Creative writing
From Informationism.org
[edit] Unlock Reality
What do you get if you combine new age Christianity, pop Buddhism and a little bit of Existentialism? Well you get to ‘unlock reality’ if the the ebook of the same title can be believed.
Unfortunately it can not.
The reason for this, is that the whole thing is just a series of unproved feel good statements written at about the philosophical level of a seventeen year old.
You might think that something whose entire promotion seems to consist of viral marketing might have some substance as a set of ideas, but it's just a lame bunch of the same old crap you already know.
The first things it does is assumes that we have some sort of essential freedom without bothering to go into the philosophical debates around freewill. You WANT to have freedom right?
Secondly it assumes a desiger of the world, using that same ancient: 'If you saw a complex machine you'd presume it was designed' reasoning but it's not against evolution infact it says 'there is quite a bit of evolution'.
As far as God goes he may or may not exist (Who really cares?) The book is kind of leaning towards the idea that God does exist, but says we should act as if he does even if he doesn't.
As far as what this probable god is like we are given this gem:
"The father is all of time space and eternity, the son is the expression of sharing and co-operation in a human form (which includes us) and the holy spirit is the force that holds things together."
So:
God = The Universe Jesus = Some sort of nice idea? The Holy spirit = Gravity
Take that fundamentalist Christianity!
But I'm getting ahead of myself here. What you've got to understand is that that main idea of the book is you should share and co-operate because that's some sort of fundamental force in the universe.
"Cells in your body share so you can live"
Isn't that amazing! There's this one thing you can draw out of the physical world and erect it as a principle with with to live your life. (But just that one specifically, because it seems most culturally acceptable and safe.)
Guess what else! There's this 'person' who some number of hundreds of millions of people believe is the saviour of mankind. And although it might seem that way, he really doesn't want you to go round killing people and starting wars.
Hmm, I wonder if this has anything to do with Christianity - It's this major world religion, you might have heard of it.
I've got to stop being sarcastic here.
One of the only decent things about the book is that it's a broad front attack on fundamentalist Christianity. It's a shame that it's so bad that it can only make fundamentalist Christianity stronger. The other thing is that it acts like in terms of religions there is only Christianity, and people have got that all wrong. Other religions aren't mentioned - Islam; 'never heard of it mate'
Christianity itself is only talked about in terms of metaphor, and in terms of Buddhism it barely qualifies although it does mention Karma a couple of times.
Since I've been unable to find any kind of decent idea or analysis in this book I can at least set your mind at rest on one point. This is that you no longer have worry about nuclear annihilation. This is because:
"The power of life had been asked to stop any hand that tries to start a nuclear war ... it is doing that thing right now." p79
I'm sure you are relieved as me to hear about that direct intervention of a god like force.
Luckily you can even be God:
"If you are kind to people then you are being God to them." Great! So what is kindness? It's to do unto other as you would like them to do to you - The golden rule, you may also have heard of it.
