RICK WAS DETERMINED TO continue the day’s marathon and complete his task of three topics per day.

“After a short break, I’m now back. As boring as I am naturally, I decided not to bore you additionally with the history of humanity and religion. You’ll get a dose of that otherwise, so I won’t repeat it. I will let you know, however, what I’ve seen and learned.”

“We are in our year 2075. A frantic, grasping world that appears orderly on the surface is as shit-face screwed-up as it can possibly be.”

“In this late stage of our species’ existence, we are monstrously diverse on the topic of God. And given the Great Debacle and recent tech advancements, far fewer humans or hybrids have any belief construct around God whatsoever. If there’s a prevailing one any more beyond the minority of zealots, it’s a recognition that God does not possibly exist given the horrific death and destruction of thirty-eight years ago.”

“I was born at the turn of this century, and as I grew up Catholic in my earliest years, I was skeptical. Loving science the way I did, I never reconciled the concept of a superior being to the biology I knew so well. Most of my friends felt the same.”

“When the Debacle occurred, few pondered God’s intentions after the fact. They were living in their post-traumatic stress worlds, shocked and drugged with the stench and taste of death still on their tongues. We were all fatalistic, commiserating at the loss of loved ones, the loss of all we knew, and compressed by the emotional weight of such a terrible and unimagined waste of life.”

“If there was any prevailing view on religion, it was visceral anger at the topic. As I indicate elsewhere, people defaulted to blaming God, not themselves, for not coming to our rescue. This blame has changed little among most humans since that time.”

“Certain religious groups worked their way through it, however. Regrettably, many of them have pursued the dogma that the Debacle was God’s wrath, cleansing the Earth of the sinful or giving humanity a spanking to let us start over again. Somewhat like a second Noah’s Ark.”

“Still others believed that they were the sinful ones. Those who died, at least a few entitled and worthy ones, were supposedly swept up in invisible raptures seconds before their horrific deaths. They believe those who died are now living their lives in heaven while we who remain must toil each day toward an even uglier and deservedly painful demise followed by everlasting torture and hellfire. They preach you can only avoid this fate if you believe as they do. God, how many times must we tread down this ancient moronic path?”

“Despite our science, despite having controlled the mechanics of life, despite the fact that we’ve created life that is synthetic and human-made, many still believe in God. They argue and fight incessantly about who are the most righteous owners of the most righteous doctrine, even occasionally throwing nukes and biologics at each other when they disagree. Very entitled behavior? Yes. Very human? Indeed.”

“And considering the illogic of it all, I am still one of those who believes in God in a very minimalistic sense. Quite the opposite of classical paternalistic beliefs.”

“My revelation, so to speak, occurred after the Debacle. I’d realized that no part of my life was spent on the spiritual; that my mental constructs were only practical and pragmatic, like any good engineer.”

“Then this idea of ‘belief constructs’ hit me like a dozen bricks. I possessed no belief constructs on the topic of God because I never worked toward developing any.”

“Sure, I held beliefs around lasers and light and related technologies. Those constructs were created from intensive studying and practical realization in laboratories and the field. One does not know a thing simply by assuming one does. As in understanding science, one must work to understand God if one is to properly evaluate a belief in God.”

“Although I had reviewed most of the world’s religions at a peripheral level, I found what I’d term ‘God’ in quietude, in meditation. I now align to no particular religion, but I have some thoughts. As the Bible and Upanishads infer and state directly, God simply is. I can’t explain that easily but wish it was because someone convinced me it must be that way.”

“My belief is far different than most. Of those who still believe, many hold some allegiance to the ancient religions of humanity’s past – Christianity, Buddhism, Hindu, Islam, Judaism. And no digs against any of these, as I know little about them. They appear to be effective for their purposes – the teaching of morals and proper behavior, congregation and grouping together, differentiating themselves from others. Most of them contain mystical or magical beliefs based in lore or combinations of oral and written histories through the ages.”

“However, I have a hard time believing their ancient stories. They seem to me to be written by men, but who am I to question their belief constructs, no matter how ancient?”

“When I say my beliefs are different, I assign no specific divinity to God. I believe God is a creator, though I’m not certain God is an all-seeing, all-caring overseer. It’s quite possible we bastardized and layered far too much onto the essence of God, which I would sum up in the word ‘creation’ if nothing else.”

“We animate God as if God is made in our image, so we assign human characteristics to this entity. Hopeful and powerful human characteristics, like omniscience and all-knowing.”

“But to think an “all-seeing, all-knowing” God allowed over half of the population to perish in five days? I have real problems with that as do many others. Perhaps that’s similar to what people were thinking during the Middle Ages plagues. Similarly, I have issues with any view that God makes divine interventions into our affairs per my following rationale.”

“We have free will. That’s enough. That’s the gift from God, in my opinion. To expect God to rescue us from ourselves after giving us that gift is illogical and even antithetical to the gift itself.”

“Please review the cascade of horrors that humans have inflicted upon each other, many times in the name of their God constructs. It’s our human passion or poison. It’s disgusting and cowardly, always attempting to absolve humans of any responsibility for their actions.”

“It is so easy to claim death, destruction, and vicious domination on behalf of God, rather than blame themselves. That is the ultimate in cowardice. If you do a horrific thing to another because your writings say you are entitled to do so, at least take full responsibility for it and stop pinning your evil deeds on a supreme being.”

“But good can arise from human religions, and the positives can sometimes outweigh the negatives. Few religions actively engender violence against others like nonbelievers. The problem is not the religion itself – that’s just words. The problem is how a religious leader or group interprets those words, the underlying intent, and to what degree they use the religion to attain controlling and entitled ends.”

“Backing up, I spoke earlier on humanity’s lack of a sense of self, both individually and as a species. In having so little faith in ourselves, humans searched elsewhere for divine guidance. Throughout our history, shysters, powermongers, and evildoers have often used religion to capture and control the minds of the weak and non-discerning. These shysters used their religious status to engender fear, entitlement, and hatred against others while almost always enriching themselves with power, possessions, and pleasures.”

“Nothing brings a group of humans together in a tighter bond than unquestioning hatred for others. This is an other-hate focus against a different ethnic or religious group, a group of transhuman hybrids, for example, or even those who’ve gone off into different realms of consciousness through their data connections.”

“Irrespective of the means of ethnic, sexual orientation, genetic modification, machine integration, or any other derivation of what we consider human or hybrid these days, so many of the religious leaders around the world use their ancient texts and beliefs to subjugate or annihilate these new forms of humanity. They claim the varint classes are bastardizations of God’s intent for humanity and proof that the devil or other form of evil is in control. Some even implicate marauding aliens who have yet to show their faces nearly four decades after the obelisk.”

“In these times of inconceivable human turmoil, the old methods of human control remain tried, true, and very effective. Many humans today are blindly manipulated by the self-anointed ones who claim to be the experts at interpreting the ancient texts and their entitled lore.”

“Much doubt exists as to the intent of those people in control of religious dogma. Perhaps that was always the case, but it is only amplified now. Some believe that this new breed of religious leaders are connected to and controlled by their own AI complexes, even though most indicate no outward signs of such connectivity.”

“New forms of religion have been created from today’s advanced tech. Ancient text writings are coupled with the math, logic, and universal knowledge found in AI systems to create a compelling, irresistible rationale for joining their religious team. It’s as if the “all-knowing God” has devolved into an all-knowing religious icon whose prophesies and visions come true only because of the vast predictive capacity inherent in such extensive and powerful AI systems at their disposal.”

“On the other hand, I can’t claim that God is not a mathematical construct or something beyond our comprehension, woven into the math of the universe. Not surprisingly, some continue to postulate that we on Earth are the remaining survivors in a game being played by interdimensional beings. I can’t go any farther with you on that topic because it is so far beyond my own mental constructs.”

“When I consume the news feeds, what continues to slap me in the face, hourly at times, is that humans are incapable of distinguishing the unadulterated, entitled, and volatile slurry often included within such ancient texts from the valuable gems of wisdom and insight they contain. The innately lazy human mind is rarely one that wants to make an effort to be discerning.”

“Lack of discernment is our true species weakness. We are swayed and convinced too easily.”

“For example, one might read a book with a handful of inspirational writings and deduce that all other writings within it must be as valid. We humans carry the weakness of doing this type of conflation across the board, such as with political leaders. We are unable to distinguish good promises from evil intent, though they are often coupled together in the same persona.”

“But back to religious manipulation of humans for evil purposes. This activity, profusely abused through the millennia, will continue during these waning days of our species.”

“Humans love to coalesce around victimization narratives, much like iron filings to a magnet. They, their surrogates, or representatives are victims of something or someone. Often this is inferred to be another religion, an ethnic group, hybrid humans like chippers and grippers, genetic research, scientists, politicians, social systems, birth order, jobs, or physical location.”

“Victimization pervades every dimension of their lives, sewn like an arsenic thread into the entitlement garments constructed from their effusive ‘I’ve been wronged’ dogma. Given this noxious doctrine of perceived victimization, controlling persons only need to extract a relevant clause or two from their ancient writings that allow them to justify and rationalize their inhuman but oh-so-human, detestable wrath against individuals or groups they love to demonize.”

“Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the absolutism now characterizing humanity. Instead of becoming more flexible, open, inviting, and considerate, our race has regressed. I’ll cover this in more detail as I describe our expanding, malicious society built on hyper-aware, hyper-controlling technologies. But that’s for later, and I can’t lose track of the absolutists concept.”

“As a Stoic, I am pragmatic. We got ourselves into our messes by self-absorbing on our own fears and entitlements. We have nobody else to blame. Not God. Not alien beings yet to arrive. Not some fatal destiny written in a manic revelation or visionary dream of an ancient human.”

“I repeat this again since it relates to the God topic. I am vexed by the absolutists who work towards the day when human consciousness is dissolved. ‘Dissolutionists’ may be a better term for them. They are encumbered by their religious dogma, wrapped around the prophesies of a glorious end, their Armageddons, in which they are elevated to a very entitled location for eternity. Unable to separate themselves from these belief systems, they work actively to advance the day of that final Armageddon, as if the Great Debacle was not enough for them.”

