism is a key to personal happiness, something egotistical people would have difficulty believing.
Do other arrows point at this unexpected solution? Yes, many. If people increased their empathy, even more altruism would be required to achieve personal happiness. Everyone would benefit from this increased altruism, which tends to align efforts vectorially for the good of all, making it easier to achieve worthwhile goals. If we pick the optimal goals, then we can progress together with minimal effort and pain. How can we increase our empathy?
Jesus had the right questions and some of the answers. Working together, the namians would solve them and improve their world without using shaky intellectual foundations or dishonorable means.
Chapter 2: Jesus’ philosophy
Plato’s speculative metaphysics grew out of Archimedes’ physics. It implied that the universe exists and has always existed in a necessarily conserved “zero sum state.” Conservation of energy (a zero sum change in the amount of energy in the universe), a dominant idea in science, is consistent with this. If Plato was correct, God could not possibly exist. A zero sum would require an infinite God and an infinite anti-God to be created simultaneously. Since the energy required to do that would be infinite, it is “impossible.”
Jesus stopped referring to Moses’ god in his talks, even those attended mostly by Jews. Thus, the Jewish law became a big question mark. If there is no god, there was no revelation. Possibly intoxicated by power, Moses used bogus divine revelation to manipulate people for his own purposes. Fortunately, Jesus thought, Moses was a kind person. He believed his hallucinations were communications from god. In reality, divine revelation was another appeal to people’s innate laziness, telling them that the truth has already been given to us. No need to make an effort. Just like instant salvation.
Like a scientist, Jesus thought that people can find truth only by atomizing problems, formulating hypotheses, and empirically crosschecking results. Finding truth requires a high degree of imagination, skeptical inquiry, humility, intellectual honesty, carefulness, precision, persistence, and courage to oppose the majority.
Thinking probabilistically, Jesus thought that truth is “hard to find” because so many different rare characteristics are required in the search. Were it not for these limitations, truth would be easy to find, as it is intuitively obvious, just as falsity is. In particular, shortsightedness, embarrassing fears, and arrogance have stopped many a bright truth seeker cold. Disrespect of rivals can hinder the search for truth. With his empirical criteria, Jesus noted that he must be careful with Moses, who was becoming his chief intellectual adversary.
No amount of empirical evidence proves the universal truth of a position, but a single piece of solid empirical evidence (an exception) does disprove the universality of an errant position.
Several pieces of evidence disprove some statements that Moses made, invalidating the universality of claims of divine revelation. Jesus was not forming an anti-Semitic religion. A waste of time, as that religion would have the mirror image problems of the original. Jesus respected Judaism enough to incorporate its best ideas into a grand synthesis, but could not accept divine revelation empirically, and thus did not blind himself to Judaism’s faults.
If mathematical nihilism is true, as that fearless questioner Socrates concluded in Plato’s most famous dialogue, we must listen to our antagonists because they have the other side of the comprehensive truth we seek but are not seeing.
We focus our attention too narrowly on extreme positions, mere antipodes.7 We waste our energies trying to refute opponents instead of finding the greater truth together. Folly squared if Plato is right. Jesus suspected that mathematical nihilism might provide the basis for universal agreement, including a profound synthesis of Eastern and Western thought, as it is the only philosophical position that respects the equal reality (and unreality) of all antipodes and dualisms.8 The nihilist must use all ideas – even nonsense as evidence of our irrationality - in his grand synthesis, as all ideas and contradictions must sum to zero in the final analysis.9
Then, what justification is there for these laws? Jesus realized the foundation of the theocratic Jewish society was unstable. We do not know to what degree he agreed with the Greek sages, but his intuition told him that science is fundamentally correct and the Greek sages’ thoughts were consistent with science, while Moses’ ideas were not.
Inconsistency implies error, but it does not follow that consistency implies truth. Thus, Moses was wrong when he contradicted science, but Plato may have been wrong too, at least in part (e.g., his elitism). Again, truth is so rare because it requires so much more than mere consistency. However, he kept all of these “negative” opinions to himself, including even his belief in science, as he struggled to find coherent and workable thoughts, and express them in a friendly way.
