AUGUST 2024 SULLYGRAM:  And God said, “Nuke those sons-a-bitches!” Something lost in translation? And yet that’s what it comes down to in any religion whose culture ever fought a war. Even in the state religion of anti-religion – atheism – higher purpose does for a deity and a duty to kill.

Win or lose, the moral imperative to destroy others en masse seems historically to require justification in the name of God or some moral will. There are roughly 5,000 named religions in the world presently, countless more named divinities, and pretty much all of them preach peace and limited tolerance as long as theirs is the truth on the marquee. What’s even more paradoxical is that, once you clear away the details that empower pecking orders of priests, prophets and clergy, virtually all man-made religions profess the same general truths…love, mercy, forgiveness. Universals all.

Consider three of the world’s most dominant institutionalized religions: Christianity, Islam, Judaism. Each is descended from the God of Abraham, each demands veneration of a central figure be it messenger or messiah, each has evolved differing interpretations within itself from literal to metaphorical, and each is conjugated into sects and denominations. All three religions reverence the same figures and prophets, hold sacred the same sites. Even their holy texts overlap: traditionally, the essence of the Torah is the first five books of the Bible, said to have been written by Moses; while the Bible is a 66-book compendium by 36 authors said to be inspired by the Holy Spirit; and the Quran is said to have been revealed by Allah to Muhammad over 23 years and written down from memory and notes by Muhammad’s companions after his death.

So, how is it that all three of these divergent streams have spent so much of their past (and present) killing and torturing each other? Ditto atrocities committed between their own factions.

Is this just the murderous nature of humans like Cain and Abel writ large? With equal intolerance and brutality, countless other religions around the globe are historically steeped in blood. Makes you wonder if holy murderous zeal is a group requirement, a sort of registration fee of clashing man-made faiths? Would a remote shepherd on a hilltop who never heard of divine pharaohs or Martin Luther or Lao-Tse or Buddha or any other spiritual entity or intermediary contemplate such hostility? More fundamentally, could that isolated shepherd discover a spiritual path to follow? Deprived of oral/written deific details, would such an outlier still come to know the mystery of being and consciousness and the nature of creation and creator? No doubt, our provincial shepherd would be damned for his ignorance by egocentric societies whose testimonies describe God as a being with a temper, who changes his mind and out of remorse creates the rainbow, puts a thumb on the scales of justice, and wins protracted battles using spears, arrows, drought, disease, locusts and famine? But in turn, the modern descendants of that shepherd might wonder why such religious texts don’t upgrade from slings and arrows to lasers and bombs – “…nuke the sons-a-bitches.” 

Or is there a God for all perspectives? A mystery. A paradox. Nevertheless, a way to explain why there is existence at all. A cause to go with an effect. An omnipotent, omnipresent will behind all overtness that – sans details, stories and physical attributions – is evident to free-will beings of any intellect no matter when or where they live. Something self-proving by its very existence. Or simply put, explains why the default state isn’t nothingness. Such a worshipper would then be an Omnist (someone who believes in the abstract essence and truths of every religion but not necessarily their details). Our shepherd would find answers to all the imponderables a priori in Nature, self-evident in manifestations of life. GOD FOR BEGINNERS.

Beginners. That’s who we are here on dinky Planet Earth, about to take our first steps into this one known universe. We are currently developing PMPs (Pulse Plasma Rockets) that will reach 100,000 mph and allow us to explore our own minuscule solar system, and then…? Quantum to the stars? Wormholes through Time? (My head hurts.) 

Are we ready to meet some of those other evolved “intelligent” species that are inevitably out there (or may already be lurking on Earth)? Here is an incredible video I posted elsewhere that is not for everyone. If you have some sense of astrophysics and the ultimate mysteries of the Universe, this summation of 25 mind-bending enigmas and recent discoveries will adjust your perspective to what and where we are as an infinitesimal part of reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09IpHojknqQ . Here’s how I put it to someone not long ago.

No current mind can come to terms with the dynamics of the cosmos. We are too wedded to the limited physics (Newtonian) and geometry (Euclidian) that works in our little region of Cartesian space. The paradoxes of ultimate reality speak to something vastly greater. But maybe it can be sensed in another way by our natures. Soul? Our penchant for reducing profound complexities into terms we can deal with (man-made religions) reminds me of a tribe of remote Pacific islanders who worshipped the airplanes that brought modernity into their lives during WWII. When the war ended, they built a dirt path runway lit by torches and a crude model airplane as a lure, trying to attract the planes to come back with their largesse. Comedienne Jack Paar took some of them from their jungle enclave to an airport and they stood outside the chain-link fence in their best feathered finery silently watching planes take off and land…and looking very small. That’s what all we humans are like today peering out at the Universe.

Photos below: #1 Moi and Bruce my brother-from-another-mother. #2 A laugher newspaper photo (if that’s my breastroke as the article says, I’m DQed – the news photographer wanted me to come up high for a face shot…glub-glub). #3 My Aunt Francis second to left and Mom next to me – yeesh – that’s zinc oxide on my nose, or maybe a seagull was flying over. #4 A stunner to me, my dad – didn’t know he played football (law school team??) – third row up, sixth from left. #5-6 My sister Merry’s wedding day. #7 My Niece Nora and nephews Will and Matt.

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan