Essay 2 - Libertas

Essay 2 in a series exploring aspects of my life

Essay 2 �" Libertas 

Nothing Happens in Isolation - Seeking Truth

Preamble:

There is a certain incongruity in starting any story of mine with religion; I am possibly one of the most irreverent persons under the sun.  However, my life began with the compulsory ‘religious brainwashing’ imposed on children worldwide.  No matter the religion, which part of the world, rich or poor, saints or sinners, parents insist on the right to ‘educate’ their offspring in the dogma and mythology of their preferred religion.  Children get no say and no choice.  To me, the parental obligation to program children’s minds, withholds a basic human right �" freedom of choice �" and is patently wrong.  I know the devout would argue differently, because they are always right, because they have God on their side.  Might, apparently, is right!  If I may use a phrase in the vernacular, such religious indoctrination is pure bullshit!  

Religion: the very word sends people scurrying to hide from that dreaded knock on the door; conversely it turns normally rational people into total fanatics.  Dictionary.com interprets the word religion as: ‘a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny, [he lost his faith but not his morality]’.  Or, ‘an institution to express belief in a divine power, [he was raised in the Baptist religion]’; [‘a member of his own faith contradicted him’]   Similarly, Wikipedia sums up religion as: ‘a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a supernatural agency or agencies, usually involving ritual observances and often containing a moral code of conduct governing the conduct of human affairs.’

Unfortunately, none of those definitions highlight the fact that millions of people plainly have their choice of what they might truly wish to believe, if they were allowed the choice, usurped at a very early age.  In none of the above references, or any other that I have seen, does the word ‘brainwashing’ appear.  And yet, that is exactly what happens to most of us as children.  We are, indoctrinated, in favour of our parent’s prescribed religious dogma! 

I have discussed this intentional brainwashing with, ‘devout people’, who in reply, took great joy in piously pointing out that, ‘washing’, is a cleansing process.  Thus, they defend with naive simplicity, the practice of seizing young hearts and minds for the purpose of maintaining and expanding their chosen religion!   I’m sure the reader doesn’t need examples of the more extreme elements who apply this callous doctrine in seeking to isolate their own children from the intellectual world at large. 

This same childhood ‘brainwashing process’ started me on a quest of many years; a quest interrupted and sidetracked by the idiosyncrasies of life, only to be taken up again at some later date, as my curiosity found quiet moments in which to once again ponder: what the hell is this religion business all really about?  Could the dogma indeed be ‘true’?  If so, everyone should surely believe unreservedly!

The following essay will track both my ‘spiritual development’ and its apparent reasons; ultimately arriving at my own personal ‘logical’ conclusions based upon much study, deep thought, and sharing of ideas.  The journey is a long, meandering one, in which I retrace a few of the blind avenues and, for me at least, fascinating events I encountered along the way.  I have never had any mad desire to raze another person’s belief system, nor to become particularly involved in an unwinnable philosophical stoush.  Those who have faith, often retain their unshakable ideas for deeply psychological reasons.  The old adage, ‘blind faith’, is profoundly rooted in each ‘individual's reality’!  My only purpose in writing this essay, apart from simply documenting my journey, is to provide the discerning reader with some alternative considerations they may have missed when thinking about the deeper spiritual questions that arise in our lives.  There are those, much like myself, who have spent a great deal of time and considerable mental effort in a genuine, open-minded search, for the meaning of an encompassing reality in an empirical sense; most of those personal quests sadly remain undocumented. 

The history of the uniquely human search for more than an ‘individual reality’ is as extensive as the existence of the human intellect!  My suspicion is, even when the scientific answers are eventually forthcoming, there will still be those who will continue the fruitless spiritual search, in the hope of supporting their own blind faith and unqualified superstitious demands! 

Meanwhile, I will have added my ‘two-bob’s worth’, one man’s conclusions, to the ever-growing pile of human thoughts that litter the table of dreams regarding the 'true nature of spiritual reality'.

Now the eye of man can see light waves with lengths between four-hundred and seven- hundred nanometers long.  But man will be bat-blind to other EM (electromagnetic) waves.  And since visible light constitutes a tiny band of the electromagnetic spectrum, man will be mostly blind.  But man will think that what he sees is all that can be seen.  Man's perception will be small.

                 (Jupiter Scientific, 1997, p. 225)

                     

Background - Ancient History:

Born on December 29^th, 1944, towards the end of World War II, I was delivered into a Great Britain that viewed religion differently than the less influential Britain of today.   Whilst there were Protestant and Catholic churches, plus their diverse branches, there was little or nothing of the more exotic, cultish, Eastern, American or other religions.  Great Britain was traditional in just about every sense of the word!  Six days shalt thou labour, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the ploughing season and harvest you must rest: Exodus 34:21s

That Old Testament doctrine was adhered to in varying degrees by the majority of the British population.  Shops opened five and a half days a week, closing at mid-day on Saturday and not reopening until Monday morning, the start of a new working week.  Public houses kept ‘Sunday hours’ and radio programs delivered church services at correspondingly appropriate times of the day.  Sunday was truly the day of rest; the day the virtuous attended church.  Those not so morally or spiritually inclined, slept in and enjoyed a leisurely traditional heathen fry-up breakfast of bacon, eggs and fried bread. 

Our Sunday dinner at home was always around 13:00 hrs; the ritual preparation for dinner began around 10:30 hrs.  A listening audience of 16 million people would tune their old valve radios into the BBC, to listen to the regular Sunday program, Two-Way Family Favourites. 

That program linked those servicemen and women still serving in war shattered Germany to their friends and families at home in a similarly ruined Great Britain.  The social values of those days are reflected in the following quote from an article about the far-off popular BBC radio program:  

“After the war, the BBC determined to raise the moral tone of Family Favourites...  Mention of fiancées and girl friends was declared taboo; there was to be no banter, and noisy jazz was forbidden on Sundays.” (Radio Days)  

As lunchtime neared, the mouth-watering aroma of roast dinners became ever more pervasive.  The virtuous returned from their spiritual devotions, while the less devout finished reading the Sunday papers.  In our house the Sunday newspaper of choice was, ‘The News of the World’ (colloquially the News of the Screws). 

With church over and news read, the mouth-watering roast dinner was served.  That weekly ritual was repeated in homes throughout the length and breadth of the land.  Dinner over and cleared away, a lazy afternoon listening to the radio, a walk, or even an hour in the veggie garden ensued.  The whole weekend’s affairs were the result of deeply ingrained religious dogma regardless of individual beliefs!  In post World War II Britain, religion and patriotism reigned supreme!

Almost without exception, children are to this day, brought up in their parents’ religion(s); hatched, matched and dispatched by the same religious company, ad infinitum!  Naturally, complications arise!  Being human, we cannot avoid obstacles that spill over or become incorporated into our religious or spiritual beliefs.  Catholics fall in love with Protestants, Baptists with Anglicans and Jews with Gentiles!  Mostly, we overcome such marginal problems on life’s bumpy journey.  One partner may opt to adopt the other’s belief system.  Others may simply choose to become non-practicing.  Even those who ‘drop’ attendance at a church, nevertheless, make a decision regarding the spiritual and moral education of their children!  The partner who expresses the least resistance will more likely defer to the wishes of the more dominant partner.  Thus the indoctrination cycle is re-established in favour of the primary controlling religious dogma; that which usually exercised the strongest influence over the parent(s).

The Congregational Church has existed in one form or another in Wales and elsewhere, for centuries.  It is a Protestant offshoot with a Puritan or Calvinist ethos, in other words, a very strict flock of people, with unshakable religious and moral values.  Born late in the 19^th century, my Welsh granny, Maggie Paul (Widow Jones), was a committed Congregationalist, who was responsible for the upkeep of the local village chapel. 

Accordingly, my father, William Morgan Cornelius Jones (29/12/1917-24/11/1985, aka Taffy, Connie or just Con), was raised in a seriously God-fearing manner.  Part of his righteous upbringing was spent on hands and bare young bony knees, not praying, but scrubbing and cleaning the cold, stone paved, chapel aisle!  

Maggie Paul, the family matriarch, also had a reputation as the local village clairvoyant; it being said she had a ‘sixth sense’ and could foretell when disaster was about to strike the local colliery. 

To me there seemed an incongruity between the strict Congregationalism and the more primitive heathen beliefs in the ability to foretell the future.  Mining was always a dangerous profession; mining disasters were nothing out of the ordinary in the 1800s and early 1900s.  My blood grandfather, one Hugh Morris Jones, of who I know nothing, was apparently killed in such a pit accident.  Life in the small Rhondda Valley mining village of Blaenrhondda, a district of Treherbert, thus revolved around the local collieries.  Christian religion and even older, Celtic Druid superstitions were the foundations of local society. 

Incidentally, one of Maggie Paul’s other regular duties was the traditional, lying out of the dead.  Being brought up in such an austere environment must have had a huge impact on my father’s very insular and personal view of world reality!

At the age of 13, circa 1931, Dad went to work at the local Ferndale Colliery site; he worked as my step-grandfather’s ‘boy’, earning 6^d (sixpence) a week.  Eddie Paul, my step-grandfather, was a bit of a mystery.  I know he was a Somerset man, hailing from the country town of Crewkerne.  A one-time merchant seaman/stoker on coal-fired ships, he somehow ended up as a coal miner in South Wales.  It was there he married my widowed Welsh grandmother.  Ed had his own daughters, Gladys and Jeanette, plus his own life story, of which I knew very little.  The following link may provide a clue to why Eddie ended up working in Wales.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferndale_Colliery *(There was an apparent exodus of miners from England to Wales at this period as men sought work.)

Each week, after crawling about in the pitch-dark, airless bowels of the earth, Dad was relieved of his hard-earned silver 6^d by his mother, who insisted she ‘saved his money for him’.  Many times over the years Dad recalled contemptuously how he never saw a penny of that hard-earned money ever again, once his mother had relieved him of it! 

