Athair Ar Neeamh
Enya
World Government
The best way to achieve a permanent world peace!
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This page was last modified on Thursday, 10-Oct-2002 00:29:12 EDT
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Years ago, John Bates posted the following message to The Truth Tree's General Message Board. I have edited it somewhat and with his permission submit it as the first part of The Truth Tree's Position Statement on World Government.
Some while ago, after watching on television the suffering of so many people throughout the world, I decided to try to write a book--one that would encourage people of all nations to work together in an effort to ease some of this suffering. Bringing about constructive changes in this direction will require a unified world effort which has never been possible in the past. Now, however, we have satellite instant world-wide television, pocket audible electronic language translators, and, best of all, the Internet. Soon after the onset of my research into how this might be achieved it became obvious that the two biggest stumbling blocks were going to be religion and nationalism. And the greater of these is undoubtedly religion. So it would seem that when it comes to helping people to help themselves the only possible way to achieve any beneficial results is, first, prove the harmfulness and absolute futility of religions and to render them all impotent. Expecting the religions to settle their differences is unrealistic. However, there is reason for optimism. Today, people the world over are more sensible than they have ever been in the past, and logically so. They now have at their disposal all the past knowledge that others before them never had. Religious leaders used to restrict access to knowledge that would undermine their power. This restriction is no longer possible now that the information revolution has provided almost instant access to almost any information anyone could want to obtain. This fact should make the task considerably less difficult. So, after weighing the feelings of the many religious individuals against the positive worldwide greater gain which could be realized by neutralizing religion (the mental debate for this decision took only seconds,) we come to the important business of attacking religion in a constructive but effective way. That so many apparently sane and sensible people all over the world can believe in any part of any religion is a miracle in itself. How can they? Religions are evil! They have caused and continue to cause more wars, more hatred, more fear and frustration than all the world's geological disasters put together. Religion defeats itself. How can it be that each of the hundreds of religions that exist around the world can be believed by so many when each of these hundreds of religions claims to be the "one true religion?" The only true religion is no religion at all! Religions are by far the greatest shackles Mankind has ever had to endure. To list the atrocities committed in the name of religions would require a thicker book than the Bible. The money and time wasted because of religion is truly phenomenal. Think of the cost! All the religious artifacts all over the World; Churches, Cathedrals, Mosques, Shrines, Paintings, Engravings, Carvings etc, etc. All the wages for more than 1500 years. Enough to make every starving child a millionaire. And time! In the time that people and parsons have stood singing, dancing, and praying they could have built the Universe. Oh! Praying! When the children are starving don't do anything practical to help them; just pray! To wait in hope for help from a god is not constructive, it is positively destructive! The mind blows and more children starve. These are some of the costs of retaining religions. But these costs become next to nothing when one considers the human cost. No, not just the time billions of people have wasted in the churches, not just the money these people paid that enabled the religions to make a profit even after all the above-mentioned expenditures, but consider the staggering human mental cost of these ridiculous useless belief systems. The lives wasted, the fear propagated, all the religious myths that caused so much hardship and suffering over so many years: People afraid to die for fear of burning in the religiously concocted "Hell fires." Even the great teacher known as "the prince of peace" mentioned the fires of Hell. The effects of this and other religious teachings have caused thousands of people to burn themselves and to torture others in order to prepare them for the agonies they expected to endure in purgatory. It is only 200 years since the last women and children were burned alive as so- called witches. Many believers lived in constant fear. The diaries of writers and poets over hundreds of years make horrendous reading. They describe the many tortures they inflicted on each other, the years they spent terrified, even though they had committed no crime whatsoever. "Hell" is such a stupid vile concept, devised by greedy evil people in order to control and exploit their fellow men and women. Religious sexual laws imposed many additional hardships upon families. Another sad aspect is the number of people who blame themselves after some tragic occurrence has taken place. They cry out, "What have I done wrong to offend my God so much that he would do this to me?" Many people are very badly affected by this even though they know that they have done nothing wrong. Why do people torture themselves and blame themselves? Why, oh why? It is because they have been taught the concept of "sin" by religious teachers who need for their followers to suffer so that they will seek solace in religion! Only this week, the wife of a very poor man died. He had struggled desperately to look after her during a long period of illness. After her death it was discovered that she had money but that she had bequeathed it in her will to the church. One may say "But people need Religion." Yes, some do, but only because they have been purposely taught to need it by their particular religious group, be it any one of the 5OO or more all set to take your money and brainwash you and your children anew. When many wonderful inspiring deeds and kindnesses are performed by religious people (and there are many) it is the people who deserve the credit, not the religion. The same well-meaning people would do the same without a religion. They would find a way of their own. There have been many non-religious philanthropists. What has any religion ever achieved? Apart from creating hatred, nothing! When a religion uses a god, supposedly omnipotent omnipresent and omnibenevolent, the congregations are made to believe that that god created and controls the whole world. How can one reconcile this with the fact that there are other religions with their own myths using entirely different gods each believing that theirs is the only god. This means that really to believe your own religion is an insult to all the others! Different religions have used fundamentally contradictory concepts for the world's creation. If God created the Universe twelve to fifteen billion years ago, wasn't he a bit old to have a son yesterday, so to speak? And if he created man in his own image, then he too must have been algae in the same primordial soup. Do religious people purposely have no interest in archaeology or geology? Could it be they are afraid of these subjects? How can they doubt the mountains of evidence these disciplines have provided? Today we should