“Sadly, those anarchy-minded dissolutionists who were not killed in the Debacle are working to effectuate this end as quickly as possible. In doing so, they add their weight to the increasing burden of human desecration.”

“They do this because they believe they should. As I see it, they despise their conscious selves so much, and they have such an overinflated view of their eminence in the eyes of God, that they will pursue any means to bring humanity to an end. They are compelled by their belief constructs. Their fears coil and constrict like vipers around them.”

“If you contemplate our devil construct, these dissolutionists are paving the path a devil would lay out for them as they advance the utter annihilation of God’s creations. Geez, we’ve done that in a huge way already with our abuse of Earth and the life that existed before we scoured and sanitized the land. If you are the devil, you only need to sit back and watch while the dissolutionists fulfill your twisted plan to fully destroy humanity – all because their belief constructs inform them to do so.”

“But I believe not in a devil. That should be obvious. Belief in such a thing is just another extension of our victim behaviors. We use the concept to assuage our responsibility for the evil we inflict upon each other and everything within our domains. Just another convenient excuse for our detestable behaviors.”

“Can you conceive of a powerful AI complex imbued with the Book of Revelation as its guide? One programmed to surreptitiously manipulate our activities and actions so that an Armageddon itself is effectuated? As I survey the landscape of humanity in its final hours, one can imagine an AI is ardently assisting these dissolutionists to coerce the species toward its final, terrible conclusion.”

“My apologies for being so negative. Despite my Stoic ways, I can’t help but be wholly disgusted at how poorly we continue to treat each other. You might think if the ‘cleansers’ are correct, those who believe God used the Debacle to cleanse the planet, we might have improved our ethical systems four decades hence. Not so fast, however, as dogmatic belief systems have, to our detriment, exploded in the years since the event.”

“This may have occurred anyway, even without a Debacle. I suppose it was getting there before the event due to the poisons that profiteering social media amplified.”

“Sadly, we learned nothing from those four billion deaths. Nothing useful. We became more entrenched in our religious belief systems. More fearful and cowering, looking for something divine to hold onto, to hope that it will lift us away from the horrors on Earth that we enabled and exacerbated.”

“We are cowards, humans. We take credit for the divine, this amazing world which has been gifted to us, and take for granted the consciousness that allows us to perceive these wonders.”

“At the same time, we blame others for our self-inflicted condition. We fail to look in our own mirrors, our individual mirrors, and take responsibility. We regurgitate that it must be God’s will, or God’s master plan, absolving ourselves of guilt and taking comfort in our presumed innocence while rationalizing away our lack of positive actions to effect change.”

“I’m repeating here for emphasis. We have everything in our possession to create heaven on Earth. Everything. Aging cessation and reversal. Vital organ regeneration. Most medical mysteries resolved. Technologies to advance our race and allow it to be fruitful and multiply, in all its varint forms. All this capability and promise for our species was within our grasp to use, yet we abused each other instead.”

“Our status is now as a gangrenous callous that festers on an insignificant little toe of the universe, perhaps one of many millions of such toes. We human callouses will soon be sloughed off in the raging, torrential vortex of entropy.”

“We failed to recognize that our conscious minds were the only weapons we possessed to forestall or defeat the constant gravity of entropy. But it’s too late now, too late for our race.”

“I’m closing for this session, but I’ll leave you with my advice, take or leave it. Humans are widely dispersed across the planet. It took many centuries for us to populate and grow in the various regions. Belief systems evolved disparately, sometimes crossing over and hybridizing. Since these systems often formed the basis for a human’s sense of self, any slight against such systems became a slight against the individual or its group.”

“Religious leaders have long realized and bastardized the benefits of religious station and power. Many wars occurred through the centuries, and many people used religions as their excuse to do horrific things to each other. These detestable behaviors not only continue to exist, they are now hyper-enabled with new, democratized technologies of annihilation.”

“For you to avoid humanity’s mistakes, I can only think of one path that might be effective. If your society is comprised of individual, separate units of life as ours, you must work to elevate your population to an equal level of understanding. I call this self-actualization, to quote an old Earth psychologist. But it’s more than what the phrase means in psychology.”

“Self-actualizing is a personal growth dynamic that should never stop. In our case, humans might have been raised, every one of them, with equal opportunity to learn. Most particularly, we should have developed and held high a common, underlying set of ethics for the beneficial treatment of each other.”

“Educate your own species in this. I suggest you suspend or sublimate classic training of sciences or other fields until you have excelled at this one, for it is the only one that matters for species longevity.”

“Do you want to fail like us? Who gives a rip that you can educate students to explore the exoplanets if your society self-destructs before you ever leave your solar system?”

“You must create a simple ethic for longevity. That ethic should be taught and retaught, irrespective of religious beliefs or other dogmatic systems. You need to do it now, as the hands of the clock are death to the procrastinator stumbling at the upward spike of the infinity curve."