RELIGION

AUDIO     SECOND DRAFT

We are moving into an age of religious revolution. Now the key question is how religion relates to the key issue that we face, which is the biological destruction of life on this planet, and that’s a very big subject. And we're certainly not going to get into a detailed discussion of what Hinduism is doing about this, what Buddhism is doing about this, and so on and so forth.

NEGATIVE TRENDS IN AMERICA

What we will comment on is the very disturbing situation that Is taking place in America and has been taking place in America for a considerably long time, certainly 20 or 30 years is the hostility to science but it’s much more disturbing that a hostility to science. It’s a hostility to life itself among the majority of the white Christian evangelicals in America. This is a very disturbing and destructive trend. Now part of the problem in looking at religion is the lack of understanding of the elites in terms of what drives religion. In history, religion has been a dominant force, if not the dominant force in world history in one way or another.

DISILLUSIONMENT IN EUROPE

In Europe, starting in the 18^th century, there was a very understandable disillusionment of hundreds of years of Christianity and all the crimes, persecutions, nonsensical theological conflicts and so forth. And there was the illusion from the late 19^th century through perhaps the early part of the 21^st-century that we were moving into an age of a secular world where religion would fade away, might be some nice little thing that people did some nice little things about and that everybody would agree that we should have some wonderful things...

 

[AUDIO LECTURE STARTS HERE]

THE EMERGENCE OF PRE-CHRISTIAN RELIGION

  This lecture is a further elaboration of our long-term plans. The subject for this lecture is the issue of religious long-term trends. In religion, desirable trends in religion among the people that we associate with is an infatuation with "paganism," the pre-Christian world. We are sympathetic to this view in terms of the pre-Christian world appearing to respect nature and being a part of nature. However, this as we have discovered in researching and talking to people, this becomes a very vague subject. What is paganism and paganism in all different areas of the world is very different. In other words paganism, in Latin America is very different from paganism in Norway. So all this is very hard to define.

We feel it's more constructive to try to look at shared key values built around the concept of the eco-state, built around the concept of respect for nature's laws.

CHRISTIANITY AND NATURE

Now where the major religions fit or don't fit in with this is a controversial subject, and is not clear. For example, in Christianity, you have truly horrible points of view in relation to nature as well as other matters by the white Christian evangelical forces in America. the overwhelming majority of whom are supporting Trump on the other hand you have some very enlightened and positive comments from Pope Francis of the single most important Christian in the world now where all that sorts itself out is not clear Christianity as a whole does not have a very good record on the environment.

THE GROWTH OF WORLD RELIGIONS

As to where people come down in terms of the likely inevitable reduction in the world's population and the ferocious forces that will be unleashed when that happens, we don't pretend to be able to sort all that out.

In my view classical Islam, not this monstrous Wahhabi Islam, has a great deal to say for itself of all the world's religions. But far be it for us to get involved in trying to sort out all the world's religions. We do need to emphasize some basic moral values in terms of preserving the environment and how those are explained needs more fine tuning. The concept of the Samsara is also highly relevant, the reincarnation and rebirth of life.

Our critical comments of Christianity are justified, but they they need to be explained more clearly in a larger context that we are not condemning all Christians and so on and so forth. Furthermore, simply it is always easier to destroy than it is to create. If you totally destroyed Christianity tomorrow something worse might reappear. You've got to understand that as the world becomes more damaged, as things get more dangerous, religion is going to grow. It's going to grow. When you look at modern society interpretations of Christianity and other religions are extremely compelling. Many people are extremely lonely. They don't feel like anybody cares about them, particularly among the elderly as their families have died and they feel just just devastated, just totally alone and and very depressed, and and the the belief in a God who cares, Virgin Mary who cares, it can be ridiculed, but it is also extremely comforting to a lot of people. And this is also true of Asian religions, of praying to the various incarnations of the Buddha and so on and so forth. It gives people a tremendous source of comfort that there's nobody in the real world who seems to care about them, but there's someone to talk to, likewise the hope for the future, the hope for life after death, is of an enormous significance because so many people's lives here are not going very well, and the notion that all you have here is what you have is not very encouraging. It really isn't. So this is very compelling and it's why religion is growing around the world

