Jesus: Architect of Rational Morality

Whether you believe Jesus was a prophet, messiah, or a myth he remains one of the most influential characters to date in the human race. As a brand Jesus has influenced every form of media. Jesus is one of the most obvious architects I could think of but I had difficulty actually figuring out what his primary characteristic was. Each religion has a fundamentally different view of Jesus and this made it difficult to evaluate, but after deep though I discovered that the trait that made Jesus, Jesus was his direct opposition to existing norms by means of supporting rational morality.

In Christian theology Jesus is the messiah who opposed what is called the old covenant or the 613 mitzvah (rules). In Islam, Jesus was a prophet who foresaw that the future messiah was not Jewish. In both these cases Jesus was a messenger who opposed current existing religious thought. His opposition to stagnation and non progressive thoughts, as a side effect, made Jesus a marketing genius. Unfortunately the very essence of what Jesus stood for is all but forgotten by every modern Jesus based religion. Jesus’s common sense approach to morality has been traded in by all modern religions for rule of text. During Jesus’s time being holy consisted of how you groomed yourself, what you ate, and even what you wore. Jesus justified the only true basic tenet of all morality, loving your neighbor, and this made him incredibly popular.

This very simple truth apparently was not enough because almost all the religions that were based on him engaged in bloody warfare at some point. Christianty vs Islam, Catholic vs Protestant; it would almost be comedic if it wasn’t horrifyingly sad. If Jesus was real, and was a prophet, when he said “forgive them for they know not what they do” he was surely talking about us in the future. He despised what we would consider Bible thumpers today, following rules for rule’s sake instead of being rational. Nothing was more evident of this when he stopped the stoning of the harlot by saying, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

All religious theology and miracles aside, the core concept of Jesus I agree with. We must oppose anything that is not rational and that hinders the progress of the human race. Following rules simply because we think they justify some divine entity does not benefit us. Human progress should come first and above any text that any human claims to be a divine rule book that we must follow.

The Fit Problem

The fit problem is a problem that all mainstream religions or any religion claiming to have a truth directly from God has. The problem is the fact that what people believe and want “God” to be does not fit in with their own texts and further does not fit in with time as a complete whole. The best example of this is modern day Christianity, the primary text of this religious philosophy is made of two parts. The first is the old testament which is actually the holy book of the Jews (Judaism) and the second part of the book came into being after the death of Jesus. The lack of fit is that the first part of the book outlines a certain a set a rules and the second part of the book literally overturns some of them. Despite that this is glaringly true, the adherents of the belief system still espouse that God is unchanging, morality is not subjective, and that truth is absolute. How could this possibly be true when God could overturn on a whim what was true for one set of people.

It’s not the believer’s fault of course, most are raised and taught to believe these things and it becomes a fundamental part of their psychology.

Further, in the case of Christian based religions there is the concept of Judgement, however, this judgement would have to be completely relative based on the time the person died within because, for instance, Jesus did not exist 3000 years ago.

It’s not the believer’s fault of course, most are raised and taught to believe these things and it becomes a fundamental part of their psychology. In the grand scheme of things even if they are completely wrong it is not a problem as long as the belief system causes utilitarianism, as Architects we are concerned with forward motion above all. There are many ways to Elolight and truth doesn’t necessarily have to be one of them, but the odds of getting there without truth are improbable. These religious belief systems often don’t cause utilitarianism, and if they do, it is usually temporary. Religions will usually force a morality stagnation and so instead of morality improving it either gets worse or stays the same. Without moral evolution, we would not be able to eat shell fish according to the old testament. Further, physical conflict can be created simply over philosophical ideas and this is the worst type of conflict to resolve ideas because it depletes resources that would ultimately be used for the idea that would arise as the victor.