Cogito ergo sum (atheus)

Loosely translated this means I am a pompous git for spouting Latin.

More tightly translated it means I think, therefore I am (atheist).

And so I return to a subject on which I have pontificated before (see God and Religion )

I had better make it clear at the outset that I am not implying that people who believe in God don’t think! Obviously they do but follow different thought patterns to those that lead me to an atheistic position. Since time immemorial Jewish scholars have debated over the meaning and interpretation of the scriptures, obviously involving a good deal of high-powered thinking which, in the end, lead them to maintain their beliefs.

Christians and Muslims have done the same.

I simply find myself unable to accept the existence of either the God of the Bible or the God of the Qu’ran.

Are they two different Gods, or the same God being interpreted in two different ways? What about the multiple Gods of India? Humanity has believed in and worshipped countless numbers of Gods over the millennia. I am sympathetic to the view that rather than humanity being the creation of God (whichever one you believe in), God (whichever one you believe in) has been “created” by humanity.

I subscribe to an online discussion community called Quora and some of the most frequently occurring questions relate to God and Atheism. A common question is something along these lines .. How does an Atheist prove there is no God? Since I don’t believe in anything that cannot be proven beyond doubt it follows that, in my mind, there is no God, and since you cannot prove the non-existence of something I do not feel the need to produce any such proof. More to the point, I believe it is incumbent upon those who believe in the existence of God to provide proof of His (or Its) existence.

The usual come-back to this challenge is the assertion, “I have faith in His existence”. The Encarta English Dictionary defines faith as  belief in, devotion to, or trust in somebody or something, especially without logical proof.

Another common question is along the lines of  .. "How do atheists maintain good moral behaviour without religious commandments? This is preposterous. Human beings don't need religion in order to behave properly. A civilized society that has no mutually beneficial rules of behavious is doomed to collapse. Conversely, religious groups demonstrably have no monopoly on good behaviour!

Now I submit that you are perfectly entitled to be endowed with this faith (in the existence of God), but you are not entitled to present it to others as fact. I believe that people have every right to believe in whatever God and teachings that they wish, so long as they: (1) bear no malice towards me, and (2) feel no compunction either to persuade or force me to adopt the same views.

For my part I have no wish to turn Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, etc., into atheists. Atheism is not a proselytizing condition. Other people can reach that state of mind, as I did, by questioning their own beliefs in their own time, should they wish to do that. 

As has been stated by me and other more learned thinkers (such as Richard Dawkins) the reason most of us are Christian/Muslim/Hindu/Catholic/Protestant/Shia/Sunni/Atheist is because from the first time after our birth that we were able to understand anything our parents told us who and what we were; and their parents had done the same to them .. and so on back into the mists of time. As a child we learn first from our parents, and what they tell us is true fact, for we have no way of knowing otherwise, or even thinking we ought to question what we are told. “Give me a child till he is seven, and I will show you the man” (Aristotle).

I was told it was fact that God existed, that he knew my every move, and if I was good I would go to heaven; if I was bad I would go to hell and burn forever. I had a childhood imbued with fear. I was told the Bible was Holy and I was expected to read it .. which I did in my early years without questioning a single thing I read .. talking snakes, talking donkeys, a man inside a fish, slavery, animals in ark, submission of women to husbands, virgin birth, life after death, the psychotic episode that is “Revelations” .. to name but a few oddities. I had no reason to doubt the existence of Heaven or Hell. I was expected to go to church every Sunday, and for the greater part of my life had feelings of guilt if I did not do so. 

By the time I was 70 I had re-read large parts of the Bible (and the Qu’ran) with an adult mind, and decided that much of it was patent nonsense. I could also see that religion had caused, and was still causing, much conflict and evil around the world. We are currently suffering the latest manifestations of evil in the activities of fanatical Muslims calling themselves “Islamic State”, who feel compelled to rid the earth of every human being who doesn’t submit to their particular thought process.

I have therefore turned my back on religion. I have Christian friends who accept me for what I am, and for that I am grateful. I offer them reciprocal acceptance and respect. They are good people. I have also been told by others professing to be Christians that I am misguided, mentally unstable, and destined for Hell. I'm not sure they are good people.