all know that evolution is fact. Indisputable fact. We should all know that mankind has inhabited the world for millions of years. It can be seen to be fact. Archaeologists and paleontologists are digging up the bones on a daily basis--everything from dinosaurs to prehistoric men and sabre toothed tigers. Yet some people still believe in ideas that were concocted and written as books which supposedly came from God or from "the gods." We have the Torah, the New Testament, the Vedas and Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Book of Mormon, the Koran and many many others. There are probably hundreds more religions kicking about out there each with its own holy book. How can any of it be true? It is just not possible! But is it so surprising? When we have all been indoctrinated with some aspect of religion from birth, first by our mothers, then the school, then the legions of preachers and priests. And don't forget the soothsayers and witchdoctors! No, it's not surprising. It's sad, especially when one can see it happening to tiny children. They, the most vulnerable of us, should certainly not be taught to believe lies that create hate. They should be taught to love their neighbours--not just those in their neighbourhoods but all their neighbours worldwide. We don't need religions. We have enough disease. We need truth and trust. What can we do to bring Mankind together? The key is communication. Free, open, truthful communication will either cure or alleviate many of the world's insanities. Nota bene: (1) We live in a chaotic, unplanned world. Alert people to this fact. (2) Advertise worldwide that what is called "national sovereignty" is the equivalent of advocating street gangs on a worldwide scale. (2) Learn how nations have been created and how groups of nations, states, or provinces have cooperated in the past to their mutual benefit. Then promote these ideas. Nationalism may not be as difficult to break down as religion probably will be. Perhaps the best weapon against the idiotic chauvinism that despots can use to create war is to expose the deceptions and connivings that every existing country in the world has in its history. These ill deeds are typically covered up by various shenanigans of the press and the established authorities. We should endeavor to unmask these unsavory secrets and publish them so that millions will be much harder to fool than they have been in the past. Revealing the hundred years secret lists will help. Some of the deeds perpetrated by Britain and America should help to remove their undeserved majesty and bring a breath of fresh air into the argument. Religions, as we have pointed out, may not be so easy. To cancel the effects of years of continual brain washing will take some time. However, so much truth about all those religions can now be sent worldwide via one or more of our miraculous cyber-tools. Many atrocities have been and are still being committed in the name of religion. Accurate portrayal of these sordid truths should help to counteract the religious propaganda. The existence of so many diverse cults with so many conflicting claims should not be allowed to remain secret. The salient features of these insane group hysterias should be shouted from the roof tops. Humanity will soon see reality. There are mountains of documented history in libraries and vaults, proving just who "bribed the scribes" in order to manipulate the masses. There are lists of documented deeds, invidious, horrendous, obnoxious deeds they have all committed. These should be placed on the Internet where people will find them. It can be done. With truthful education, common sense must prevail. The cost of retaining Religion and Nationalism is tremendous, but the gains that will accrue from working in unison are astronomical. Of the world's wealth, 95% is currently being controlled by one billion of the world's people. The remaining 5% is left for the other four billion. The world in a very large alien universe is a minute speck. One day people will convert to Worldism. But how soon?
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As Grouch has pointed out (in the message board) John's letter emphasizes religion as an obstacle to world government. There can be no doubt that religion is a significant problem, but The Truth Tree (Remi, that is) takes the position that whatever one may say about religion and its many irrational features, it is an important part of the social landscape of the human race and isn't going to go away just because of its irrationalities. An interesting test for any intellectual would be to prognosticate the future course of religion. In so doing he would reveal much about his world view. So while the Tree agrees with John's complaints about religion to a significant degree, it does not believe that abolishing religion would be either possible nor desirable. There are elements within the major religions which are just what is needed to increase feelings of brotherhood between different peoples and to stimulate the accurate perception of the need for some better way for nations to cooperate than what they have so far achieved. Perhaps the most salient reason for establishing some form of world government or federation is the prevention of war. Another is to provide a forum or deliberative body to assess the many supernational problems, such as world population and the preservation or management of the terrestrial environment, which if left to the individual nations would in all likelihood receive scant attention. We already have in our history the needed guidelines. We have seen how wars between city states become irrelevant when they join small nations and how the enmities between small nations can be successfully mitigated when small nations join together in larger nations. The history of governments provides guidelines for the structural requirements of the needed world government including the necessary parts such as executive, legislative, and judicial as well as the principle of checks and balances. Many people of a libertarian turn of mind have an automatic horror of the word government. Government can indeed be most troublesome and the source of many evils. Constructing a manageable government which will not run out of control is perhaps analogous to constructing a rocket that doesn't explode. We should not blind ourselves to the necessary functions of government just because we have an acute sensitivity to the possible ways in which government can go wrong. Never before in the history of the world has it been possible for virtually any two people on the planet to converse with each other at will. Even the language barrier has been significantly reduced by services such as Systran. Using this service you can compose a message in your own native language and send it to the other person in his native language. Then he can reply to you by reversing the process. Try it! it works surprisingly well! The Truth Tree would like to invite speakers of languages other than English to participate. (I note that at this time the German translation is not as good as the French.) We support the creation of The European Union with the hope that other unions will take place upon the other continents, evolving into one day a world government. Let there be an end to artificial and meaningless barriers between geographical regions!
Feel free to submit your plan
to promote fairness among all nations and perhaps bring some form of sanity into
world affairs.
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The Truth Tree's World Government Message Board