Pyramid Schemes

I saw a banner today, hung over a bridge for all to see, advertising an amazing course, like no other, which promises to deliver the ultimate knowledge - the meaning of life! Surely this is too good to be true, I thought? The sign, a call to the unfaithful to join the Alpha Course, brought to mind those other signs we've all seen plastered around town - earn £2000-£3000 a Month in your spare time! Get a new career - earn £500 a day! The oft said truism is no less true for that - if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. In fact, the Alpha course couldn't be less true - what it offers is far more than any fat businessman wanting to sucker you in to a pyramid scheme which he's at the top of is offering, and so it's the bigger lie. Yet Christianity works, partly because the £500 a day is 'in the bank' - you just gotta trust the banker in the sky (and his alleged views on life's meaning), then it's all there for you when you die, or when Armageddon comes, or whatever you believe - all you need to do is make more pyramid schemers like yourself...(how much more proof do we need that this Christianity thing is the biggest pyramid scheme ever invented?!) If only a fat businessman could think up such a crazy pyramid scheme, he'd be sooooooo rich - laughing all the way to that imaginary bank where he's putting all your imaginary money! Still, he might ease his occasionally pricked conscience by thinking that those below him get a lot of happiness out of thinking he's storing all this money away for them, and surely happiness itself is a good thing to possess?

Pyramids actually feature quite strongly in Christianity - life has a meaning which is sort of synonymous with a great, solid, comforting hierarchy in which you have a place (but not the top one). Wouldn't it be scary if you were in top place, nobody above you to tell you how things were, to look after you? Yes, various Christian movements have their own hierarchies which will all obviously have God at the top (he's the nice businessman who really does put your money in the bank). Thing is, how do you know we're not the top, humans, that is, as biologists would 'proudly' (emphasis added by sarcastic Christians) assert is the case from an evolutionary perspective? If there is some sort of hierarchy in nature, then why must there be anything above us? It doesn't appear (quite literally speaking) that there is.

Why should this be such a shocking fact - if you accept that there exists something above which there is nothing superior (i.e. a creator/ancestor) then why cannot that something be humankind? (for that matter, why couldn't there be 500, or 602, or an infinite amount of 'levels' above us in the pyramid, if you're going to introduce invisible entities into the damn thing?) Is it not far more likely that the evolutionary process (or something which certainly includes it), a development of simple things to complicated (and to us), explains the universe around us - who would start building a pyramid from the top?? Believing there is something above us makes matters more complicated, not less - religion is that thing which plugs that gap and says 'we know' when we clearly don't - it is completely understandable ('things will turn out alright in the end'), but it is unbelievable and (one day hopefully) unpardonable to give it credence.

It is a very scary thought, speaking plainly, it scares me to death to think that such a 'lowly' species as ourselves are actually top of anything - but it is death which really scares me to death. Still, why should I hide from the truth in comforting lies? If the heavens are silent, why not accept the fact that there is no heaven above to say anything (or not), nobody to thank or blame, and only this precious short time in which to live my life? We have an unfortunate (conscious of our own future death) but utterly unique, perhaps in all space and time, position: we are top of the pyramid, we are God. God help us.