I recently listened to a young lady calling into LBC to explain why she had abandoned Christianity for Islam. The general gist of her reasoning was that there was too much flexibility in Christianity, not enough compulsion to understand the Bible in detail, too little firm guidance. What she wanted was a firmness of purpose in her religion, and praised the fact that so many Muslims are expected to learn the Qu’ran by heart. When the presenter suggested to her that over the millennia humanity had evolved, and that what was written thousands of years ago could not be applied rigidly to how things were today, her response was that religion had evolved .. and this is how she explained that evolution: "First there was Moses, then there was Jesus, and then there was Mohammed; and HE was the FINAL MESSENGER". In other words, all that we need to know ended in the 7^th century.

What a gloriously simplistic thought process! And how lacking in proper thought.

Cogito ergo sum atheus.

©Lionel Beck

August 2017

American Enigma

I have the pleasure of knowing a few Americans. Some I have met in person, others I've merely corresponded with via the Web.

I have visited Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Washington DC. The experiences were good, the people I met were kind, generous, and friendly.

So I'm not starting an anti-USA rant here, far from it; I'm raising a particular question to which I have no answer.

I'm also aware that my own country (UK) has many peculiarities, and many traits that are undesirable, for example (to mention a few) our tendency to regard ourselves as superior beings, an unwillingness to reform our democratic processes, a belief that something should never be changed because it's "served us well" for generations, our dislike of immigrants, and our inability or unwillingness to learn any language other than English. (Indeed a good many of us cannot even master our own language!)

What makes Americans so different from us is (1) Religion and (2) Guns.

Religion

In 2014, 71% of Americans regarded themselves as Christians. (Pew Research Centre)

In the UK 2011 Census only 59% of the UK population described them as Christians, but various surveys suggest that they are not actually practising it, with between only 7 to 10% being actively involved in the Church(es).

A YouGov poll this year found that nearly 30% of Brits either called themselves Atheists, Anostics or Humanists. The religious beliefs of political leaders in Britain are not considered a big deal. The previous Leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, and the previous leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg were publicly open about having no belief in God.

In the USA the contrast is stark: "In God we trust" is printed on the currency. It is usual for leading US politicians to end their speeches to public gatherings with, "God bless America". If a British Prime Minister ended a speech with "God bless Britain" it would be met either with puzzled silence or laugher (or a mixture of the two).

The pages of Facebook are littered with American postings exhorting people to put their trust in Jesus, accept the Lord, Praise the Lord, Amen, Amen, Amen, and people ask to be placed on Prayer Lists.

Guns

The USA is about 4% of the World's population but Americans own 42% of all the guns on the planet. So far this year there have been 45 school shootings in the USA. The number of gun deaths per million people is 106 in the USA and 7 in the UK. The right to bear arms is vociferously defended in the USA, and one of the most common and trite responses to criticism whenever there is another mass shooting is, "It's not the gun that kills - it's the man behind the gun".

The Enigma

And so my question that nobody has yet managed to answer for me is this : How do we reconcile the American love of guns with the American love of Jesus?

Are the gun lovers and the Jesus lovers the same people, or are they two distinct and separate groups? I'm suspecting there's a significant overlap, but I don't claim to know.

ISLAMIC TERRORISM

Islamic Terrorism

Stop Denying the Obvious 

In recent years I have become weary of listening to news of the latest Islamist atrocity followed by leading politicians bleating on about “Islamic State” and their like practising a “perversion of Islam” –“essentially a religion of peace”.

I suspect it has something to do with the innate ability of the British people to exercise tolerance to the point of absurdity, just because we think tolerance is a good thing. Also, since Islam is a Religion having long-distant but vague connections with the Abrahamic and Christian religions, it must therefore be benign: so those who follow it should be respected for their views.

I have long since held the opinion of Islam that it cannot be described as a religion of peace. The evidence to the contrary is slapping us in the face almost every time we switch on the TV News, and yet we are still reluctant to face the facts, and become apologists for the religion. We have become paralysed by so-called Political Correctness, by which we cannot allow ourselves to face the prospect of being accused of either Racism or Islamophobia.

Racism is a stupid word in this context, since Muslims are not a Race. Phobia is an irrational fear of something. I don’t think that fear of Islam is in any way irrational, so I’m not even sure if the word “Islamophobia” is correct.

I should admit that there was a time when I counted myself amongst those who strongly defended the rights of Muslims to follow their religion which (I also believed) was a “Religion of Peace”. But that view was consequent upon my ignorance, and I think that ignorance is widespread amongst those who would aspire to govern this country.

Having subsequently come to an entirely different point of view I was heartened to see my feelings echoed in a book that recently came to my attention: Heretic – Why Islam needs a Reformation Now by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The fact that she and I are “on the same page” is important only insofar as she was born, in Somalia, into a Muslim family, and brought up strictly to observe the tenets of Islam. I therefore think that her opinions are far more important than mine, based as they are on inside knowledge of what it means to be a Muslim. Her views carry infinitely more weight than my own, so I urge people to buy this book and become better informed about Islam.

By the time Ayaan Hirsi Ali had become a teenager she realised that the religion she had been schooled in was repressive, prevented innovation and change, was not subject to debate or analysis, was abusive to women, socially in their 2^nd-class citizenship and physically in the practice of female genital mutilation. Against massive opposition from her own family she parted from her religion and fled to the Netherlands in 1922, where she went from cleaning in factories to winning a seat in the Dutch Parliament. A prominent speaker, debater, and writer, she was chosen as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. She is now a fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Her book Heretic .. opens with a paragraph that invites us to fill in the blanks from any number of newscasts that we might have heard in recent years:

                On ________, a group of ________ heavily armed, black-clad men burst into a ________ in ________, opening fire and killing a total of ________ people. The attackers were filmed shouting “Allahu akbar!”

                Speaking at a press conference, President _______ said: “We condemn this criminal act by extremists. Their attempt to justify their violent acts in the mae of a religion of peace will not, however, succeed. We also condemn with equal force those who would use this atrocity as a pretext for Islamophobic hate crimes”.

Of course, the most recent example you could use to fill in the blanks would be the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. Though if you hark back a few years to their most spectacular evil act you’d also have to change a few words as well to involve aeroplanes and skyscrapers. But I think you see the point she is making.

The author goes on to say ..

                For more than thirteen years now, I have been making a simple argument in response to such acts of terrorism. My argument is that it is foolish to insist, as our leaders habitually do, that the violent acts of radical Islamists can be divorced from the religious ideals that inspire them. Instead we must acknowledge that they are driven by a political ideology, an ideology embedded in Islam itself, in the holy book of the Qur’an as well as the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad contained in the hadith.

The really scary thing for us to recognise is that every barbaric act (beheading, crucifixion, burning, amputation &c) carried out by so-called Islamic State, or Al-Quaeda, or Boko Haram, can be fully justified by reference to the Qur’an. Therefore, far from being “un-Islamic”, they are indeed being wholly Islamic!

Now, speaking as an atheist, I have little time for either the Bible or the Qur’an, but there is a big difference between the two. Whilst the Bible is full of bloody and gory exhortations and punishments by God (not to mention a number of stories that can only be described as fantasies), adherents to the Bible, on the whole, do not accept every word in that book as the literal and final Word of God, to be followed as LAW.

On the other hand Muslims who take their religion seriously accept the Qur’an as the final and immutable instructions from God, given to his Messenger Muhammed. It has remained set in the 7^th century of Middle-Eastern tribal life, and has rarely been open to interpretation, analysis, modification, query or discussion (except by non-Muslims and ex-Muslims of course). Querying the validity of the Qur’an is simply not an option, whereas for centuries Jews and Christians have deliberated over the interpretation of the Bible, and have in practice (since the Reformation) gradually moved towards a flexible interpretation, even to the point of never referring to certain sections of it. We should acknowledge that in medieval times the practices of Christianity were very similar to what we are now seeing in fanatical Islamism. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is saying Islam needs the same Reformation as that of Christianity, and it’s needed urgently.

In the more extreme Evangelical Christian sects in the USA there are many who do take the whole Bible literally and refuse to recognise the current scientific view of the Universe and our place in it, but even if I lived amongst them, should I openly declare my rejection of Christianity I dare say it would be unlikely that hordes of angry American Christians would rise up and call for my immediate death. But you try converting from Islam to another religion, or question the validity of the Qur’an, or the divine nature of “The Prophet” then you are potentially on Death Row.

I think it is therefore incumbent upon all of us, especially our “leaders” to understand this fundamental difference between Christianity as it is generally practised - having evolved into a 21^st century religion (which by the way doesn’t override the secular laws of the land), and Islam – rooted (apparently immovably) in the 7^th century. 

We in Britain say to our Muslim citizens, “You want a new mosque? OK, build one here.” 

Try building a new Christian Church in an Islamic State.

Islam is based not on what good we can do in this life; it is based on the importance of the next life, where you will find a Paradise that is described in great detail, down to the number of rooms and gardens, and how they look, and the number of black-eyed virgins ready to cater for your every need. (Obviously this is a male-dominated Paradise; it doesn’t sound very appealing for women!)

And you can get to this wonderful “next life” by killing all those “pigs” and “monkeys” that refuse to accept the Prophet’s divinity. Western liberal democracy? Freedom of thought? Respect for women? It’s all sinful. There are billions of human beings out there who don’t accept your adherence to the word of Allah through his Messenger, so make a start – just strap this bomb to your chest – Paradise awaits your arrival.

Finally, saying Islam is not a religion of peace is not the same as saying there are millions of Muslims who are not peaceful. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is saying that peaceful Muslims have somehow managed in their own minds to modify or ignore certain central tenets of their Faith. They have contrived to activate cognitive dissonance reduction. These are the people we should be encouraging, instead of constantly trying to make excuses for the atrocities of the radical adherents, by citing things like social deprivation and foreign policy errors made by our leaders.

© Lionel Beck

April 2015

Atheists are Lost for Words

Oh my God!  .. I’ve just realised that religion and language have been so intertwined over the centuries that oft-repeated phrases become problematical for those of us who have concluded that GOD (as we understand Him through the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions) does not exist.

What in God’s name are we going to do about it? Invent new phrases, or be comfortable in the knowledge that everyone uses them without actually thinking?

Jesus!! .. it’s difficult! God only knows how it’s all going to turn out. But surely, being able to use words and phrases that might cause offence to some people is my God-given right?!

Lord knows, even the ghastly 21^st century manifestation, “Text-speak” (which is surely the spawn of the Devil) does not make things any easier for the atheist .. OMG !

For God’s sake help me out here. But don’t leave troll-like comments, or you can just go to Hell. I sometimes think that internet “trolls” are people who have the misfortune to live in God-forsaken towns and just feel compelled to give everybody else Hell.

Good God! .. is that the time? I must get to the end of this soon. (“Thank Heaven for that!” did I hear you cry?)

It’s even difficult for me to work out how politely take my leave of you, since the simple “goodbye” is a contraction of the 16^th century (or thereabouts) God be with Ye.

So, as I sign off from God’s own country (Yorkshire) I hope you’ll remember me in your thoughts and prayers.

God bless .. and I’ll see you in my next Blog (God willing).

God and Religion

Who, or what, am I?

I  pray to a (probably) non-existent God .. sometimes .. when troubled.

Or do I?

Or is He?

Why do I do this?

It is to do with childhood conditioning, which is why I spent most of my life as a ‘Christian’ for no other reason than my parents had me baptised as a Christian, and when I was old enough to comprehend speech, told me I was a Christian.

I was made to go to Sunday School and to Church Services, and I was taught that God created the world in six days, was everywhere, knew my every thought. I learned that I should say prayers; indeed I didn’t even have to think about what to say, because several hundred years ago someone else had decided what I should be saying and had written it all down in the Book of Common Prayer.

Apparently mankind started with ‘Adam and Eve’ in the ‘Garden of Eden’. They produced a couple of sons, one of which killed the other and also found himself a wife, though no one ever explained how she had materialised!

I learned that I was a ‘sinner’, and that ‘Jesus died for my sins’ (whatever that means), even though this was nearly two thousand years before I existed. I learned that there was somewhere called ‘heaven’ and somewhere else called ‘hell’. ‘Hell’ was where I was going to burn for eternity if I did wrong; and it seemed to me, from my mother’s endless criticism, I was doing wrong for quite a lot of the time!

This is powerful stuff for a child, because all a child knows when he has entered the human amalgam is what he is told by grown-ups; and stuff that is instilled in the first few years tends to become a permanent fixture in our brains, and difficult to break away from even with the help of rational thought and education. (“Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man” – Francis Xavier.)
 