The collieries of those days were, as noted above, extraordinarily dangerous places.  Hellish tunnels hewn by pick and shovel and supported only by stout softwood pit props; a maze of totally black and dusty crawl-ways in which canaries were used to test the air quality in case of dangerous pockets of methane; colloquially known as ‘fire damp’. 

Half-blind pit ponies hauled up to 30 tons of newly mined, best quality Welsh coal, daily from the deepest coalface to the endlessly turning pitheads.  Those ponies spent most of their life underground, only coming to the surface at annual holiday times.  They naturally suffered all the resulting ailments of sunlight deprivation!  At least at shift’s end, the luxury of a tin bath in front of a coal fire, awaited the grubby, black-faced, bone-tired human miners. 

I stress such points to accentuate how times and cultures have changed; also how individual realities are formed against such rapidly shifting, yet interacting environments!  Try placing yourself mentally, at least, in a similar situation.

 

As regards his ‘childhood’, Dad often spoke of his, ‘fun times’, wandering the Welsh hills and generally getting up to youthful mischief.  A favourite tale, often retold, was that of the haunted farmhouse the family once occupied.  Dad would recall how, lying on the paved flags in front of a roaring coal fire, reading comics, the thick oak doors would unaccountably creak open.  One dark and stormy night (it has to be a dark and stormy night); Eddie Paul had a need to go outside to the barn.  Returning a short time later, he was pale and visibly shaken.  Thereafter, he refused to go to the barn after dark.  Again elements of deeper superstition enter the story, and the fear of death and the dead is accentuated.  Eddie refused to speak of what had occurred; but the story recalled how a previous tenant farmer had committed suicide by lynching himself in that same barn.  The story was always left hanging at that point for the listeners to draw their own conclusions: pun, fully intended.

These next few paragraphs are mainly conjecture.  The only person who could verify the facts is long dead.  Herein lies a lesson; either talk to your family or attempt to write a few things down before you or they depart this troubled realm.  

Family rumour suggested that Dad had some early inclinations to become a lay-preacher within the Congregational Church.  One can quite imagine with such a pious upbringing, the rumours might well have had some foundation.  Then at the age of about 20 years, his world changed almost overnight; he faced his greatest unsought-after challenge, the declaration of World War II.  I think there must have been some notion of impending trouble, because I know my father had joined the Territorial Army (TA) prior to the outbreak of war.  Being in the TA might have been an attempt to avoid conscription for the real deal. 

However, I can't confirm that now.  The advent of war probably presented serious moral challenges and possibly life-changing predicaments.  

There was also another side to the story because without doubt, World War II also opened the doors to the wider world for those whose quiet routine, parochial lives would otherwise have remained untouched and unspoiled by the world at large.  In the Welsh miner’s case, that world was quite plainly powered by his labour.  In reality it was a world of which the Welsh miner knew very little; nor the world of him and his kind.  How my father justified becoming a soldier and going off to war to fight for his country, only he could answer. 

 

I suspect that the naive young men of that period were primed by media and political propaganda to become cannon fodder.  They were pumped full of patriotic and nationalistic crap.  On the other hand, there’s little doubt that Hitler himself was a ‘weapon of mass destruction’, a mass assassin, who had to be dealt with one way or another.  I have no hesitation in saying the Second World War changed my father irrevocably.  He became a man he never would have been if his life had been left untouched by six years of such horrific and bloody trauma. 

So saying, the same applies to all people throughout history who undergo similar traumatic events at some stage in their short lives?  During the war years, Dad met Mum and love blossomed.  He miraculously survived the war and was finally demobbed, returning home deaf in one ear, a physically damaged and mentally tormented soul; but luckily not as damaged as some.    

                     

On December 29th, 1944, I was born in Sussex; whilst Dad was having his birthday and fighting remnants of the German army in Holland.  From Sussex, Mum and I moved to the small Devonshire seaside town of Sidmouth.  The details of the move from my birthplace in Sussex to Devon are unknown to me; but I do know my Welsh Granny, had moved to Sidmouth to be installed as the caretaker of the local Sidmouth Congregational Church.  A small terraced cottage, situated in the town centre, No. 5 Mill Street, was owned by the Congregational Church.  Therefore, I presume family arrangements had been made on the Welsh side, with strings being pulled, to make sure Mum and Dad had somewhere to call home sweet home. 

Sidmouth, a deeply class-conscious, conservative and often duplicitous Devonshire town, henceforth moulded my life and subsequent 'spiritual' development.  Life is strange; that’s an understatement!  Dad and I were never really close, unlike Dad’s relationship with my sister, four and a half years my junior.  I always thought that was because we hadn’t bonded as father and son, on account of him being away soldiering when I was born.  Mum and I on the other hand were as close as a mother and son could be.  In spite of that closeness, I probably knew less of her moral and religious upbringing than I did of Dad’s.  In many ways, Mum was very typical of the females of her time.  She didn’t actually have an opinion of her own; any opinions she expressed were sad hollow echoes of my father’s domineering philosophies, be they religious, political, moral, social or simply general opinions about the folks next door!

 

Mum (25/01/1922-22/10/2002), was a child of the slums around Portslade, near Brighton in Sussex.  During her childhood, she was struck down with TB hip (see tuberculosis).  Simply having such a disease was a sad reflection of the times and dreadful conditions in which people were then forced to exist.  According to Mum, she spent most of her childhood in hospital.  At some point her parents were told she was permanently crippled and would never walk: Ever!

From the little I have read on the subject of TB related illnesses, which mainly affect third world countries these days, are of several types, each with its own set of symptoms.  Because Mum had her hips locked together, with what she described as ‘a silver plate’, I can only assume her disease was degenerative in nature.

I can summarise Mum’s early life in a word; hell.  Unlike Dad, who had one elder brother called George, and step-sisters Gladys and Jeanette; Mum was the youngest of a family of eight, including one sister, Dorothy, who died in her prime.  Her mother Emma, my Granny Muggeridge, was the long-suffering wife of a drunken oaf, who indulged in regular rounds of inebriated domestic violence. 

It wouldn’t be drawing a long bow if one described the family’s early life as Dickensian!  For a living, the alcoholic, Grand-dad Muggeridge, drove horse-drawn buses along Brighton seafront.  He was reputed to have received much of his weekly income in whiskey, leaving little or nothing for food and rent for his large destitute family. 

Again, one can only imagine the many hungry and fear-filled nights spent in the Muggeridge household.  If religion featured at all it was because, apart from God, there was no one else, except the Salvation Army, to lend a hand!   The Army’s mission statement being:  ‘to perform evangelical, social and charitable work and bring the Christian message to the poor, destitute and hungry by meeting both their physical and spiritual needs’.  A mission statement designed exactly with the Muggeridge family in mind.  As it turned out, just about all my aunts on Mum’s side of the family eventually became affiliated in one way or another to the Salvation Army. 

On finally leaving hospital, Mum, then a child of about nine years old, set about proving the doctors wrong.  With the aid of an old wicker wheelchair, she learned to drag herself around the slums of West Street, Portslade, walking from the knees down only.  She grew to adulthood, and as I remarked above, met my father, married and started a normal family life.  That ‘family life’, beginning as a war-time evacuee, was spent far from her own family support network.  Very often people such as my mother, incorrectly I believe, are described as ‘stoic’. 

To be stoic, is to exhibit an (outward) indifference to pleasure or pain.  Mother did neither of those things; she did however, bear her physical disabilities with amazing grace and fortitude.  Mum’s favourite saying was: no matter how bad you think you are son, there’s always someone worse off!  Mum was a quiet realist, who took a lot of verbal ridicule from other people, both young and old, because of the odd way she ‘walked’ or shuffled. 

Her childhood disease had left her not only walking from the knees, but also with an exaggerate scoliosis of the spine; making her appear strangely misshapen.  Forced to wear a torturous steel-ribbed support corset; she grew up learning how to disguise her constant physical pain and true inner feelings.  When that emotional dam occasionally burst, as her son, I became ‘her shoulder to cry on’.  The loneliness of living far from her own family, who still resided in Sussex, and the ‘pain of just living’, often resulted in many secretly spilt tears; her loneliness was palpable.  Whilst my father was a wonderful man, he too was a man of the times.  His sympathies didn’t really extend to the homesick tears of ’his missus’.  The same rule applied to other familial roles. 

His role was man of the house, the breadwinner; a role in which he excelled.  Mother’s role was to manage the children, the finances and the house, in spite of her physical disabilities. 

On pay day the brown pay envelope appeared on the kitchen table and Mum was ‘given’ the house keeping money as assumed to be sufficient, by my father.  Mum was always too afraid to ask for more, in spite of the fact she often didn’t have enough money to cover the weekly bills.  Her task was to ‘make it do’.  Perhaps there are still men with that sort of attitude, but I recall, even at a young age, I resolved I’d never, ‘be like that with my wife when I grew up’.

                                                     

 

Brainwashing - to build a myth

It was from that strange human amalgam: the domineering, war-damaged Welshman and the subservient, but brave, uncomplaining crippled lady from the Portslade slums, that my ‘religious and spiritual roots’ were first formed.  Those roots were then continually nourished and reinforced throughout my formative years. 

We moved house from 5 Mill Street to a council estate, 102 Manstone Avenue, when my sister was born, around 1948.  When I was deemed old enough I was packed off to the local Sunday school to undertake my first formal, age appropriate, religious instruction.  I would then have been aged about six or seven years old.  The local Sunday school was held in, ‘Emmanuel’s Church’, a Baptist organisation.  They describe themselves today as, ‘Affiliated to the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches’.  Staffed by a very dedicated and lovely volunteer group of people; the corrugated roofed building in which the Church and Sunday school was housed was in fact a converted cowshed.  We children named it, ‘The Tin Tabernacle’, quite fitting under the circumstances.  The religious instruction wasn’t exactly ‘fire and brimstone’, but the objectives were nevertheless to inculcate the Baptist dogma into its juvenile initiates.

