Religion: A giant conspiracy theory

Regarding “‘All religions are paths to reach God’” by Joel Butuyan (Flea Market of Ideas, 9/19/24):

In the Pope’s recent Asian tour, he declared: “There is only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian.”

I could have uttered the same words in the ‘60s when I was in high school, but what kind of voice would that have been in a parochial school where everyone sang the same exclusivist Catholic mantra: “It’s Jesus or bust!”

Butuyan and others are missing the subtle implication of the Pope’s bold declaration. The Pope and other religious leaders are just now saying what they have concluded long ago about an inescapable fact about religion: It is the seed of so much strife and discontent and, as Butuyan stated, “the underlying cause of many past and current wars.” Religion has been on a killing spree since man forged this intolerant beast. (As of the latest count, over 40,000 deaths in Gaza in 10 months; next: Lebanon.)

Pope Francis has been a master of oblique statements that do not immediately cut into the heart of the matter. Either he is being diplomatic, or he has a more stark admission to proclaim before he passes on. Religion is a kind of cultural conspiracy theory that humanity has clung to because the human species, in its early development, needed comfort and reassurance that only supernaturalism could bring.

We are in the throes of an evolutionary shift, a period of “punctuated equilibrium,” a faster pace of change after a time of relatively slow, meandering developments in our 200,000-year history. Whether physiological or cultural, there have been stages in this natural growth process that bring an accelerated epistemological worldview—the current period of growth started some 300 years ago in what we call the Enlightenment.

The rise of Empiricism during this period slowly boosted science and secularism. Now, it is bearing fruit, which we call technology. Artificial intelligence is the most transformative product of the current technological know-how. Two thousand years of religious delusion have finally met their match. I suspect the Pope, like many religious leaders, has been guilt-ridden by the conflict and dissension they have created. This latest declaration by the Pope is a preamble to what I think would be transformational: Religion is, in fact, a path to no one; the one God of all religions is a mythological babble.

Pope Francis would go down in history as the first atheist pope. It’s an inevitable cultural shift that’s been building up since the Enlightenment. So get used to it. Is Fr. Jerry Orbos paying attention?

Edwin de Leon,

edwingdeleon@gmail.com