Religion as a deterrent to harmful persons and the unbridled desires and raging ambitions of dictators, warmongers, criminals and their like has certainly not proven effective in human history quite apart from the countless recorded violent excesses of religions and the countless warring sects themselves, which continue even today in many parts of the world.  Considering the miserable prospects offered to sinners by Christianity and Islam (not least the world ending with annihilation of all creatures and a Last Judgement with sinners descending to eternal hell) it is not so remarkable that would-be wrong-doers remain largely unaffected by preaching. Even though total cleansing of all sins is promised (such as just through believing in Jesus – a dodgy ‘clearance sale’ type promise though it sounds, unbelievers and dissenters remain unaffected by priestly admonitions of which they may learn. The less so as the so-called ‘faithful’ these days are again increasingly known to be ridden with mortal sins, especially nowadays of sexual abuse and pedophilia among the priesthoods of male-dominated and monkish leanings. Meanwhile, only human laws – however deficient they can be or lacking thorough enforcement – have provably done far more to curb many of the ills of societies and nations. Human values in the advanced cultures are specifically not values of divine commandment, but an ever developing and further discriminating instrument for the regulation of worldly life.

Virtually all established churches strive for influence and power in the ‘temporal’ social and material world. Most religions or their sects proselytize. Through the progress of law and human rights, they have mostly had to refrain from outright and open force or repression of people, which was the practice of most religions in earlier times. By showing a semblance of humility and unctuousness, churches have a known history of worming their way into favour with the powers-that-be so as to gain influence, money and power. (Amusingly, they have no records of being able to influence the supposed ‘otherworldly spheres’ or their imaginary inhabitants, despite massive collective mental efforts).

If one looks with un-indoctrinated eyes through the ritualised language of religions and their ossified certainties and what they believe to be divinely imposed commandments, values and beliefs, one can discover it to be a mix of hypocrisy and priestly twaddle combined with skilful manipulation of the engrained anxieties, superstitions and wishful thinking of people generally. The highest religious values – like love and total forgiveness, self-sacrifice for the good of others – are ideals which are seldom possible for most people – including religious leaders – to follow consistently or anywhere near completely. This has led to the Janus-faced character of religions, which make the right hand not see what the left hand is up to. The prime example is perhaps the (vague) Judaeo-Christian commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’, while churches which preach it are most often supporters of killing in warfare, and also have a long history of torturing and burning non-conformists. Some interpret this over-generalised commandment to include not killing animals or even anything living, including any unborn foetus.

Countless generations have striven to extract truths from the Bible’s Old Testament, in which process it was necessary to ignore or reject the remainder as incomprehensible, false or inexplicable. Considering the very diverse origins of its content and knowing how the Bible was compiled and the agendas that were involved in including or excluding scriptures, the result is seen as an arbitrary hodgepodge of mostly incompatible doctrines, ideas and values. Nonetheless there are countless fundamentalists who would accept that it is infallible! Such pettifoggery is rife within evangelical as well as previously established churches. In much modern-day Christianity, there seems to be a common consensus silently to downgrade the Bible’s Old Testament, because its doctrines do not agree with the New Testament teachings of Jesus. Yet it has never been excluded from Christian holy scripture.

Christian denominations have – knowingly or not – instilled much pessimism in their folds. This begins with the assumption that everyone supposedly inherited ‘original sin’ as a burden of being born. This attitude lingers over much ritual and sacrament in churches, though most capitalise on the fact by teaching that baptism into their faith washes away all inherited sins, or confession of sins can absolve the sinner. To avoid further sinning, a puritanical and joyless rejection of the pleasures of the senses is advised – most notably any sexuality other than heterosexual marriage relations. Various sects further condemn sexual relations other than as solely for procreation, so abstaining is made a general rule. This puritan mentality, and behavioural norms related to it, repress many healthy natural instincts, even from a child’s earliest years. The repressive nature of religion has induced joylessness or melancholy and caused intolerable conflicts within the minds of many of the indoctrinated.

