This paper has been written not only to expose the hypocrisy of man-made mythical religions, but also to enable thinking people to articulate the unmitigated nonsense of a belief in myths. There is no morality in religious dogma. Morality is the natural behaviour of normal human primates whatever their level of education. It is this harmony that enables the human primate to pursue their comparatively short life on this incredibly small planet. We are dogged by undemocratic civilizations that aim to manipulate, control and disrupt the natural order of our scientific understanding of our particular universe. At the moment our wellbeing is threatened by the mythical fundamental evangelism of the United States of North America and their judeo-christian capitalist cohorts.

Before embarking on a brief history of man-made religions, let us be absolutely clear on a few simple facts. The hundreds of man-made religious practices that we see around us today were only created within the last few thousand years. Before that the human primate slowly evolved to its present form over a period of several hundred thousand years with only natural morality to sustain their various activities. I was going to say ‘primitive activities’, but that is a word more applicable to many of today’s species! Children are born free of all this nonsense, but unfortunately, depending on where they are born, many are indoctrinated and brainwashed into believing a great variety of conflicting myths. There is no common denominator, in fact many religious beliefs were or are violently opposed to one another, including Protestants and Roman Catholics for centuries. The majority of human beings are not very bright or well educated, through no fault of their own, and surprisingly many are honest enough to admit they know virtually nothing about the scientific discoveries of recent years. Even those who know their beliefs are irrational and illogical, maintain these lies in order to hold sway over the masses.

One of these many conflicting religious sects called themselves Christians. Let us analyse this word. The Greek word Christ means ‘the prophet’ and was later used to describe the followers of a humble carpenter called Jesus, in Aramaic Joshua. To command the attention of a wider audience in Asia Minor two thousand years ago, he was imbued with all manner of mythical properties, including being the ‘son of their imaginary god’ and ‘having come alive again after he had died’! The history of the hundreds of other mythical religions around the world tells their own stories of blatant casuistry by the minions of the ruling class. When the human primate species eventually becomes extinct, any remaining man-made mythical religions and their ‘gods’ will die with them. Before discussing the harm done by man-made mythical religions, let us consider the word ‘atheism’, which literally means ‘against religion’. This was a word that became fashionable by religious believers after Charles Darwin wrote “The Origin of Species’ in 1859. Today the advances made in our knowledge of evolution has left the remaining pockets of man-made mythical religious believers vehemently opposed to the teaching of evolution. Sir Jonathan Miller in his “Brief History of Disbelief” says ‘atheism is a strange word, you can’t be against people who believe in angels, faeries, and an ‘afterlife’, one can only feel sorry that they have missed out on a science education’. As the biologist Professor Steve Jones says ‘man-made mythical religions have nothing whatsoever to do with the empirical facts of evolution’. As societies like Norway, Sweden and Denmark become better educated and more socially stable, man-made mythical religions become meaningless. In this country Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury recently said that ‘the United Kingdom is a post-Christian country and that the era of widespread worship is over’. David Cameron, the Prime Minister admitted that ‘faith is neither necessary nor sufficient for morality’. In a recent issue of the “New Scientist” discussing the end of religious belief worldwide said ‘would the last person to leave the church please turn out the lights’! Children are not born Christians, Jews or Muslims; they only become so if their parents indoctrinate them into their own man-made cults and rituals. Carl Sagan in his brilliant series “Cosmos” says, ‘man is left to his own devices in this wonderful world with no mythical help from elsewhere’, but then man-made mythical religious believers look upon evolutionary science as blasphemous.

The reaction to my first draft of “The Final Days of Man-made Mythical Religions” has been extremely positive. My ‘spiritual’ friends have reacted in much the same way as I would have expected, many ‘politely’ saying that they would not even read what I had written. Others found it ‘fascinating’ and admitted that they had never really studied science when they were at school, and were largely ignorant of the early history of religion. The ‘true believers’ found evolutionary science an anathema to their man-made beliefs as it seriously threatened their long held convictions. A good friend of mine, a local Minister, said ‘don’t be surprised Ian, religious believers are terrified of the advances in evolutionary science in recent years. Many of us have tried to come to terms with the evidence of science, but for true believers this is difficult. As the numbers of those attending church dramatically fall, congregations acknowledge that the younger generation are better educated than they were as children, particularly in the sciences, and that mediaeval religious dogma has no meaning for them today’. The world dominated by Judeo-Christian capitalism is racing towards disaster; we cannot just wait for the older generations to die out. In fact we need them to cast off their belief in man-made mythical religions and join the rest of us in putting an end to the ‘evils’ of neo-liberal fascist racism. Parts of Western civilization are still in thrall to traditional mediaeval mysticism. By this I mean a preoccupation with spiritual unreality. Whilst Europe is rapidly becoming a myth free zone, the United States of North America is still steeped in mythical beliefs. Their inability to logically resolve their own personal fears and problems has encouraged a plethora of charlatans trading in psycho-therapy and false counselling. These practices have become a mythical religion in themselves. Much of the Islamic world is still locked in religious mythical beliefs dating back to its dominant role in the Middle Ages. Asia on the other hand has been largely spared the debilitating influence of mythical and supernatural beliefs, except as a talisman. The presence of man-made religions in the Muslim world today is a power struggle between a deeply entrenched wealthy ruling class dominated by Islamic clerics, but opposed by highly cultured and well educated secular independence movements. Islamic faith is itself in disarray as the Sunnis battle with the Shias to decide who they should look to as the father figure of their mythical religious beliefs. The future of their faith depends on the unquestioning belief of their followers in Islamic teaching. At the moment the Islamists are in a slight majority, but in Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia the majority of their citizens are demanding change, with fewer people paying lip-service to extreme Islamic doctrines. Their hopes are often dashed by coups of conformist ideologies, which have led to the exile, imprisonment and frequently death of those fighting for democracy. Islamic extremists violently target apostates, who renounce their former religious beliefs. The so-called Arab Spring has not been helped by aggressive and decadent western capitalism. The fight for freedom from corrupt rule and man-made mythical religions is being delayed in the Middle East and North Africa by the United States of North America, the ‘The Great Satan’. They provide bribes in the form of military and economic support to countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, in return for allowing Israel’s continued illegal occupation of Palestine. One day Judeo-Christian Capitalism will be forced into paying vast sums to compensate for the evils they have perpetrated throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Let us not forget that the very nature of evolution has allowed our animal species to develop an ability to communicate in a more sophisticated way than mere grunting and barking. It has also opened the way to irrational beliefs that can only be resolved by a good education in the sciences. Where this is not available people can easily be lulled into false beliefs that appear to give solace and comfort to the ignorant. Some early religious mythical beliefs were no doubt occasioned by powerful potentates anxious to control their oppressed masses by appointing soothsayers from their own ruling class, later to become known as priests, to promise not only an afterlife of ease, tranquillity and plenty, but an opportunity to introduce the hypocrisy of forgiveness, whereby the wrath of the masses should not be taken out against their lords and masters. What a load of cobblers!

During the last fifty years spirituality has become the default position or halfway house of those who no longer go to church. They don’t know enough about evolutionary science to join the rest of us in the New Age of Enlightenment. It has developed its own raison d’être without any real understanding of what they mean by spirituality. To most of us this manifestation smacks of witchcraft. This descent into the underworld of ethereal imaginings and illusions has become the plaything of people with poor education, time on their hands and nothing better to do. The lighting of candles and the performing of strange rituals appears to occupy a gap in unfulfilled lives. Alternative mythical religions are sadly commonplace in the United States of North America. When you hear people rightly admit that our short lived species don’t know everything, they are expressing their impatience that scientific knowledge still has so much to discover.

Another bizarre and dangerous path taken by man-made mythical religions is the move away from traditional church rituals to extreme expressions of idolatry by the Evangelical and Pentecostal mythical believers. Over the years in both the United States of North America and in England I have made it a point to see for myself what goes on in traditional and alternative man-made mythical religious gatherings. On 2nd January, 1996 I witnessed four hours of unbelievable bedlam at the Grosvenor Evangelical Church at Barnstaple, North Devon. They share the same weird missionary zeal as the Canadian based Toronto Airport Vineyard Christian Fellowship. Some of their leading visionaries were invited from Toronto to address a meeting at the Church Hall, which was absolutely packed with hundreds of ‘lost souls’. After two or three hours the meeting descended into a chaotic scene with everyone on their feet, hands raised in the air, speaking in tongues, ululating and foaming at the mouth, all the while clutching their well-thumbed and heavily annotated bibles. The stage acted as a pulpit for zealous Toronto Blessing evangelists from Canada, local evangelists and a number of local Church of England priests. Amongst those present at this extraordinary scene was the Revd. Paul Smith, the Rector of St. Mary’s Church, Bideford. The congregation were then exhorted to cleanse their souls, whatever that means, and admit their sins. I couldn’t believe that people were so ready to reveal their dishonesty, marital unfaithfulness and incestuous behaviour. This was followed by what I understand is called a state of ecstasy where hundreds of those present collapsed on the floor with their eyes closed, knocking over their neighbours, chairs and other furnishings. This behaviour was largely staged, as I noticed that many people opened their eyes just before they hit the floor! I wonder who they were trying to impress with this ridiculous game-playing. It was like a battlefield with dozens of evangelists kneeling over the fallen ‘making the sign of the cross’ and blessing them! It was really weird. My wife Rosina and I decided we had seen enough and with great difficulty stepped over countless bodies to make our escape into reality and the fresh air.

More recently I witnessed a somewhat similar scene at an Evening Service at St. Mary’s Church, Bideford orchestrated by the Revd. Alan Glover. Watching from the back of the church, at one time I had to rush forward to stop a lady from crashing her head against the back of a pew. On another occasion I attended a lecture in the same church on the ritual of prayer to their imaginary man-made god. I find it surprising that these shenanigans are never reported in the press or on television. A good friend of mine John Burnett a former MP for West Devon said, ‘Ian, the reason is that the politicians, and the media they control, can’t allow this behaviour that borders on insanity to be common knowledge as long as they still value the need for the votes of religious believers’. In much the same way a wall of silence has lasted for centuries about the appalling levels of child abuse and paedophilia by priests of all denominations and wealthy predators. Fortunately at long last rational human beings are demanding that this abhorrent behaviour is brought before the courts.

I leave you with another example. A few years ago I was invited by a friend of mine in Taunton, Somerset to a meeting of the Christian Business Fellowship, an evangelical cult that has made considerable profits by asking for donations to finance their message. My friend had recently lost his business, his wife and his family following a serious hang gliding accident. People should be aware of charlatans peddling snake oil in the guise of man-made mythical religious practices, such as spiritual healing, crystal and candle therapy, cranial osteopathy, aromatherapy, reflexology, homoepathy, psychotherapy, kabbalah meditation, hypnotherapy, Japanese reiki healing and a host of equally peculiar pastimes indulged in by people who have missed out on a real education.

The failure by some people to accept the advances made in the scientific understanding of our universe has created divisions within our society that continue to bedevil the harmony of our primate species. The generic term Homo Sapiens, meaning being ‘well read and broadly knowledgeable about the world we live in’, can only apply to a few members of our species, possibly no more than seven per cent. They would of course include Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, who although mythical religious believers are fighting oppression around the world. Amongst the coterie of well-educated enlightened evolutionists are Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Oliver Stone, Robert Fisk, Howard Zinn, Christopher Hitchens, George Monbiot, John Gray, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris, Chris Hedges, Peter Douglas Ward, Robin Dunbar, Neil Shubin, William Blum, Eduardo Galeano, Grace Livingstone, Stephen Kinzer, Ilan Pappé, Greg Palast, Francis Wheen, Peter Atkins, Susan Jacoby, Richard Gott, Mark Curtis, Richard Dawkins, Alice Roberts, Jerry A. Coyne, Steve Jones, Edward O. Wilson, Mark Lynas, Lawrence Krauss, Naomi Klein to name but a few. In their books of non-fiction they see the world for what it is, uncluttered by alchemists, soothsayers and the snake oil of charlatans. Many of these writers were born in the United States of North America, and are fighting back against the appalling ignorance of so many of their fellow citizens.

School, college and university curricula must encourage the reading of non-fiction as opposed to the mindless novels that so many people read, which rarely enlarge on the fundamental issues that challenge civilization. I do not include many historical novels that are often brilliantly evocative of real events. Apart from professional textbooks, non-fiction books are beautifully written and can open the mind to a whole world of real life changing experiences and challenges. The future teaching of literature in our schools and colleges must include the reading of non-fiction books. A good non-fiction book can be infinitely more rewarding than many so-called ‘classics’. This is epitomized in the writings of the authors mentioned above. To join the ranks of Homo Sapiens what better way than curl up in your favourite armchair with a gin and tonic and absorb the studied brilliance of these masters of communication.

The problem facing us today is how to bring on board the remaining ninety-three per cent of humanity. The great majority of people, through no fault of their own, could be characterized as Homo Insipiens the ill-informed. They are not stupid, far from it, but they have been denied a comprehensive education. Few people have any idea of what the brutal semi-educated Homo Rapiens, rapacious pillagers and free market capitalists, are doing to this wonderful world of ours. Homo Rapiens and their camp followers the apologists may be few in number, but they control the purse strings and wield enormous power. How can we stop them from further undermining our society? It is difficult to quantify another primate species that I call Homo Fides Fabulae, believers in man-made myths. They include church hierarchies who can be as corrupt, vicious and sexually exploitive as their Home Rapiens counterparts, especially when their false teachings and tainted wealth are threatened For example witness the Catholic Church hierarchy’s support for the repulsive Dictatorships in Central America and South America after the Second World War. The Jesuit Liberation Theologists didn’t stand a chance of defending the interests of the poor against the Council of Catholic Bishops meeting in Brazil at that time, who damned their activities in supporting the poor. They only survived because they went along with the obscenities of the oligarchs. All this coupled with the appalling brutality of the United States of North America’s trained CIA Death Squads working hand and glove with these vile Dictatorships.

For anyone in any doubt about the struggle of Central and South America to free themselves from United States imperialism and the oligarchs, the descendants of Portuguese and Spanish slave owners, they should read Eduardo Galeano’s “Open Veins of Latin America — Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent”, and Grace Livingstone’s “America’s Backyard — The United States and Latin America”. These books expose not only the brutality of the Dictatorships and the United States of North America, but also the indifference of the church, the oligarchies and middle class apologists. The ruling class traditionally ignore the great mass of people, who are in fact an untapped treasure trove of talent crying out for real democracy and a decent education. A new breed of well educated people must replace the corrupt politicians, lawyers, landowners and media tycoons that seem to dominate contemporary society.

Venezuela is a good example of this hidden talent. Consider the Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra which contains some of the finest musicians in the world. Many members of the orchestra grew up in the poorest parts of Caracas, but with education they have reached the pinnacle of their profession! Venezuela also reveals the many problems that can arise when the domination of a national asset is illegally sequestered by a foreign power. When the President Hugo Chavez nationalized the oil industry from the hands of the United States of North America, they rightly sacked the pro-American directors and technicians and replaced them with loyal Venezuelans and skilled men from other nations. The United States and Venezuelan oligarchs were furious at the loss of profits pouring into their own pockets. Out of chagrin and spite they have since made it very difficult to allow production to reach its former levels. This is criminal interference in the just affairs of another country. Until Hugo Chavez came to power the ruling class in Venezuela had done absolutely nothing to ameliorate the appalling conditions under which the great majority of native Venezuelans lived. The Spanish descendants who have committed crimes against the impoverished native population and have subsequently left Venezuela should be hunted down and put on trial. Venezuela must hold new elections and end corruption wherever it rears its ugly head, including within the present administration. The Revolution of Hugo Chavez must be protected in order to ensure proper housing for the native population, educate a new generation in the art of good government, build new colleges of science and technology, to develop the land for the benefit of the people and to end centuries of religious indoctrination by the descendants of the original Spanish missionaries. Corrupt oligarchs, politicians and their camp followers should be banned from voting in these elections, and their land and businesses confiscated. Decent Venezuelans from all classes will welcome the opportunity to make a break with the past and support these much needed reforms and changes. It is despicable that the old settler mentality still exists.

The people who supported apartheid in South Africa, the overthrow of President Salvador Allende and the murderous rule of General Pinochet in Chile, the military Hunta in Argentina, the illegal Zionist occupation of Palestine, and the vile Dictatorships in Central and South America have caused untold misery and poverty amongst innocent people, and they are still with us! Foremost amongst these are mythical church hierarchies such as Pope Pius XII who made a deal with Hitler on condition that the church turned a blind-eye to the holocaust, and the Catholic Bishops Conference in Brazil and their indifference to the plight of the poor in Central America as I have already mentioned.