When questioned by the Jewish scholars, Jesus did not criticize the law or oppose it with science. He never said that Moses or they were wrong. Rather, he asked questions whose answers implied that Moses was wrong. He showed them and the ancients proper respect. He called his soundest ideas “opinions” and admitted they were not facts. Jesus called each person by name, smiled continually, even while talking, and spoke kindly to everyone. Jesus never raised his voice, even to Caiaphas, the high priest, his most vocal opposer, who often loudly interrupted him. Such disrespect never provoked Jesus to retaliate.
Jesus was a master diplomat. He learned the hardest lesson, to respect even those who disrespect you. He lived his ethic of world peace through broad-minded tolerance. Even when the Jewish scholars raised the hot button issues, Jesus never interrupted them. He listened politely even to inconsiderate multi-part questions with demands for follow-ups. He joked with the questioners. When a question was too difficult, he admitted it and said he would ask others. Even his adversaries loved him. Who would not? He was truly lovable.
Jesus was always deep in thought. Thus, he was not quick on his feet and he played that to his advantage, as he would use long pauses to great dramatic effect. Masterful, he had audiences hanging on his every word. Often, as he gracefully walked around the room, after a long pause, he would say something funny or honestly self-deprecating.
Skillfully, he skirted the issue of the validity of the Jewish law. When cornered, he simply said he was seeking another foundation for ethical behavior besides the revealed word of god. This objectivity coming from a Jew impressed the Gentiles, but it also puzzled the Jewish scholars because revelation is (supposed to be) an absolute foundation. Who needs another? What could be firmer than absolute?
Yet who could argue with having another foundation for the theocratic Jewish state? The Jewish scholars thought, more power to him, if he can ground the laws secularly. That might increase our influence among Gentiles.
Jesus impressed them with his version of Plato’s idea that truth is independent of starting positions, including all assumptions. He started to use the example of the world’s intelligibility, which is empirically true, and then interrupted himself when he realized where his own thought was going. He did not want to thrust science in their faces. He stopped, made fun of himself, and they loved him, as they laughed with him.
His more dangerous unstated thought was that under theistic assumptions, the world is intelligible because an intelligent being created it according to rational laws. Under the opposite, mathematically nihilistic assumptions, the world is intelligible because of strict conservation of nothingness in all of its forms and manifestations. Thus, intelligibility is a criterion that points to the truth of neither theism nor mathematical nihilism.
Theists do not like that conclusion. To them, the world is intelligible solely because an infinite intelligence created it. To Jesus, Plato, and Aristotle, no way. Namian intelligence had already bested nature in several attempts. Empirically, it is impossible that an infinite intelligence engineered the world, unless that divine intelligence has a great sense of humor and wanted to be bested repeatedly and laughed at by engineers with mediocre intelligence, or that divine intelligence is not omniscient and wanted to understand what would happen if a world were created with such laws, without emotional involvement in the sufferings of many namians.
God as an unfeeling scientist? While consistent with the observation that namian suffering is independent of apparent moral worth,10 it seemed unlikely. To Jesus, god could be an unfeeling scientist, but if god is not omniscient, god is not to be worshiped. So who cares about a god who is just a super-namian? Like a Greek god, someone to be respected, but not a being to whom he would willingly genuflect. Thus, more likely, the world is intelligible because it is a “zero sum” state, a thought Jesus kept to himself, at least until he met his intellectual equal and more empathetic confidante, Mary Magdalene.
Theologians “argued” ontologically for god’s existence because someone had to create the world. The world could not have been here forever, because the stars would have burned out long ago. The world cannot have being independent of god because that would make the world a second god. There is but one true god. They assume that the only theism worth considering is monotheism.
God is “being” by definition. This derivation of the world assumes this. Thus, god created the world out of nothing. The world is still just a zero sum by conservation. If the observable world had substance or were anything other than “nothing,” then the world would once again have a reality and being independent of god, even though god created it. The world cannot possibly have being. Only god is or has being by definition.
Though it is longwinded, Jesus agreed with this. However, mathematical nihilism is a simpler explanation of the world’s zero sum existence. Monotheism trades reduced logical consistency for greater ontological consistency, when it predicates contradictory characteristics of a single being, like infinite justice (for one’s enemies) and infinite mercy (for oneself, one’s friends and loved ones, or more altruistically, for everyone).