“Jesus Loves the Little Children, All the Children of the World, Red and Yellow, Black and White, All are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

No doubt the evangelical religious philosophy loosely fitted in with my parent's very diverse religious upbringings.  Dad, by that time, seemed quite disillusioned with religion and the two-faced religious bigots we knew on his side of the family. 

Mum, as usual, had adopted Dad’s jaded views on religion, but nevertheless still retained her love of the (Sallies) Salvation Army.  I suspect my father's initial loss of faith was directly related to his horrific wartime experiences.  Whilst the verbal emphasis at home was always: We are C of E (Church of England), my parents didn’t exactly express any serious desire to attend ‘formal church’, C of E church services themselves, nor to have their children do so.  My parent’s general attitude, as far as I recall, was always that there were: ‘more hypocrites and bigots inside the church than outside of it’.  Those words I recall quite clearly! 

Over the years I gathered more and more that my parent’s cynical attitude was tied closely to my Welsh Granny, the (Sidmouth) Congregational Church, and Eddie Paul; whose religious views were increasingly seen as highly questionable by my father.  The mixed messages raised doubts in my young mind as to how seriously one should really take religion. 

Of course, adults never seem to consider that mere children would have opinions or thoughts about such esoteric subjects, even though they insisted those same children attend formal religious instruction.  And yet, the religious messages being fed to us at Sunday school were unquestionably genuine!   The parables and Biblical stories were told and retold with indisputable gusto.  Adam and Eve were real people and miracles were real events.  The Holy Bible was: The Word of God!

The fables, the moralising, the hymns, the seasonal messages of Easter, Christmas, and Harvest Festival, were all crystal clear.   God was real!  He was: The Creator!  It was, He, who watched our every move and knew our every indiscretion.  It was Him to whom we would one day all be accountable.  It was He to whom we must mumble skywards, hands clasped in reverential prayer.  It was He we should, above all else: FEAR!  

Satan, Lucifer, The Devil, was likewise portrayed as an equally real, even if spiritual, entity.  Everlasting hellfire and damnation in the sulphuric stench of Hell awaited those non-compliant souls who decided to reject the truthful path to salvation.

There’s a certain incongruity when talking about TRUTH in relation to RELIGION!

Confusion abounded in our young minds as we dear ignorant children, discovered that ‘one person’ was in fact three different characters: Father, Son and Holy Ghost!  The choices were made abundantly clear.  Sin and you were eternally damned!  FEAR: PARANOIA: INSECURITY: GUILT and BRAINWASHING: the repetitious and destructive tools of all religions, and coincidentally, all despots and dictators.

On Sundays at home, the radio then later the TV always relayed ‘church’ and religion into our living room.  Mum enjoyed the hymn singing and often joined in with familiar hymns being broadcast, particularly if the Sallies happened to feature.  Dad always seemed content to listen, provided it wasn’t what he called, high church!  And so, for years, the mixed messages continually prevailed. 

As I have indicated, my Welsh granny was by the later 1940s and early 1950s installed as the caretaker for the Sidmouth Congregational Church; my step grandfather, in semi-retirement, assisted with the heavier chores around the church.  We never joined the Congregationalists at worship in their church.  That, to me at least, reinforced that all was not in common agreement between my father and his parents.  My grandparent’s close association with the Congregational Church seemed the basis of Dad’s pre-occupation with the bigotry that existed within all religious organisations. 

Dark criticism was often levelled at my step-grandfather, who, when he thought no one was around, was known to smoke a pipe in and around the confines of the church, (a cardinal sin apparently).  As if smoking wasn’t a big enough sin, I later discovered the ‘old man’ wasn’t averse to a little philandering, if and when the opportunity arose.  In later life, he was confirmed as having a long time lover, one Miss White.   I thought: ‘what a strange name for a scarlet woman.’

There is often more to life than childhood innocence can cope with; the adult world has difficulty hiding its ugliness as developing human intellect fumbles blindly toward maturity.  As years passed, so the apparent realities of life became increasingly difficult to understand. 

If sin was so bad: if sin earned such terrible punishments: if guilt itself was so destructive: why then did so many adults indulge in such eternally self-destructive and lethal behaviour?  Clearly, all was not well with the world, and all was not being revealed in a truthful manner. 

Why, when truth and light were so virtuous, yet the wages of sin were death, was this so?  Who was I, a simple child, to be concerned with such questions?  Why was I, a mere child, being lied to by adults who should know better?

St Nicholas Parochial C of E Junior School also played its part in my ‘spiritual development’.  Today, St Nicholas School, whilst situated in a different part of town, is still in existence.  The school now advises that it has a Year 4 Religious Education teacher.  I can’t remember having religious instruction whilst in Junior School; I do however remember observing certain religious proceedings.  For those more notable events, Christmas, Easter and so on, we would line up crocodile fashion and stride merrily off to walk the quarter mile or so to the ancient Sidmouth Parish Church. 

The Parish Church had served the local community since the Norman times, circa 1100, and had the air of a place that could no doubt tell many stories.  That was my introduction to the ‘real church’!  I marvelled at the high-vaulted ceilings, the glorious echoes of hymns or Christmas carols as their strains floated skyward to Heaven and God’s illustrious ears.  God must have ears, he made man in his own image and man has ears!  Sing loudly, praise the Lord for He is mighty!   The vicar’s voice boomed righteously from the pulpit, delivering yet another impressive message of religious truth; or more rightly, religious dogma! 

All those accepted holy concepts, honed, polished, repeated incessantly; sent to pound my youthful senses into compliancy and shaping my mental impression of the reality of the natural world surrounding me.  Religion did provide a mental sanctuary in some respects.  At night, before going to sleep, one could pray to God, quietly muttering away to ask for things. 

One could make frivolous requests, and feel mildly guilty for doing so.  In the process, I self-reinforced the idea that there actually was a spiritual being that looked over me at night and really cared whether or not I slept safely through the night.  You might not be able to ask Mum or Dad for certain things, but you could always ask God for whatever you liked!  It didn’t pass my notice that I never actually received the requested goodies! 

The guilt aspect was also surreptitiously applied by parents, nothing too obvious, just a gentle reminder now and then that it was wrong to tell fibs, even small white ones.   It was wrong to steal and wrong to want what someone else had (covet).  God was watching your every move and recording your deeds and misdeeds in a large book, to be used on, The Day of Judgment!  Wicked people would fry in Hell for all eternity and the meek, good compliant folks, would live forever amongst the clouds with the angels and other ‘good souls’.  I wondered how those souls sat on the clouds without falling through!  Was there enough room for thousands of years-worth of departed souls?  Hell must be a very sweaty place indeed; bulging full of all those wicked buggers who hadn't passed muster.

The Meek would, by right, inherit the earth!  All those ideas, sayings, and covert messages were woven into the very fabric of our everyday life!  But, there was a certain proviso: you had to belong to the ‘right mob’.  There was only one true religion! 

Questions relating to the legitimacy of such statements were defended with stock adult answers.  Might was always right: because I said so, I am an adult therefore what I say must be right and must be believed, and complied with! 

But which was the true religion?  What chance does a child have against such overwhelming odds?  And yet eventually nothing impedes the truly enquiring mind.  With maturity the questions just become more pressing.  To me ‘truth’ mattered, whatever the ‘truth’ might be.

Thus I slowly matured, mumbling doubtfully yet dutifully, at the sky on the road to adulthood.  In times of deep despair I mumbled more passionately; still without reward or even mild relief.  My one small, muted human voice went unheard amongst the multitude of requests clogging the lines to God’s Department of Miracles.  I wondered why, day after day, unbelievable human slaughter occurred around the world?  Storms, floods, earthquakes, famine and disease killed millions of innocents.  They must be heathens, of course, that was the only answer.  They didn’t belong to the right mob! 

War followed war; big wars, little wars, and terrorism.  Murder and chaos were the natural order of the world.  But God in His wisdom looked over all and wrote blotchy notes with a feathered quill in His Big Book for, The Day of Judgment!   Mankind had God-given choice over his own decisions!  The atom bomb was tested and retested, threatening our lives; the very existence of humanity and every living thing.  The Cold War felt very hot to us.  In God we must trust!  (You certainly wouldn’t trust humans)

Sylvia Beer’s youngest sister, chasing behind the Coop soft-drink delivery lorry, slipped.  The lorry’s big black evil tyres ran over her tiny, fragile blonde head.  She was dead with a squashed skull!  We children teased Sylvia, who like her sister was blonde, spindly thin, and always had a runny nose.  Even as a child, I felt guilty for doing so; I knew teasing was cruel.  Why did God, in His mercy, decide the f*****g drink lorry should run over an innocent little girl’s head and end her miserably short life?  I didn’t even know her first name!  That must be a grown-up’s problem.  I certainly didn’t understand it! 

Retrospectively, that terrible accident was perhaps my first experience of how the death of one small person can have a much greater personal impact than the deaths of millions of people in far off places!  Was religion supposed to help children make sense of life?  If it was, it failed miserably.  Religion raised more questions than it answered.  Religion caused me profound personal confusion.  Without that burden I might have made more sense of the dark realities that surrounded me.  Adults seemed impervious to many such dramatic events; they simply accepted the things they could not change.  They muttered at the sky and wiped away the tears, then carried on as if nothing had happened.  Religion added an unnecessary false layer of complexity to my daily life.  It stunted any form of true self-discovery; yet religion was always there, day after day, year after year. 

The unremitting religious ceremonies of baptism, marriage, death, Christmas, Easter, and Lent; year after year; the same bullshit messages, dished out by dutiful creatures in stiff white dog collars.  The brainwashing reiteration of tired messages eagerly soaked up by lost ignorant souls, who knew no other answers.  Those lost sheep; congregations who continually awaited their regular dose of unquestioned and incontestable spiritual motivation.

A growing awareness of life and death comes to all children; in this, I was no exception.  I had a female cat; she was expecting kittens.  As a family, we all looked forward to that event.  The cat disappeared.  She died giving birth to her kittens over at Churchill’s farm across the hedgerow.  I cried.  The 1950s like every other period had its notable deaths and millions more besides.  

