This Thing Called God

By Ramon Nonato A

Back cover text

During a time span covering over four decades, the author fought back, as best as he could, the religious indoctrination of both the Catholic and the Protestant churches that haunted him from his early life on, as well as that of the so-called esoteric schools to finally, at the end of a long trek, stumble upon a different approach to understanding God that satisfied his inquisitive mind.

His long search included also a period of atheism but it was to no avail for he now openly admits that “the ghost in the machine” does exist, although he conceives it in an entirely different way.

To his great astonishment, the author wound up challenging the core philosophical concepts underlying Religion, which coerced him to offer suggestions that might promote transformational effects on society as a whole in the long run.

He also looks into the reasons that make human beings so prone to Religion and discloses why churches will continue to thrive, in spite of his new approach to understanding and relating to God.

An essay written to expose some surprising novel viewpoints with regard to God and Religion where open confrontation and denouncing have been resorted to only when deemed utterly necessary.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ramon Nonato A
• Release date: Nov 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386296287

Book preview

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to www.clker.com , and to Victoria, who, on 06/06/2013, shared on this site a picture named Radio waves, out of which I made an enlarged derivative to turn out the book cover.

Special thanks also to The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM) for granting me permission to use copious allusions to Jesus Christ from their video Zeitgeist, the Movie, as well as for offering me, free of charge, the Companion Source Guide, which is an extensive and thorough analysis of the aforementioned chapter, made by authoritative scholars.

Dedication

There are two outstanding comedians in the American scene today that excel in their performances for being extremely funny and thoughtful, a rare mixture indeed.

I am referring to George Carlin and Bill Maher whom I find really creative and imaginative.

It is to these two Maestros of Comedy that I dedicate this short essay, for their incisive unveiling of the inconsistencies and blunders of Religion and the exposure of the misconceptions about God which happen to coincide with my personal viewpoints on these matters.

Dear friends, there may still be a God to play a role in human life and the Universe but, unfortunately for many, I conceive Him differently, as revealed in the pages of this book.

I can’t wait to visit America again to see you performing live this time!

Also, and in no way in a second place, I would like to dedicate this work to a most remarkable gentleman, Professor Richard Dawkins, and to the myriads of scientists that work their way through Life, unbeknownst to the vast majority of people, teaching and living according to the principles of Science, the most widely accepted, respected, and time-tested way of taking hold of knowledge, rather than adhering to cave-age guidelines to interpret Reality, as revealed in the video The God delusion.  

Dear Sirs, may the God I am offering to the world in these pages illuminate even more your gifted minds, so that you can continue to unveil before the whole of Humanity the rationally provable evidence displayed before all of us by Science, in order to be scrutinized and challenged in accordance to the most stringent and demanding codes, to ultimately be rejected or accepted, with the deliberate intent of contributing to enlarge the wealth of knowledge the human race has at its command to confront the endless inquiries it encounters in Life.  

Epigraph

So now the Emperor walked under his high canopy in the midst of the procession, through the streets of his capital; and all the people standing by, and those at the windows, cried out, Oh! How beautiful are our Emperor’s new clothes! What a magnificent train there is to the mantle; and how gracefully the scarf hangs!

In short, no one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit for his office. Certainly, none of the Emperor’s various suits, had ever made so great an impression, as these invisible ones.

But the Emperor has nothing at all on! said a little child.

Listen to the voice of innocence! exclaimed his father; and what the child had said was whispered from one to another.

But he has nothing at all on! at last cried out all the people. The Emperor was vexed, for he knew that the people were right; but he thought the procession must go on now! And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold.

The Emperor’s new clothes by Hans Christian Andersen.

Foreword

Although I held in my mind for a long time the idea of writing a book expressing my views about God and Religion, I always ended up abandoning the project because, as I advanced into maturity, spent a lot of years not writing anything at all, devoting my time instead to my shop and to learning Music and Composition.

This led me to think of offering the late Dr. Wayne D. Dyer this task, hoping that he, being the great writer he was, could agree to undertake it.

But it was not his death that spurred me to write this work myself but the fact that I found, months before Dr. Dyer’s passing away, that I had reached a conception of God dramatically different from that held by him. What I mean by this is his obvious acceptance of the Divine Realm –as can easily be concluded from reading his books– a view that is diametrically opposed to the one I hold in this writing.

So, I had to take a deep breath and organize my ideas in order to write the book myself. My fears had to do with the enormous amount of time elapsed since I graduated high school in 1970 to these days, time during which I never wrote anything of importance, let alone as important or as serious as a book about religious matters.

Also, not being a college graduate, put me away from having the necessary know-how to build a book, such as the organization of the ideas into chapters and subchapters, page formatting, headings, page numbers, etc., and the rest of procedures required to reach the sought-after final outcome. Consequently, I undertook the whole project myself with apparently scarce technical preparation, counting on the guidelines I expected to get from knowledgeable friends and other sources such as the internet.

I recall that Dr. Dyer used to praise highly Dr. Abraham Maslow for contributing a new awareness in him with his theories. Dr. Dyer, though, as he expressed in his autobiography I can see clearly now, found a point where he differed from Dr. Maslow and, with all the respect his mentor deserved, acknowledged their differing point of view and put forth his own.

