A Brief History of Innovation vs. Religion
Hi! Happy Sunday!
You might think it a bit odd that Irreni World Scale is calling for innovation not revolution, engineering vs. ideology.
But in fact it is not odd at all. It is natural, literally. What is unnatural is what you get in the news.
The news has been feeding everyone nonsense for decades. What is really going on is that journalist know nothing about science and treat everything as politics.
There is a false narrative that the journalists have been promulgating for years. That narrative goes something like the decline of morality in western cultures is due to the liberal western values. The Muslims certainly believe this. The religious right certainly believe this. The media generates billions of dollars in ad revenue propping up this emotional, spleen venting fabrication.
Have you ever stopped and asked yourself if scientists have ever looked into claims of liberalism destroying the family? Have you ever asked yourself if the sexual revolution has ever been shown to undermine morality?
What really killed religion? What really happened to the family?
This is going to be a brief history so here you go.
The Printing Press
Gutenberg signed religion's death certificate when he invented the printing press. It was only a matter of time mixed with technological advancement before religion would be exposed and made irrelevant. Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1450's and within 50 years Martin Luther was banging on the Vatican's doors ushering the demise of Catholicism. Gutenberg invents the printing press and Martin Luther brings down Catholicism. This is because Gutenberg ironically decided the Bible was going to be his first book of mass production. Well met Gutenberg!
Religion has never been the source of morality. What religion is is control. Religion has been a power based founded upon a tyranny of ignorance. Educate the people and then goodbye religion.
It is for this reason that the appropriate position for strident anti-theists such as myself is not to oppose religion, but rather to promote education and technology
The Renaissance
We're going to skip this era and many other eras of history so we can get right to what matters most: history in America beginning in the 20th century.
The 20th Century
Prior to the 20th Century the average person never travelled a radius of more than 30 miles from their birth place. People grew their own food and the American Census of 1900 indicated that 90% of Americans were directly involved in growing their own food.
Then comes along the advent of the automobile, the internal combustion engine and the airplane after 1900. As the 20th century progresses then along comes the telephone, indoor plumbing and electricity.
All of this new technology is mass produced and made available to the common American and as a result revolutionizes society. Technology turned society on its head.
I took a sociology class in college where we read studies of what happened to society after WWII. I remember reading one particular paper that really stood out for me. The study was about all the new technology since 1900 and the effects it was having on Americans.
It turns out that after WWII there was an ideal condition made readily available: GI's were returning from abroad with foreign wives. The thesis of the study was to understand the impact of technology on new arrivals. How long would it take for these women to adjust to American culture? How much would they assimilate? Would they assimilate the technology?
What the study found is that the 1950s saw the birth of the suburbs in America. The advent of indoor plumbing, electricity and food transportation made suburbs possible. People no longer needed an acre of land to grown their own food and so families could be more densely populated, but not as much as in the city.
The study found that religion was not the only institutionalized form of ignorance tyranny. The male of the household ruled with ignorance. The ignorance part is the key to all this. Turns out that husbands had been controlling women down through the ages by telling them lies. Think of cults where people are brainwashed. A husband could convince his wife that say beating her was the norm.
The suburb undermined that tyranny of ignorance however. Homes being closer together meant women could lean over the fence and talk more to compare notes. Women learned that their husbands were lying. Factor into that education the telephone then you get even more notes. Pile on a television where the husband is not, in fact, beating his wife and well you get the picture.
The study concluded that women became fully westernised after a period of seven years and were not as controllable due to ignorance. The conclusion was that technology, not ideology, lifted women out of the tyranny of the home by improving communication.
How about another study after WWII. There is another study we read concerning the history of no-fault divorce. How did no-fault divorce come to be in every state? Ever ask yourself that?
One study concluded that in fact the automobile was instrumental in bring no-fault divorce about. The advent of the automobile meant that husband could so easily abandon his wife and be anywhere in the country within two days. Get a fresh start. And husbands did. They abandoned their wives and started families in other states. Running out on your marriage has never been a felony crime where one state will extradite you back to another. Imagine you are a judge in a state where a women is seeking divorce from a run away husband in another state who refuses to appear in court? What choice does the judge have but to declare a divorce with no-fault when the other party is not around?