Mention of the holocaust reminds me of my cousin Edwin Miller (Ted) Aplin (1909-1973) from Teignmouth in Devon, who became known as ‘The Angel of Belsen’ for the part he played as a young Royal Canadian Air Force officer at the notorious Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in Germany at the end of the war. Stationed at the nearby Celle Air Force Base he arranged through the Armed Forces Postal Service for survivors to make contact with their families and friends, and organized his friends in Canada to provide much needed food, clothing and other necessities. The internees gave him this soubriquet for the months of care that he gave them before the camp was finally closed down. He returned to his wife and family in Canada after the war. He was fondly remembered at the 50th Anniversary held at the camp in 1995.

The hypocrisy of many world leaders at the recent funeral of Nelson Mandela stands as a lasting shame to large sections of humanity, many of whom still rely on the backing of the church hierarchy to maintain control of their undemocratic states. Compared with the untold contributions that people like Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela and Hugo Chavez have given to the poor and oppressed, the oligarchs and their camp followers have given nothing. Fidel Castro and Cuba have suffered outrageously at the hands of the United States of North America, a country that imprisons its own African-Americans and Latinos in frightful numbers. The United States of North America has still not been properly called to account for its years of slavery and lynching of African Americans, let alone the earlier massacre of its native population! Nelson Mandela won a sort of freedom for his country, but real victory was denied by Western pressure on him not to nationalize the mines and the banks, which would have given black South Africans the real freedom to change their country. Hugo Chavez, for all his faults, made a wonderful start in ameliorating the abject poverty in his own country. Central and South America are still battling the corruption of dictatorships and the church, in much the same way as in the Middle East and North Africa. Progress in both parts of the world is hampered by western capitalism and by a middle class that has benefited from the old order, but is reluctant to join a revolution to revitalize the lives of ordinary people. The camp followers of the status quo must be rooted out if we are to make the changes necessary for a fairer society.

One can tell a great deal about people by the newspapers, magazines and books they read, the radio programmes they listen to and what they view on television. For the most part it is trivia, with vapid novels dominating the reading of Home Insipiens. Reality is studiously avoided and replaced by a world of make-believe. They are for the most part voyeurs of the darker side of life and revel in the fantasy, sexual violence and corruption contained in the venality of Hollywood ‘la la’. The male preoccupation with watching corrupt and overpaid sporting events underlines the depths of the problems facing civilization. This is exemplified by the current craze for mindless ‘hand held violent video games’ — see the January, 2014 edition of “Le Monde Diplomatique”. What on earth is going on in our education system? For the cultured few the reality of non-fiction books, quality newspapers and travel provide an opportunity to see the world as it really is and enables them to question the morality of the ruling class, but to what effect? For many sadly the desire to even read is virtually non-existent. To understand the distorted version of world affairs as portrayed by the majority of newspapers and broadcasters it is essential to read the brilliant book by David Edwards and David Cromwell called “Newspeak in the 21st Century”.

Who are these ill-informed members of our society? They constitute a surprisingly large proportion of the public, not only in Middle England. For many a hedonistic lifestyle practically is all they know! They know little about world affairs, or for that matter what is really going on in their own country. In order to sell most newspapers and protect the establishment the public are never told the truth behind the benign indifference and criminality of their government. Much of society today is dominated by the latest technology with their smart phones, many being used as playthings by not very bright people. Large numbers of otherwise rational people endlessly naval-gazing on Twitter, or mindlessly texting and sexting. Have we nothing better to do than spend our days ‘social networking’, whatever the hell that means! How society has changed, it has become ‘crazy’, we are now surrounded by tattooed and metalled clowns, by zombies with headphones listening to the inane bleats of so-called musicians and by insecure people who make themselves even more invisible by cosmetic surgery. The great majority of people are neither ’cool’ nor ‘with it’, as they replace normal conversation with the grunts, howls and cries of their primal ancestors! Thousands of people are virtual automatons surviving on spiritual healing, alternative medicines, placebos, aromatherapy, reflexology, candles and the dark arts of charlatans. They avidly follow the antics and sex scandals of outrageously paid celebrity nonentities. Obesity, drunkenness, drugs and an obsession with casual sex are the accepted mores of teenagers and adults. No wonder the rest of the world is rightly alarmed at the decadence of western society. Added to this we are amongst the least well educated nation in the so-called civilized world. To add to all this hocus-pocus, we now have a proliferation of weird alternative new age beliefs to keep the punters happy! We are living in a world of myths and superstitions that must be completely outlawed if we are going to stop murdering one-another!

Recently Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury has spoken out against the nonsense of middle income families spending absurd sums of money on temporary marriages to match the loathsome celebrity culture that dominates society today. Unfortunately schools and colleges have totally failed to fully educate at least two generations of our society. In any gathering, you would be right in believing that the great majority of people neither know of nor even care about what is really going on in the world today. To make a start in correcting this moral decline we must ban the filth and rubbish that dominates the gutter press in so called newspapers that are in fact sex, drug, and celebrity scandal magazines. Amongst them I include “The Daily Mail”, “The Mirror”, “The Daily Express”, “The Daily Star” and “The Sun”’. If you don’t believe me just analyse a typical edition!

Another aspect of man-made mythical beliefs that needs to be addressed is the debilitating presence of ‘Compulsive Obsessive Behaviour’ and ‘Phantasmagoria’, which are frequently linked to mythical religious beliefs. Neurologists studying Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder are trying to unravel the causes of mythical and supernatural beliefs in adults. Compulsive Obsessive Behaviour causes otherwise normal people to behave irrationally by repeating strange mantras that they believe will protect them from some dire consequence. They wrongly imagine that people don’t see them behaving in this strange way, but that is frequently not the case. When confronted with what they are doing, embarrassment can sometimes break the cycle, but not always. Dr. Judith Rapoport in her research into Phantasmagoria has studied why outwardly normal members of society believe they have seen images of friends and family long since departed. In fairness to the sufferers of these addictions, many know that these manifestations are irrational, but sadly cannot shake off an attachment to these delusions. Gullible people maintain a strong belief in the supernatural and imagined ethereal creatures and objects. Undoubtedly the proliferation of bizarre science fiction books and films has encouraged this delusion. Some people will continue to hallucinate and fantasize to fill some gap in their unfulfilled lives. Let us consider for a moment the potential venality of man-made mythical religions. Brutal religious wars have dominated and destroyed the lives of ordinary people for centuries. We recall the callous Crusades of the early Middle Ages between Christians and Muslims, the Spanish Conquistadores and their Catholic Missionaries in Central and South America in the 16th Century. Witness also the appalling behaviour of European Christian Missionaries in Africa during the 19th Century. In places like Nigeria, the Sudan and the Central African Republic European missionaries indoctrinated the local African population into joining Christian and Muslims cults with such fervour that any religion other than their own is viewed as ‘evil’ and frequently leads to genocide amongst people who until the arrival of missionaries were totally unaware of these man-made mythical gods. Early this year the government in the Philippines launched another attack on Muslims in the south, with the blessing of the Catholic Archbishop! After the United States of North America won their Independence in 1783, they continued to harass the Native Americans and virtually massacred their entire nation between 1860 and 1890. All this by a nation steeped in mythical religious fervour! This sorry tale of mythical religious indoctrination and persecution has also dominated European life for centuries. Let us recall some of the religious conflicts that have bedevilled society in recent years. In 1915 one and a half million Christian Armenians were murdered by Turkish Muslims. During the holocaust in Germany between 1935 and 1945 millions of Jews were oppressed and murdered in a country that was predominantly Christian. The granting of Independence to India and Pakistan in 1947 resulted in millions of Muslims being murdered by Hindus. The illegal occupation of Palestine by European Jews in 1948 has led to the brutal deaths and murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinian Muslims. In 1982 Israeli Jews surrounded Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon at Sabra and Chatila, and encouraged the massacre of thousands of Muslims by Christian Phalangists! The Bosnian War from 1992-1995 was largely fought by ruthless Serbian Orthodox Christians against Bosnian Muslims.

The United States of North America, the United Kingdom and Israel are ‘the real terrorist states’. Today Judeo-Christian forces are still waging a brutal onslaught against those Muslim countries who support a completely independent Palestine State, and the removal of all Jews from there country. Quite apart from the appalling conflicts waged by the West against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, other Muslim countries like Iran, the Lebanon, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Libya, and Somalia have all been targeted by the United States of North America and the United Kingdom. The West’s aggressions in the Middle East are all related to the defence of European Zionist Jews continued illegal presence in Palestine.

