The Seeds of Hate

othing can justify the terrible evil of 9/11.   It was a completely unprovoked attack on innocent victims, who never did anything against our attackers.   Our actions since 9/11 are not acts of revenge, but of self-defense, since 9/11 showed us we are vulnerable to suicidal fanatics, domestic or foreign.   We will do whatever we must to protect ourselves from additional attacks.   This will be difficult, though not impossible.   See the chapter "Stopping Terrorists."

hy do they hate us so much?   At first, we could only attribute it to the outbreak of some unfathomable new evil, like Fascism in the 1930s.   But as we learned more about the terrorists, new hypotheses arose.   It turned out that the terrorists were not the poor and downtrodden, not even people brought up in the fundamentalist tradition of pure Islam, where the only book read was the Koran.   No, the terrorists were rich, urbane, well-educated men, who lived and moved without notice in the West.   Some of them were born in the West, educated in the West.   They begin to seem more like traitors from within, like the American Taliban fighter, than traitors from without.

normous rage is required to turn an intelligent and well-educated person into a suicidal killer.   The presence of an Islamic background leads them to the Mosques of the radical Mullahs, who can give them a specific focus for their rage, and can tell them where to go and who to see to become a suicide pilot or a suicide bomber.   Every religion has within it the seeds of violence and intolerance, so this chapter is not about Islam. It is about the West.

estern religion is not Christianity or Judaism, as you might imagine.   It is the religion of science. The distinction between "science" and "the religion of science" is that the former refers to "anything learned by scientific method," while the latter refers to a specific set of articles of faith.   Followers of the religion of science would probably not see this distinction.   But it can easily be shown that the reality of such things as reincarnation, NDEs, OOBEs and UFOs are well-established by the same rules of scientific method that are used elsewhere.   Here I use the term "UFO" not in its original sense, but in its popular sense as spacecraft piloted by humanoids from other stars.   One can easily detect the followers of the religion of science by offering to show them the studies which establish the reality of reincarnation, NDEs, OOBEs, and UFOs, using scientific method.   If they are not interested, if they simply laugh at you, then it is evident that you have stepped across a line into a forbidden zone.   You are challenging a core set of beliefs which are resistant to empirical refutation. That is the definition of a religion.   It has become the religion of the West, supplanting Christianity and Judaism among the educated elite.

cience is a seductive and powerful religion, draining the lifeblood out of all the older religions, and forcing its way everywhere.   And the reason is, science is not called a religion, but confidently presented as "the truth, which only ignorant fools reject."   Indeed, the high priests of the religion of science chart the spread of irrationality with polls testing to see how many people believe in reincarnation, ESP or UFOs.   In the eyes of the high priests of science, belief in any of these forbidden doctrines is sufficient proof of irrationality.

estern religion is seductive in other ways as well.   People in Pakistan or India or Saudi Arabia can easily see that many good things come along with the religion of science, including Western luxuries, high technology, democracy and wealthy economies.   All it will cost you is the loss of everything sacred.   In the religion of science, there is no soul, no divinity, no life after death, no immortality, no meaning to our existence.   As Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg said at the end of his book The First Three Minutes "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."

nce a sensitive young man recognizes the nihilistic character of the religion of science, he may begin to despise all the outward signs of Westernization, such as the growth of huge, impersonal boxes for architecture, or the spread of tawdry strip malls, or the cancerous spread of McDonalds and Wal-Mart, a cancer which destroys the distinctive souk or the small towns painted by Norman Rockwell.   He may become frustrated that nothing seems capable of halting reductionist materialism.

become pessimistic myself when I see the high priests and Grand Inquisitors of the religion of science (psi-cops) in Scientific American and on the Discovery Science channel on cable TV.   Does no scientist object?  Can't anyone see that this is the end of scientific method?   You have to choose.   Either scientific method applied to all things, known and unknown, or the religion of science. The psi-cops (CSICOP) want to close the books.   No more new sciences to be allowed.   Rationality is now defined as believing the textbooks, and irrationality is everything else.  After three centuries the grand adventure of ideas is over and science becomes just another faith, another superstition.   One can easily see why this leads to a desperate search for any alternative.

slam provides an alternative, one that seeks to destroy the West.   It may now be clear why the most Westernized of Moslems and the most intelligent are the first to raise the bloody flag of Jihad.   They know better than anyone the cost to the soul of the soft luxury and gadgets of the West.  A good example of the core terrorists is Ahmed Omar Sheikh, abductor of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.   Sheikh is Pakistani, but raised in a middle-class neighborhood in East London (Newsweek, 2/18/02/ p.42), educated in an elite private high school and the London School of Economics.   So it would seem that merely educating Moslems in the ways of the West would be counter-productive.  

t is we who must change, and offer kinds of spirituality which are compatible with science.   No spirituality is compatible with the religion of science, which we must vigorously reject, as we reject all other religions, with some regrets, with some sadness.   They have outlived their usefulness.   They all induce sectarian intolerance, and they all teach fear, where there need be no fear.   We need not fear death. It has no terror for those who have had an NDE.   Death has no terror for those who know Professor Stevenson's Twenty Cases.   We need not fear "the endtimes."   This universe has lasted at least 15 giga-years, and if it is closed, it has a minimum lifetime of 1000 billion years.   If it is not closed, it will last forever, but will not be habitable forever.   And there will be no discontinuities in time.  It is odd that this is a common fear among the religious, perhaps because they do not understand why the sun comes up every day, or why one season follows another.

hat is emerging is a new metaphysics, which shall be the basis for a renaissance of art and architecture.   It will be rich in mysticism and symbolic revelation.   Anyone can have a symbolic revelation.   All they have to do is make a mandala.   This new metaphysics will be open to all seven ways, and there shall be no credo, nor any social hierarchy.   It will be open to ceremonial magick, and to every form of meditation, and to every kind of entheogen, as we party and frolic our way towards a brighter day.   Freedom!   Liberation from our Puritanical past, and a repressive and tyrannical present.   Throw off the shackles!   Begin the long journey.   It will not be a hardship.   It will be a party, as we live, and love, and express ourselves, and grow.   Let spiritual evolution and the divine purpose be our goal.   Sic Itur Ad Astra.   To the stars--and to immortality.   See Mind and Soul for more.

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