Unfortunately, some of the worst kinds of political religion are the kinds that are growing around the world, such as Hindu extremism, such as Buddhist extremism, and such as Islamic extremism, particularly disquieting what's happening in Indonesia, which used to be a center of more tolerant Islam and that seems to be giving way so to speak. Of world history which grew out of a disillusionment with Christianity hasn't worked okay. As we mentioned, you can tear down Christianity, but then people are faced with a kind of spiritual vacuum and avoid... okay they don't believe in Jesus they don't believe in the Christian version of God...so what's left? Just life in the here and now? Again that's not very encouraging. It's not very encouraging in terms of what's around, but subconsciously it's not very encouraging in the feeling that there's no one there to talk to and so on and so forth. So you should take religion very seriously. It's going to be a very critical part of of what's coming up in the future.

THE FAILED ATTEMPTS TO REVIVE GERMANIC PAGANISM IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY

In getting back to the issue of paganism, because it's popular among a lot of the metal fans and so on, you have to look at a very controversial subject. There was an effort to re-create ancient Germanic paganism that was extensively organized and extensively thought through. Most pagans do not want to talk about it because it's very controversial, but that is the issue of Nazi Germany. Heinrich Himmler, as we discussed on our website, organized, a very systematic plan to rebuild paganism in Germany via the SS via. Institutions such as the Ahnenerbe, the Nordlund press, the SS headquarters and the castle and so on and so forth. This was very carefully thought through but you see again they ran into the same problem that other people ran into, which was, what exactly this was and the historical records from paganism are not that great. There was a dispute within Nazi Germany, the full extent of the conflict is not clear, between Hitler at the top of the system and Himmler. How much Hitler disagreed with Himmler, as we mentioned, is not clear because of the political importance of the church in Germany. Hitler never forgot the total humiliation and political destruction of Eric Ludendorff, the two masterminds of World War I, from national hero to international laughingstock due to his campaign of opposition to Christianity and endorsement of a form of paganism that many Germans found to be crackpot and goofy. On Hitler in his private discussions and point of view, he vehemently disagreed with the whole idea of bringing back German paganism. Hitler also hated Christianity, but he was very opposed politically to any any campaign against Christianity. He felt that if his government in the postwar period was successful, it would begin to fade away. Hitler felt a campaign against Christianity would be very politically self-destructive and not constructive. He also raised the issue that if the form of German paganism that Himmler tried to revive was so great, why did it collapse so completely in the face of Christianity? You can argue it was a question of persecution and that is a relevant point, but the historical records on this just aren't clear. We honestly don't know exactly what happened as to why paganism appeared to collapse as rapidly as it did in the face of Christianity. We honestly don't know the answer to that because the records we do know that was a reign of terror when the church came to power in the Roman Empire that's very clearly documented. But the exact details of how they converted these various Scandinavian and Viking kings, and what happened after that are frankly very sketchy. So we can't just say, "oh it was a question of persecution as it was in so many other parts of Europe." Certainly in the horrific persecution in Spain, which is the only country in the world that ever converted back to Christianity from Islam, but we really honestly don't know. So we need to be sensitive to these issues and try to put this thing forward in a positive manner.

 

NEW WORLD RELIGIONS

The popularity of our page about Life Death and Judgment is kind of mind-boggling because that's a very vague term. But I think it shows there's a public interest in this. So this is a big minefield and we need to be more careful about how we approach it. But it's very important because if we don't discuss the religious agenda other people will. You'll have the Islamic extremist do what they, Hindu extremists etc. etc. and so on. So there has to be some sort of center ground in a multicultural presentation. Obviously that will be fiendishly difficult to do, but that's going to be necessary. The coming of the next hundred years are going to appear to be a tremendous period of the power of world religions, new and old, and whether a new religion could come on, that's an interesting subject. The patterns of theology tradition are very powerful and it is unclear that a new religion could supersede the main entrenched religions. That's indeed possible. It would seem that this new religion would have to take factors from the other religions but the these are very important points to put the issue of a plan to fight climate change of plan for you know a stable environment and other very important moral goals in a religious goal and put that in the context of the extremely harsh measures that are going to need to be taken. That is that is a big subject and how far we can go on that is unclear, but it needs to be a priority. That's the end of this lecture.