Salvation and Solve-ation: Two sides of incoherence.

We are trapped either looking for salvation or for solutions. Nothing better shows the deep links between science and civilized religions than this tie.

After a few thousand years seeking salvation a splinter group has set off to find solutions and now labels any positive motivation as, “Saving.”

This impulse now competes with seeking salvation as the only possible conduit for “good” behavior. The purpose in each case is to insist that any human motivation cycle back into an Ego-based response.

Behind all these impulses is a strong desire to escape. To escape everything real, to escape evolution, and ultimately to escape life itself. One side looks to a Sky God as paternal authority on all questions. The other celebrates human hubris more directly as it is manifested in the urge to hyper-manage everything through highly developed technologies and methodologies of control.

This is a battle between Egoists. One side claims ultimate power lies with their projected Sky God, a character they identify with, under whose protection they can act on their projections without question. The other side, cuts to the chase and claims that their own Egos are at the center of the universe and that they need no paternal protector.

This is not another volley in the “debate” between the religious and the atheist. These are two sides of the same coin. Neither cares to look for divinity beyond their own projections, and neither is without a faith held in the face of every contradiction. They have more in common than we have imagined. They are both tied to the pathology of the breakdown in sincerity. Theirs are strategies for controlling life that date to the break-out of civilization. As with “conservative” and “progressive,” these labels pretend to delineate important differences in self-world-view. They hide the underlying incoherence they share.

Behind, in fact propped up by, the vehemence with which each side holds its faith; is the brittleness of Ego, an illusion fighting to maintain its hold over our attention.