Why are we religious?

So, the reason most Christians are Christians are because they were raised that way from Day One in their lives. And it is for that same reason that most Muslims are Muslims, most Hindus are Hindus, Sikhs are Sikhs, Buddhists are Buddhists, and – dare I say – Atheists are Atheists.

This nonsense is compounded by the various sub-sects of each religion. Are you a Protestant Christian or a Catholic Christian? If you are Protestant, are you an Evangelical or Baptist or Presbyterian, or Methodist, or Anglican, or Quaker, or Plymouth Brethren? (Or are you someone who throws money at some Television Evangelist who has hypnotized you into supporting his personal extravagant lifestyle?!) Are you a Sunni Muslim or a Shia Muslim or Ahmadi, or Sufi or Wahabbi? Are you a Jew or a non-Jew, a Hassidic Jew or a progressive Jew? All of them believe they are possessors of God’s Truth. Each is right, the others are wrong. But they can’t all be right. It is a kind of mental slavery, and inside which branch of mental slavery you are shackled is determined by accident of birth. How stupid is that?

It’s taken me over seventy years to start breaking the chains, by re-examining the beliefs by which I was raised, and by reading books by respected scientists and philosophers with better brains than mine, such as (to name but a few) The God Delusion by Professor Richard Dawkins, God is not Great by the late Christopher Hitchens, Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris, and The Language of God by Francis S Collins (this last one arguing on the side of God’s existence, by an eminent scientist involved in the Human Genome Project). They persuaded me to re-examine my battered Bible with an enquiring mind rather than a passive one.

I once wrote a piece about my daughter when she was a little girl in hospital after an appendix-removal operation. She was in terrible pain and begging for relief. She was denied more drugs because the doctor had said she had had the required dose. I went outside and begged God to do something. I went back inside and found her relaxed. The doctor had made a mistake and had corrected it. To me, that was a prayer answered and it sustained my Faith for a considerable period.

But of course that might anyway have happened with or without my appeal to a supernatural being. In all the years before that incident, and in all the years since, there has been no other obvious response to any of my many prayers. I am not a statistician, but I would think that within a 74-year life span there must be a chance that at least one of my prayers would actually coincide with something that was going to happen anyway. In spite of my prayers, and those of millions of others, sick people continued to get sicker and die; famines, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, wars, torture, and religious wars continued (and continue) unabated. Epidemics of killer diseases continued (and continue) – though less so with advances in medical science.

A few years after my daughter was the subject of that earnest prayer, she was killed in a car crash.

The thing about prayer is this: if what you pray for comes about, then God has answered your prayer. If what you pray for doesn’t come about, then it’s “all part of God’s plan” – live with it!

The Word of God

Whether or not God, or a supernatural Creator of the universe, exists is a matter for which my mind remains open, but on the matter of accepting the Bible or the Koran as ‘holy’ books, or ‘the Word of God’, or template for a worthy life, my mind is now pretty much made up: they are not the Word of God. They are the Word of Man. They are an amalgam of history, fiction, poetry, indoctrination, superstition, primitive fear, and power-play – much of it written hundreds of years after the events described. Moreover they have been translated so many times (including various forms of English) that one cannot be certain of the true meaning of the original texts as laid down thousands of years ago by members of primitive and superstitious societies.

For the most part over the centuries organized religion has been a force for evil rather than good. It has been the foundation on which corrupt power has been built, the rationale behind the exploitation and subjugation of women, the genital mutilation of both girls and boys, the excuse for the adoption and maintenance of slavery, and the inspiration for torture and killing on a gargantuan scale.

Having started to re-read the Bible (after many years of ignoring it) I now find most of it to be utterly incredible. It is full of contradictions, hate, vengefulness, and orders by ‘God’ to kill thousands of innocent men, women and children (whatever happened to “Thou shalt not kill”?) Thousands are condemned for the sins of one. We cherry-pick the bits that are suitable to be read in church services. The accounts of the life and death of Jesus do not match up. I am not prepared to accept that any woman can – or did – give birth to a child without sexual intercourse; and even some prominent churchmen have difficulty with this, not to mention the little business of life after death. (And by the way, many other religions refer to weird and impossible methods of birth, often using virgins, for the existence of their “gods”.) There is serious doubt about the use of the word “virgin” instead of, perhaps, a “young maiden”.