Having raised ‘man’ above all animals to the extent of denying our natural origins and evolution, Christianity consequently tended to look down on what reminds of natural animal behaviour, yet also the more human aspects of eroticism and sensuality, stunting natural drives and degrading the creative life force. This influenced arts such as music and literature in trying to ban many of their forms. Further, by taking numerous myths (eg. the Genesis mythology, Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden etc.) literally, Christian churches rejected genuine curiosity and discovery or philosophical investigations as challenging. The conflict soon arose between church authorities and scientists from Galileo and Giordano Bruno and on to Darwin and a host of new scientific disciplines. Though evolution is regarded as a fact in more enlightened religious denominations, this is still vehemently rejected in favour of irrational and non-empirical ‘creationism’ by most evangelicals and fundamentalists. As is the doctrine on the terrors of hell and brimstone and the devil or Satan still lurks in many Christian sects and Catholic dogma.  The Vatican’s denial of the use of contraceptives and the right to abortion under any circumstance is an indefensible irrational mockery of human values and rights. Protestant churches are more liberal on some of these issues, which is obviously a consequence of the Lutheran rebellion against the vast malpractices of Rome.

Christian scripture holds that only the meek, humble and poor can gain entry to heaven, meaning that one has to be an apathetic failure in worldly affairs to qualify for the doubtful afterlife in a vaguely defined, insipid and imaginary incorporeal realm. That the vast majority of convinced believers and priests cling desperately to life, often believing nearly all mortals to be inveterate sinners. The burden increases unless one sacrifices oneself almost totally and sins only most minimally, and above all believes in the Christ of the gospels as a requirement to enter heaven. It is depressing – yet somehow quite laughable – toTo hear Prime Ministers and Presidents on television reading most discriminating scriptural gospel texts like “Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” What a contradiction to their constant stances against most other forms of social discrimination!

That believers strive to live on in what is taught to be ‘a vale of tears’ and so put off the supposed paradisal future is thus something of a conundrum too, but to help ensure they do the Roman and other church teaches that suicide will leave them bereft of a consecrated burial and hence bar them from grace hereafter. The right to die is still almost unrecognised in otherwise civilised  nations due largely to the inertia created by centuries of religious insistence that one must suffer unto death regardless of the circumstances. What a mockery of forgiveness, love and compassion!

It is quite flabbergasting to think that otherwise sober and informed persons can actually believe that prayer for victory in battle or war can have the slightest effect on the outcome, especially when both sides are fanatically religious. The Christian Crusades against Islam illustrate this most effectively, though examples can be found throughout history and anything remotely like proof of divine intervention in world conflicts of any kind is totally lacking. Without going into detail here, what goes for the mass surely applies pari passu to the individual as regards begging for divine help.

One great crux on which most religion is broken is the doctrine that God created and rules over everything, and hence must have created the conditions of sin and evil actions, not least the devil Satan (a figure of fearful fantasy based on ignorance of the real causes of the ills of the world).

Not all religions alienate humanity from nature or life in the real world to the extent of Christian dogma. Nor do all religious sects pay homage to such absurdities as God having inseminated a virgin to give birth to a son whose suffering and awful death will redeem humanity. By what means this could be achieved it is impossible to conceive in any intelligent or sensible way. Add to this the Eucharist, the symbolic drinking and eating of the blood and flesh of Jesus… an obvious anachronistic leftover from stone age primitive thinking shared by cannibals and sorcerers. ‘transubstantiation’ is undoubtedly one of the nonsense howlers of the non-science Christian theology.

The Roman Catholic tradition

Canonising people as ‘saints’ is a doubtful practice which aims at raising the prestige and mysticism of the Catholics. The candidates chosen must satisfy the Vatican powers that they fulfil a set of criteria, one key such requirement being that they have performed some miracle(s)…  itself is a highly controversial claim. However, if many were most likely basically good people who dedicated their lives to helping others, to attribute to all of them events deemed to be miraculous is not credible except to the indoctrinated. The sainting of Popes is also questionable, reminding somewhat of how persons in power glorify their predecessors so as to keep up the reputation of their country, political party or even cover up untoward matters in which they were involved. Some Catholic saints can be suspected of having been mountebanks or mentally disturbed fanatics. The tendency is similar to the irrational tradition among Hindus who honour as ‘holy men’ anyone who punishes himself with terrible salf-sacrifical ordeals like standing for years on one leg, fasting surrounded by fires in extreme heat for long periods and an amazing range of suchlike worthless and bizarre feats.