The Korean War, a world away, began in 1950.  King George died in 1952 and the whole country mourned.  Solemn radio broadcasts reverberated across the world.  George Bernard Shaw breathed his last in 1950; and the murderous Joseph Stalin in 1953.  The Mau-Mau terrorists in Kenya slaughtered and mutilated all before them.  All those historical names and events meant little or nothing to me at that time.  Albert Einstein passed away in 1955.  His significant scientific achievements mildly aroused my curiosity; or perhaps it was just his mad professor appearance.   Mum didn’t understand who he was, or his significance to humanity. 

She knew he was German and had something to do with the atom bomb!  Well, she was nearly right!  James Dean died in 1955, his name forever glorified by Hollywood.  I was 10 years old; his death interested me for a short while.  Mum just tut-tutted and shook her head.  What was the younger generation coming to?

Greater than all of those events, the constant bombardment of radio and TV news relating to nuclear bomb testing and anti-nuclear bomb protests overshadowed all our lives!  CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) was born, and the general population became acutely aware of the potential for complete annihilation in a wholesale nuclear war.  The Civil Defence movement was created by the government; animated films depicting the effects of nuclear detonations drove home the terrible possibilities.

Our daily free school milk, the ritual one third of a pint, was suspended as the airborne strontium 90 released from world-wide nuclear air testing sites polluted the atmosphere.  Cows ingested the nuclear waste and the deadly airborne contamination entered the food chain.  How many died as a result of cancers caused by that government sanctioned polluted historical period, is anyone’s guess.

The Space Race began about 1955; it sort of spoilt the heavenly illusion in a way.  God’s territory invaded.  Sputnik, 1957: Telstars 1 & 2, 1962-63; look out all you guys up there sitting on clouds!   All sorts of vehicles were being fired into space but not one of them bumped into God!  Religious communities started to get a bit edgy about the whole idea of humans going into space.  What if intelligent life was found out there?  That would complicate things dreadfully!  What if they had a different version of creation?  What if they didn’t have a god?  More to the point, what if Earth’s religions were proved wrong?  So many ethical questions, the biggest surely being that the Christian church, for 2000 years, had pushed a specific message.  According to most religions, the Earth is a special place in the universe, created solely for special beings, which were given dominion over all.  That (human) being, according to the church, was created in the image of God, Himself. 

If life of any kind existed elsewhere in the universe, what then would be special about the Earth or its special inhabitants?  Exposure to such stark realities was well outside the Church’s experience.  Severely challenged, the church and religious movements generally, were dragged kicking and screaming into the modern age.  Technology, science, and religion embarked on a new journey. 

See: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1967/JASA6-67Johnson.html

The enclosed link provides some thoughtful insights and also highlights the continuing angst felt by those who believed in a spiritual world or a holy realm.

`I'm going to 'ave a prize next Sunday at our Sunday School,' said Elsie as they were leaving.       ‘What are you going to get it for?' asked Nora.

`'Cause I learned my text properly.  I had to learn the whole of the first chapter of Matthew by heart and I never made one single mistake! So teacher said she'd give me a nice book next Sunday.'  `Ain't you never been?' said Charley in a tone of surprise.

`No,' replied Frankie. `Dad says I have quite enough of school all the week.'

`You ought to come to ours, man!' urged Charley. `It's not like being in school at all!  And we 'as a treat in the summer, and prizes and sometimes a magic lantern 'tainment. It ain't 'arf all right, I can tell you.'

Frankie looked inquiringly at his mother.  `Might I go, Mum?'

`Yes, if you like, dear.'

`But I don't know the way.'

`Oh, it's not far from 'ere,' cried Charley. `We 'as to pass by your 'ouse when we're goin', so I'll call for you on Sunday if you like.'

Ragged Trousered Philanthropist Robert Tressell �" published 23 April 1914 --- eBook as free download; a recommended read. 

I parted ways with Emmanuel’s Sunday school at about the age of 13 years.  I'd spent the best part of my young life up until then attending the, Tin Tabernacle, on Sundays; so leaving was quite a significant occasion.  The story of the parting of the ways is worth recollecting here as it highlights my personality, even at that young age.

The Parkers, a family of five boys and Mr and Mrs, had lived next door to us in Manstone Avenue for several years.  Ken Parker was a month older than me and his younger brother, Jeff, a year or two younger again.  It was Ken and Jeff I mainly associated with, them being my peers.  Ken and Jeff were irritating buggers who would feed off one another once a little stealthy bullying got underway.  I had put up with that type of sneaky harassment at Sunday school for a few weeks and was starting to get just a little annoyed with the constant aggravation.  That last day at Sunday school was no exception.  The bullying had taken the form of rib poking and sneaky punches, delivered from the left and right when our heads were bowed in worshipful prayer.  The whole congregation, being in a bowed attitude, ensured no witnesses.  I had put up with as much as I was going to take and had planned my course of action.  As our heads went down and the mumbling increased, the poking and punching started.  My strategy was simple.  I sat bolt upright, grabbed a handful of hair to the left and to the right and swiftly brought the two offending heads together.  BANG - OUCH!  Two surprised Parkers yelled in unison.  Wonderful: sheer elation on my part.  Whilst there were no witnesses, there were plenty who’d heard the crash of skulls, bone on bone, and the surprised yells of pain and utter indignation.

We always had a short break halfway through Sunday school services.  Usually we younger people were allowed to nip outside to play and get some air.  That day, the Parkers and I were not allowed out.  Furthermore, we were informed, we would be kept in after Sunday school as punishment.  My sense of righteous indignation knew no bounds.  All, however, was not lost.  My brain went into overdrive.  On one side of the church there were double doors, hidden behind heavy red velvet curtains.  The doors were tightly bolted and rarely used.  During the break, while no one was looking, I sneaked behind the curtains and released the double bolted doors.  Leaving the doors closed but still unbolted, I returned to mingle with the others.  Conspiratorially, I whispered to the Parker brothers:

‘When the service is finished, we’ll make a break for the front door.  When I shout 'go', run for the exit and we'll get out.’   

My plan worked like a charm.  The service finished.  I yelled, and the Parker brothers ran for the main exit door.  The Sunday school teachers, expecting such a move, rushed to head them off.  While all that was happening, I disappeared behind the curtains and let myself out the side doors.  Once out, I legged it for home, where I thought I'd cop it for causing mischief.  As it turned out, I told my story truthfully and was surprised to find my parents not only believed me, but were content for me not to return to Sunday school.  You could have knocked me down with a feather.

One of the Sunday school teachers lived just five doors away.  His name was Mr. Macey.  He wasn't a bad old guy.  He and his wife had adopted a little girl, Veronica, who was an occasional playmate out on the street.  I think he must have known of the bullying and silently approved of my action.  A few weeks after my disgraceful departure, an anonymous parcel, I've always suspected came from that neighbour, arrived at our house.  Inside the parcel was a very expensive looking 'zippered' Bible. 

Inside the Bible were a note and two references:

To David Jones: from a friend with an earnest prayer that this Word of God may be to him a real lamp on his path.  March 1958

Acts 13:22 … And when He had removed him, He raised up for them David as king, to whom also He gave testimony and said, ‘I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will.

John 3:16 …For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

I still have that same Bible to this day, some 60 odd years later.  Apart from a broken zip, it is still in remarkably good order.

Secondary Modern School (High school) was generally a religion free zone.  We did have meaningless ‘Morning Prayer’, usually accompanied by much back of the knee nudging, poking and coughing.  After the usual hymn and the obligatory parable of some sort, Toby Greenslade, our headmaster, would conclude morning prayers with that unforgettable phrase: Lettuce Spray (sic).  That phrase was always the cue for muted giggles, heads down, a quick morning mumble and off to study for the day. 

 

With the arrival of 1959, I finally escaped the drudgery of weekday academic study and took the first steps on the path to adulthood and self-sufficiency.  In December of that year, a couple of weeks before my 15^th birthday, I left Woolbrook Secondary Modern and started work as an apprentice plumber…

                

Growing Doubts:

It has taken a while to get to this point, but without laying the groundwork and background, the whole picture cannot be appreciated in context. 

What, if anything, had my most ethical upbringing gained me?  In fairness, I did have a strong moral sense of right and wrong.  But, would I have had a similar attitude without religious brainwashing? 

I also had a sense of fairness and could be empathetic to anyone's point of view, even if it was detrimental to me.  By that, I mean I was very green and easily hoodwinked.  If someone had a sob story, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt.  Did that have anything to do with my 'religious' upbringing?  I doubt it. 

I knew it was wrong to steal, and have never been able to steal with a clear conscience.  Does that mean I've never stolen; no, of course not.  Some of the environments I've worked in, ‘theft’ was an accepted part of the scene.  I'm not talking massive theft, but rather the use of gear that happened to be ‘left over’ at work, which would end up changing ownership.  Because everyone did it, I saw nothing wrong with the occasional ‘permanent loan’.

Overall, I think my parent's example(s) had more to do with my attitude at that point in my life; that and the general attitudes of my own peer-group. 

My overall personality, often over the years described as stoic, had more to do with my emerging character.  I have discussed the misuse of the word 'stoic' earlier and have always found it strange that the same word had been misapplied to both my Mother and me. 

It was also obvious, even at that early point, my trait of: not suffering fools gladly, was already noticeable.  I had and have always had an inclination to call a spade a spade and a lazy b*****d, a lazy b*****d.  However, I can't see how religion had anything to do with that attitude either.

Did I believe in God or even 'A God'?  I didn't know, and remained confused for a long time on that issue.  I certainly didn't believe some hairy-faced bloke was staring down at me from on high and recording my every move. 

