Being First—More Powerful than Right

How you can be first and biggest and still be wrong. A new morality is at the door.

You know those brands that becomes a household name, even when using the competitions product? Ziplock, Saran Wrap, LEGO’s, and Jell-o come to mind. Proprietary eponyms eventually fade into genericide, losing there luster in sales, but the names live on. Being first is powerful. Staking claims on territory is much the same. Whoever plants their flag first, it can take hundreds of years to get just a slice in return.

Enter religion.

Staking a claim on morality, religion has branded itself as the authoritative source on it. There are better versions available, but morality is synonymous with god and religion. Why? Because they said so—and they have the biggest brand. I need some acetylsalicylic acid—Asprin™️.

But, after unbelief we see morality is a natural phenomenon and find our groove pretty easily. This strivation for balance, homeostasis, civil society, and equilibrium is as natural as cause and effect and our ability to process consequences. We like fairness and we’ll give it to get it—just like other animals.

It’s no secret that a friendlier and more inclusive moral construct is possible, but then the next big lie too has been repeated ad nauseum—and that that, would be too difficult. Not so fast my religious friends. We could work out a rough draft over coffee if it weren’t for the beliefs. Those naggy little seeds that hijacked universal decency and divided us.

We really should do something about this. If the biggest is going to dominate the rules, Islamic morality is just a few years away. Two factions, both wrong, competing to force ideas on the world—and control you and me by legislating them. When that happens, humanism won’t look so bad, will it? Just Google™️ it—on your search engines.

Author: jimoeba

Alternatives to big box religions and dogmas

46 thoughts on “Being First—More Powerful than Right”

    1. I have a stunning 8 square miles of backyard. It’s flower season in the mountain too. It’s a little tough in the winter but this is all worth the wait. Thanks Carmen

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      1. It looks like paradise to me. We live on a small lot in a small community with neighbours on three sides. It’s like being in a fishbowl BUT we don’t have to lock our doors or take the keys out of our vehicles. (we’re used to it, after 42 years!) Also, we have a large woodlot 5 k’s up the road (with a camp on the premises) if we want to ‘get out of the loop’ for awhile. . . but your place just looks just fabulous! How could anyone NOT appreciate nature in those surroundings??

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        1. I take my daughter up there nearly every day. Sometimes she’ll just sit on a little patch of ground and study the ants and flowers. It’s quite fascinating really. And always barefoot. I took her out of Panama, but I’ll never take Panama out of her.

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  3. Every time man’s world view expanded religion was there to stake its claims. By doing so, it expanded its powers. The major religions all supported slavery because slavery was, for thousands of years, the mechanism that supported civilization. remove it and, boom, civilization collapses, including all of that religions benefits. But when we came to recognize that slavery was wrong, who was claimed to have lead the charge? The religious! (And no they did not do that because of their religion, they did that in spite of their religion.) Just like the religious often blame evil deeds upon atheism, it is rare to establish that atheism motivated anyone at any time. (How can unbelief be a motivation?) The flip side being theist claims that they were responsible for the anti-slavery movement or science. No they weren’t certainly not based upon their religions? Can you find any support for the process of science in Christian scripture? (No.) Can you find anti-intellectual screeds there? (Oh, yeah, baby!)

    And your point is well taken. This is why when discovers were made during the age of discover, the first thing to do in the Discover’s Manual was to offer thanks to god for showing us this wonderful new whatever it was. The fact that it was only new to the discovers shows that the all-knowingness of their deity wasn’t shared much.

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  4. ”Yah, well no fine”, as they say down here. I think the real problem is all those homeostasis who want to get married and have their wedding cakes and eat it and’ wot have you?
    Before long the USA will be over-run with homeostasis and then our God-given morals will be down the crapper!
    I shall complain to my congressman …. or woman. If the KJV was good enough for Jesus it should be good enough for those damn homeostasis …. es .

    Yours in Stars n’ Stripes

    Red Blooded American.

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      1. Too terrible how those damned homeostasis are undermining the very fabric of American society.
        I’m sorry, but as fair and open-minded and tolerant as I am , and as God is my witless y’all knows I am, if I discovered a homeostasis living next to me I’d have to move.
        Couldn’t have a homeostasis near my kids!
        What next? A Catholic running for president? Or worse …. a woman!

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        1. I’m having trouble deciding if this is Doug, or Jeff. Lol. Maybe need to freshen up your cornflakes just a little. Hehe

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          1. Well, I can’t suggest things about my own country for fear of being labeled racist!