Polytheism is more logically consistent in that contradictory traits like passion (Dionysius) and reason (Apollo) are essential characteristics of different finite gods. Without a premise of conservation (as required by mathematical nihilism), polytheism has difficulty explaining the ontological origins of all of the different “competing” gods.
Monotheism violates conservation. Theologically, prior to creation, the universe consisted only of god, an infinitely good being. By conservation, infinite goodness must persist forever. Monotheism begins the world process with a creation by an infinitely good creator, who can do only infinitely good deeds by definition. Somehow, an initial state of infinite goodness becomes a universe that contains evil. Where did evil come from? Theologians offer no satisfactory explanation (including free will) that does not also violate conservation. They cannot, because they have blocked their thought processes by making the unnecessary assumption of god’s existence, which to them is actually true by definition, as being must exist. “Being is; non-being is not.”11
Jesus hypothesized that the Jewish theologians’ zealous faith blinded them from finishing the argument about god’s creation of the world. If the observable world has no being, then it is a complex zero sum state. Thus, neither a creator nor a creation is necessary, as by conservation, one zero sum state may evolve into any number of others.
He was fairly confident that science will eventually uncover the mechanisms of these evolutionary processes. The main point is that by positing these conservative evolutionary changes of state without detailed mechanistic knowledge,12 one is not proposing any absurd violation of conservation. By Aristotle’s razor,13 god is rejected as an unnecessary hypothesis in explaining the world.
By mathematical nihilism, god’s existence is rejected as impossible. There exists no single being or ensemble of beings that satisfies the mathematically nihilistic conjecture, god + ? ~ 0, if god is viewed theologically as an entity with infinite amounts of all of the following: life, power, intelligence, knowledge, goodness, love, justice and mercy.
There exists no opposite to zero such an infinite god. Initially, without realizing this was Plato’s idea, Jesus wondered if this is an instance of a more general truth. Namely, if something exists, it is finite and zeroed (balanced, canceled) in the universe. If something infinite actually existed or had being, it could not be zeroed and thus cannot exist or come into existence in a mathematically nihilistic universe.
An infinite “anything” is an abstract concept, like god, numbers, and abstract possibilities. Most numbers are not actualities. They are possibilities that do not actually exist. As each number is used in science and everyday life, it becomes an actual conceptual entity. Nevertheless, those numbers in use are finite in number. A mathematically nihilistic universe cannot give birth, actuality, reality, or existence to “anything” infinite, including infinite numbers. As he re-read Plato, Jesus realized Plato had thought this four-hundred years earlier.
Jesus thought, Was Plato right again? Is my atheism just another unfinished argument that terminates in mathematical nihilism? What do I fear? Am I less brave than Plato? Am I afraid of the higher truth? What is beyond mathematical nihilism? Happy mathematical nihilism? What is beyond that? Jesus thought that cooperative efforts of superior minds might provide answers. He also smiled as he thought, the only way to best Plato is to combine our less gifted minds.
Thus, starting from mathematically nihilistic or monotheistic presuppositions, even though god is being by definition, one ends up with the same non-theistic conclusion, god does not exist, as long as one finishes the “arguments.” Thus, neither “god” nor “being” has a referent in experience or beyond experience. Thus, Jesus realized that the proposition that “an infinite god does not exist” is true, because it is independent of opposite assumptions.
Jesus considered other assumptions and came to the same non-theistic conclusions, as long as he finished the arguments. He resisted stopping the arguments just as he was concluding what he wanted to conclude (theism, not atheism or mathematical nihilism). He pushed the arguments to their natural limits. Atheism is true under all assumptions that Jesus considered and so Jesus’ thought matured past monotheism to non-theism. He may have been a nihilist. Only his confidante would know for sure, as he protected himself from censure by never mentioning mathematical nihilism in his speech or writings. In fact, he mentions mathematical nihilism only in his notes.
His message was more focused and powerful without controversial ideas like theism or mathematical nihilism. The mention of “god” or “heaven” short-circuits efforts at societal improvement.
