Science-based Religion

Science-based Religion

By Mark Leo Collins, Ph.D.

Smashwords Edition 2011

Formerly: Namian Christianity: Less is More

And before that The Gospel of Jesus and Mary

Copyright 2006 by

By Mark Leo Collins

e-book ISBN-13: 978-0-9832040-1-5

e-book ISBN-10: 0983204012

A companion lecture to this book, entitled Science-based Religion: Popular Lecture Series 2, is available for free download from Smashwords at

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mljczz

This is a work of literary, historical, and science fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Abbreviations used: GR, Golden Rule; 3GN, the Greatest Good for the Greatest Number; ROI, return on invested capital.

Table of Hyperlinked Contents:

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Appendix 0

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

Appendix 5

Endnotes

Introduction

This book brings to life an apparent contradiction, a religion based wholly on science, using a fictional story of the teachings of a Jesus-like figure on another planet, inhabited by people like us called namians, pronounced nahm’ e ns.

Chapter 1: The namian Jesus’ humble origins

Jesus was born in Bethlehem in a barn because his parents could not afford a room at the hospital. No kings showed up to pay homage because no one knew this child was going to be special. As contemporaries believed in science, there were no claims of portents or of a miraculous virgin birth. The idea of Immaculate Conception would make namians smile ironically, as that would maculate conception.¹

Well-trained in the empirical science of biology, namians are not ashamed of sexuality in any way. They see sex simultaneously through the eyes of trained scientists, poets of love, and lovers of nature and nature’s ways. There is no shame in loving one another in nature’s way.

While they also recognize violence as natural animal behavior, they affirm that it has no place in a civilized society. Such lack of self-control is dishonorable.

Mary, Jesus’ mother, was a homemaker, who knitted for extra income, and his father Joseph was a jobbing carpenter, and was unemployed for almost six months at the time of Jesus’ birth. In desperation, they wandered from town to town.

Jesus’ parents had no formal education beyond the sixth grade and were poor throughout Jesus’ childhood. Despite this, their happiness was well above average. Jesus considered himself lucky that he was not born with two silver spoons in his mouth like Plato, who naturally enough opposed Athenian democracy as an inferior form of government, an affair of the rabble. Good-humored, Jesus observed that noble birth would have been a handicap to anyone trying to discover the ultimate basis for democratic ideals.

Joseph and Mary taught their son the Jewish law, which was grounded in the monotheism of Moses, and he respected it even as he transcended it. He considered monotheism a qualified intellectual advance over the polytheism that dominated Middle Eastern thinking for several centuries of recorded history before. Not wanting to make waves, he appeared to live the highly regimented lifestyle prescribed by Jewish law. However, Jesus was a gifted and happy child, freethinking, empathetic, and curious. What a combination, as the world would discover.

A chance event changed his life and their society forever. A rich man, Joseph of Arimethea, hired his father to work on a third vacation home, his grandest, but just another investment to Joseph. Namians savor the delicious irony of the observation that Jesus’ anti-vain, radical egalitarianism owes a serious debt to the vanity of a very rich, snobby person.

Flashing that winning smile that everyone loved, Jesus often observed the same thing. Our complex world gives birth and a happy, long life to such scrumptious ironies. Through Joseph, Jesus befriended a scholar who lent him translations of the works of the great minds from the West and the Far East. Jesus immersed himself in study and his father indulged him by shouldering more of the carpentry burdens, although his parents worried about the direction of his thought, fearing corruption by the Gentile thinkers.

Much to his parents’ surprise, Jesus learned many things from Plato and Aristotle, Buddha and Confucius. From Plato and Buddha, he learned the importance of simplicity in society. Simplify wants, needs, and desires. Simplify thoughts and goals. Control senseless spending by buying only what one truly needs and truly adores. Most people buy what they merely like. Consequently, they buy too much, regret it, and thus have cluttered and dusty homes.

Smiling as he read this from his tiny desk and uncomfortable wooden chair in a most uncluttered room, Jesus was so poor he had no choice in the matter, but he could see the wisdom of society’s not spending its money and resources on luxuries. This reduced spending focuses production on what is needful, increases leisure (as the same number of people have less to produce), reduces pollution, slows the growth of landfills, and lessens the inevitable competition for limited resources. Reduced spending saves money, which accumulates by the power of compounding.