Did I believe I should belong to a church?  No!  Did I have any regrets about severing my ties with the Tin Tabernacle?  No; in fact I gave the whole episode of Sunday school little or no thought ever again.  I did occasionally think about the good times, Sunday school outings and prize-giving.  I also had a small foreign coin collection, given to me by Mr. Halse, one of my Sunday school teachers in the older group.  I still have most of that collection to this day.  Did I hold any great respect for religion or the religious?  Definitely not!  But that was surely more to do with my parent's attitudes towards religious narrow-mindedness, than anything I'd learned at Sunday school.  Did I believe in ghosts or the spirit world?  At that time I was unsure, but I did hold an inner apprehension of the unknown, for no other reason than I had been raised with the view that there was life after death!

Embarking on life's journey, my mind was more immediately concerned with starting that journey than any real spiritual ‘other world’ concerns.  And so my teenage years were passed in a similar way to many others, fighting with my own insecurities and raging teenage hormones and establishing myself in the rude, crude adult world.  The words: agnostic and atheist cropped up a few times in my youth.  I often wondered what they meant. 

Agnostic: A person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.

Atheist: A person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.

Having found out the meanings of those words, or at least, sort of found out; I did wonder which category I fell into.  For a long time I was happy enough to consider myself agnostic.  Although I didn't really have a clear grasp of what that might mean.  I think I knew I was sitting on the philosophical fence; but my Sunday school teaching was very deeply entrenched. 

During the early years of my first marriage there was an episode that made me stop and perhaps for the first time as an adult, question religion and my own position in regard to the spiritual conundrum. 

There was a knock on the front door one day and on opening the door I was greeted by a Jehovah's Witness.  The usual conversation ensued with God's self-appointed representative making it clear to me that mankind, myself included, was doomed, unless of course I joined, The Chosen Ones!

Still being naive in the extreme, I took much of his spiel to heart.  As any well trained JW will do, being presented with one ripe for suggestion, he promptly inveigled his way into our house over the following weeks.  My fatal mistake had been to attempt to out-talk a man who had all the answers.  His name was, perhaps aptly, Paul.  He and his wife came to our house quite regularly for a short period of time.  During those times, he insisted we pray before he launched into his well-rehearsed routine.  The prayers made both my first wife and I feel quite uncomfortable, but we complied nevertheless.  Each time he left I felt as if I was being taken down a path I really didn't want to travel.  I became so concerned and agitated about those bad feelings I decided to take matters further and seek other professional advice.

What better place to seek a second opinion about religious matters than at a church?  Although not a member of any congregation, I knew the priest at our local St Francis (of Assisi) Church was an approachable sort of bloke.  It was with him I sought an appointment. 

By that time, my mind had become so swamped with what I can only call religious nonsense, I was beginning to consider that if there was truth in what we were being told, then all men and women should believe in God unreservedly.  Indeed, their very lives depended on it.  While my confusion was much deepened, somewhere inside me doubts still lingered as to the real truth of the matter.  Having explained my predicament to the local priest, I am very pleased to say that he at least was honest.  For that I still admire the bloke. 

He considered my story and after some small talk, explained that there were many avenues of belief and they didn't necessarily always agree with each other.  I don't think he even criticized the Jehovah's Witnesses as a group, or their methods of recruitment.  He simply pointed out that we, as individuals, should follow our own hearts in such matters.  I do remember we discussed the differences between the JW version of the Holy Bible and the King James Version. 

In this as I recall, he was a little more direct, pointing out how by manipulating text in the Bible, intrinsic meanings could be altered to suit a very selfish marketing end.  With the omission of a word or the addition of a comma, the Word of God could be made to say whatever Man desired.

 

As the priest's advice had not contained an urgent command to believe one way or the other, I understood how I had become influenced, or infected, by someone who was simply determined to convert me at all costs.  Naturally, none of those costs being of any real benefit to me or my wife personally.  The next time Paul and his ever faithful wife arrived at our front door I gave him short shrift and requested he not return again.  He did try to argue, but I had learnt my lesson.  Never argue with someone who has all the answers pre-packaged!

That rather distasteful little episode remained with me over the years and galvanized my determination to remain uninfluenced by one or the other religious group.  In spite of that, human curiosity still demands answers.  Where did we come from?  Why are we here?  What is the purpose of life?  Is there life after death?  Such questions can and should be divorced from all organised religious association and interpretations.

                

All At Sea

Time passed, as did my first marriage, which ended in disaster after five years.  My black period descended.  My two children, the only good thing to come out of that sour union, went to live with my sister and brother-in-law.  I returned home to live with Mum and Dad.  No help came from a god of any description. 

As anyone who has been through such a family break up will tell you; it is one of the most unpleasant heartbreaking, pain-filled events that can happen to anyone.  Anyway, that is the subject of another essay, so I won't dwell on it here.  Suffice to say, after struggling to survive in my home town of Sidmouth, I finally realised my road to sanity lay not in town but in getting out of town.  My decision led me away to sea as a merchant seaman, a ships' plumber, for the next six years.

Seamen are not renowned for their religiosity, in spite of often facing the worse that raw nature can throw at mankind!  There's only yourself and your mates to rely on at sea.  Sometimes there's a shortage of 'mates' and those sorts of voyages are the stuff of nightmares (yet another story).

I did attend one memorable religious ceremony during my time at sea; a funeral, in the United States of America.  Now that was a spiritual eye-opener.  I had sailed with Black Bob a couple of times previously.  He was a young bloke, maybe late 20s, part Mexican apparently.  He was tall, 6' plus, handsome, slim and a snappy dresser when he went ashore.  But he was definitely strange!  He was the sort of bloke who could have pulled women without trying; but I never saw him in female company. 

His position on the ship was that of 2^nd Cook and Baker, but I shouldn't hold that against him.  At the start of that particular trip, which was to the USA and the Caribbean, Bob had joined the ship in Plymouth amid tales of having spent some time in a mental hospital on his last shore leave.  No details other than that were forthcoming and seamen, being the way they are, never bothered to probe too deeply anyway.  Each man had his own demons, without taking on anyone else's.

From the very start, Bob began to annoy the rest of the Petty Officer's mess, about 30 in number.  We didn't have many rules in the 'bar' where we spent our leisure time, but there was a dress code. 

After 19:00hrs everyone was supposed to be showered and changed.  Bob didn't like that rule, he’d arrive in the bar when he finished in the galley, at about 18:00hrs and proceed to drink.  Having worked in the bakery section of the galley all day, he stank, not just of greasy cooking, but also the added dash of yeast and similar products.  Throw in a good portion of BO and the results were not nice.  In spite of being repeatedly warned, Bob continued the practice throughout the first couple of weeks of the voyage.  Eventually, the inevitable happened; he was told quite bluntly by the Mess President to shower and change each evening or he was banned from the bar. 

The reaction to that instruction was just as predictable, Black Bob said - ‘f**k you’- and took himself off to the Crews' bar, on the same 03 deck but aft, at the stern of the ship.  Bob was popular enough with the crew and no one in that area cared whether he changed or stank; many of the crew didn't fuss with such niceties after they had finished a day's work anyway. 

And so the trip progressed.  Bob had made no friends in his own mess, but that didn't seem to bother him.  He spent his evenings socialising with the crew.

Eventually, on reaching America and after the usual program of naval exercises, we ended up in port for a couple of weeks R & R.  Whilst I mentioned above that I was a merchant seaman, I should be more specific and point out that although a merchant seaman, the ships I sailed on were ammunition and supply ships for the Royal Navy.  Our employer was the UK Ministry of Defence (Naval) and we sailed under the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) flag.  Our main task was to keep the fleet supplied with everything from 1000^lb bombs to beer.  We were obviously included in all naval exercises, which were ongoing; endlessly!

When the fleet, having rendezvoused with a multitude of other ships at sea, hit port, naturally the crew members flitted between ships visiting friends and catching up over a few drinks.  One small group of our galley and catering staff decided they’d do more than have a few beers and a chat with a neighbouring RFA.  The visit to an RFA oiler developed into a full-blown piss-up. 

No harm in that of course and in itself not particularly unusual.  Except for one small life-changing incident involving Bob!  It turned out he had a proclivity for young boys, of whom there were many in the catering staff, galley boys and young stewards etc.  To cut a long story short; when the drink's in the wit is out. 

Black Bob really let his hair down on his nautical visit and took sexual advantage of a young steward, who had passed out in the privacy of his own cabin from too much alcohol.  Bob was caught in flagrante delicto, performing oral sex upon the comatose youth.  I'm not sure that being caught, 'red-handed', is a suitable term, but caught he was and the outcome was very predictable. 

A fleet of ships is much like a small village when it comes to gossip; scuttlebutt spreads like wildfire!  Bob's already dubious reputation was in shreds!  Having returned to our ship, the following day Bob tried to carry on as if nothing had occurred.  However, the whispering and innuendo soon gathered momentum.  Black Bob, as he had now been well and truly christened, sunk into black depression of self inflicted guilt.  He sulked in his baker’s corner of the galley.  He still drank in the crews' bar with those few who would abide his company.  There's never a shortage of people with aberrant sexual behaviour amongst any ships' crew anyway.

A few nights later Bob made his final visit to the Crews' bar.  On that occasion he'd arrived at the bar, where as usual he proceeded to drink to excess.  That night, he had taken his caged budgerigar with him.  During the course of the evening he gave the bird away to another seaman.  Early the following morning all hell broke loose. 

Ernie, an Able Seaman (AB), had a healthy early morning habit; he would always sneak into the fridges and steal an apple to start his day.  That would be one day he wouldn't forget in a hurry.  The apples were stored in the cool room outside a deep freeze area. 

Ernie noticed a freezer door was ajar, so he poked his head around the corner to see why.  There, empty pill bottle by his side, sat a very deeply frozen, Black Bob!  He was as dead as a mackerel and ten times as hard!  The US naval base paramedics were summoned post-haste.  The last vision I had of Bob leaving the ship was of him on a gurney, one paramedic pushing and the other hammering hell out of his deeply frozen ribs in an attempt to restart his long dead heart.  Those resuscitation attempts were pretty pointless by that time because, as I said, Bob was frozen solid right through.