Chapter 3: Jesus formulates a doctrine of radical equality
Jesus realized that his ethic is consistent with mathematical nihilism, but he derived it empirically without assuming mathematical nihilism. Jesus’ ethic seemed to be valid, insofar as ethics can be validated, because the same ethic is arrived at, independent of opposite assumptions, including selfish ones in which one seeks one’s personal happiness without any regard for others’ happiness. Empirically, such selfish people are frustrated. They achieve little happiness until they learn to value the happiness of others. This points to the importance of altruism in maximizing personal happiness.
His first “case studies” were his patron Joseph and himself. As a young man, Joseph admitted he was that selfish egoist, who trampled the feelings and fortunes of others, crushing rivals like insects. His conscience ate him alive in a downward spiral. He drank and smoked heavily, abused painkillers and sleeping pills, took hallucinogenic drugs, escaped himself at every opportunity, filling every waking moment with distraction.
When Joseph learned to forgive himself, he forgave others. In an ascending spiral, he began to like himself more, and he found that the world started to like him more. He began to regard others’ happiness as important and became noticeably happier. His drinking and smoking became social. No more hallucinogens, no more constant escapism. He could now face himself. He introspected and learned to love others more. Irrationally, as Jesus sensed, Joseph used to fear talking to him, clearly uncomfortable in his sublime presence, even though Jesus was non-judgmental. Once Joseph became more comfortable with himself, he began to seek Jesus out to talk about anything and everything.
Jesus considered the cynical view that ethical systems are just personal preferences to be superficial. Jesus hypothesized that no single thing is “simply, just, or purely” anything else. That is emotional exaggeration, an embarrassing lack of self-control, which itself is an illustration of the “intrinsic complexity of the world.”14 How? Because a question of truth is revealed to depend critically on an ethical issue of character. Categories that are too rigid cease to be useful. Ethical systems are a reflection of a person’s character and personality, and to some extent of his or her education and culture, but they are not merely that. One system can be inspiring, another useful, still another useless or harmful to society. The same person may invent all of those systems during a lifetime.
Even if it is not provable, there is a correct metaphysics and one may stumble on it. All arrows point at it. There must exist an ethic that is most consistent with metaphysical truth. By definition, this ethic is the most “valid.” Empirically, the most valid ethic is likely also the one that generates the greatest amount of true societal happiness.
Why? In his case studies, Jesus noted that happiness is positively correlated with better behavior. In an ascending spiral, all other things being equal, people who behave better are happier because they enjoy their relationships more, have less guilt, anxiety, worry, and fear of reprisal, and people who are happier are less stressed and thus less likely to do evil. The greater the stress applied to an individual, the greater the probability of vicious behavior.
Jesus speculated psychologically that people are unhappy in part because their truth-seeking conscience tortures them for their deceptions of themselves and others, particularly when their ideas are anti-social.15 Truth may hurt initially, if one has long embraced flattering falsehoods, but in the end, truth is the only basis for lasting personal and societal happiness.16
In spite of the highborn Plato’s obvious elitism, to Jesus’ mind, Platonic mathematical nihilism suggested a basic equality of all people, as no one could simply progress beyond the mean without paying penalties, which by definition set back overall progress. It further suggested that egoistic selfishness is not only evil behavior for self-conscious namians (neutral for dumb animals), but also unintelligent, laughable behavior in a mathematically nihilistic world. Thus, it is not wrong to make fun of the stupidity of egoists and egotists. Although he loved a good joke, Jesus was too kind and too smart to do this. He left that unkind task to the many excellent writers of comedies.17
Jesus continued to think about equality. Both mathematical nihilism and the Far Eastern doctrine of ahimsa suggested a more fundamental type of equality, equality of all “beings.” This is distasteful to the elitists’ vanity and suggests that one must be humble to find the truth. Undaunted even by the genius of Plato and other prominent elitists, Jesus considered them victims of insufficient emotional self-control. With difficulty, rational self-control triumphs over vanity.
No namian can be greatly superior to the average person, when large numbers of equal atomic characteristics are weighted equally. Plato was noticeably superior to the average namian in a number of intellectual characteristics. It follows that Plato must have been average or inferior in other characteristics not evident to observers (and thus not considered). Mathematically, it seems sound, but Jesus suggested to others that a detailed scientific investigation was needed. By itself, the mathematics is suggestive, but is not enough.