Catholicism claims to bring liberty to mankind while in actual life it seeks to enslave them to its precepts and demands in return for interventions with the Almighty (such as for lenience towards their supposed ‘sins’, for blessing and rewards after death.. whatever they are supposed to consist in). The crusaders, the Inquisition, the witch hunters and other fanatical believers set about torturing and exterminating the enemies of their faith and their authority, while preaching forgiveness and love towards all men. Islam, with its jihad, warred against infidels (i.e. non-believers) and this agenda is firmly continued in contemporary Muslim extremism and terrorism and intolerant attitudes which are inspired by the injunction of mullahs to extend Sharia law wherever possible throughout the world.

The Catholic church was never above using flattery and a range of other irreligious means of appeasing opponents – especially those of any State – ever aiming to lead the unwary into the delusion that it will not try to take over as much influence and power as it can. Amassing monetary power and property are invariably a goal for most religious institutions, and in one way or another, they collect wealth in return for supposed godly favours, ‘dispensations’ which can be purchased… as if god’s favour were a commodity and not a highly doubtful idea having no more basis in experience, tangible proof or logical reasoning than has the existence of an all-good and infallible Creator.

In order to continually expand its influence, Catholicism exerts pressures to ensure that children born of a Catholic parent is baptised only as such on pain of ostracism and sometimes yet worse, disregarding the rights of tender children to think in freedom and eventually discover their own convictions. This total conformism, however, is even more rigorously enforced in Islam, even to the point of preaching death for apostates and murder of family members who reject the demands of their mullahs, as all who follow contemporary events well know.

The edict that the Pope is infallible is now a recognisable and most risible bogus claim. This is but one of the countless dead branches on its dogmatic Bible-based theology while many others such as the ‘earth-centred universe’ finally dropped off very belatedly, while the doctrines are gradually eroding in the face of modern science and the social influence of human rights’ movements etc. One can hardly imagine that Popes could ever become apostates, since they must always get embroiled in an increasingly narrow ideological gridlock since they confined their lives to the mental environments of church and Vatican. A life without proselytization, power, influence, political importance and comfort would be unthinkable to the Cardinals and their countless subordinates. Paradoxically for them, none of these attributes fit in with the stunted vision of the ‘kingdom of heaven’ to which they cling.

This aspect of freedom of the will – seemingly such an evident fact – is mostly overlooked in the concentration on the more technical philosophical or theological issue whether human can have any free will at all. There may be reasons why such a debate is not raised or is unpopular, since it conflicts with the widely cherished generalised belief about the supposed freedom and equality of all persons. On the one hand it is patently evident that everyone does not have the same degree of personal freedom – that is, the ability and means to do whatever they choose – because all freedom or choice is limited by the alternatives on hand. For example, an infant is less free than an adult, a person serving a prison sentence is less free than a normal citizen, a person with broad knowledge and long experience is usually aware of more realistic possibilities and alternatives than a person deprived of education and opportunities for wide experience. The limitations on freedom can also be congenital, as in those born with symptoms of genetic mental retardation.

The significance of the above consideration is that it opens for the possibility of degrees of human freedom of will in a way which even tends to challenge the basic assumption of free will as a universal human capacity, or at least some of the implications drawn from it (not least in religion, morals and the law). It has been proposed in some religions and by esoteric schools that the degree of free will anyone has depends upon unusual achievements such a yoga, tantra and other practices. The pseudo-philosopher Gurdjieff was a proponent of such a theory. This idea also forms the basis of most Hindu and Buddhist religion. The difficulty with this is that, as a hypothesis, it is far beyond any normal means of investigation or testing. Nonetheless, science in general still regards the existence of higher forms of consciousness or ‘transcendental wisdom’ than the human mind normally achieves as a ‘unvalidated hypothesis’, and some even regard it as an unnecessary theory to explain anything. Moreover, there is no evidence that any such supposed ‘spiritual masters’ have ever contributed anything significant to genuine knowledge, but only to speculation and subjective self-interpretations.