 

Not surprisingly, the local American law enforcement officers came onboard and questioned all and sundry in an attempt to get to the bottom of that heinous incident.  Again, it was a fairly pointless exercise.  Seamen are notoriously anti-authority when it comes to ' the law' or 'the customs officers'.  Black Bob had topped himself.  That was his choice and f**k-all to do with anyone else.  Now came the strange part; in a fit of moral pique the MOD proclaimed that, because Bob had not died in the line of duty, but had offended the departments' sensibilities by committing suicide, his body would not be flown home.  Instead, as punishment one can only assume, he would be laid to rest in America; well, cremated anyway.  That being the case, volunteers from the Petty Officer's mess would be required to attend Black Bob's funeral service at a local consecrated chapel. 

Because of the events surrounding Bob's demise, the gossip and innuendo spreaders, many of whom were in our midst in the PO's mess, felt stubbornly disinclined to attend Bob’s funeral.  I know guilty conscience played a large part in many decisions; it was each to his own.  I had no axe to grind and although I had no great liking for Bob because of his poor attitude, I did offer to attend the small funeral party, thereby representing the Engine Room Department. 

On the morning of the funeral we were transported from the ship to the funeral parlour in a mini bus.  Standing outside the funeral parlour, no one could be blamed for mistaking it for an ordinary American home.  We filed solemnly in through the front door of the house.  Big Dai, a Welshman, built like the proverbial brick shithouse, walked in front of me through the unpresumptuous reception hall area.  We were then directed through to a curtained-off room. 

Sweeping the curtain aside, Big Dai stepped through and then stopped dead.  I walked into his fat arse and grumbled: 'what the f**k'.  Peering around Dai's ample backside, I was stunned to see Black Bob sitting up in his coffin, the half-lid casket wide open.  There he sat, as large as life!  Apparently, that was the way they did things in America!  Being a small party we were quickly ushered in and our whole group seated in the front row; an arm's length from a very miserable looking, totally thawed, dead 2^nd Cook and Baker.  The service wasn't long but it sure was arduous.  We muttered prayers and stuttered through the words of an unknown hymn, obeying the religious ritual requirements.  We listened to the empty words of a 'holy stranger', who'd never met Bob nor smelled his BO.  Then it was over; accompanied by suitable funereal music, Bob's coffin and thawed corpse slid between curtains on its way to his own baker’s oven. 

Still bewildered and in relative silence, we shuffled back to our transport and were returned to our ship.  Once there we began the wake, which if nothing else relieved the tensions of the day; not that we needed an excuse to drink. 

That evening we sailed away from the USA minus one smelly 2^nd Cook and Baker.  As we headed out to sea we treated ourselves to a movie, ‘Blackbeard's Ghost’, which was irreverently renamed, 'Black Bob's Ghost'.  The mockery of that whole episode and the lip service to religious dogma has stayed with me over the years. 

Whilst we all use survival humour under certain conditions, I could never get over the fact that so little actual help was available to a man who was obviously in need.  On top of that, the meaninglessness of the so-called funeral service was nothing short of farcical.  Our masters at the MOD didn't do themselves any favours either; the official attitude only reinforced how little any of us were worth when it came to the crunch.

Travelling the globe for six years gives one a wider view on the world generally.  Travel broadens the mind, as they say.  For us, reasonably affluent British sailors, many parts of the Third World presented many shocking examples of 'how the other half lives'.  We only consider poverty relative to our own situations in our own country.  Believe you me, the Western World knows little or nothing of real poverty; or the depraved lengths humans go to just to alleviate the pain of basic deficiencies. 

One very poignant aspect of Third World life that quickly became evident was the degree to which religious observance played a part in the lives of the poor.  Catholicism, for example, is very strong in many poverty-stricken parts of the world.  The Catholic Church is one of the richest organizations in the world and the founder of the Western banking system.  Nevertheless, it flourishes and grows on the abject poverty of its devotees.  It has a policy that ensures the cycle of poverty continues by forbidding such human rights as birth control.  Enforcing its dogma of fear and superstition with an iron fist, the Catholic Church maintains the numbers to ensure a continued supply for its 'flock'.  My only thoughts about those situations now relate back to my own mother and her early life.  When there is little or nothing to look forward to in this life one can only look forward to 'the next life'.

For me, life was about to move on yet again.  On a trip to the Far East, that took us all the way to Australia, I met a young lady who was to become my second wife.  I'd always said that if I was to remarry, I would leave the sea.  Life at sea was a single man's existence and no place for one who wanted to settle down. 

And so it was; Barbara, my wife, accepted my proposal of marriage and I retired from the sea.  Barb was raised in a Catholic family, but always considered herself to be 'non-practicing', whatever that means!  

She was also educated by nuns in a Catholic school and even to this day relates tales of the brutality dished out by those harridans of religious fervour.  It was September 23^rd 1978 when we settled for a civil marriage service and began our new life in Chard, a country town in the county of Somerset in England.

                

Megalomania

A few weeks later, on November 18^th 1978, an event took place in a distant land that once again focussed my attention on religion in general.  Over the years there had been various religious cults or sects prophesying the end of the world.  Their members had theatrically gathered on mountain tops or other designated points around the globe, to await the second coming.  Those people always considered themselves as: the chosen few. 

The rest of us, those of us who didn't belong to their exclusive club, were of course doomed to eternal hell-fire and destruction.  The predicted end never came on the appointed day, consequently, after a few days the chosen few then vanished from their newsworthy public position, never to be heard of again. 

November 1978 proved to be rather different.  At the root of the event lay a bizarre mixture of politics and religion; originally communism and Methodism, but later a type of Pentecostalism and communism.  For those with long memories, the name Jim Jones might ring a bell.  For younger readers, the event is probably interesting enough to research fully.  For the purpose of this essay, it will suffice to concentrate on the events in Guyana, South America, on that November day in 1978. 

Whilst the organisation set up by Jones in 1955, under the name of, The People's Temple, had 'churches' based in various places in the USA.  The organisation eventually morphed into what might best be described as a quasi socialist-religious commune, under the name of, The People's Temple Agricultural Project.  The site in Guyana, is now more commonly known as, 'Jonestown'.  The ‘Rev Jim Jones’ considered himself a self-appointed minister of religion and his ragtag group of hippy followers to be his congregation.

On November the 17^th 1978, American Congressman Leo Ryan, arrived at the Temple site in Guyana to investigate accusations of abuse within the commune.  Whilst there, it became apparent that several of the group members wanted to be allowed to leave.  Those same members attempted to leave with Congressman Ryan and an accompanying media group the following afternoon. 

They were stopped by Temple’s armed security guards, who opened fire on them, killing the Congressman, three journalists and one of the Temple renegades.  On the evening of the shootings, Jim Jones ordered his flock to commit mass suicide!  They were instructed to drink a soft drink infused with cyanide.  The official reasons given for that drastic action seem to relate to Jones’s angst over the impending end of his ‘faux ministry' and his almost certain arrest.  A total of 919 men, women and children died that day. 

A few did manage to escape into the surrounding jungle, but many simply followed his instructions to commit suicide.  Those who didn't comply with the suicide commands were murdered in cold blood.  The event made worldwide headlines and provoked much disgust at the time.  It also prompted further discussion into what motivates specific groups to commit such atrocities?

How does such an incident relate in any way to religion?  Of course, it would be easy to say: it doesn't relate to religion!  However, if one considers the history of religion, the atrocity most certainly does relate to religion and not just too bizarre off-shoot groups within the mainstream religious system either.  Mainstream religions themselves, have the blood of many thousands of innocents on their hands.  That spilt blood and accumulated misery, quite often relates back to an individual within the organisation exercising his or her power over a group, in order to enforce group complicity.  In the Jim Jones' case, his actions seem to have amounted to nothing less than an excessive ego trip.  The congregation had even been primed for the premeditated event; they actually held rehearsals for the mass suicides.  Those rehearsals were more than likely the catalyst for the small number of members wanting to leave the project.  Such macabre realism obviously had a sobering effect on the few not caught up in the mass hysteria demonstrated by the majority of the group.

On a personal level it was yet another reason to question the whole culture of religiosity and religious organizations.  To this day, I find it difficult to distinguish between mainstream religion and smaller groups with the label of 'cult' or 'sect'.  Whilst the dogma of various mainstream organizations seems to contain less excessive requirements, if one explores beneath the surface, one will find many rules that go against natural or normal human behaviour.

Examples that come to mind in the Christian church are: Lent, a period of fasting and abstinence, the birth control requirements or lack of, in the Catholic creed, and the strange restrictions on clergymen entering matrimony.  In Islam, there’s a similar practice to of fasting, in Ramadan, and the treatment of females as second-class citizens.  Superstition and superstitious practices abound in all cults, sects and religions. 

Whilst one might say: 'well, that's obvious, the movements are spiritual movements'.   I would then ask: ‘what has the Catholic habit of carting a load of old saint's bones around the world got to do with religion; or for that matter, collecting vials of blood from a newly departed Pope’?  Religious artifacts, icons and a huge variety of inanimate objects hold seriously significant meaning for peoples of all religions.  I have always found such practices beyond wacky, macabre in the extreme and quite meaningless.

                                     

Confusion in the Antipodes

Meanwhile, marriage number two progressed in a hectic but idyllic manner.  Eventually, we had three daughters, all three born in Taunton Hospital in Somerset.  As the girls grew, in spite of our own ambivalent religious views, we discussed what sort of 'religious teaching' the girls should experience.  Neither of us had ever seriously considered ourselves affiliated with any church or any religion.  In spite of this we thought it only fair that the girls should join a Sunday school to gain some understanding of that particular aspect of life.  Consequently, all three girls attended a local church Sunday school for a short period of time, prior to our immigrating to Australia.  

