Developing a Universal Religion, a review

This article by Dan Polansky is a brief review of a self-published book Developing a Universal Religion by David Hockey, 2003. The reviewed text is currently available here: File:Developing a Universal Religion Parts 1-2-3 & 4.pdf and was previously available at Wikibooks: Developing A Universal Religion. Even if self-published, the book seems interesting enough to be reviewed.

The book's key tenet is that we should adopt as a surrogate purpose of life to "support life’s continual evolution and focus upon helping it to achieve an omnipotent ability". "Given that there is no detectable purpose pre-designed into life or the universe, then, if we must have one, we must adopt a surrogate. To my mind, the only viable option is to support life’s continual evolution and focus upon helping it to achieve an omnipotent ability. Such a purpose is universal and rational; it is a purpose that will last as long as life itself lasts. It accommodates the whole of life, and shows that we care about more than just our own well-being. It declares that we value life for its own sake and think little about the death that must follow, taking it simply as the price to be paid for living."

The book contains multiple questionable claims about life's omnipotent potential. Not only can life not become omnipotent but it cannot become nearly omnipotent either. To begin with, given our current knowledge, there is no chance life could ever inhabit planet Pluto and the book does not support this idea in any way; and there is no way life can spread from the Earth to the Earth's nearest star given our knowledge. One can find multiple such claims and I will quote just one: "This omnipotent consequence of evolution is just that—a consequence." It is trivial to come up with capabilities that life including humankind may never achieve; one needs just a little bit of imagination. The argument that our ancestors could not have imagined our present capabilities has very little force to support the idea of future near omnipotence. A relevant link is Quora: Is evolution omnipotent?.

The book examines some of the ethical consequences of its proposed ultimate purpose, e.g. in chapter "Killing". Its examination in unconvincing. For instance, it says "The rationale for stating that it would be wrong to kill an individual is easy to state: any individual’s actions may contribute to the objective of supporting Life’s continued evolution, thus each life is valuable and should be preserved", but it is not obvious that each and every human including those severely disabled can contribute to Life's continuing evolution, so it does not follow that each human life should be preserved. Those following the stated purpose could decide to exterminate a technologically weak nation and take its resources and there is nothing obvious in the stated purpose to prevent them from doing so; the author does not seem to realize that.

The book presents a philosophy of the purpose of life and ethics, not a religion. The book does not involve God or gods except that it portrays evolution and the life on the Earth as a quasi-god for being alleged potentially omnipotent and by its occasional capitalization of "life" as "Life". It is not true that any philosophy of purpose of life is a religion and the book does nothing to distinguish itself from philosophy as a religion.

See also A purpose of life: The power of living things. The criticism contained in that article largely applies to David Hockey's surrogate purpose.