I'm oversimplifying the science here because I'm telling just a brief history. Technological innovation at the start of the 20th century rapidly revolutionized society by exposing aspects of human nature never before exposed. Religion has no answer for new technological morals required other than to lay blame for failures. Religion cannot provide answers to moral dilemmas not possible 2000 years ago.
I'll close not with another study but with an anecdote which I think is illustrative that technology and not ideology has changed morality.
My brother is a Jehovah Witness. I've necessarily brushed up against some of the quirks of that religion because of exposure. One of the aspects I found interesting was that of the morality of watching movies.
Turns out the Jehovah Witnesses at that time were not allowed to watch 'R' rated movies per church doctrine. What I find dumbfounding is why the Jehovah Witnesses would leave their moral code to a non-religious organization in Hollywood?
Why? Well, it turns out one cannot rate movies without watching them. Oops. Any Jehovah Witness who watches all the movies so as to rate them then is committing sin. Of course the obvious answer is to either a.) don't watch movies at all or b.) only watch movies made by the religious for religious. Turns out that making movies was impractical and going cold turkey unreasonable because that would cut Jehovah Witnesses off from society at large.
The point of all this history is that technology exposes human nature to new opportunities and new moral situations every single day. This innovation is antithetical to all religions because religions are rooted in dogma and tradition. Dogma and tradition have no answer to new moral landscapes brought about by technology.
It is for this reason you will fine no definitive religious moral about what movies to watch.
Every day religion becomes more irrelevant as technology creates new and exciting opportunities for people that in turn create new moral quandaries. And yet every day the news feeds us the same old BS of ideology, left vs. right. The real gap in morality these days is not that people have abandoned religious morals but that technology exposes new morals by the thousands and religion cannot provide. And this is the brief history of innovation vs. religion.
Where innovation has challenged us with new moral needs then we can use innovation to meet those needs. That is the design of Irreni World Scale. Irreni World Scale is calling for thousands if not millions of social experiments to be run over a long period of time to close the gap of unmet moral needs created by technology and left unmet by religion.
Cheers!
Find your tribe!
Be sexy people!
The future is coming!
Innovate at a rapid pace!
Slow speed ahead!
Well come! and well met!
You might think it a bit odd that Irreni World Scale is calling for innovation not revolution, engineering vs. ideology.
But in fact it is not odd at all. It is natural, literally. What is unnatural is what you get in the news.
The news has been feeding everyone nonsense for decades. What is really going on is that journalist know nothing about science and treat everything as politics.
There is a false narrative that the journalists have been promulgating for years. That narrative goes something like the decline of morality in western cultures is due to the liberal western values. The Muslims certainly believe this. The religious right certainly believe this. The media generates billions of dollars in ad revenue propping up this emotional, spleen venting fabrication.
Have you ever stopped and asked yourself if scientists have ever looked into claims of liberalism destroying the family? Have you ever asked yourself if the sexual revolution has ever been shown to undermine morality?
What really killed religion? What really happened to the family?
This is going to be a brief history so here you go.
The Printing Press
Gutenberg signed religion's death certificate when he invented the printing press. It was only a matter of time mixed with technological advancement before religion would be exposed and made irrelevant. Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1450's and within 50 years Martin Luther was banging on the Vatican's doors ushering the demise of Catholicism. Gutenberg invents the printing press and Martin Luther brings down Catholicism. This is because Gutenberg ironically decided the Bible was going to be his first book of mass production. Well met Gutenberg!
Religion has never been the source of morality. What religion is is control. Religion has been a power based founded upon a tyranny of ignorance. Educate the people and then goodbye religion.
It is for this reason that the appropriate position for strident anti-theists such as myself is not to oppose religion, but rather to promote education and technology
The Renaissance
We're going to skip this era and many other eras of history so we can get right to what matters most: history in America beginning in the 20th century.
The 20th Century
Prior to the 20th Century the average person never travelled a radius of more than 30 miles from their birth place. People grew their own food and the American Census of 1900 indicated that 90% of Americans were directly involved in growing their own food.
Then comes along the advent of the automobile, the internal combustion engine and the airplane after 1900. As the 20th century progresses then along comes the telephone, indoor plumbing and electricity.
All of this new technology is mass produced and made available to the common American and as a result revolutionizes society. Technology turned society on its head.