People were taught they were responsible for their own actions but were nonetheless powerless in the face of fate and God’s implacable will, indoctrination beginning in early childhood (as still done these days). Those who succumbed to these ideologies and arbitrary morality were offered prayer, submission to priesthoods (representing deities or God) as a palliative, a crutch of hope, and were thus readily manipulated by the powerful – whether similarly deluded or cynically uncaring. Especially the latter committed most despicable crimes against humanity in the name of their ‘faith’ throughout the ages. The same religious mania of having the only right faith still dominates much of mainstream religion, especially Christianity and Islam but also many sects and cults in all religions.

Truly moral humanitarian behaviour should arise naturally from personal and collective experience in a sane (i.e. non-ideologised) society, as prefigured in the case of certain peaceful tribes of ‘noble savages’.  When humanistic education arises and is not interfered with by religionists and ideologists, immoral people tend to lose power and their freedom of indiscriminate selfish action is reduced. If people break the laws of a just society, physical restraint and educative punishment must and in the main will follow. No ‘invisible’ or unknown entity can achieve this, as human experience shows, and theories of ‘divine retribution’ like karma are mere speculation, however much embroidered. Religion would and should – and actually does – decline and fade along with the development of humanistic and caring societies.

That any conscious designer, any intelligent energy source, created everything is an extremely unlikely hypothesis. Nothing intelligent or purposeful can be found to be behind the origin of the universe. A pre-existing creator of creation is a total logical conflict and a non-starter for explaining the Big Bang. No answer to say that it was itself uncreated.  Nor can the claim that God was uncreated hold water, it is sheer self-contradiction. That the universe is the result of a perfect, good, omnipotent intelligence is contradicted by the ills of the world… by the ever-present accidental nature of events in individual lives and human affairs altogether, which are fraught with the most terrible and mostly undeserved sufferings.

I outgrew the belief system of Anglican Christianity during my last years at grammar school, but had not then developed the necessary skills and experience to take up the so-called ‘eternal questions’ very effectively or thoroughly. I was in the position of many sceptics and atheists who have never really been ‘infected’ with religious enthusiasm and therefore have viewed most religion from the sidelines or the outside. Such a position protects from disrupting superstitious and ‘mystical’ influences in work and the learning processes, but it can fall short when confronted with differing religious theologies and especially reported phenomena, from proclaimed ‘miracles’ to mystical experiences.

Though I cannot advise anyone to take up any religion or get involved in mystic sectarianism, those who do so with serious intent and who become disillusioned through experience and what they learn, are in a far stronger position to know the score than armchair academics, philosophers, sociologists and their kind as regards the possibility of religion being anything more than unfounded and misguided belief. To have lived through the processes involving so-called mystical experience, heartfelt adherence to some teaching or teacher, self-sacrificing practice of the virtues and any other requirements for whatever one hopes it will bring teaches a lot. Then, to have discovered the essential emptiness of all the teachings in practice, the invariable weaknesses or outright fraud of the teacher, the mental-emotional and other character failings of most other believers, and the frustration of nearly all good intents in the whole enterprise… that is a deeply educative process, especially as regards the approach of religious sects and cults and also goes far in giving insight into to the ‘eternal questions’. Those who observe without participation and inside experience can only get a superficial understanding of the processes of conversion, indoctrination, fixation of belief, how control and misuse of adherents’ autonomy and rights by religious ‘authorities’ and institutions operates.

The rational, empirical and other intellectual criticism of religions and theologies are nonetheless also very important as bulwarks against the slide into the ills that follow upon otherworldly fantasy and misplaced faith.

The recent sale of a letter from Einstein to a German philosopher knock on the head all ideas that Einstein was a believer in any God. Because Einstein occasionally used the word ‘God’ as a ‘creator’ at least figuratively  (eg. ‘God does not play dice’ and other similar statements), religionists have jumped on it to try to convince us that Einstein fully believed in a God who created the universe. Sathya Sai Baba was one of the worst offenders, as one might expect, but he went further than anyone in creating statements which he then attributed to Einstein!