The corrupt media in the west has brainwashed their mainly ignorant public into believing that it was all about safeguarding oil interests! They bribed corrupt states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan into recognizing apartheid in Israel by arming these dictatorships to keep down the mass of their own people who support Palestine. The true horrors of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the expulsion of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland can be found in “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappé. A charming man, he now lectures at the University of Exeter. He was formerly at the Hebrew University at Haifa before he and his family were forced to leave. How can people who have suffered in the Holocaust behave as they do in apartheid Israel? In his latest book “The Idea of Israel: A History of Power”, he explains how Zionists with the backing of the United States have brainwashed a generation, whereby ‘myths and distortions have become accepted as historical truth’. What a scandal, for the four years that I was living in Palestine until the British withdrew in 1948, the country was overwhelmingly Arab apart from parts of Tel Aviv and Haifa and a few isolated kibbutzim settlements that had been permitted by earlier British governments.

The day of reckoning is fast approaching. Four issues will have to be addressed; firstly the outlawing of man-made mythical religions worldwide, secondly regime change in the United States of North America and the United Kingdom, thirdly the withdrawal of all Zionists from Palestine and fourthly the end of ‘world surveillance’ by the brutal minions of the CIA, FBI, MI5, MI6 and Mossad. Hurrah for Edward Snowden the hero of our time and the bête noire of Judeo-Christian capitalism. No wonder the United States of North America don’t want their dirty secrets exposed for all to see! Judeo-Christian extremists will fight this every inch of the way. The tragedy is that the holocaust and many other religious based atrocities would never have happened if man-made mythical religious beliefs had been outlawed centuries ago. As we have seen mythical religions are essentially immoral and mischievous in the way they create weird dogmas for their fellow believers, and pursue endless aggressions against other man-made mythical religions. They are each convinced that their particular set of myths is one that should be followed, and woebetide anyone who questions their particular man-made mythical religious beliefs! The world is crying out for an end to the control of their lives by a ruling class steeped in man-made mythical religious beliefs and the sheer nonsense of prayer to some esoteric agent. Rational people want to be free to pursue their lives as nature intended. With better education the vitriolic excesses of the ruling class will come to an end. The Courts at The Hague will be occupied for many years with independent investigations into Judeo-Christian war crimes in Central and South America, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan. Also crimes and human rights abuses committed during the final days of Empire, especially in Kenya, and the horrendous crimes perpetrated worldwide by so-called security agencies like the CIA, Mossad and MI6. I recall with horror the CIA’s support of the brutal Greek Hunta in 1967, and the right-wing Christian Democrat Party in Italy during the Gladio Operation in the 1970s. See my Occasional Paper No. 6 “The “Gladio Operation” and Occasional Paper No. 7 “Strategy of Tension”. Both depict the horrendous crimes committed by the CIA in Italy at that time. During the State of Emergency in Kenya from 1953-1960, the blatant racism of white Christian settlers epitomizes the evils of Empire. To their lasting shame most of the members of the Church of England in Kenya under the Bishop of Mombasa showed complete indifference to the plight of native Kenyans. The white settlers together with the Kenyan Police and the British Army were responsible for the murder, torture and unaccountable disappearance of nearly 300,000 native Kenyans! Quite apart from the crimes committed by the British Army in Iraq and Afghanistan, recently brought to light by the International Criminal Court, the part played by the British Army and the Police in the struggle for Irish Independence has been another scandal with no one so far being brought to trial. In the fighting between the Catholic majority and the Protestants, the behaviour of the British Army’s notorious ‘Black and Tans’ after the First World War and during the ‘Troubles’ in more recent years is a terrible indictment of a once respected British Army. The ICC has placed the responsibility firmly on the shoulders of both politicians and the commanding generals for systematic abuse. The ICC has still to come to terms with atrocities committed by the British Army, including the activities of the Special Air Service, in Cyprus, Malaya, Oman, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. These are predominantly Muslim countries. How is it that a War Criminal like Tony Blair can still walk free? In a recent outburst he has praised the military coup in Egypt, but only because the earlier military dictatorship under President Hosni Mubarack were bribed by the United States of North America to support the Zionists illegal occupation of Palestine.

Slavery! Western and Middle East nations for centuries have used their aggressive power and a belief in the superiority of their man-made mythical gods to justify the subjugation of indigenous people around the world. Long before white British colonists brought captured Africans as slaves to North America to work on their plantations, the Spanish Conquistadors and the Portuguese ravished Central and South America. Their soldiers and missionaries stole their land and to justify their ruthless behaviour called these very people whose lifestyle they had destroyed ‘lazy and feckless’. These indolent settlers and their camp followers still use the same argument for an indigenous people with no rights whatsoever. This same ruthless indifference still existed in the European Empires in Africa until fairly recent times. The full story of ruthless exploitation in Kenya, Rhodesia and South Africa has still to be told. Over 14 million Africans were cruelly transported as slaves to North and South America, and the European colonies in Africa enslaved millions of indigenous people to work on the lands they had illegally stolen from them. For the most part the settlers in the British colonies were members of an arriviste middle class or the wayward sons of their aristocracy. The local African women were constantly abused sexually by the cruel, arrogant and hedonistic settlers, their sons and overseers. No regard was ever given to the wellbeing, living conditions and education of these virtually enslaved people. How did people brought up in the green fields of Britain become such racist monsters?

The settler mentality is maintained by their wives, who ruthlessly exploit the situation and bring up their children to believe that their plantation workers ‘want to live like this’! When you take away any hope of education, proper housing and a chance to live like human beings constantly under the whiplash of a gruelling workload, life becomes a simple matter of staying alive. To understand the horrifying depths to which these racist members of our society have fallen please see my Occasional Paper No. 22 “State of Emergency in Kenya, 1952-1960”.

To understand the appalling conditions experienced by the native Indian population in South America, you should read “Under The Eagle — US Intervention in Central America and the Caribbean” by Jenny Pearce and Richard Gott, and “Dollars and Dictators in Central America” by Tom Berry, Beth Wood and Des Preusch. Two DVDs will further underline the oppression facing the native population of Central and South America, they are “South of the Border — A Commentary” by Oliver Stone and “Salvador” a film depicting the horrors of El Salvador in 1980 with James Woods, actor. To ease their conscience the apologists amongst the middle class gave what can best be described as ‘crumbs’ to maintain the loyalty of their house servants, but made no effort to improve the living standards of the people who worked for them or their children. Colonel Arthur Young, a London Police Commissioner, who was sent out to Kenya by the British Government to correct the brutality of the Police and the settlers, resigned within a year because he found it impossible to control the killings and murder of a colony completely out of control. He described the Police and settlers as ‘racist scum’. To their great shame the administration in Nairobi and the British Army were acquiescing in all these crimes. Those regiments found guilty of heinous crimes committed in Kenya, Northern Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere should be immediately disbanded and struck from the Army List. These Judeo-Christian wars raise very important moral questions. The British Army must be completely restructured from top to bottom. It is essential that the traditional honour of the British Army be restored. Following the end of the Second World War the ‘rank and file’ have had good reason to show scant respect for the new breed of career officers, whose main interest is pay and promotion. These so-called officers have become blindly obedient to the government regardless of whether a war is just or unjust. Men’s lives are being put at risk, and many have needlessly died in what has become a mercenary racist army using horrendous methods of warfare against innocent people. In Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq napalm, phosphorous and depleted uranium shells have been used indiscriminately. In Afghanistan the immoral use of drones and the vile practice of rendition have been used against tribesmen heroically defending their country against Judeo-Christian terrorists. Rape, murder, torture and pillage have become commonplace by western forces in these pseudo-religious wars.

In the past soldiers have rightly expected their officers to be well educated and gentlemen, and trusted them not to lead them into immoral and unjust wars. Where are we going to find a new breed of ‘officers and gentlemen’? At the moment we are moving towards the despicable system in the United States where college and university graduates no longer have to serve in their country’s armed forces. Described by one American as ‘the poor being sacrificed to keep the super rich alive and well’. What a scandal! In the American Army all officers are either recruited from the ranks or are ‘grace and favour’ West Point Military Academy political appointees by Members of Congress, never the sons of wealthy politicians and business tycoons. Today the annual Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst intake seldom shows men from independent schools joining the army as potential officers, and yet for years they were the main source of recruitment. This has undoubtedly been caused by the fundamental change in the backgrounds of those families paying for their sons to attend Public Schools, namely the sons of wealthy city bankers and so-called celebrities. Despite the parlous state of our nation, well educated gentlemen abound in our society and could be attracted into a restructured British Army where officers would question the decisions of wayward politicians. Highly respected senior Non-Commissioned Officers and Warrant Officers remain the backbone of the British Army. They have questioned the poor quality of men allowed to enlist in the Army. At least the German Army are now banning all new recruits with tattoos!

The new British Army together with other branches of the armed services will no longer be an extension of the brutal foreign policy of the United States of North America. They will be free to form alliances with like minded European nations in supporting the overthrow of dictators around the world, the freeing of illegally occupied territories such as Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipeligo, Irian Jaya by Indonesia, aiding Iraq in confronting Saudi Arabia and supporting the Afghan people in defeating the Northern Alliance. With the end of the unworkable United Nations Organization, a new World Forum based in Europe would be able to unravel many of the iniquities created by ‘Judeo-Christian Capitalism’ in recent years. It should be possible to engage the support of Russia, India, Pakistan and China in these endeavours. Let me add a word or two about the Volunteer Cadet Corps maintained by certain leading Public Schools at the end of the 19th Century. In 1908 they became the Junior Division of the Officer Training Corps (OTC). Many of these young men provided the nucleus of the officer class in the army for generations. Alas with the end of the Second World War the Junior Division of the Officer Training Corps ceased to exist. The character of Public Schools has changed and the sons of professional and landed families have largely been replaced with the sons of wealthy nouveaux riches bankers, celebrities and media tycoons. With the end of the Officer Training Corps a career in the armed services holds little attraction for the students at Public Schools as they pursue the moneyed status of their fathers. We have seen the end of an era that may well explain the problems facing the British Army today.

Homo Fides Fabulae is afraid of evolutionary science, as it makes nonsense of their mythical beliefs. They refuse to accept that the universe emerged within a multi-universe 13.7 billion years ago, and that our solar system evolved in the Milky Way galaxy about 4.6 billion years ago. They view as heresy that early life in the form of bacteria appeared 3.5 billion years ago, with multi-cellular life about 1.8 billion years ago. They refuse to believe that the human primate species evolved about 2.5 million years ago, and that we are more than halfway through our life cycle before we become extinct. We shall be one of the shortest-lived species because of our learning to walk on two legs, which has created a narrowing of the pelvic girdle forcing caesarean births, back problems and an unhealthy lifestyle. Professor Steve Jones says, ‘society and order could well collapse within the next hundred years’. A sobering thought. For anyone interested in my latest thoughts on “The Evolutionary Universe”, please read my Occasional Paper No.18.

To put our own species into some form of perspective, Prof. Robert May of Minnesota and Cambridge Universities says, ‘the total number of species that have so far evolved must exceed 100 million’! To religious sects this is an anathema. I recommend the late Stephen Jay Gould’s anthology “The Richness of Life” in which he traces the evolution of all species, including our own, from our earliest origins in the sea. Equally fascinating is Neil Shubin’s book “Your Inner Fish”. Also Jerry A. Coyne’s marvellous book “Why Evolution is True’, where one can follow in great detail how all species today, including plants, are the result of evolutionary changes made over millions of years.

Alas we shall not be here to see the changes that evolution will bring about during the last five hundred million years of ‘life on earth’, but we can be certain it will be no less fascinating. With the extinction of the human primate species and all its man-made mythical religious beliefs, our planet will continue to thrive untrammelled by the exploitation of habitats and resources by an extinct human primate species. After the increasing temperature of our sun destroys all life on earth and the seas evaporate, our solar system will explode in a massive fireball. Like all main sequence stars the small residue of this fireball will became a White Dwarf and eventually cool down to become a Black Dwarf. In our Milky Way galaxy alone there are over 1,000 billion stars, including 50 billion White Dwarfs, which are the remnants of stars like our own solar system that have evolved and died. Outside the Milky Way galaxy the universe contains trillions of stars in thousands of galaxies.

Last month the television programme “Start the Week” included a number of eminent scientists discussing climate change. The dire consequences of unrestrained exploitation of our planet’s resources led to the question of the likely demise of the human primate species. Sir James Lovelock suggested not more than 100,000 years. In fact some palaeontologists believe that by averaging the life cycles of the eight main hominid species that have evolved, the remaining life expectancy of our own species should be measured in only tens of thousands of years. Professor Steve Jones warns that population growth, the narrowing of the pelvic girdle and increasing back problems caused by walking upright could reduce our life expectancy as a species to little more than a thousand years.

Can you imagine a priest being honest enough to tell his congregation the truth about how the universe evolved and the future of our solar system. Or to tell his congregation that they represent only one species out of over 100 million species which have so far evolved on our planet. Or that our solar system is situated in a spiralling arm of the Milky Way called Orion, and that we are but one solar system amongst 1,000 billion other solar systems or stars. Even priests are not that stupid, they must realize that it is time to call a halt to all this man-made mythical nonsense. Why are some people so insecure that they need the comfort of an imaginary agency and the prospect of an ‘afterlife’, whatever that means! They miss out on a wonderful world that offers so much. I know priests are terrified of having to admit that they have been misled in what they believe, and are equally afraid of losing their pensions when their church finally comes to an end. But they need not worry, after all Henry VIII decreed that all monks and nuns should receive pensions from the sale of monastic land and property after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Today pensions should be paid based on length of service, and paid out of the church’s vast stolen assets locked in land and investments.

I am told by several church ministers that the one question they studiously try and avoid answering from their ardent parishioners are those relating to ‘heaven and angels’. Eschatology and anything to do with the ‘afterlife’ is not surprisingly impossible to answer. The better educated priests know full well that the myth of a ‘permanent refuge’ for all those who believe in an ‘afterlife in an imaginary heaven’ defies even their ability to satisfy the longings of the people they have spent a lifetime brainwashing with meaningless hopes and fantasies. As for an explanation of ‘angels’, the mind boggles!

In advanced societies anyone who still believes in mediaeval religious mysticism and ‘faeries at the bottom of the garden’ should not be allowed to vote in national or local elections, or to hold employment positions ‘under the crown’, especially in education. Irrational beliefs are no basis for a right to express an opinion and vote in a civilized society. Unfortunately many people find it very difficult to articulate any doubts that they might have, as they neither understand the history of man-made mythical religions nor do they understand the advances made in evolutionary science. In fairness to mythical religious believers, most of us were born into societies where man-made mythical religions and superstition have been the accepted way of explaining our presence in the world. In fact all animals, including ourselves, are born absolutely free of man-made mythical religious beliefs; it is only by brainwashing and indoctrination that some of us are initiated into believing the nonsense of a man-made religious cult. Free born children are later indoctrinated into the man-made mythical religious beliefs of the culture of the country into which they happen to be born! It was only with the coming of the ‘enlightenment’ in the late 17th Century that the nonsense of man-made mythical religions became apparent and the true nature of our place in the universe began to emerge.

Most mythical religious believers are not aware of the fundamental differences of interpretation that occurred in early church history. To this day the Eastern Orthodox Church has never fully accepted the inclusion of the ‘Holy Ghost’ in the doctrine of the Trinity. In the same way the ‘Arian Theological Controversy’ rumbles on as to whether or not Joshua (Jesus) was the son of some god. It was not until the First Council of Constantinople in 381 that the Nicene Creed became the distinctive feature of Christian orthodoxy. Until then the many followers of the early church under Presbyter (Elder) Arius in Alexandria did not accept that Joshua (Jesus in Greek) was ‘eternal’, but believed he was human, the son of a humble carpenter, through whom their God could speak in order to lay the foundations of a new religious sect in opposition to wayward Jewish beliefs. Early Arian teachings describe him as ‘chosen by god’ to further his message. Today one would call Joshua a zealot and a believer of a local religious myth. In fact the soothsayers of the day wanted a figurehead to launch a new fantasy amongst the uneducated masses in their remote corner of the Roman Empire. Arianism was narrowly rejected at the First Council of Nicea in 325, and Arius himself was forced into retirement. These momentous events in the early church are little known by either the clergy or their congregations. For those interested in the early history of mythical beliefs, I would strongly recommend “Archetypal Heresy — Arianism Through the Centuries” by Maurice Wiles, Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus at Oxford University until he died last year. A charming man, he was my Head of House at my old school at Tonbridge.

Let us list some of those charlatans, soothsayers, prophets and purveyors of myths and snake oil. The three main Western mythical beliefs are ‘Christianity’ centred on Joshua of Nazareth (aka Jesus by the Greeks), born about 6BCE and died about 30CE, ‘Judaism’ based on a belief in one god who created the world, and ‘Islam’ a mythical religion, based on the same god, revealed to Muhammad of Mecca (570-632). Eastern culture has mainly developed around ‘codes of personal behaviour’ unrelated to any specific imagined agency! The five main traditional beliefs that occupy minds in Asia are Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Shintoism. Even so they can be equally aggressive in defence of their particular beliefs, witness the recent atrocities committed by both Buddhists and Muslims in Burma and Kashmir.