This is exactly my approach with regard to my differing point of view from Dr. Dyer’s: Acknowledgement and respect. And this is also the general approach I undertook when I decided to write this essay.

If I had written this book in my 30’s or 40’s, I would have turned out a masterpiece full of hatred, rage, and fierce criticism of Religion and the Church, because that way of being was the hallmark of my life at that time. Fortunately, I had already launched, by the time I was 17, a veritable crusade to find out why I behaved the way I did and ultimately who I was. In order to attain this goal, I decided all on my own to find out via psychotherapy what was wrong with me. I did not choose a psychiatrist because I already knew that, unlike psychologists, they make use of prescription drugs instead of talks in their treatments and, expectedly, I feared the collateral damage I could be exposing myself to as a result of the prolonged use of those medications. Collectively, I could make it to having less than 40 sessions with diverse psychologists in the time span of about 20 years or so because I could not afford the cost of the sessions.

I compensated this lack of continuity by talking to my friends about my personal problems, which included a marked shyness and a lack of self confidence. But my friends’ advices were not helpful because they knew as little as I did about these matters. Also, I turned to reading self-help books during this stage in my life, in my desperate desire for grabbing more knowledge, no matter how tiny, regarding the essential fundamentals pertaining to the human psyche.

Finally, there appeared a person in my life, a man 10 years my elder who had recently moved to my country and became, unexpectedly, my permanent counselor whom I resorted to on a daily basis, if necessary, to receive his guidance. No wonder our relationship has endured some 45 years to this date, although today we never talk about my personal past hard times, unless it is absolutely necessary to make a point. When an unusual recalling of my past ever takes place, we always end our conversation remembering how things used to be for me during that bleak time in my life. The peak achievement of our long friendship can be summarized in his having me understand and definitively accept that I am an intelligent man, capable of reaching any goal that I make up my mind to achieve in Life. Additionally, it could be safely said that, as a consequence of his openness to listen to my grief, I decided, one beautiful and marvelous day when I was 23, never to blow my brains out with a bullet.  

Because of this experience, I ended up concluding over the years that people commit suicide simply because they do not have a friend, just one, a real ally whose only important trait is to listen to one’s hurting heart and never abandon us, ever! I have watched in dismay, how Hollywood stars put an end to their lives at the peak of their careers, which makes me recall my plight during my youth and how my misery was turned around with the help of a single friend who never let me down, mocked at my troubles, or turned his back on me. And I can today say it proudly: All of this took place without resorting to using prescription drugs at all; it occurred by just plain talking and talking, for decades on end, about the issues that were marring my life at that time, with the intention of finding solutions to my personal problems.  

As I said before, I used to read during this whole period of time, self-help books as a means of reinforcing the few counseling sessions I could afford, which included authors such as Dr. Erich Fromm, one of Freud’s disciples, a psychologist who pioneered the application of Psychoanalysis to the masses; one book, What do you say after you say ‘Hello’ by Dr.  Erick Berne, founder of Transactional Analysis, then a new approach to solving psychological problems which became very popular in the 70’s and 80’s and finally, several more books by different authors to help me to understand the basics of this new method. Dr. Berne’s book turned my life around, putting me to work hard at finding out what I had decided to be in my life, a decision which I took, according to his teachings, anywhere between my 4th and 6th year of age. I got mad at the author for what appeared to me to be a cavalier position of his as that goal, I knew, was extremely hard to attain because the set of ideas that make up such decision –he calls it the Script– lays hidden underneath tons and tons of ideas, prejudices, misconceptions, misinformation, and other unreachable data in my subconscious mind. How could he ever suggest that we reach where professional psychologists could not reach even using the best methods at hand? I was really mad at him but, incredibly enough, in a matter of a few years I managed, by doing lots of thinking and analyzing, to reach into my mind and bring out into the open an incredible trophy namely the script Dr. Berne said was at the base of all my decisions in Life! Next, I tried my discovery for some time until I realized that I had got hold of the single item that indeed determined the way I behaved. Then came, naturally, the time to replace this wrong notion with a more realistic approach to Life. Needless to say, I am in eternal gratitude to Dr. Berne for posing that kind of challenge to us readers.

Then, in my mid-forties, I came across You’ll see it when you believe it, a book by Dr. Dyer that would effect a permanent change in my life for the good. After reading the last chapter, Forgiveness, my life was turned around and I entered a new stage of awareness leading to increased maturity. I had never been exposed before to a teaching that demanded from me to simply forgive in order to attain peace of mind. Ultimately, I learned from Dr. Dyer’s advise to forgive, not so much the people I pointed out as the culprits of my personal problems –my whole family and especially my mother— but myself. Yeah, I had to forgive myself for never graduating from college, for never completing my musical studies, for never getting married or owning a home, and a host of other self-accusations I permanently directed at myself, turning my life into a nightmare. This process of self-accusation with its host of negative results on my personality was not new at all: It had been raging since I was a young boy, grew bigger and bigger and got worse as time went by, and became intolerable in adulthood.

