because it’s humanity that will be weeded out if it doesn’t come to terms with the problem. We can’t count on nature to help us. Her eye sees horizons far beyond what we can understand, and she will lead evolution onward with other species in case we botch it and don’t cherish life. Is humanity ready enough to learn from the past? I don’t think so. Or better: not yet. Aggression is festering in so many places and among so many nations that a new escalation of trouble seems unavoidable. Whether a third and possibly final world war will develop remains to be seen. The future of humanity will depend chiefly upon political diplomacy. It’s never power, but good diplomacy that can defuse political self-delusion.
Religious Self-Delusion
Dawkins wasn’t entirely incorrect when he certified religion to be an explosive force in itself. I strongly suspect that religious self-delusion has the greatest overwhelming power of all four types of self-delusion. Many religious followers are very fanatical when it comes to defending their faith. “My own God” holds far greater rank than “my homeland”. Fanaticism—the irrational zeal of being possessed by an idea—leads to delusion if people are silenced and can’t speak out. Religion is useless if people have no freedom to ask questions and to scrutinize!
Religion is and has always been the most important “revelation of truth” for many human beings even though science has claimed the right to that throne. But the truth is that religion has provided a great contribution to our consciousness of self. Whether you believe in God or not—now or later you will have to ask yourself questions: “Why am I here?” “What is my place in this universe?” And precisely these questions, for which science has no answer, are deeply religious. Their theme is the self and its relationship with the world. The answers religions give us vary widely, but all of them strive to isolate the self from the rest of the world and arouse great hope even to that of achieving immortality. Reasonable hope gives assurance, but blind hope stupefies. Whoever promises his followers immortality shouldn’t be surprised if they intensify this belief and live in its delusion up to the point that they fight for “their God”.
It isn’t scientifically correct to speak of a “God delusion” because no one knows—not even Dawkins—whether a God exists or not. A delusion is always about something that doesn’t correspond to reality. If we try to talk about God, we’re groping in the dark. It even adds more difficulty that the concept of “God” isn’t clearly defined. Many people conceive of God as a person, others (especially scientists) view God as a causal force of nature11 or as the primal order of cosmos.12 Even if a personal God were a delusion, an abstract God could still be real. The delusion that’s really happening here is that many people think they know how God feels and thinks. They live on in their delusion serving “their God” whether they do missionary work or call for a “holy war”. But all of these people are only following their own projection of God. So, what Dawkins is fiercely criticizing isn’t really God delusion, but religious self-delusion. Its breeding ground is fundamentalism.
Abdel Rahman al-Rashid, the director of Television Broadcast Al Arabiya, sums the situation up quite well with regard to what the Western world is facing at this moment: “It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.”13 It is important at this point to carefully differentiate between Islam and Islamism: Islam has been a religion of revelation for more than 1400 years where peaceful togetherness is valued very highly. Islamism is a radical restriction of Islam. Islamic fundamentalists strive to establish a “theocracy” where sharia law rules— Islamic law that severely restricts freedoms of mankind and punishes apostates with death.
The root of conflict between Islamism and the rest of the world is the clash of an archaic way of thinking with freedoms that humanity had never experienced before: easy access to alcohol, drugs, gambling and sexuality. Any man who is not permitted to see a woman unless she is fully covered will easily feel provoked with tantalizing clothing, but it’s not up to him to forbid the wearing of such clothing. Any civilized man should be able to control himself and not hit on every woman he sees. The only peaceful solution is to let anyone decide how she/he would like to dress. Men who lack foresight will eventually die out as women will walk out on them—provided that humanity supports these women and protects girls from the cruelty of mass rape.
But self-control is frequently a problem with the other kinds of freedoms that I have just mentioned: alcohol, drugs and gambling. Consumption of them is strongly addictive. Regarding these temptations I consider Islamic approach—not Islamistic methods—to be exemplary: Addictive drugs should be regulated more strictly than today or even outlawed. They are not good for humanity. Producers, dealers and casino operators are the only ones who make a profit with them. Alcohol, drugs and gambling make our perception of reality even worse—and it is already distorted. Many criminal acts occur while under the influence of drugs or alcohol—not to mention drug-related crimes. Young people especially cannot foresee how their character is changed by alcohol, drugs and gambling. Whoever lets young people engage in these things if they choose to do so, will drive future generations into addiction and criminal acts. Again the lobbyists did humanity a great favor by acting on politicians to bring about lax gambling laws: Lotteries, casinos and bookies are booming in our cities and on the internet, and they skillfully drain the pockets of our citizens. The cause of this fatal development—social responsibility is just an embarrassment—is Western capitalism. This fact is nothing new, but we could make much better use of it: With less capitalism and more social justice we could deflate greed and hatred among young people and thwart the will to organize for the sake of terror.
Nowadays the numbers of the worst kind of fundamentalists are growing: fundamentalists who just won’t tolerate opinions of other people and who are prepared to fight. We have two questions: 1) Why is this radical fundamentalism so popular? 2) How do fundamentalists get their weapons? Whoever wants to stop religious self-delusion in the long run must face both of these questions and find a remedy to the problems that they present. Now more than ever, young people feel drawn to fundamentalism. There are two reasons for this: One is, again, they lack a thorough general education. Whoever hasn’t learned very much can be manipulated and can easily fall prey to questionable causes. The other reason is increasing lack of perspective, especially among young people. As they face a world with rising unemployment where money is needed to “fit in”, fundamentalism offers an attractive alternative. Whoever can give frustrated people the vital feeling that they are needed, will find it easy to win them over to their cause. And then, whoever promises them “paradise” on top of everything else can make them even enjoy going out and blowing themselves to bits “in the name of God”.
The answer to the other question is a lot more complicated. Violent fundamentalists acquire the majority of their weapons either from war booty or in exchange for crude oil that they have also captured or stolen. The weapons themselves come from countries that have no interest in supporting terrorism at all. Even if there are strict guidelines from the Western world that regulate to where and to whom these weapons are allowed to be sold, it is never for sure that they won’t fall into the hands of fundamentalists. So they all profit from economic self-delusion (specifically because of arms manufacturers’ greed for profit) that in this case gets in bed with political and religious self-delusion. Since power breeds desire for more power, we have only two options: We either permit the spiral of violence to escalate further and further until weapons of mass destruction fall into the hands of fundamentalists, or we finally put an end to all greed for power and profit and …
… focus on enlightenment: Fundamentalism dominates our media, but there are jihadists not only in Islamism— Christians waged bloody wars during the Middle Ages “in the name of God”. People fight one another time and again for their religion. We can draw only one conclusion from all of this: Freedom of religion is a basic need for all of mankind— just like food and water. Whoever doesn’t respect this need is waging war not only against people of different