Fundamentalism as we know refers to the entrenched mythical religious beliefs of Christians, Jews and Muslims. To enlightened societies this indicates a lack of education, which is understandable in poorly educated parts of the world, but very surprising in so called advanced societies. Fantasies, delusional beliefs, fiction and daydreams are the ‘playthings’ of very young children, but it is very disturbing to find fully grown adults locked into this miscellany of senseless mumbo-jumbo. I know that many people are very aware that something is not quite right about what they are told to believe in, but they find it difficult to articulate their doubts and breakaway from what they have been taught to belief. All I can say is that when they do so a whole new world of sheer wonder is open to them, with the freedom to fully enjoy a world that has so far escaped them. The Age of Enlightenment has led to a scientific revolution in the understanding of our place in the universe. Good education is changing the teaching of history in our schools and colleges. Young children should be taught the nonsense of man-made religions and religious wars caused by mythical beliefs. They should be made aware that the First World War was not really a just war, but was fought to re-establish the balance of power in Europe between the privileged classes. Although the brutal invasion of Belgium by the Germans in 1914 provides good reason for maintaining that it was a just war. In more recent times the much vaunted British Empire covered up the most heinous crimes, including the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people seeking independence from colonial rule in Kenya. They should be taught the facts behind the brutality of settler rule in British colonies throughout Africa, including apartheid in South Africa and in Palestine under the Zionists, and the appalling litany of horrors committed by the United States of North America in Central and South America, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, in the Middle East. They should know that the United States of North America massacred the indigenous population of the land they first colonised, namely the Native Americans, and the vicious story of African-American slavery and lynching. This appalling behaviour is sometimes equated with the behaviour of animals, but in truth animals never behave in this way. Cruelty, torture and murder are the default behaviour of human primates! That this generation may grow up free of ‘man-made mythical religions’ would be a resounding victory for the rational and logical arguments of those great writers that I have mentioned in this text.

Changes to the teaching of history are one thing, but the real problem is the country’s current power base, which doesn’t want to see change or the historical facts revealed. Their controlling influence over the media, including the BBC, is paramount to their control of people’s minds. The religious conflicts continue unabated, whether it is in Northern Ireland, illegally occupied Palestine or between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Iraq and Syria. A complete restructuring of our political system is essential. A new breed of highly educated rational and logical people must sweep away the detritus of man-made mythical religious beliefs. Let me briefly mention three observations that bring home the utter absurdity of mythical belief. The first relates to Professor Richard Dawkins who in a recent lecture on mythical religious belief said, ‘The future of our planet is entering a very dangerous period. We can no longer afford important decisions being made by people who continue to believe in myths. In the United States of North America, 83% of the people believe that our planet was formed only 6,000 years ago. In a country that still dominates the planet both economically and militarily this is particularly dangerous. Scientists around the world have established beyond any doubt that our Homo Sapiens species has taken over three and half billion years to evolve. We are just one of millions of species that have evolved and become extinct. Long after we have disappeared as a species, other life forms will evolve for at least another five hundred thousand years, before our own solar system finally collapses into a White Dwarf’.

The second observation arose in conversations with my friend a retired Rector of a small village church near Taunton in Somerset. He was a friend of Dr. David Jenkins, the former Bishop of Durham. The Bishop achieved respect and admiration from not only many of his fellow Anglican Bishops, but also from millions of people worldwide for his denunciation of the myths that have surrounded the teaching of Christianity for centuries. He said that the idea of a ‘virgin birth’ is nonsense, and that Jesus was just a human being albeit an inspirational follower of the religious beliefs of his age, but certainly not the son of some god. That the ‘resurrection was a confidence trick’ played out on a gullible public. As for my friend the retired Rector, he believed that it was right for him to continue his ministry as some people unfortunately ‘needed’ to believe in something outside their own lives to give meaning to their existence! He said to me one day, ‘You are quite right Ian, why would a species take three and half billion years to evolve from bacteria in the sea, only to become extinct in a few hundred thousand years and believe, and yet they believe they have ‘a special relationship to a mythical god?’

When Dr. David Jenkins, the Bishop of Durham denied that Joshua (aka Jesus in Greek) was ‘the son of some god’, he exposed possibly the greatest crime in the history of Christianity. The Jews rightly claimed that Joshua was the son of a humble carpenter and not ‘the son of their god’. Joshua was ‘adopted’ by this new Jewish sect as their leader and was given a mythical status in the poorly educated minds of his followers. The Jews later arrested and crucified him as a troublemaker, which led to centuries of persecution and the massacre of millions of Jews by Christians. At the time Joshua’s father Joseph and his wife Mary were living in Canaan under the Romans, where thousands of false prophets and charlatans were tied to wooden beams and crucified. The Greek word for prophet is Christ; hence the Greek for Joshua was ‘Jesus the Christ’ or more usually ‘Jesus Christ’. Can you imagine Christians ever apologizing for their horrendous crimes against Jews?

The third observation underlines the changing patterns of mythical religions in its dying days. The traditional western religions are being largely replaced by Pentecostalism that encourages barely literate congregations to enthusiastically express their emotions in ‘supernatural’ ways. They believe in ‘divine spiritual healing, speaking in tongues (glossolalia) and exorcism’. Formed originally in the early 20th Century in Los Angeles, their ‘message’ has spread to many poorly educated undeveloped parts of the world in South America, Indonesia (a Muslim country), Africa and throughout the United States of North America. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby has already expressed his concern at the rapidly falling numbers within the Anglican Church. In France the closing of so many seminaries has meant that black African priests are now seen regularly as parish priests in rural France, where their language skills are failing their parishioners. The same problem exists in Germany where the Roman Catholic Church has been forced to employ Polish Priests. In Asia Minor and North Africa the Arab Spring is dominated by secularists anxious to rid themselves of the influence of such sects as the Muslim Brotherhood. I shall be surprised if the remnants of organized mythical religions in Europe last beyond the next thirty years. The standards of most people today rely on their own moral consciences not mythical ‘mumbo jumbo’. A classic example of how people can be indoctrinated into mythical religious beliefs at an early age can be highlighted with reference to the ‘mythical’ story of Noah’s Ark. Climate changes from cold icehouse to warm greenhouse phases continue to take their toll on plant and animal life, as have massive volcano eruptions and rare asteroid impacts. For an example of the effect that climate change can have on our planet. Over 18,000 years ago at the height of the last Ice Age during the Quaternary Era, the African continental plate collided with Europe and sealed the eastern end of the Mediterranean from the Indian Ocean and the western end from the Atlantic Ocean. At that time Homo Sapiens had already evolved as a species about 2.5 million years earlier. As the vast sea that had been trapped between Africa and Europe began to drain away early man could walk from Africa to Europe across a fertile valley. This enormous plain was dominated by mountain ranges whose highest peaks we now know as Malta, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and Crete. The present seabed has been studied by French and Russian research vessels, and they have discovered the fossils of plant and animal life lying in the present seabed east of Gibraltar and in the Black Sea.

Following a period of global warming about a million and a half years ago the rising sea levels in the Atlantic breached the low lying mountain range that once stretched from the Cordillera in Spain through to the Rif Range extending from the Middle Atlas Mountains in North Africa. The weakest point in this mountain range was just south of Gibraltar. The inundation of the land that we now call the Mediterranean Sea is still remembered as ‘The Great Flood’. The biblical story of Noah’s Ark tells the same story of small communities desperately taking to rafts and boats with their possessions and animals to escape to higher ground. The bible was merely recording an historical event, but religious zealots enhanced the story to fit in with their own man-made mythical religious beliefs. At about the same time the land link between Britain and Europe flooded to create the English Channel.

In the United Kingdom the very small congregations that still attend church services are dominated by somewhat elderly women. They come from a generation when many girls left school between the ages of 12 and 14, in an environment where religious education took precedence over the natural sciences, which was virtually unknown in school curricula. Sadly further education at that time was mainly the preserve of young men. In most advanced societies today boys and girls have an equal opportunity to enjoy a broad education and discover for themselves a greater understanding of their role in the evolving life of our planet. Unfortunately this is not so in the less intellectually developed nations like the United States of North America, Central and South America, the Middle East and Africa.

