The moment life came into existence we developed a barrier—a membrane between us and the existing world. This layer reduced the immediacy of total entropy between the organism and the whole world, the complete environment.
Our immediate needs of food and reproduction had to be met in the most efficient way possible. No primal organism could see the truth of the reality. A transparent window between us and it, would leave no upward bound to the limits of our entropy. The truth was then irrelevant to survival. The truth is still irrelevant to that end. In fact, the less we see of total reality the better our chances to avoid the infinite distractions from feeding and breeding.
Eventually we developed senses crude enough to master that purpose. We have never developed senses that would surpass that limitation. But occasionally nature slips up and we catch a glimpse that the world “out there” is much more complex than our senses derive. Much more than our headset can see, let alone interpret.
Transcendence is the process of bending that barrier between our senses and reality as it is. That barrier becomes more porous and our perception expanded to capture what evolution missed. Religion is originally a method of that transcendence, but is now a list of rules and regulations to follow—it is a way to control people and rests as a power structure the men of words control.
Western religion is about rules, regulations, and politics. In short, a way to control the masses— and since it offers no transcendence it has to. It has nothing to do with real religion in the origin of the word.
Now belief is a virtue that has humanity absolved of all responsibility, allowing the ridiculous to have equal time with real virtue, which cannot expand by belief. Believing a doctrine is not religion. Believing a doctrine is the barrier to transcendence.
TheCommonAtheist 