The Bible is, to me, a collection of histories and edicts written by priests and/or leaders of primitive tribes of people in order to exercise power. This seems to have been the purpose of religion(s) throughout the centuries. As society develops more knowledge, and accumulates more scientifically provable facts, and makes changes to what is and what is not acceptable to society, it seems that religious leaders are in perpetual disagreement with scientific discoveries and society’s changes until they eventually have to “catch up” and make adjustments to their theological arguments purely in order to make them more acceptable to us as religious leaders. No doubt one day the Catholic Church will subject itself to whatever contortions it finds necessary to endorse the use of condoms, not only as a means of birth control, but as a means of preventing the spread of killer diseases. But by then, religion’s game of catch-up will be too little too late (again).

There is more hate, conflict, war, and unspeakable terror committed around the world by people of Faith than by people of No Faith. Christians and Muslims not only fight each other, but Christians fight Christians and Moslems fight Moslems because they are not believing the “right” things!

The history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is awash with the blood of innocent men, women and children; moreover it continues to this day. In spite of (or I wonder if that should be because of) our education the superstition, prejudice, fear, and willingness to kill others in pursuit of our beliefs appears as strong as ever.

The stuff we are taught in church

Although passages from the Old Testament are read out as part of regular Christian church services, they are for the most part passages that have been cherry-picked for acceptable consumption. Even when the passive congregation receives the message, they are hearing it rather than listening to it and analyzing it, for to do so is too confusing and uncomfortable. It is just an accepted routine.

For example, how useful would it be for us to receive the following pieces of wisdom from Chapter 8 of Leviticus ..

22 And he presented the other ram, the ram of consecration: and Aaron and his sons laid their hands upon the head of the ram.

23 And he slew it; and Moses took of the blood thereof, and put it upon the tip of Aaron’s right ear, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot.

24 And he brought Aaron’s sons; and Moses put of the blood upon the tip of their right ear, and upon the thumb of their right hand, and upon the great toe of their right foot: and Moses sprinkled the blood upon the altar round about.

25 And he took the fat, and the fat tail, and all the fat that was upon the inwards, and the caul of the liver, and the two kidneys, and their fat, and the right thigh:

 
26 And out of the basket of unleavened bread, that was before Jehovah, he took one unleavened cake, and one cake of oiled bread, and one wafer, and placed them on the fat, and upon the right thigh:

27 And he put the whole upon the hands of Aaron, and upon the hands of his sons, and waved them for a wave-offering before Jehovah.

Here endeth the Lesson.

Fantastic. Laughable. There are pages and pages of this kind of stuff.

By Chapter 16 we are still labouring under instructions about killing, dismembering and burning animals for the glory of God, to atone for sin, as a peace offering, as thanksgiving. Then there are instructions that deformed people, i.e., blind people, people with broken hands or feet, flat-nosed, (!) etc., shall not be deemed fit to make offerings to Jehovah. (I thought God made man in His own image!)

From Chapter 21 .. daughters of priests who act like harlots shall be killed, specifically, burnt with fire.

As I said before, we cherry-pick the bits that are suitable to be read in church services.

I have been looking through sections of the Bible to find examples of God’s morality. It is a tedious business and so I was very grateful for stumbling across a piece of work by Daniel C Dennett (included within Christopher Hitchens’ book, The Portable Atheist).  Dennett is the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, University Professor, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies (with Ray Jackendoff) at Tufts University (near Boston, Massachesetts).

I found that Daniel Dennett had done some of the trawling for me ..

Consider first God’s moral character, as revealed in the Bible. He routinely punishes people for the sins of others. He punishes all mothers by condemning them to painful childbirth, for Eve’s sin. He punishes all human beings by condemning them to labor, for Adam’s sin (Gen. 3:16-18). He regrets His creation, and in a fit of pique, commits genocide and ecocide by flooding the earth (Gen. 6:7). He hardens Pharaoh’s heart against freeing the Israelites (Ex. 7:3), so as to provide the occasion for visiting plagues upon the Egyptians, who, as helpless subjects of a tyrant, had no part in Pharaoh’s decision. (So much for respecting free will, the standard justification for the existence of evil in the world.)

