How a theocracy could be useful for atheists

Seneca:

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful."

It is my purpose is to emphasise the USEFULNESS of instilling a belief in God rather than take a position on whether or not He exists.

God is after all Man's greatest most divine creation and, having been created, it would be waste not to use this infinite resource to assist Man in his government, politics and morality.

God if He exists would be Perfect and Moral as well as Omniscient and Omnipotent. It is quite clear therefore that He is a philosophical aid, for He directs our minds towards the contemplating and defining Perfection, Morality, Knowledge and the consideration of what it is practicable and politic to do at any given time.

The more I think about it, the more I think that an Agnostic Theocracy in my lifetime may not only be desirable, but also possible.

After all, most people would like to believe in God, and many will want to believe in God when things take a turn for the worse.

When they turn bad, they will wonder what has gone wrong and how it could be put right.

Any cursory reading of the Bible and Koran would tell us that most of the commandments of God have been ignored by our liberal political establishment and most of what He forbids practised in our atheist feminist sexually-liberated liberal democracy.

The solution is simple, therefore: do what God commands, and refrain from doing what He forbids.  This is the essence of Secular Koranism, which does not require a belief in God, merely the preparedness to live in harmony with the principles propounded in the Koran.

What are the principles propounded in the Koran?  You must read it yourself, dear reader.  I only know that I find nothing objectionable, irrational or impracticable about it.  Indeed, so unobjectionable, moral and practicable is it that even those who do not believe in God cannot help but agree with it.  After all, you do not have to believe in God to see the fairness, wisdom and good of the commandments not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery and not to bear false witness amongst others.

I have reasoned that by saying I am agnostic, I will win the hearts and minds of

1. atheists

2. monotheists

3. agnostics

However, if I were to say I am atheist, then I would be alienating monotheists and agnostics.

If I were to say I am a believer, I would be alienating the atheists and agnostics.

By saying I am agnostic I straddle not only two stools, but three, equipping me to promote Secular Koranism better than if I claimed to be either monotheist or atheist.

I am an agnostic because I know it is impossible to make someone who does not feel they need to believe in God believe in God, or to make someone who wants to believe in God disbelieve in God

What is certain is that the concept of God already exists, invented by Abraham himself.

From the existence of this concept, we may infer that God has a utility, for it was Voltaire who said that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him, presumably to be used as an instrument of government.

God as policeman in your head is cheaper than having CCTV all over the place.

Since God is clearly useful, I shall make a point of believing in Him, while occasionally denying His existence and at yet other times merely doubting it.

It is not necessary that I absolutely believe in His existence, merely that I entertain the idea that He might exist, and that He might know all about me, care for me and even be prepared to assist me from time to time, if I am good and mindful of His wishes.

Some will say that an agnostic has no faith but that is not strictly true, in the sense that many agnostics go through the motions of worship and are probably nominally an adherent of the faith they were born in. Why do they do this? It is probably because they believe that a pretense of belief is better than professing no belief at all.

However, if He were omnipotent, then He would want to be moral too, would He not?

And if a unique moral and omnipotent God exists, then He would keep His promises.

Since He is already omnipotent, He would make Himself moral.

If YOU were omnipotent, you would make yourself unique and moral, wouldn't you?

As for whether He exists or not, it is actually not important, because, now that we have established that it is useful to believe in Him, we will want to believe in Him.

Once we have decided that we want to believe in Him, He will simply be conjured into existence, and we can then proceed to draw a line under the failures of the past and walk towards a theocracy that will give us better government, fewer laws, lower taxes and a sound currency that keeps its value under prudent financial management, after we have changed our system of government.

How an atheist can use God AKA An Atheist's Guide to Getting God to Work For You

To get the most from God, remember it is not necessary to actually believe in the actual existence of God.

All you have to do is imagine the time when Abraham conceived of an omnipotent, eternal and moral God.

And then imagine how it would be if He existed.

And then imagine how it would be if He were your very own personal God.

It was the imagination of a mere man that conjured Him into existence, to assist him in his politics, morality and spirituality.

The question is not  whether God exists, but whether YOU wish to enlist Him to be YOUR friend, when you already know you cannot trust anyone.

Therefore even if you do not really believe God exists, you could still have a relationship with Him and bargain with Him, if you know what you are supposed to do that just might help you get yourself into His good books to preserve you and aid your enterprises in this life only, if you do not believe in an afterlife.

Even if He does not really exist it is therapeutic, comforting and allows you to function independently of any other prop.  Whatever works.

If God is only a spiritual and an emotional prop, He is at least more transportable and at hand than even your iPhone and Facebook account.   You only have to think of Him to summon Him to your assistance and make Him listen to your concerns and anxieties, while you may lose your phone and have your Facebook account disabled.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_friend

Imaginary companions are an integral part of many children's lives. They provide comfort in times of stress, companionship when they're lonely, someone to boss around when they feel powerless, and someone to blame for the broken lamp in the living room. Most important, an imaginary companion is a tool young children use to help them make sense of the adult world.

God is just the adult version of this.    