Jesus examined the idea of equality of all namians from other assumptions to see if the conclusion was arrived at, independent of assumptions, as long as all the arguments were finished. It was. With the help of a mathematician, Jesus worked out a quasi-mathematical demonstration of namian equality from first principles18 that he based on Aristotle’s scientific ideas.
In well-attended public lectures, at twenty-one, four years before maturity, he presented this fundamental equality of all namians as self-evident, a tautology. Cleverly, this made an unpalatable truth seem indisputable. Not able to prove it, Jesus suggested it and left the proof to more clever people. He noted the empirical fact that even the lowliest people feel terrible when the powerful despise them. Why? Such sadness makes no sense if the lowly believe the elitists are superior to them. Why, then? Because deep inside our minds, we intuit that we are equal, all things considered.
He found other empirical evidence for universal namian equality. In non-scientific language, the main one referred to the inherent tendency of natural selection of the fittest to level the ratio of maximum/average by automatically increasing the frequency of any trait in the “gene pool” to the degree that it is beneficial and thus selectable. In addition, no one has been or can be bred for superiority in all characteristics, most of which have not even been identified. Moreover, specialization forces us to overdevelop certain characteristics at the expense of others. For example, with every ability we develop, we put others off with our smug overconfidence. People see their progress more clearly than their setbacks. No wonder elitists miscalculate their advance beyond mediocrity. Jesus was fond of saying, “Elitists can detect a mote in their brother’s eyes but not the beam in their own.”
In addition, no one could possibly develop all desirable characteristics simultaneously. There are too many, hundreds perhaps. All namians are born approximately equal and remain so throughout their lives, if all fundamental characteristics are weighted the same. Some people overdevelop courage at the expense of their intellectual skills and pay the penalty of being overly harsh on others for their lesser courage.
Others overdevelop abstract reasoning and knowledge at the expense of their interpersonal skills. Most scholars roared at that. They thought that their teachers, not themselves, were most devoid of people skills. For some reason, their students agreed. The mote and the beam, Jesus thought.
In the process of overdeveloping their minds, some truth-seeking scholars compromise their ethical development. They become arrogant, less empathetic, too critical of opponents, more impatient with others, and thus easily angered. These ethical defects in turn limit their ability to find higher truths. More importantly, it hurts others. After an overbearing professor lambastes them, timid people shy away from developing big ideas.19
Other namians overdevelop their altruism and interpersonal skills at the expense of abstract reasoning, knowledge, and courage. They are kind-hearted, but shallow and too timid to be effective leaders. They find little truth and not much happiness. Too bad, he thought, for the world could use their altruism and empathy, if guided by personal magnetism, creative intelligence and rationality.
How respectfully Jesus presented this radical idea, which contradicted the elitism of most of the highly educated attendees, and what he did not say were if anything more important than what he did say. Realizing its fundamental importance, he spoke of this “dry-as-dust” tautology of namian equality with great emotion. However, he never lost his emotional balance. There was no faulting this smart and passionate namian who was the master of his passions.20
He made sense, especially to the mathematically-minded, and his delivery was flawless. Again, so as not to offend orthodox Jewish intellectuals, Jesus left out all criticism of elitist Jewish law and their theocratic state, all mention of mathematical nihilism, skepticism, science and evolution, and his other debts to Greek and Far Eastern sages.
Though Jesus was skillful at “hiding” the origin of his ideas, any well-rounded intellectual could figure it out. His respectful, tentative, non-contentious “arguments” made so much sense to the namian public that they began to contribute financially. The uniqueness of his thought suggested to everyone that he should not go to the university. In particular, Joseph of Arimethea was proud to be the major benefactor, but at least 20,000 namians contributed something during Jesus’ life.
Years later, the skilled investor Joseph still proudly spoke of his support of Jesus as his best investment ever. Without a doubt, one that is still paying huge dividends two thousand years later. Jesus was so adept at dealing with adversaries that seventeen well-known liberal Jewish scholars were among his contributors and intellectual supporters. So special was Jesus that even his Jewish opposers loved him. They were proud of him as a Jew, but even prouder of him as he became a namian of and for the ages. Understandably, a tiny minority, the most orthodox Jews, never warmed to him, but he was popular with all other groups, owing to his obvious goodness, honor, kindness, humility, humor, respectfulness, sincerity, objectivity, and both the clarity of his thought and the soundness of his workable ideas.
His popularity made it difficult to oppose him openly. Adversaries looked dishonorable, egotistical, foolish, shortsighted, cowardly, and small-minded. Jewish leaders knew that Jesus’ radical egalitarianism threatened the rigid hierarchy of Jewish law and their theocratic society.
The majority of namians love their great sages, religious leaders, and teachers. They admire their single-minded devotion to the truth and self-enforced poverty. People seek out these teachers. They support them emotionally and financially long after they have understood the “take home lessons.” The public enthusiastically incorporates the wisdom into their everyday lives and when they become noticeably happier, they stick with the new ideas.
The public puzzles over clever sounding ideas that do not work. Namians love to find the flaws, not to prove they are smarter than the intelligentsia, because they know they are not, but to see if they can extract a workable hidden gem. Namians put their sages’ busts on pedestals in halls of fame and museums, but not so they can politely ignore them or to put them in their place.
Namians find everything funny. While egotistical fools are the butt of comedy, they admire their sages too much to take them off their pedestals.21 Ideals drive progress. No one wants to short-circuit this fount of energy that increases everyone’s happiness and well-being.
On the positive side, namians also love the irony of those who gain much by giving much, including those wise entrepreneurs who focus on satisfying their burning ambition to make better products less expensive for everyone’s benefit. Altruism coupled with intelligence, hard work and luck sometimes pays off handsomely. Had they narrowly focused on profit, they would have achieved less of both.22
Chapter 4: Mary Magdalene
Mary was a bright, exceptionally happy, self-taught woman of twenty-five when she first heard Jesus lecture at the age of twenty-three. Also an only child, she lived at home amidst great wealth and passed her time in studies. Her father indulged his precious princess, but her mother would not let him spoil her. Mary had the best social skills, great powers of intuition and exceptional empathy, even more than Jesus did. She could feel the sadness of people who most carefully concealed it from all others and she sought to help those wounded people whom others ignored or abused. As a rule, she sought truth from happy authors, believing that unhappy authors are deceivers of themselves and others and are tortured by their conscience.
Because of her exceptional empathy, no one abused others less than Mary. If she started to hurt someone’s feelings, she felt so terrible so quickly that she stopped and apologized. She knew too well that the most abusive people23 are the least empathetic. Some are too obtuse to feel others’ pain. Others have trained themselves to hide their feelings in order to look tough.
Not the least judgmental, a great listener and altruistic person, who earned the highest trust by never betraying a trust, Mary became everyone’s special confidante, especially the deeply wounded people. From detailed knowledge of the pain in the lives of everyday people in her village, she learned so much that is not in books. She was more knowledgeable of what really matters in society than the vast majority of scholars.
Intellectually, her empathy helped her excel. She could feel the consequences of erroneous thoughts by their negative effects on her emotions. She would cry at the selfish heartlessness (right wing) or laugh at the foolish impracticality (left wing) of wrong-headed extremist views. Then, she used her intelligence to straighten out the erroneous, extremist, emotionally unbalanced thinking.
Since she used more than just logic, she believed that her method was likely better than that of any logician’s. She knew that if an erroneous argument appeals to a formal logician’s sentiments, it will receive less scrutiny and he may not find the error. Particularly so if the error is a “false analogy.” Since logicians lack her empathy and intuition, they will fail to detect many of the errors her “logic of passion”24 uncovered. In another era that allowed women more freedom, with such powers of intuition, Mary might also have been a great scientist or engineer. She proved herself a great religious leader, cofounder of the ecumenical movement (not the religion of Christianity) with Jesus.
The fundamental flaw she found in people’s thought was the failure to see the wholes. For example, elitists judge themselves elite by overweighting a handful of characteristics. They are blind to their many weaknesses. When we weight all fundamental characteristics equivalently, we are all approximately equal, as Jesus correctly contended.
She broke this widespread failure to see the whole into three parts.
(1) The failure to establish the proper intellectual contexts. This in turn leads to unfinished arguments, especially in metaphysics, which is an important context for all thoughts. Ignoring the metaphysical context of thoughts is as absurd as a painter painting a foreground without a background.