Joseph was a fine example of this. Tight-fisted on discretionary spending, lavish only in entertaining his business associates, he enjoyed the simple life while he became one of the richest men in the world. By saving and investing, Joseph compounded his early inheritance an average of twenty two percent per year over fifty years, enabling him to help Jesus become Jesus and improve the world forever.

After Joseph’s death, his will directed that his executor continue to invest his fortune aggressively (like our venture capitalists), and the earned income continued to support the new ecumenical religion of Jesus to one triumph after another. Their world would never be the same. It owes a huge debt to a realist, who for many years failed to improve himself morally, gave up the effort, and gave up on improving the namians as a lost cause. However, this capitalistic materialist had a soft spot in his heart for bright, enthusiastic, realistic idealists like Jesus, who dreamed of making the world a better place for all namians (and all other beings), one small step at a time.

All four of the sages taught Jesus that the purpose of life is to achieve a lasting and honorable happiness, and in the process create as much happiness for others as possible. Put differently, an honorable happiness (not wealth) is the best empirical measure of a successful life. Good, thought Jesus, for I will never have Joseph’s wealth. Though I am very poor, even Joseph acknowledges that I am happier than he is.

Moses did not agree with these four sages. In particular, Moses never mentioned the importance of honor, rational intelligence, skeptical inquiry, and empirical approaches in the passionate search for knowledge. Moses was the odd man out, so to speak. Thus, in Jesus’ mind, Moses was either wrong or he alone was right by being the sole recipient of divine revelation.

To Jesus, if a skeptical empiricist finds the firmest ground, he will probably reject Moses’ unempirical ideas. Plato did not fear anyone using his intelligence to question Platonic concepts. Skeptical himself, he repeatedly invited it. Consequently, Plato’s ideas are worth pondering and developing further.

Jesus also wondered why monotheists never praise honor and how they, who outwardly honor god so much, can dishonor themselves, who are supposedly god’s creation.

It occurred to him that monotheists have a safety net called god’s grace. The theist thinks, Who cares what other people think of me? If god forgives me, why not acquire riches and fame by clever and covertly dishonest means? Most likely, the fools will never detect my dishonesty. More power, fame, and money to me. If they catch me, I am covered, because I daily pray to god for forgiveness. All is well that ends well. If I end up in heaven, what difference does it make if I lived like a saint or enjoyed life by living wickedly at others’ expense?

As absurd as it may seem, one can admit sinfulness and pray for god’s forgiveness even while continuing to wrong others. One says that one cannot help it—it is just our sinful nature. I would stop if I could, O Lord, Most High.

The thought of the four Gentile sages does not contain this amazing lacuna. Moses is again all alone. In the namian Plato’s thought, honor is so much dearer than life that he never once mentioned mere life in the same paragraph with honor, rarely on the same page. To the sublime Plato, if you dishonor yourself, you dishonor yourself forever. There is no safety net, no forgiveness, just the passage of time. Fortunately, namians are kind people and they eventually forget those few who dishonor themselves.

Even their historians barely keep a record of such dishonorable acts (only if they are relevant to the direction of subsequent history). Namians have a lot of moral fiber. They do not reveal their secret admiration of law-breakers by eagerly giving them free press. Honor-lovers do not want to hear of dishonor. Plato would cover his ears when anyone mentioned anything dishonorable about anyone, even a foolish rival. Honor-lovers do not puff themselves up because of their superior behavior. They pity and forgive the dishonorable ones.

Four people independently said the same thing. Jesus thought like one trained in probability theory, though it did not yet exist. How could they all be wrong? Unlikely. Jesus was ahead of his time in asking whether the namian mind could believe in the absurd. No, he thought, faith is over-stressed because the deeper mind is forcefully rejecting the dogmas. Consequently, believers are finding little comfort from religion.

Unfortunately, Jesus thought, divine revelation fails simple empirical tests. Thus, Moses was wrong. Costly intellectual errors reduce happiness. People mistakenly take love, money, power and leisure as meaningful goals in themselves. No, they are but means to greater happiness. We make money so as not to burden others with our care. If we are as successful