He kills all the firstborn sons, even of slave girls who had no part in oppressing the Israelites (Ex. 11:5). He punishes the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great great-grandchildren of those who worship any other god (Ex. 20:3-5). He sets a plague upon the Israelites, killing twenty-four thousand, because some of them had sex with the Baal-worshiping Midianites (Num. 25:1-9). He lays a three-year famine on David’s people for Saul’s slaughter of the Gibeonites (2 Sam. 21:1). He orders David to take a census of his men, and then sends a plague on Israel, killing seventy thousand for David’s sin in taking the census incorrectly (2 Sam. 24:10-15). He sends two bears out of the woods to tear forty-two children to pieces, because they called the prophet Elisha a bald head (2 Kings 2:23-24). He condemns the Samarians, telling them that their children will be “dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open” (Hosea 13:16). This is but a sample of the evils celebrated in the Bible.

Now, how much of this stuff is regularly read in churches these days as our “Lesson” for the day?

And how much of it would you regard as morally defensible?

And on the subject of The Flood, just in passing, how did Noah physically manage to get together all those animals .. especially, for example, kangaroos (existing on an entirely different continent)? And how did he prevent them all from killing each other? And how did he deal with the waste disposal problem?

Creation

I have no problem with evolution. The truth of the evolved and evolving state of our planet and its inhabitants is there for all to see. But who or what set the necessary seeds for evolution?

 “The origins of evolution” are, to me, the true “Creation”. Therefore I am open to the argument that a higher deity may be behind all this, and I am open to the concept of a spiritual relationship with that Deity, but He is not the God of the Bible, or of the Koran.

Morality

I do not deny some of the good aspects of religion, or Christianity in particular: the creation of beautiful buildings, inspiring music, great literature, and charitable works, but I fear they are outweighed by the negatives. In spite of thousands of years of devotion to all sorts of gods (including the “God” of which we now speak) it seems they (or He/She/It) have been indifferent to the millennia of suffering, deprivation, fear, war, torture, tyranny, earthquakes, tsunamis, poverty, genocide, and the interminable prayers offered up. And why did this “Creation” by an omnipotent and omniscient Deity include such things as pathogenic bacteria, killer viruses, and cancers? And why were so many of his creatures destined to be born deformed, or born dead .. take note, “Pro-Lifers”, God also practices abortion on a daily basis.

The enthusiastic adherents of religion suppose that without religion there is no morality. Society falls apart. No, it doesn’t! All civilized societies work within a system of laws designed to maintain law, order and common decency between people, in order to survive. A society that is prepared to condone wanton cruelty, unbridled selfishness, theft, violence, or murder, cannot survive.

Morality is hard-wired into most of us. We know what is right and what is wrong. We know what is good and what is evil. This has nothing to do with religion.

“Ah, but” .. says the religionist, “There is much in the Bible that tells us how to behave well towards one another, especially in the New Testament.”

One cannot argue with this, and I don’t try to .. I acknowledge it. But we have already seen that there is much in the Bible also that we find so morally reprehensible that we forget, ignore, or rapidly pass over those bits. Cherry picking again. The conclusion must be, therefore, that far from shaping our morality, the ‘good’ bits we pick out of the Bible are reflecting our own morality.

Religion itself is no guarantee of a well-behaved society. The United States of America is probably one of the most pious nation in the “Christian” world. Hartford Institute estimates there are roughly 350,000 religious congregations in the United States, and a disturbingly high proportion of American Christians believe in the literal truth of the “Creation Story”. And yet the USA has roughly four times the murder rate than Great Britain which is one of the least religious countries. Not only is the USA a religious country, it also practices Capital Punishment.

Dangers of religious fanaticism

I believe the biggest threat to our well-being comes from politicians who declare themselves to be driven by God. If these people believe half the clap-trap found in the Bible or the Koran as the literal truth and Word of God, then they are going to cause us nothing but trouble. When Tony Blair was the UK Prime Minister, his press aide once famously declared, “We don’t do God”. Interestingly, Blair later converted to Catholicism once safely out of office. He is now making a personal fortune. (The words “camel” and “eye of a needle” come to mind.)