I think it was Dr. Erich Fromm who stated somewhere in his books that education in western society consists in having an external authority such as our parents, teachers, mentors, or religious leaders judge our conduct and compel us to behave according to some pre-established social rules intended to punish or reward us, depending on our failure or success in complying with them. Also, he stated, this process never ends until this judge is internalized and we require no more of its physical presence to control us. Put differently, when we already have accomplished internalizing this judge, we make use of it to, fundamentally, punish ourselves by pointing out our wrong deeds, actions, failures, and misbehaviors, remarking and making stronger the inner judge in the process. To make matters even worse, while we proceed to concentrate only on our wrong behavior as indicated above, we simultaneously disqualify the positive side all of us have, inflicting this way a double harm to ourselves. Getting rid of this monstrous judge forever is the ultimate reward for learning how to forgive ourselves in the first place, to afterwards apply the same treatment to our trip companions in this magic and utterly enjoyable voyage called Life.

We are always advised to start with ourselves when it comes to trying to attain any changes in our behavior or personality. That is exactly what I did and, in due time, I began to experience the transformation that comes as a reward for not blaming myself, others, or whatever circumstances that show up in the world. The end result is simply that we attain a cleansed mind with no remorse or reproaches for our past deeds or omissions; in other words, a mind freed from the oppression of guilt. My life changed dramatically and I entered a new stage where I no longer hold grudges or am otherwise enraged at anything or anybody at all. And this includes the high representatives of the so-called Four Powers namely the Church, the Politicians, the Military, and the holders of the Economic Power, in other words, the Rich. Holding the highest rank of power has turned a great deal of these people into cocky and sick individuals, to the extreme of making them genuinely untouchable. But it is my view today that these people rightfully attained their positions based on whatever merit or lack of merit they had, on whatever accord they agreed upon with whoever they did, and on whatever rules they abided by. This does not mean, by any means, that I endorse each and every decision they make for those decisions at times happen to be evidently harmful to whole populations.

So, to my great benefit and gain, I stopped fighting these people altogether and a calm slowly streamed into my life over the years. To make matters even better, I read later in the 1990’s, The seven habits of the highly effective people by Steve Covey where he discusses the futility of trying to change or attempting to have a bearing on or control over that which lies beyond our circle of influence. This is why I can today deal with the above mentioned leaders and not get red in the face out of rage or frustration because of their apparently wrong behavior even though at times I do say strong words about them in my book, especially about religious leaders. I keep no resentment for them as I used to before I adopted this new point of view. And, surely enough, this attitude has changed my life for the better.

I have witnessed untold times people literally put on a show, displaying uncontrollable rage and making their hearts race wildly, as a result of learning about certain unacceptable misbehaviors by the people that belong to the clan of power mentioned above. Thanks God I am out of this club, for the sake of my health! No matter what they do or fail to do, it will not enrage me as it used to. I have become, because of this attitude that I enforce at every turn, mentally safe and healthy. This is not to say that I do not get upset from time to time but when it happens, it does not immobilize me: It lasts just a few minutes; it does not linger or prosper in my mind anymore.

All of the experiences I went through in my youth have played a role in making me a more relaxed and understanding individual, to the point of allowing me to write a book on such a thorny and volatile subject as Religion, without my losing the appropriate perspective required to deal with this issue that is crucial to everyone, as all of the decisions we make in Life are rooted fundamentally on our beliefs, most of which are inextricably tied to Religion. Thus, let us see how my personal search for happiness and fulfillment intertwine with my criticism of Religion and the new definition of God I am exposing to the world at large through the pages of this book.

Introduction

This is a book about God and Religion based on the idea that Man created God in his own image as opposed to the original God created man in his own image, a ground-breaking idea I came up with in my late teens but which I could enunciate clearly only in 1974, by the time I was 23. Although this is exactly the way I put it, switching the position of the words God and man in the original sentence just to give rise to a shock in the listener, what I really meant to say was Man conceived God in his own image because man has no power whatsoever to create God who can, beyond any doubt, create anything, including man himself. But this unimportant mistake helped me to hold a strong and inflexible stand against Religion and all sorts of believers in religious and pseudo-religious nonsense until I reached, as recently as 2013, a different notion about God, in a rational and unconventional way, detached in absolute terms from any religious preconceptions.

Over 40 years have gone by since the day I first uttered my novel idea and I have not done much to make it known because the very few times I tried, letting my peers and friends know about it, I found their open rejection and, at times, their condemnation. The message implicit in their usually loud and violent reaction was that the foundation of their world was being shattered at its base. This usually impaired their reasoning and rendered them unable to counter the new viewpoint I was presenting to them.

I exposed my idea out very sparingly over the span of about two or three decades, talking about them only to those friends or acquaintances of mine whom I regarded as somewhat inclined to be thinkers but the end result was invariably the same: They were shocked as well as angry to hear someone challenge their unquestionable religious ideas and altogether refused to listen to me and analyze my viewpoints. It became clear to me that everybody was just stuck in the way they were taught to believe in God and feared that some sort of divine