None of our girls has ever been formally christened; both my wife and I were always in general agreement that such a decision should be their adult personal choice.  If, as adults, they decided to join a religion, then that would be their business.  They would not suffer any criticism from us should they so decide.  As a note, not one of our daughters has ever shown the slightest inclination to join a religious group of any kind.  I have to ask myself; is that simply another instance of parental influence making itself evident in the children?  In their case, at least, there doesn’t appear to be any innate desire to seek out the support of any particular religious group.

My own interest in religion had taken a backseat for many years and apart from fleeting thoughts or the occasional media sensation as outlined by the Jonestown incident, I was still yet to form a definitive opinion.  It's not that life didn't present dramatic moments which sometimes justified a prayer if one were so inclined; we certainly had our share of those moments over the years.  Nevertheless, the underlying speculation as to what life was all about was never too far from my mind.  After living 10 years in the UK we decided to immigrate to Australia; I was then 43 years old and getting a bit ancient for such massive domestic upheaval.  My wife's parents offered us 10 weeks temporary accommodation upon our arrival in Australia, which gave us a short breathing space in which to decide where our Australian future lay.  For purely financial reasons, and adding the 'why not' factor, we decided to try our luck in the city of Orange, in the Central West of NSW. 

It was in that tranquil, almost English setting, our lives changed irrevocably.  As if emigrating hadn't been enough of a change, what occurred shortly after our arrival in Orange city would make the move shrink into insignificance.

Needs must where the devil drives!  It's a funny old saying, but as with many old proverbs, the adage completely summed up our situation.  The original saying, obviously, had religious connotations and dated back to Middle English texts.  The original text in Middle English looked much like this:  "He must nedys go that the deuell dryues."  There had been times in my life when I'd felt totally out of my depth, but what lay ahead would change me in ways impossible to imagine.

The drama began simply enough; I'd been having trouble finding permanent work in the Orange area.  That was a major drawback of moving from the big city to the country, or outback, in Australia; vacant positions are: as rare as hen's teeth!  My first job had seen me travelling all the way back to Sydney and lodging throughout the week; whilst working as a plumber for a company in Orange City.  When Friday evening arrived, we would jump in the company van and drive the four hours back home to Orange and our respective families.  Naturally enough, that type of situation didn't suit me at all; Barbara was stuck in Orange, coping with a young family all week, whilst I camped out in Sydney just to earn a living wage.  Effectively, one ended up paying for two very different lifestyles and all financial advantage was lost.  I very soon resigned from that plumbing position.  Having given up that job, I was prepared to take on anything just to stay working locally.  When I say anything; I mean anything! 

Orange was most famous as a fruit growing region.  As a consequence it was flooded at various seasons with itinerant workers who picked everything from cotton in Queensland to apples in Tasmania.  The City of Orange was not famous for oranges, but it was famous for its stone fruit.  At the time I was looking for work, cherry picking season was just getting onto full swing.  My old naïve streak kicked in, because without a second thought I got myself hired as a fruit picker.  I soon found out why itinerant workers travel light and live comparatively rough nomadic lives.  They work from sunup to sundown, and the remuneration is pathetic!  A week’s wages wasn’t enough to keep body and soul together, let alone feed a family living in a regular home.  Out of desperation, one day I even took Barb and the girls with me, hoping their contributions might boost the meagre income; all to no benefit.  It was back to the drawing-board and the Job Centre in search of a real job.  I'd never been on the dole in my life and found the whole welfare experience of being out of work thoroughly degrading. 

Eventually, if one persists, something turns up.  In my case what turned up was a casual position as a factory labourer, with a white-goods factory: Email of Orange. 'Email' being the company name and nothing to do with computer communication.  White-goods include such items as fridges, freezers and washing machines, etc, which were built and then transported from the Orange factory to outlets all over Australia.  Australian businesses seem to have this propensity to first employ staff as casuals, often for extended periods of time.  I suppose it suits their business purposes and also restricts the rights of the casual employees, of course. 

Not only that, the arrangement guaranteed a sense of insecurity was maintained within the workforce if a proportion of the staff were constantly seeking permanency at the possible expense of the incumbents.  Whatever the business rationale, I was not in a secure position and was very aware of the fact. 

As a factory labourer, I found myself doing a variety of tasks as required throughout the factory.  One of those tasks was the garbage run, which involved driving a small flatbed truck around the factory picking up large bags of rubbish of varying weights and sizes.  At each stop, two of us jumped from the truck to pick up bags, swinging them up and over onto the truck.  It was during one of those pick-ups, when swinging a large bag onto the truck, I felt my back give a very nasty clunk! 

Over the next few days the physical damage became apparent as the pain increased and my ability to walk was reduced to an agonizing shuffle.  Cutting a long story short, it turned out I'd ruptured a disc in my lower back.  After a week or so rest, I felt game enough or perhaps desperate enough, to return to work, least I lose my casual position at the factory.  The doctor's instructions were; return to work but light duties only.  

Email's idea of light duties was to put me on a gang loading articulated trucks with vast cargoes of upright freezers and fridges.  Each piece of equipment had to be manhandled onboard, and required the loader to throw his full body weight against each item to ensure it was tightly packed.  The effect on my recently damaged spine was catastrophic.  Not only did I end up off work again, but out of work permanently.  Being casual, I had no recourse at that time to some of the benefits afforded others who were permanent employees. 

That situation was resolved many years later, but that's another story.  The outcome for the time being was a slow recovery and a very lean time financially.  During my time at home, I found myself volunteering to help out at the local primary school where our daughters were enrolled.  As a keen brass bandsman, I quickly found my talents useful, helping out with the school band. 

Once more essays overlap, but suffice to say, I came to the attention of the school principal, who suggested I consider a career in teaching.  At 44 years of age, having left school at 14 with no academic qualifications, I felt teaching might be well beyond my talents and certainly well outside my sphere of expertise. 

Because of the nature of my physical injury and my obvious inability to return to manual labour I had been placed under the auspices of the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service.  Mary, my case worker, had shared our despair, sitting at our kitchen table discussing the bleak outlook; in truth, she shared tears as well as the general despondency relating to my dismal career prospects.  Naturally, she was at a loss with what to do with someone who’d spent their entire working life engaged in manual work of some description.  We discussed with her the school principal's suggestion regarding teaching as a career.  She looked doubtful, as well she might, but agreed to investigate the possibilities.  Mary went to great pains to stress I would have to undergo various tests to assess my suitability for the training.  Not just anyone could access the funds necessary for such an expensive and risky long term undertaking.  All those points noted, I said to Barbara: ‘if someone will give me a bloody chance, I'll show them what I can do!  Prophetic words indeed; the necessary tests were arranged and true to my word I proved I had the potential to at least attend university.

My first three year course at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst NSW, was to attain the, Diploma of Teaching: Primary.  I found myself in the company of students, mostly around 18 years old.  After a rocky settling-in period I joined a small group of mature-age students; older people like myself, who had a wide variety of life skills.  Amongst the group there were two ladies, both of whom were definitely Christians, in the ‘true sense’ of the word.  The group also included one gentleman who was a committed Catholic, with a large family that reflected his adherence to that particular creed. 

Obviously, there were others who, had faith, but I had less to do with them and therefore learnt little of their religious commitments.

My Catholic male associate never made much of the fact he was a committed Christian.  He was one of those people who minded their own business and got on with life.  If you went to his house or socialized with his family as we often did, it soon became apparent where his religious beliefs lay. 

One of the religiously committed female mature-aged students was always on about God, or 'someone' looking over her.  I am afraid to say, I did tend to poke fun at her constant references to this strange invisible personage who oversaw all her daily business.  I remembered that particular point from Sunday school. 

Anyway, she was one of those people who seemed to have a constant desire to 'convert the ungodly'.  In that task she was bound to fail miserably with me and my attitude towards anyone who seemed so obviously determined to convince me of the existence of spooks.  The lessons I’d learned many years previously came to the fore.

The second lady mature-aged student was a really interesting person in that she was a Creationist.  I'd never heard of such people and the more I learned about her beliefs, the more I began to wonder at the absolute, and even dangerous, gullibility, of such ‘believers’ in general. 

Those Creationist beliefs turned out to be her prime motivation for attending university.  Once her course was finished, she intended to enter the teaching profession where she would spread the word of God.  There she was, a middle-aged woman with a large family of her own, prepared to give up precious years of her life, in order to educate other people's children in the hope of converting them to her brand of religion!  Now that situation was something which both intrigued and bothered me greatly.  One could only wonder at how many such devious people have surreptitiously infiltrated our supposedly secular school system.  

Creationism takes many forms; Flat Earthers; Geocentrists; Young Earth Creationists; Old Earth Creationists, to name but a few.  Included in those categories are off-shoots such as, the Intelligent Design followers.  All the groups appear to have similar basic philosophies, in that they take the Biblical word very literally, albeit to varying degrees and with sneaky alterations to certain wording. 

From my reading, I would place my associate in the Young Earth Creationist group.  They believed planet Earth to be 6000 to 10,000 years old, and they quite plainly deemed all life to have been created within a standard working week: 6 x 24 hour days.  They also believe death and decay were directly related to the fall of the mythical Adam and Eve; therefore, I could only assume they considered that before Adam and his much maligned ‘rib-created’ lady-friend, everything was incorruptible and lived forever?  That category of religious fanatic considered normal geological processes must be construed in terms of the legendary, Noah's flood.  On the positive side, one had to give that branch of Creationists credit for at least accepting a spherical earth and a heliocentric solar system.  There were other sects within Creationism that did not accept those basic, scientifically established, empirical assertions.  One may assume that, in human terms, most religions have relatively ancient roots, but of course that’s not always so.  In the case of the Young Earth Creationists, a Canadian Seventh Day Adventist, named George McCready (1870-1963) seems to have been instrumental in forming the original set of beliefs.  Apparently, his views did not take hold until after his death when the modern creation science movement got going during the 1960s.  For those interested enough to pursue that line of enquiry, the whole history and development of Creationism is reasonably interesting in itself.  One should naturally consider the historical background and environments against which such movements developed and not be too consumed by the overall mythology which surrounds the modern (or older) movements.