Before I left California in the early nineties I held a number of seminars for small groups of four to five people explaining their country’s appalling foreign policy supporting dictatorships in Central and South America, and also Washington’s encouragement of man-made mythical religious and supernatural beliefs to play a part in undermining the people in those countries desire for revolutionary change. They became known as the “Piedmont Lectures”. The course required the reading of a number of recommended books before each seminar, and included talks by nationals and Jesuit priests of the various countries discussed in the seminars. Short films relating to each country were also shown. Marianne Ellis a charming, well educated Jewish lady in her early forties said at the end of the last seminar that I held before I returned to England, ‘Ian, thank you so much, I can now live my life in a completely new way. I have never felt comfortable with our foreign policy, and now understand why America is so hated around the world. Our meetings have also made me realize how indoctrinated I was as a child into beliefs and rituals that just didn’t make sense’. I personally shall always be grateful for the nearly twenty years that I spent in America, without that experience I would not have been aware of the depths of ignorance and racism that exists amongst a supposedly educated people.

It is important to understand the psyche of the mixed race society that forms the United States of North America. Their geographical isolation from the turmoil that set Europe ablaze in two World Wars enabled them to profit economically and politically. Their new found wealth enabled the country to establish military bases worldwide to protect their imagined interests. However their waning influence today has brought them face to face with rational decisions that cannot be made by a society that predominantly believes in myths and the supernatural. ‘One Nation Under a Mythical God’ is a sure sign that The United States of North America is just not intellectually equipped to meet the challenges of mankind today and in the future. The advances in evolutionary science are being totally ignored in their educational system. The great majority of Americans still believe in ‘heaven and angels’, to such an extent that many States refuse to allow science to be taught in colleges and schools. In a very recent Poll taken by the Pew Research Centre the percentage of Americans who believe in ‘heaven and angels’ has increased to over 60 per cent! Think about it, this reflects a degree of scientific illiteracy not seen since the Middle Ages.

Prime Minister Tony Blair only spoke about his religious affiliations after he left government. He said he had not done so earlier because people would have called him a ‘religious nutter’! In America such religious aberrations have led to something called “Creationism” and “Intelligent Design”, which in most of the States is taught in place of science! This has meant that three generations of Americans believe that the world was created 6,000 years ago by a mythical god or agency! The appalling ignorance of most Americans about the real world and its origins has caused Europe to question an alliance that was really formed in the dying days of Empire. Science teachers have been expelled from large swathes of the United States for refusing to accept this ancient belief in man-made religious myths. For a more detailed understanding of what Americans believe when they talk about “Creationism” and “Intelligent Design”, I would strongly recommend A. C. Grayling’s masterful new book “The God Argument”.

In talking of “Creationism” an American friend Max Peak recently wrote to me from California about why he thought people like him believed that life on our planet began only 6,000 years ago! Max is a 7th Day Evangelical Adventist. He said, ‘The Bible clearly shows that God created the universe, the earth, animals and human beings like himself. That is why he is depicted in early religious paintings as looking like us. The Bible then traces the history of life on earth, including the arrival of his only begotten son Jesus’. What is important to my friend is that the story of man can be contained within a 6.000 year time frame thereby ‘conveniently’ excluding billions of years of an evolving universe! This justifies their belief that ‘man is made in god’s image’. What sorcery! His brainwashing does not allow him to believe that our planet was created billions of years earlier, despite the empirical evidence of evolutionary science. These beliefs fanatically held to be true by the great majority of Americans have led to the rejection of science being taught in many America schools and colleges in favour of what they call “Creationism” and “Intelligent Design”. To suggest to these man-made mythical religious believers that early life started as bacteria in a slime mould, similar to what you can find in any scientific laboratory Petri dish, they would just not believe you. Here lies the problem with all mythical religious believers. As Professor Richard Dawkins rightly says, ‘children have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people’s bad ideas’. Without a proper education millions of people around the world remain subject to indoctrination by charlatans and their ‘snake oil’. Max Peak is a brilliant yachtsman and an authority on twin hulled catamarans. I have spent many happy days sailing with him in the Pacific, and in fact he asked me to be ‘best man’ at his wedding! We discussed his beliefs many times, but nothing would alter his beliefs. Our other interests allowed us to remain very good friends.

The 7th Day Evangelical Adventists were founded in the United States of North America in 1831 in the belief that their prophet Jesus would appear again in what they referred to as a ‘Second Coming’, whatever the hell that may mean! Eschatology and Millenarianism are common factors in a number of mythical religions including Judaism and Shiite Muslims. The Branch Davidians are a breakaway religious sect formed from the Adventists in 1955. They gained notoriety in 1993 when 82 members of all ages died after a siege at their Mount Carmel Centre at Waco, Texas. They have an affiliated ‘church’ in Taunton, Somerset where I have witnessed their strange rituals. Amongst a number of other weird religious movements are the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project formed in San Francisco in 1955 by Jim Jones. They are remembered for a mass suicide in 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana. In their settlement 918 men, women and children drank orange juice laced with cyanide. They had earlier murdered Congressman Leo Ryan and his entourage who had been sent by the United States Government to investigate this religious cult. In this paper I have only just touched on the inherent ‘evils’ of man-made mythical religious beliefs. The sooner this wickedness is outlawed the sooner civilization will return to its original state of nature where our species can enjoy the fruits of our beautiful planet in all its seasons. The American credo ‘to hell with everyone else as long as our interests are safeguarded’ has proved a disaster for most of the world. After the war they perceived that ‘socialism and democracy’ were the main threats to their way of life. Yes, ‘democracy’ which in the United States has nothing to do with their electoral process! They were terrified of their concept of communism in Russia, which they viewed as undermining the hedonistic lifestyle of their wealthy ruling class, and to allow the people full democracy would have been a disaster to the ruling class. This was not the only problem. They also saw their man-made mythical religious beliefs being undermined and threatened by an enlightened Europe that no longer believes in such nonsensical man-made mythical religious dogma. For years they had brainwashed their poorly educated people that they were ‘One Nation Under God’, and also made sure the media convinced the masses that all the appalling things they were doing around the world had the blessing of their mythical God! All this comes at a time when the Gaia Telescope has just been blasted off from a space station in French Guiana to explore the depths of the universe that we have never seen, including trillions of new stars, supernovas, black holes and dark matter. It even hopes to photograph the entirety of our own galaxy The Milky Way, and may well reveal aspects of the universe that are at present unknown to us. These fascinating scientific explorations are an anathema to man-made mythical believers.

Toby Young writing recently in “The Daily Telegraph” makes an interesting comment about myths. He says, ‘Why do mythical religious believers deceive their children into believing that a man in a red suit flies around the world in a sledge pulled by reindeer distributing toys at the end of each year, let alone the nonsense of tooth faeries?’ As he says, ‘It is only brainwashing young minds to join them in a greater lie because they themselves have already been indoctrinated into man-made mythical religious beliefs and fantasies’. Our own short-lived species has evolved to be able to unravel the wonders of our universe, but sadly this is lost on those charlatans who believe in all this mumbo-jumbo.

In the past young children have been indoctrinated and brainwashed into a culture of mythical beliefs soon after they are born. They don’t even have a choice of which of the debilitating mythical dogmas they may or may not wish to subscribe to. Let me explain my own path to reality. When you are born you are unaware of any local cultures, but as you grow older you are surrounded by the ‘good or bad’ beliefs of your parents, who in turn were conditioned by the culture in which they grew up. In fairness my dear Scottish mother never showed any religious leanings whatsoever. It is in the nature of being a child that one is brought up in the mores of the environment one is born into. In a so-called Christian country children are taught a miscellany of rituals connected to the beliefs or otherwise of their parents. They are taught to pray to an ‘imaginary god’, are baptized, go to church, attend Sunday School, read the ‘Bible’, sit through hours of indoctrination at school in classes called ‘Religion or Theology’. Later they are ‘confirmed and take communion’ in a ritual that to a young mind is for the most part meaningless. All the while aware of a tall building that dominates the skyline, a ‘mediaeval church’ that is the centre of ‘worship’ on a Sunday, and is the focal point for baptisms, marriages and funerals. Can brainwashing and indoctrination be any more compelling than this to a young child?