However, Einstein denied he actually believed in any kind of God on various occasions, though he admitted that the human mind could not (at least then) comprehend everything of the mystery and harmony of the universe. Just now (October 23012) a letter he wrote to the philosopher Eric. B. Gutkind (on January 5, 1954, about a year before Einstein’s death) is on auction on-line confirms his actual view in his last year very convincingly. The BBC reported on its contents as the images above show.

“The Encode consortium’s 442 researchers, situated in 32 institutes around the world, used 300 years of computer time and five years in the lab to get their results. They examined a total of 147 types of tissue – including cancer cells, liver extracts, endothelial cells from umbilical cords, and stem cells derived from embryos – and subjected them to around a hundred different experiments, recording which parts of the DNA code were activated in which cells at which times.”
See ‘Breakthrough study overturns theory of junk DNA in genome‘ 

Those who ‘believe’ in God should realise that all the reasons for that belief have been systematically stripped away – and are so at an increasing rate – leaving the entire idea of God hollow- Yet hollow vessels still make the most sound, it seems. Not just sound but delightful carnage in the wars between mainstream religions, as driven by their fanatical sects, relying on their rigid scriptures, the bogus ‘fossilized words god”.

In recent decades, however, the power of research into evolutionary science – with huge advances in paleontology, genetics, physical anthropology and all related biological and geological sciences – everything points to evolution from the simplest life-forms as the only possible explanation as to how all life arose and developed. There is therefore no need whatever for any god or creator to explain life. Geneticists are not only already creating new life forms, but they are recreating physical organs and limbs that were lost in the process of evolution… such as raptor tails in chickens, scales in place of feathers. This work seems very likely to produce a genuine dinosaur-like creature within one to several decades! If it can be done with a dinosaur, then creation of human life would also be on the cards. At all events, the likelihood that no divine invisible creator is required to explain and even eventually create all forms of life increases almost day by day.

Only a century or more ago, half of humanity – weighed down by the superstitions and imaginations of the past – believed that God created the universe a few thousand years ago, and many still believe that it was all created in 6 days.. with one day’s rest! [Why just one day's rest, wasn't the entire job done so God could for ever... just another typical snarl-up in what evolved humanity can today appreciate as the whole absurd religious fairytale]. But science can now  measure with great accuracy how old anything is.

I lost faith in the Christian God when I was at grammar school. Lather, due to philosophy and my study of many cultures and religions, I returned to the enigma and eventually spent decades probing in all kinds of ways to try to evaluate the claim. Only after a great deal of commitment to spiritual practice and self-investigation – I came more and more to the conclusion that everything that points to there being a god (or whatever) can be explained as a result of perplexity, confusion, error, mind-programming, social pressures, fear, longing, hope, desperation and any number of throw-offs of these human traits. Further, I am intensely aware of the disdain and false pity that believers in God feel for those like myself, who have reached a liberated standpoint… I only reached it after having thrown myself heart and soul into the search for God – discovered many extraordinary things which instructed me as to the futility of seeking a non-entity created by human fear, ignorance and awe. Also, I found out to my full conviction that absolutely no one of the many deeply involved I knew were at all illumined – as one would expect after their decades of intense spiritual practice – and were all barking up wrong trees or were stuck in dead-end beliefs and rituals.  

You may read some interesting thoughts as to whether the brain creates god, based on neurology. It is evident that we are incapable of anything before our brains grow and develop. Action and learning language and all the rest that comes after is what makes the brain capable of what it is. Today a child can learn more and faster about everything than ever before, because the sum of accumulating knowledge humanity has won through great struggles to understand is all there waiting. Nor do young people have to stick within the scope of their parents and teachers’ out-dated and largely unquestioned horizons any more… the internet frees them to investigate everything, from the craziest to the wisest, and to compare and evaluate everything themselves. IF humanity survives, surely this will lead to an incomparably better world, for ignorance and narrowness are at the root of all the world’s problems. The contrary religions and conflicts galore between them, and between their own sects, have caused and still cause a large amount of all the problems, as ever.