How God is useful even to the atheist

It doesn't matter whether people refrain from hurting others for moral or immoral reasons. The important thing is that they refrain from hurting others for amusement or gain. Frightening them with a Big Brother God is easier and quicker than explaining Kant to them.

An Atheist's Theory of Prophets and Religion

JUDAISM TRIBAL AND RACE-BASED
Jews regard themselves as the Chosen People of God and Judaism is basically tribal. Jesus, a Rabbi, saw that it would benefit mankind to spread the benefits of monotheism to gentiles. Understandably, many Jews objected to this, probably because they felt it diluted or cheapened their religion.

"MY DAD IS GOD SO YOU BETTER LISTEN TO ME!"
To make his message more persuasive, Jesus claimed divinity. For this blasphemy he was crucified. But it was not that unusual to claim divinity. After all, Roman and Chinese emperors were worshipped as deities and so were Egyptian Pharoahs. A modified form of this was the divine right of kings, practised in more recent history by European monarchs.

THE MYSTERY OF THE HOLY TRINITY SOLVED
[It has been said that if you can explain it you are a heretic.]

Christians have never convincingly explained the mystery of Holy Trinity. The only way it could be convincingly explained is through a non-religious context of psychology, mythology and propaganda. It is the device through which Christ's message is made more appealing and more powerful. It also serves as his vehicle to divinity. (You see, it is not enough to portray Christ as a man who just died for his principles. People need more than this to want to accept his message. A man who died for all our sins is infinitely more appealing than one who has died for just his own principles.)

The mystery of the Holy Trinity is this: it "explains" and "proves" that Christ is divine. To enquire further is to commit heresy. In the olden days, you could be burnt at the stake for this.

A LIGHTER BUT MORE POWERFUL FORM OF MONOTHEISM - ISLAM
Muhammad's lighter and more powerful version of monotheism consisted of claiming divinity only for the Koran which Muhammad "revealed" or "recited" in his liftime when his followers needed the guidance of God in difficult and confusing times.

MUHAMMAD THE TECHNOCRAT?
The fact that it was taken down from one source and later standardised would at least make lawyers of those who could read and had to interpret the Koran. In the meantime it encouraged literacy, for that was necessary to receive the full benefit of the Koran - to read it for oneself. Islam does not require you to believe in the impossible and improbable, ie that Jesus is Son of God.

LOWER ENTRY REQUIREMENTS OF ISLAM
Through the Koran, fairly common-sensical teachings had the stamp of divinity. Conversion to Islam was easier, because it has lower "entry requirements" than Judaism and is not caught up in incoherent and mysterious trinitarianism - a theoretical device which "explains" the divnity of Christ. Disputes on interpretation could be resolved by referring to a form of words in a particular chapter and verse that is at least undisputed.

Not perfect, but better than before. Not perfect, but still progress!

FAITH AND REASON
While Jesus emphasised Faith (as he must necessarily have done to move it away from the then wholly ethnic basis of Judaism), Muhammad emphasised Reason, and the Tools of Reason: reading, writing, reference, authority and jurisprudence.

PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF MONOTHEIST RELIGIONS
Muhammad could not have developed Islam without first examining the life of Jesus and the form Christianity was taking in Muhammaden times.

Schism was and is the most noticeable characteristic of Christianity. Muhammad must have seen the effect of the disputes amongst Christians over the Holy Trinity - an incoherent theory that would have us accept that One is Three and Three is One (or "one for all, and all for one", like the Three Musketeers!). He cut the Gordian knot by denying its validity in the Koran, saying that Christ was just another mortal prophet with no divine attributes, just like Abraham, Moses, and himself of course!

AN OMNIPOTENT AND MORAL GOD
Christ certainly would not have been able to spread the benefits of a monotheist God, if Abraham had not conceived of it first. If not for Abraham, Moses would have had no single god to which to ascribe moral attributes with his Ten Commandments.

A SCIENCE OF RELIGION?
It can be seen therefore that there is a progressive nature to the monotheist religions. Islam was built on the foundations of Christianity and Christianity built on that of Judaism.

Subsequent prophets sought to improve and add to the teachings of previous ones, and this theory can only be grasped in a non-religious context. The same analogy applies to Hinduism and Buddhism.

THE PROBABLE ATHEISM OF ALL THE PROPHETS
Indeed, I would go so far as to claim that none of the prophets in fact believed in God. They merely had the wisdom to use this innate desire of all those who wished to believe in a loving and omnipotent God to make the world a better place. Ascribing to it moral attributes to the most powerful entity Man could imagine and describe - All-Powerful and All-Wise, Benovelent and Merciful - could perhaps indirectly encourage some of us to understand and indeed take on the attributes of God, ie to become stronger, wiser, kinder and be more forgiving.

To love God is to know God, to know God is to become one with Him.

The supreme irony of this is of course that most of what humanity worships was and is in fact man-made!

PYGMALION
The story of Pygmalion illustrates this beautifully. Pgymalion was a sculptor of extraordinary talent. He sculpted a woman so beautiful he fell in love with her/it. He loved it/her so much that it/she became real, for when he behaved as if she was real, she was real. That is precisely what Man has done with God throughout the ages.

The power of imagination, eh?