I recall attending ‘confirmation classes’ when I was at Tonbridge School. I remember the school chaplain a charming man called the Revd. Harry Gripper, who later became a friend of mine and a Residentiary Canon at Rochester Cathedral, saying the day before we were confirmed, ‘I know many of you boys don’t believe a word of what I have been saying these past weeks, but your privileged education requires that you go through this ‘rite of passage’! All religions have their own peculiar rites, it is only with further education and experience of the real world that all these early rituals can be seen by most of us as illogical and meaningless. Call it a temporary ‘mental aberration’, but one day soon there will be no Christians, Jews or Muslims just fellow human beings trying to make order out of centuries of idiocy! We must remember that a belief in ‘myths’ are part of the human psyche, but man-made mythical religions can and must be outlawed. In talking about my time at Tonbridge School, I shall always be grateful to Ranald Clouston for introducing me to the wonders of the universe through the excellent telescope the school possessed and the lectures we enjoyed as members of The Observatory Society. We were also one of the first schools to recognize the importance of science, which played an important part of in our education.

For those of you who don’t know my background. I was educated at Yardley Court, a Preparatory School in Kent before going to Tonbridge School. During the war I volunteered as a regular soldier in 1943 in The Royal Horse Guards, and later commissioned into The Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, where I volunteered to join our parachute battalion, which had became the 5th (Scottish) Bn. The Parachute Regiment. I later became Adjutant of my battalion after being a Junior Staff Officer at 6th Airborne Divisional Headquarters. I spent four years in the Middle East and North Africa and visited many countries from the Syria to the Sudan. I was actively involved in the operations against the terrorist organizations Irgun Zwei Leumi and the Stern Gang in Palestine, during which 56 of my fellow officers and men were killed. After leaving the army I completed a Business Studies Course at Gresham College, part of The University of London. I have travelled extensively in Europe and behind the then Iron Curtain. In the 1970s I went to the United States of North America where I lived for nearly twenty years, mainly in California. During that time I spent many months in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao and Southern China to the borders of Vietnam. The best advice I was ever given at my Preparatory School at the age of ten was to read Rudyard Kipling’s “The Elephant’s Child”, the opening lines of which should be emblazoned on the minds of every young child, who yearns to know the truth about the world they live in. They are ‘I keep six honest serving-men, they taught me all I knew, their names were What and Why and When and How and Where and Who’! Armed with these stalwart seekers after truth, one can escape the clutches of unscrupulous mythmakers. It is important that when religious myths are finally assigned to history, the government of the day publishes a White Paper and distributes a copy to every household in the land setting out the history of man-made mythical religious beliefs and the reality of evolution. I trust that I shall see the day when all religious sects, myths, superstitions and idolatry are relegated to history. In the succinct words of my son Neil, ‘we shall see bookshops throughout the land replace the shelf sign ‘Religions’ with the word ‘Myths’!

The Arab Spring is not alone in seeking to overthrow the oppressive regimes that have controlled the lives of millions of people for so long in the Middle East and North Africa. Many countries in the West are equally determined to bring in fundamental changes to the way they are governed. It is impossible to initiate the changes that are necessary if some people still believe in myths, which is why it is essential to outlaw man-made mythical religions before we can even contemplate a peaceful revolution. Logic and reason are essential ingredients if we are to make the right decisions in the interests of our species few remaining years before we become extinct. We cannot plan a future if some people continue to ‘believe in faeries at the bottom of the garden’. The majority of conflicts facing the world today are religiously motivated by Christians, Jews and Muslims. Why some people still cling to the ridiculous man-made mythical religious dogmas of a bygone age is beyond me. Can’t they see the nonsense of being brainwashed into believing in ‘an afterlife brimming with milk, honey and virgins’?! Some people are still in stubborn denial of the scientific evidence behind evolution.

Mythical religions are an ‘Augean Stable’ of megalomania, greed, immorality, indoctrination, myths and barefaced lies. That man could have created such a miasma of evil proportions defies the imagination, and all this in an ‘age of enlightenment’! In fairness many priests and clerics are beginning to question their beliefs and ‘although anxious to take their pensions’ and their numbers are rapidly falling as more and more churches become redundant and are either pulled down or converted into much needed accommodation. New recruits to this mishmash of opposing man-made mythical religious beliefs are becoming almost impossible to find in the old Christian parts of the world. One of the vile practices associated with man-made mythical religions is paedophilia. The Roman Catholic Church has tried to hide the abuse of children and adults by priests and nuns for centuries, and not only children. Much of this abuse stems from their vows of chastity and the powers they hold over ‘believing societies’. This problem exists in all churches and can only be ended with the total eradication of man-made mythical religious beliefs, which terrify people into silence under the threat of ‘eternal damnation’!

Blasphemy means ‘talking profanely about mythical religious agencies’. In some countries you can still be put to death for speaking against mythical religious gods! No wonder the death knells are sounding for a final end of this mumbo-jumbo. The fact that there are grown men still believing in ‘miracles, angels, prayer and a life in an imaginary heaven after death’ defies reason. How can any civilized society allow such laws against truth to still stand on the statute books! Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) spoke of the stultifying effect of mythical beliefs in his pamphlet “The Necessity of Atheism” written when he was at Oxford. In it he explains how people ‘can use their minds to free themselves from a belief in a god and the imagined judgement of a divine overseer, and enter into a life of rational thought’. He also describes ‘how a failure to understand nature gave birth to gods, and that the essence of ignorance is to attach importance to that which we do not understand’. His pamphlet has very recently been republished. Another eminent author Mark Lynas, who won The Royal Society Prize for his book “Six Degrees — The Future of Our Planet” put humanity’s real problem today in a nutshell when he said, ‘how blissfully unaware are many of us at the transformations taking place in our understanding of the universe, we are phenomenally, stupendously ignorant.’! To make a start Professor Alice Roberts, the recently appointed President of the Association of Science Education has welcomed the new laws banning the teaching of ‘creationism’ in state schools in England, but says that this should apply to all independent schools and academies.

The greatest threat facing civilization today is that we still have a number of influential people who are intentionally indifferent to evolutionary science. They are for the most part terrified of having to admit that they have allowed man-made mythical religious beliefs dominate their lives. Professor Melvyn Bragg in a recent “In Our Time” broadcast on the radio stressed the importance of a ‘logical scientific approach’ to philosophy. The respected philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock not only insists that ‘individuals are free agents able to determine their own development, but that anyone seriously willing to attend a course in Evolutionary Science would soon discover for themselves the nonsense of a belief in religious myths and the supernatural’. To regain a rational understanding of our short time on this planet, it is essential that all schools study Evolutionary Science. The ‘lost generations’ of adults who have studiously avoided this reality must be given the opportunity to join this ‘Age of Enlightenment’.

I have a few friends with a blind faith in their mythical gods. They admit that they know little of the history of what they believe in know and for the most part are totally unaware of even the basic tenets of evolutionary science. The teaching of science in schools is at last coming to the rescue as more scientists are attracted into the teaching profession. Thank goodness the sad old argument ‘that you don’t have faith’ is seldom heard nowadays from religious charlatans. More and more people are questioning the brainwashing of their youth. Almost without exception man-made mythical religious believers do not even want to read books about evolutionary science. They might well read the headlines in their newspapers about new discoveries and advances in science, but if the articles undermine their mythical religious beliefs they will immediately disregard them. They are not stupid, but are afraid of having to admit that they have been indoctrinated into a world of ‘make believe’. Their knowledge of world affairs is quite appalling. They mainly read novels to escape from the realities of life. Can you imagine what it would be like to be washed up on a desert island with somebody who believes in ‘faeries dancing among the waves on the seashore’! The ruling class of politicians are full of charlatans, who encourage this loose thinking to win support for their nefarious causes. The evolution of our particular animal species enables us to believe a vast amount of sheer nonsense, whereas other animals are spared this debilitating trait in their psyche.

As I come to the end of this review of the dangers of man-made mythical beliefs, a new book has just been published called “The Age of Nothing: How We Lead Our Lives after the Death of God” by Peter Watson. He sets out at great length what the loss of mythical religious faith might mean to the high culture of our civilization. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-19000 is now at the heart of university courses in the humanities. He called for a ‘re-evaluation of old values and dogmas’, and said ‘there are no truths, only pragmatic analysis and rational interpretations’. In the late 19th Century evolutionary science was in its infancy, yet he anticipated empirical research. In his book Peter Watson says, ‘with the disappearance of a man-made mythical religious world, we are free to interpret the wonders of our universe and make the most of the time remaining for our species. Meanwhile the unenlightened will continue to look around for scraps of mythical religious nonsense to hang on to’. To sum up may I quote a recent article in “The New Statesman” by Robin Ince, ‘Evolution has supplied human beings with minds that allow us to think for ourselves and rise above the rigid mythical dogma of a few prophets’!