I took a sociology class in college where we read studies of what happened to society after WWII. I remember reading one particular paper that really stood out for me. The study was about all the new technology since 1900 and the effects it was having on Americans.
It turns out that after WWII there was an ideal condition made readily available: GI's were returning from abroad with foreign wives. The thesis of the study was to understand the impact of technology on new arrivals. How long would it take for these women to adjust to American culture? How much would they assimilate? Would they assimilate the technology?
What the study found is that the 1950s saw the birth of the suburbs in America. The advent of indoor plumbing, electricity and food transportation made suburbs possible. People no longer needed an acre of land to grown their own food and so families could be more densely populated, but not as much as in the city.
The study found that religion was not the only institutionalized form of ignorance tyranny. The male of the household ruled with ignorance. The ignorance part is the key to all this. Turns out that husbands had been controlling women down through the ages by telling them lies. Think of cults where people are brainwashed. A husband could convince his wife that say beating her was the norm.
The suburb undermined that tyranny of ignorance however. Homes being closer together meant women could lean over the fence and talk more to compare notes. Women learned that their husbands were lying. Factor into that education the telephone then you get even more notes. Pile on a television where the husband is not, in fact, beating his wife and well you get the picture.
The study concluded that women became fully westernised after a period of seven years and were not as controllable due to ignorance. The conclusion was that technology, not ideology, lifted women out of the tyranny of the home by improving communication.
How about another study after WWII. There is another study we read concerning the history of no-fault divorce. How did no-fault divorce come to be in every state? Ever ask yourself that?
One study concluded that in fact the automobile was instrumental in bring no-fault divorce about. The advent of the automobile meant that husband could so easily abandon his wife and be anywhere in the country within two days. Get a fresh start. And husbands did. They abandoned their wives and started families in other states. Running out on your marriage has never been a felony crime where one state will extradite you back to another. Imagine you are a judge in a state where a women is seeking divorce from a run away husband in another state who refuses to appear in court? What choice does the judge have but to declare a divorce with no-fault when the other party is not around?
I'm oversimplifying the science here because I'm telling just a brief history. Technological innovation at the start of the 20th century rapidly revolutionized society by exposing aspects of human nature never before exposed. Religion has no answer for new technological morals required other than to lay blame for failures. Religion cannot provide answers to moral dilemmas not possible 2000 years ago.
I'll close not with another study but with an anecdote which I think is illustrative that technology and not ideology has changed morality.
My brother is a Jehovah Witness. I've necessarily brushed up against some of the quirks of that religion because of exposure. One of the aspects I found interesting was that of the morality of watching movies.
Turns out the Jehovah Witnesses at that time were not allowed to watch 'R' rated movies per church doctrine. What I find dumbfounding is why the Jehovah Witnesses would leave their moral code to a non-religious organization in Hollywood?
Why? Well, it turns out one cannot rate movies without watching them. Oops. Any Jehovah Witness who watches all the movies so as to rate them then is committing sin. Of course the obvious answer is to either a.) don't watch movies at all or b.) only watch movies made by the religious for religious. Turns out that making movies was impractical and going cold turkey unreasonable because that would cut Jehovah Witnesses off from society at large.
The point of all this history is that technology exposes human nature to new opportunities and new moral situations every single day. This innovation is antithetical to all religions because religions are rooted in dogma and tradition. Dogma and tradition have no answer to new moral landscapes brought about by technology.
It is for this reason you will fine no definitive religious moral about what movies to watch.
Every day religion becomes more irrelevant as technology creates new and exciting opportunities for people that in turn create new moral quandaries. And yet every day the news feeds us the same old BS of ideology, left vs. right. The real gap in morality these days is not that people have abandoned religious morals but that technology exposes new morals by the thousands and religion cannot provide. And this is the brief history of innovation vs. religion.
Where innovation has challenged us with new moral needs then we can use innovation to meet those needs. That is the design of Irreni World Scale. Irreni World Scale is calling for thousands if not millions of social experiments to be run over a long period of time to close the gap of unmet moral needs created by technology and left unmet by religion.
Cheers!
Find your tribe!
Be sexy people!
The future is coming!
Innovate at a rapid pace!
Slow speed ahead!
Well come! and well met!
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