Academic Inquisition Déjá Vu

The biggest factor when it comes to beliefs is not a belief in God, but rather a belief in organized religion as being beneficial to the individual. This is not the case, at all. Have you not read about what people in the name of religion have done to their fellow human beings? Have you not read about what people in the name of science has done to their fellow human beings?

When a professor of religion exhorted to study and remember history, I felt hopeful that my work would find a home. But instead I was told in the politest terms that no one would be directly engaging with me. Would I care to get degree to "locate your ideas within a larger literature and readership"?

Nope.

History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.
~ Sharanya

Inquisition Strike 1

The Catholic Church widely promoted the Aristotelian view that the Earth was fixed, unmovable and the heavens moved around the Earth. A devout, pious Catholic, Galileo used his refined telescope to observe that the Earth orbited around the Sun. He wrote about it and shared his views with various ranking people in the Catholic church hierarchy, arguing that his view didn’t conflict with the Bible. Feeling that Galileo and others were attempting to reinterpret the Bible, the Catholic Church launched the Inquisition to assert that heliocentrism was contrary to the Holy Scriptures.

Heliocentricity was blasphemous to ancient epigenetic beliefs that the Earth was the center of the Universe, and central to the organized belief that God created the Earth as the center. It took the Catholic Church 472 years to officially include the science that the Earth orbits around the Sun into their Canon.

Every human is born with beliefs that predate their birth by hundreds and thousands of years. The belief in God is epigenetic for reasons that I explain in How Beliefs Work [PDF]. What the discoverer of epigenetics lacks is a rational statement of how beliefs work. Nobody questions beliefs, nobody is the least bit interested in knowing how beliefs work, and it seems that most people think that beliefs is the sole domain of religion. Epigenetics proves otherwise.

Inquisition Strike 2

The biggest factor when it comes to beliefs is not a belief in God, but rather a belief in organized religion as being beneficial to the individual. This is not the case, at all. Have you not read about what people in the name of religion have done to their fellow human beings? Have you not read about what people in the name of science has done to their fellow human beings? Every year there's a new way to instill fear to keep people under control. And it's **always** marketed as being a good thing for society. The conceit is that it's not good for all individuals, but just comply and if it doesn't work out, then it wasn't meant to be.

Inquisition Strike 3

The vertical beam of the cross represents the intrapersonal. As above, so below. The horizontal beam represents the interrelationship between your beliefs and external belief systems. If it's outside of you, it's external and includes family, friends, and all institutions of any kind. Your body is your temple, not religion.

Academia is all about staying in their lane. It's a career path that will never look outside of its focus no matter what's etched in stone.