The Self-Empowerment of the Masses

I was thinking more about our discussion of Earthseed and my topic for this optional blog post coalesced from there.  Why religion?  Why do people turn to deities and mystical powers to tell them how to act in extreme situations where moral action becomes ambiguous and survival becomes paramount?  Why do these people not gravitate to scientists and forward-thinking people who can give them tangible goals and returns on their devotion and hard work.  Such was done in the Stronghold of Lucifer’s Hammer, but Butler chose to use religion as her vehicle for the plot’s momentum.  Throughout history people have turned away from the eager face of science in the face of bewildering phenomena and turned instead to the banal and bold-faced hypocrisy of religion.  Lightning is an electrical discharge of the atmostphere caused by two different electric potentials occurring near each other, but in almost every world religion, lightning has been the symbol of god(s)’s fury.  Religion prevents progress by stagnating the growth of the adherents mind to accept the world for the way it is built and can be shaped by us, by humans.  The fact that there might be a god is irrelevant to humans except for the possible case of an afterlife, but Lauren does not seem to clearly imply that that is even an option of Earthseed.  Supposedly, the universe is one, and all part of god, suspended in a perpetual cycle of life and death, but who is to say that you are what you were next time the materials that compose you are reused?  This coincides with the preoccupation of most religious people who adhere to a religion promising eternal bliss in god’s paradise for good behavior: if these people are so sure of their religion and God’s existence, why do they still fear death and go to almost any lengths to preserve their life, when simply letting go would transport them all the sooner to that paradise?  Furthermore, why do people join Earthseed when it doesn’t even offer them this ridicuous and tenuous hope of eternal life?

To answer my own question, I suppose the reason is the core of Earthseed: change.  People who cannot divine the meaning in their own lives or find/create a purpose for themselves are as sheep, as Jesus so aptly recognized.  They are a weak minded and weak willed bunch who crave a magnanimous super being to pat them on the head and say, “It will be alright, be a good boy now.”  Thus, there can be no more powerfully godly suggestion than change as god.  You gain direct contact with your god in every movement, every though.  You become god, and as Butler said and I am now realizing, you reach the ultimate level of self-empowerment.  By deifing change, you surpass the meager efforts at immortality and control that other religions grasp at with dessicated fingers, and actually merge, in essence, with God.