(2) The tendency to over-analyze information without re-synthesis into wholes.25
(3) The tendency to focus on extreme positions (antipodes), splitting people into “warring camps.” Without knowing this idea is central to Far Eastern thought, she traced this Western and Middle Eastern extremist flaw to overly logical two-valued thinking, whose roots are in emotional imbalances, and saw its antidote in what little she knew of empirical science.
“If I am absolutely right and you disagree with me, then you are absolutely wrong and I am going to prove it to you.” Simple logic, she thought abstractly. True, but simple nonsense nonetheless, she intuitively felt. Only later did she convince herself of this by empirical scientific thinking.
Instead of synergizing our efforts to find truth, we dissipate our energies trying to prove we are right and our opponents are wrong, without first understanding their positions, ironically even those whose views are superior to ours. She imagined superior beings to set the proper context. In this respect, the concept of an infinite god might be helpful. A useful fiction? Probably. At any rate, the namian Greek, Roman and Far Eastern polytheistic gods were useful fictions.26
Mary thought, Each of us sees a little of the truth, typically just one side of reality, but declares our “half-truths” to be the truth, and we confuse notable exceptions with new rules, particularly when we discover the exceptions.
This leads to repeated conflict. We have to take this chip off our shoulders, admit fallibility, and work out our differences peacefully, in small steps, and thus find the higher, more comprehensive truth together. In what truth we find together, we can all believe, as emotionally, we can all “buy” into it. However, we must maintain our skepticism even of those truths that we have discovered together. Among the most dangerous beliefs are common ideas, “self-evident” truths, adages, wrong-headed, shortsighted, but fanatically defended.
She conjectured that all arrows point to the truth. Thus, the starting position matters little and truth should be easy to find, provided we do not sabotage ourselves. Falsity is intuitively obvious to her emotions. Truth should be likewise. Because our views are still somewhat incoherent, truth has eluded us. This means that we may be sabotaging our own efforts by some combination of (1) Failure to question our own wrong assumptions, faith being a potent obstacle. (2) Our overly rigid thinking, where inappropriate use of two-valued logic may be a problem. Some variables are best defined empirically and allowed to “float.” (3) Our failure to pool our limited (a) knowledge and (b) intellectual powers. Because we are mentally limited, failure number three makes us look foolish.
If we pooled our limited knowledge and mental powers, could we find even the ultimate truths? Perhaps we will find that there are no ultimate truths (mathematical nihilism). That too is an answer of sorts. Picturing Plato, she realized, that if one person finds the truth, even by chance, then nearly everyone else will fight it before they have even understood it, because they take no ownership. In essence, that is what happened with Plato. As in the Socratic method, if we find truth together, in small steps, cross-checking our results for overall consistency and coherence, empirical and logical, then we can all buy into the whole truth, as we all contributed to it.
If this practice were more widely followed, then we would unite into one world, intellectually, socially, morally and politically. She calculated that this unification process would take more than a millennium at the current rate. She was strong enough to advocate what others could not even imagine. To them, a millennium was an eternity.
After much study, Mary concluded that the claims of divine revelation fail to meet basic empirical criteria and are likely false. The alternative is that science is false. Not likely, as science agrees with experiments. The Jewish religion, she thought, pits Jews against everyone else and each Jewish sect against all others.
What folly. In the absurd limit, every person debates every other person on each point and everyone proudly leads a sect of one person. While upholding the laws, she kept this thought to herself. This sweet, gentle creature realized that a drop of honey captures more flies than a gallon of gall.27
Chapter 5: Jesus meets Mary Magdalene
She never met a man she liked enough to consider marrying and she was not one to settle. Not because she was proud. Far from it. Because she knew that settling reduces happiness for both partners. From talking intimately with others, she realized that too many people settle. Namian courtship is defective in that most people never meet anyone close to their best match.
Already, she politely rejected four suitors. She could not “make” them happy. Altruistic by nature, she thought of them first. In Jesus, she found someone she adored, a unique individual she admired, a “realistic idealist” who practices his own teachings. Jesus was a scholar like herself who was still learning, a strong and courageous person, who does not know what the word “quit” means, who was personable, passionate but self-controlled, skeptically flexible, so open and honest that he made himself vulnerable.
When Jesus and Mary were wrong, they humbly admitted it, but they showed proper respect by never telling others that they are wrong. They believed that the only way to win an argument is to avoid getting into one.28 Like Socrates, they would rather participate as equals in a roundtable search for truth with their opponents. They did not seek to lead this search, as Socrates often did (again, Plato’s obvious elitism). Jesus and Mary were instantly attracted to each other on many different levels. This developed into one of the most mutually beneficial relationships in namian history, the ideal love affair and marriage for all time.
At the right moment, when Jesus seemed to quote Plato as an authority, Mary deftly reminded him that Plato’s thought had also suggested the slight natural superiority of women, based on superiority in self-control, social skills, and empathy, and equality in other abilities, yet even their democratic societies still universally deny women their equality with men.
This got to Jesus. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, child nor unborn child, rich nor poor, leader nor follower. All are equal members of namian society. From that point on, with enthusiasm, Jesus included women among the equals in word and deed. Together, Jesus and Mary re-formulated their ideas until they appealed equally to both males and females and even to children (and impressively, with their great empathy, eventually to beings from other planets).
They began to speak in public together. Jesus gave Mary equal billing and his praise of her made it obvious that he acknowledged her overall superiority. Jesus appreciated the quality of her penetrating mind and her unequalled emotional depth. She was even more effective at reaching the audience’s heart of hearts, while satisfying the demands of their abstract intellects. He admired her no end. Each of them drew strength and emotional power from the other’s highly empathetic presence.
Because Jesus and Mary were together, they were stronger than the Hebrew prophets, who were loners crying in the wilderness, talking mainly to themselves. Use of the word “we” already implies some agreement and invites others to join. “We” is friendlier and stronger than “I.” This team was unbeatable, a force of titanic proportions.
From the fundamental equality of namians, Jesus and Mary drew the most important conclusions. All namians are conceived equally. As true altruists, they respected the right of a woman to choose, but in their hearts, they could understand no choice other than having the baby. Abortion on demand as a method of birth control seemed shamefully selfish. Birth control by abortion (virtually unknown today, though still a right) decreased with a half-life of one year after their ecumenical movement gathered steam.
All namians are born equal. All live their lives in equality. From this equality, a basic respect for the opinions of all others (including abortionists and other selfish individuals) follows. No more Jew versus Gentile. We must stop proselytizing, as that is clear abuse of others. They delivered their “lectures” objectively without proselytizing, and invited constructive criticism and empirical tests of their concepts.
These talks evolved into “roundtable discussions” and respectful, “principled negotiations.” The more respect they showed, the more “opposers” cooperated. In small steps, they reached wise and lasting resolutions of differences.
They opined that we do not want perfect freedom. We want self-determination without social chaos. Same with laissez-faire capitalism. We want economic prosperity with adherence to the highest ethical ideals. “People do not want god,” they said to each other, but to no one else. They want happiness. The unhappy, lazy and guilt-ridden seek “God,” but find little inner peace because the deeper mind rejects religious beliefs as unbelievable.
Individual happiness depends critically on how happy society is. In a miserable society, a person of reasonable empathy has to spend too much energy combating his own miserable feelings. How could society become happier? We need to make so many changes. Where to start?
Needing to atomize this huge problem, they sought the help of retired engineers. These “social engineers” devised means to replace the frictional type of competition with the friendly competition of team members, working toward a common, long-term goal of universal happiness.
By engineering lawyers out of all processes, they reduced social friction. To achieve this good, everyone willingly gave up the selfish search for advantage over their fellow namians that lawyers shamelessly preached.
To do any of this, they required a higher level of cooperation than had ever been seen. To get that, they had to show their adversaries (including lawyers) more respect.
They talked through these issues for months. They handled their inevitable disagreements with the same aplomb as in their talks, and appeared to reach a higher truth. They even agreed that various concepts of god can be useful in providing perspective (Mary’s idea), but that any mention of god in the “finished product” becomes divisive and dilutive (Jesus’ idea).
Finally, after triple checking their results under all conceivable assumptions (including non-theism, mathematical nihilism, and various theisms), they reached coherence. They prioritized their own activities and generated a set of “small steps.” Believing that there is no progress without side effects and penalties, they proceeded slowly, allowing time to find the path of least pain, and time to feedback-inhibit mistaken programs before society suffers the full brunt of the harm.29
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