If the President of the USA failed to end a public speech with “God bless America” he would be crucified (if you’ll excuse the expression). If a British Prime Minister ended a public speech with “God bless Great Britain”, half his audience would be baffled, and the other half would be rolling in the aisles.

In the 2012 American Presidential election campaign one of the contenders is a professed Christian accused by some of his opponents of being a Muslim, and the other is a very rich member of a church running an ancestral database so that dead people can be posthumously baptized into their church. In New York a Sikh who wore a turban in obedience to his religion was assassinated by an idiot who assumed he was an Islamic terrorist because he wore that turban.

In 2002 a group of Islamist fanatics flew airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the cause of their religion, killing thousands of innocent people (including many of their own Faith). They considered themselves to be martyrs and due to be rewarded by being transported to some great brothel in the sky where they could enjoy the pleasures of the flesh that they so earnestly denied themselves and others whilst on this earth.

A few years later a similar group of religious lunatics blew up London Underground trains and a bus, killing or maiming hundreds.

The problem with people “driven by God” is that if they reach a powerful position and have access to weapons of mass destruction they may find ways and means of hastening their journey to the prophesized “end time”, “apocalypse”, “rapture” – call it what you will – taking us all with them in their crazed belief that believers will be “saved” and non-believers (including those who have never had the chance to even consider belief, for example, babies) will be cast into the fiery cauldron of “Hell” for all eternity.

As I write this I am reading reports from Afghanistan that a group of Taliban came across some people dancing to music and summarily executed them. God’s work has been done again.

It’s difficult to believe that such people have been in receipt of any worthwhile education, and indeed some haven’t, which is part of the problem. There are young children in parts of the Islamic world forced to commit large parts, or all of, the Koran to memory. This process vastly reduces those children’s capacity to think and reason for themselves. Analysis of what they read is out of the question, since it is indisputably the Word of God handed down to Mohammed about 1,300 years ago. It is a dogmatic religion build on shaky foundations lacking in historical evidence. Some will grow up to become “God’s bombs” in pursuit of “Paradise”.

Christianity has also frequently, and relatively recently, been perverted to suit the egotistical, testosterone-charged desires of maniacs like David Koresh and his Branch Davidians.

How do I relate to “believers”?

If I have, somewhat late in life, come to the view that Religion is not only hogwash but dangerous, then I am faced with a personal dilemma regarding all those people with whom I have a sincere and loving relationship who are themselves sincere believers in God, virgin birth, resurrection, and the Bible as the living truth.

But, on second thoughts, there is no dilemma. The only way I am going to be in trouble is by trying to instill into my friends a pressing need for them to come round to my way of thinking. But that is exactly what is wrong with so many religious sects. They take it upon themselves to come knocking on my door with the express view of challenging my logical thought processes, and I take exception to their view that I have some kind of duty to think as they do.

So, the last thing I am going to do is to aggressively chip away at my friends’ core beliefs. Needless to say I consider my friends to be good people, otherwise they would not be my friends, and I have absolutely no desire to “convert” them. I am not so blind that I cannot see they are comforted in their beliefs. (It might well be that they will revise their view about me. I hope not, but there’s little I can do about it.)

Atheists, Humanists, Agnostics, do not go to war with other people or other countries or indulge in torture in order to enforce their way of thinking.

Looking at the remarkable species that is the human race, with its amazing achievements, and looking at (what appears to be, so far) this unique planet in an unfathomable universe, I am even prepared to concede the possibility of a “divine” power beyond our understanding being responsible for it all. But it won’t be the “God” of the Bible or the Koran. It is even possible that I might have some kind of spiritual potential connection with that power, in which case I certainly do not need men (mostly), in ridiculous fancy dress performing staggeringly boring ceremonies and rituals to intercede on my behalf.

So, all I can ask of my believing friends is that they understand and accept me as I understand and accept them.

I made my own choice to read books that persuaded me to re-examine the “Holy scriptures” in a different light. I do not wish to insist that others read them, because, in all honesty, the experience is initially uncomfortable – even scary - for the reasons outlined right at the start of this essay. We are naturally inclined to avoid reading stuff that invades our comfort zones.

I do not fear death, though I admit to be being a bit queasy about the means of getting there.

©Lionel Beck 2012