The huge variety of human culture arise from the diversity of individual minds which usually operate within the parameters of some collective entity – a society, a nation, a sub-culture. Individual diversity is the key datum about the living brain. This arises through the brain’s flexibility in handling all impulses it receives. The information (or data) is processed along known lines, yet where and how information is stored varies greatly from person to person, it being initially fragmented for its component parts to be stored in different areas of the cortex. How all these billions of data are encoded and stored – and how they are related to one another through the vast complex of neural circuits – is unique to each individual brain. ‘No two minds think alike’ expresses how this fact makes itself known even to people who have no concept of neurology. Further, though our brains have the same physiological nature and work in the same ways, they do not grow and develop at the same rate in everyone.

Memory is a main cerebral function and there are various systems by which the brain achieves encoding, storage, retrieval and not to forget the equally important function of forgetting. That we can forget is an essential to our ability to change, because it is now established that our memories – which condition our behavior and shape our aims etc. – are not ‘set in stone’ but are constantly undergoing modification as neural circuits are renewed through recollection or repetition or else fade due to not being activated. Even people with powerful and almost all-enveloping obsessional or compulsive mindsets can and do change, due to the possibility of replacement of ingrained memories by gradual modification. There are of course numerous therapeutic techniques which can help achieve this, and neurology is gradually providing understanding of the physical and genetic basis of fruitful mind therapy. (The popular book ‘Brain Rules’ underpins much of the views expressed here (see Brain Rules: Brain development for parents, teachers and business …) as the quote (inset) illustrates.)

In respect of all this, note that an International Conference will be held in Jerusalem on ‘Neuroplasticity and Cognitive Modifiability‘ (Jerusalem, 10-13 March 2013) at which a host of prominent experts will attend. The Conference prospective: “Scientific advancements in conceptualization and technology make new tools available for professionals facing medical, psychological, educational, and societal problems of human beings. This conference brings together revolutionary developments in two disciplines: cognitive modifiability and the neurosciences. Neuroscience brings evidence that modifiability is possible, and cognitive modifiability shows how to make it happen. This meeting offers the opportunity for a worldwide gathering of scientists, practitioners, therapists, and educators who come from different professional perspectives, but share common interests to explore and become familiar with the developments in these related fields. The common theme is modifiability. Revolutionary developments in brain sciences support the theory and belief that basic human behaviors and functions can be modified.“

Among the many themes featured will be:-

This reminds of the way in which the brain has long been known to complete images, such as to ‘fill in’ the blind spot or make 3-dimensions where only two are shown but experience knows there are three. Also, the brain tends to see human features – especially faces – in all manner of visual impression, such as in clouds, everyday objects,  accidental formations like Rorschach-type ink blots. These are examples of ‘pareidolia’ whereby a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) is perceived as significant. It is faulty perception, seeing something which is not there but which is anticipated (due to preconceptions or subconscious brain information). There have been many – and often striking – instances of perceptions of religious imagery and themes, especially the faces of religious figures, in ordinary phenomena. Those inclined to believe in religious figures, or wishing to have their doubts removed, are liable to fall for such accidental similarities as genuinely meaningful ‘miracles’.

The researchers who wrote the article found that children as young as three were found to attribute design and purpose to inanimate objects and animals. It is well-known that adults also are equally inclined to see design and intention where there is none. Put under pressure to explain natural phenomena, adults often fall back on teleological arguments, such as “trees produce oxygen so that animals can breathe” or “the sun is hot because warmth nurtures life”. Further  “…even adults who describe themselves as atheists and agnostics are prone to supernatural thinking….” and interviews with atheists made it clear that “they often tacitly attribute purpose to significant or traumatic moments in their lives, as if some agency were intervening to make it happen. They don’t completely exorcise the ghost of god – they just muzzle it”

It is also known that trauma cause some people to slip into believing supernatural phenomenon and finding patterns when there is none “.when we feel a lack of control we fall back on superstitious ways of thinking. That would explain why religions enjoy a revival during hard times…… [this also suggests] that god isn’t going away, andthat atheism will always be a hard sell. Religious belief is the “path of least resistance”. Meanwhile,  disbelief requires an effort.

See also How your brain creates God (i.e. subjective ‘realities’)