            Therefore, in the meantime I’ll take pot shots at the Ye Haws!

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  5. Very interesting! I think this desire for homeostasis is a symptom of something even more fundamental–our fear at the unknown, of which the greatest is the fear of death. This is the fertiliser that feeds directly into the “psychoagricultural” behemoths that (Abrahamic) religions are. It’s hardwired into us. Being fearful, we revert to our childlike states, or, perhaps more accurately, we never graduate from them, seeking for and elevating individuals and structures to be our “parents”, so that we can sleep well at night, free from existential terrors. The sooner we grow up as a species, the better, and I think the evidence-based approach and secular humanism are the best ways forward we have. Until then, we’ll all merely be living in various iterations of a phobocracy.

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      1. I think it should get a lot more airtime than it does. Everywhere you look, that’s where we are. “We’re the religion of love!” No, you’re afraid of your own obsolescence, so you try to influence legislation by lobbying to keep others as miserable and limited as you feel. “We’re the religion of peace!” No, you’re so afraid of human nature that you routinely repress half your demographic to the level of chattel, you fight for the right to do so, and you’re incensed when you find you can’t do the same elsewhere.

        It seems that everything we do is overcompensation for fear of something.

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  6. For me it’s not what I say or believe that matters in the least, it’s what I do, period. If all the poison spread by religious lies was removed from this world, no longer available even to the most depraved mind and only humanism remained the world would change for the better overnight. Imagine the only available choices of interaction to be humane ones.

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  8. I don’t know, Jim. I dislike the word morality with passion. I don’t care who it belongs to, or who is using it. It still sounds like right or wrong, good or bad, good or evil to me.
    I like to call it conscious choice. I don’t act the same way in similar situations all the time. Some choices have to be made instantly, I know, so it is hard to make a totally conscious choice, but a lot of thinking can be done in an instant. And given a tenth of a second a lot of things can be considered, things that allow one to differences in situations that appear similar.
    Morality is without thought, my way or the highway. Conscious choice is if this then that providing this other is true of false. I’ll take that over any kind of morality, every day of the week.

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    1. I’ll put in my two-bits’ worth here, rawgod. Personally, I, well, “need” to have a moral template from which to measure my performance to myself, and myself only, not as compared to anyone else’s or some mythical god’s immorality. To me living life is much like building a house. You begin with a dream, then purchase property (that would be having a body) then you proceed with the all-important blueprint and that is my moral template upon which the house will be built. The trick is to realize the blueprint is mine alone, belongs to me, and is in no way applicable to anyone else. In fact, there’s a *TM* stamp on it. Religious morality is the opposite. It builds nothing but insists that everyone has to buy their blueprint, or template then pretend forever that they built a house when all that was accomplished was create mega chaos (you can call it confusion, I know you see chaos as a posistive.)

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  11. Jim,
    No kidding sir. I buy generic/store brand tissues but still mark them as Kleenex on my shopping lists. Some folks my age, older than dirt and twice as dusty, still call photocopies Xerox. Well, I have called mine Canon for a few years as I have a Canon printer/copier/scanner.

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  12. And that’s why it was such a brilliant idea from prophet Mohammad to explicitly describe his religion as the absolute last word from God that would never get any future amendments of any kind. He was the first to say he was the last, and and it worked pretty well by taking their immunity against listening to others and learning form them to a whole new level (even when compared to other believers).

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    2. There is a similar admonition/warning in the Christian New Testament, that anyone who added anything to the existing text would be damned. So fundies rely on that to claim, like Mohammed, that the Bible is the complete revelation of God’s will for man.

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      1. And justifies the incessant hand waving of facts and dismissal of any other individual spirituality as quackery. Why learn from others when the group has all the answers?

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  13. Pingback: Being First—More Powerful than Right – Apetivist

  14. This is a good one! It’s like water law in Colorado: first in time, first in right. I immediately thought Kleenex. I never call facial tissue anything else (until this very sentence).

    Love the view. Almost as good as mine.😉

    The JWs came by today, which was not appreciated in the least. Where do they get off on pushing this nonsense, like drug dealers in dorky clothes and cheap cars? They’re just afraid to live life on their own terms. Happy to have the patriarchal nation tell them what to do all the time. Sad!

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    1. You can tell a Jehovah’s Witness, but you can’t tell em much! Water rights and religion would be a great post topic. Warning! This idea may be stolen in the near future… © ™️

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