University not only provided me with an introduction to people with a variety of entrenched mythological views, it also developed my ability to think more constructively, to reason, to research and ultimately develop my own secure opinions, based soundly on a range of research.  Perhaps, significantly, it also reawakened quite a keen interest in the subject of religion(s) by providing yet another avenue of exploration. 

Aboriginal Studies, along with Multiculturalism, were mandatory subjects at university; those subjects were core philosophies within education in the 1990s.  Come to that I’d guess Australian universities are much the same even today. 

As an aside, that type of specific academic insistence is, in itself, yet another form of officially sanctioned brainwashing; or most certainly social engineering.  Teach the teacher what to teach and use education to change future society.

The foremost objective during lectures and tutorials on Aboriginal Studies appeared to be to instil a deep sense of guilt into anyone who considered themselves remotely connected to the so-called, ‘European Invasion’, or indeed anyone of European heritage!  European INVASION; strong language; used at the behest of political and academic left wing fanatics, with their own insidious agendas. 

Nevertheless, their ploy worked and I witnessed more than once, young students filing solemnly out from lectures with tears rolling freely down their guilt-ridden faces!  Brainwashing is obviously equally alive and well in the academic world; university students must be pre-programmed and primed to carry the politically desired message forth into the wider world to the ignorant public.  Such perverse suggestions paint a bizarre picture of what academia is really all about.  We have individual teacher's with their own agendas and governments of various persuasions, all vying to corrupt young (or old) minds with their own selfish forms of social engineering.  Power, financial reward, or just embedded dogma, are a few of the more common reasons behind the formal shaping of community thought.

Nonetheless, Aboriginal Studies per-se was an engaging subject; although I considered the educational strategies outlined for Aboriginal students to be no different than those that should be in place for all children, regardless of race. 

Naturally, many facts, as well as pseudo-facts, came to light during our study time.  According to the Aboriginal Heritage Office, prior to the arrival of the white man in 1788, there were some 750,000 Aboriginal inhabitants across Australia.  The population was divided into about 400 distinct tribes; many of whom appear to have been nomadic within limited territories, although not all.  Approximately 250-300 different languages with 600 dialects were known to have been spoken prior to 1788, throughout the greater Australian continent.  Again, estimates varied, but those diverse tribes seem to have inhabited Australia for somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 years. 

That made the Aboriginal peoples possibly the longest unbroken race of human beings to inhabit a previously isolated environment; or more importantly, a group culturally uninfluenced by outsiders.  My statement is obviously speculation, but there can be little doubt regarding the uniqueness or if preferred, the purity, of the Aboriginal races.  Whilst there was and is a diversity of indigenous languages, the Aboriginal Dreamtime creation philosophy seemed to apply fairly uniformly across the country.  There are various more localized myths relating directly to the central creation theme.  The Dreamtime is really much more than a 'simple religion' and once more, worth researching thoroughly should the reader be so inclined; just in the name of Comparative Religious Studies of course.

However, what fascinated me personally, as much as anything was, in the first place, the fact that those ancient people actually had such a complex set of spiritual creation values;  secondly, the fact that many of those ancient myths and superstitions had major similarities with more modern mythological beliefs.  When such coincidences occur it is more than enough to arouse more than mild curiosity. Accordingly I made a mental note of such concurrences and retained them for further pondering. 

My first university assignment in Aboriginal Studies required me to: Compare and Contrast the Effects of the European Arrival on Two Indigenous Groups; as my 'target groups' I chose Aboriginal Australians and Native American Indians.  Whilst I wasn't required to understand the religious practices of those two quite different races; the fact that white/European clergy featured significantly in the global obliteration of indigenous languages and religious organisations was difficult to miss.  It was common knowledge that to the mainstream religions, be they Catholic, Protestant, or 'Callithumpian', anything other than those religions were considered heathen, therefore, a threat!  According to ‘the church’, as part of the 'humanizing process' unhealthy pagan beliefs must be totally eradicated, enabling the ‘sub-human heathen’ to begin his journey on the road to becoming a 'real human'. 

Likewise, the guttural noises that passed for language must be wiped out; as must the uncivilized habit of running naked about the countryside.  Such immoral behaviour should be recognised as sinful; in spite of the fact such 'normal behaviour' was well established long before the arrival of the fanatical cult known as Christianity, or for that matter, before Christianity even came into existence! 

Coincidentally, did any member of Christianity ever complain about Adam and Eve's outrageously lewd behaviour in the allegorical Garden of Eden?  

Historical accounts of all invaders, worldwide, are littered with comparable acts of bastardry as those briefly outlined above.  Culturally, anything invading groups considered hostile to their home-grown traditions was most often cruelly purged; or conversely absorbed.  Naturally, the successful invader always thought themselves vastly intellectually superior to subjugated incumbents.  No thought or appreciation of the dire consequences to the indigenous peoples was ever taken into account; no value was ever attached to what was being lost culturally; often forever.  When God or power was on your side, then everything was legal and moral; even the illegal misappropriation of Australian lands from the rightful Aboriginal owners.  Whilst not a true full scale warlike invasion; the European influx into Australia aka Terra Nullius, still exhibited those same selfish and destructive behaviours. 

For me that was yet another black mark against the religions I had been raised with.  What right had any religion to forcibly impose itself upon another culture under the guise of being: the one true religion?  Christianity destroyed much of the ‘Aboriginal Dream Time’ structure and attempted to replace it without any consideration for the ancient Dream Time record, or its deeply cultural indigenous significance.

Mixing with a diverse group of people also had quite a profound effect on my personal outlook.  I could see how deeply others in my mature-age student group believed in their own versions of God(s) and religion.  I was left in no doubt about their personal faith(s) and how deeply their beliefs motivated them to achieve the things they were doing at university and in their daily lives. 

It was through that period I often found myself wondering why I couldn't have that same sense of blind faith.  I could see how people didn't actually question their own deep-seated beliefs, preferring instead to blindly accept as true all they had been raised to believe in.  The Creationist’s viewpoint particularly disturbed me.  How could any rational person, especially one of obvious considerable intellect, adhere to a philosophy that taught and accepted such a literal view of Biblical myths?   The Earth had only been created 6000 or 10,000 years ago; and in seven days? 

Noah's flood, complete with Ark and animals, two-by-two, was historically authentic?  Heaven and Hell were real places?  The chosen ones, Creationists, would be the only people 'saved' on the Day of Judgment?

Another equally ridiculous offshoot of Creationism came to my notice about that time, in the philosophy known as: Intelligent Design or ID.  That philosophy suggests the structure of the universe and presumably all there is within, is so complex and organised that it must have been designed with a purpose by an intelligent force.  Analogies were being drawn between the complex 'mathematics' that so-called, 'ruled' the universe and such manmade items as the humble human engineered pocket-watch.  The human eye, as a complex organ, also featured highly in debates that 'raged' between devout believers (fanatics) and non-believers.  Indeed, in America, a court case was fought by the Creationists on the basis of a hypothesis called 'Irreducible Complexity'.  The court case came about because Creationists argued that Creationism was a valid subject to be taught in schools and should be just as legitimate as evolutionary science.  During that process, unbelievably, Darwinism was fiercely demonized.  Creationists attempted to have the Darwinian teaching of evolution banned from the school curriculum.  Once more, the whole issue is worth further research if the reader has an interest.  At the risk of spoiling a good yarn, the outcome of the American court case was: the Creationists lost out to the scientists and biologists.  For myself, I wouldn't bother to give anyone who spewed forth such errant creationist drivel, the time of day.

Nevertheless, I still couldn't understand why others were so convinced by any pseudo-religious arguments or more rightly, cultish dogma, when I myself failed to be so moved.  I will even go as far to say, more than once I actually felt something akin to jealousy of those who seemed to have something spiritually genuine; something that proved so elusive for me in person.

If one really stops to think about what 'faith' quite literally is; the belief in something not based on proof, (empirical evidence), one begins to see why there are so many non-believers (depending on geographic locations).  Science, on the other hand, requires empirical evidence, and even then any so-called scientific fact is always open to challenge. 

So, I guess anyone who wants to believe in fairies at the bottom of their garden, is quite entitled to believe so, complete with any personal embellishments they might decide to add.   On the other hand; those who prefer to view life rationally or more pragmatically are also equally entitled to do so.

Those who 'believe' in religious myths are more often than not raised within certain cultures and simply never bother to question those instilled values, for whatever reason, as discussed earlier.  Then there are those who 'convert' to one religion or another; again for a wide variety of personal reasons. 

At this point, I'd even venture to suggest that even those, like me, who are content to let science provide the answers for them, aren't so very different!  Without question, there is a side to human nature that demands answers related to the reasons for our existence.  Why are we here?  What is the purpose of life?  If there is 'a spiritual God'; is that God, The Creator; if 'He' exists, why does 'He' allow such an unmitigated lists of horrendous events, both in nature and human affairs?  Or can science and physics provide those answers adequately enough to ever suppress boundless human curiosity?

Note: By 'human affairs' (above), I refer directly to morons such as those who are systematically glorified with the ‘martyrs’ epithet; low scum such as 'suicide bombers' and more recently Islamic State.  Such people are not 'suicide bombers' or remotely religious, they are simply moronic, brain-dead, mass murderers.  Brainwashed fanatics such as those demonstrate the depths to which, otherwise civilized people, can be manipulated for evil purposes under the flimsiest pretext; religion and politics being very common vehicles for such manipulation.

Throughout human history it has been thus.  Magic, politics and paganism of many shades have impacted on human cultures worldwide.  The word paganism is a generality, which simply relates to any creed other than Christianity.  The human race has always sought answers; when those answers stretch human imagination and credulity too far, beyond whatever might be the current historical understanding, then religion(s), mythology and superstition, quickly move in to fill the void.  For many years, humans thought, and indeed were encouraged by the Catholic Church to think, the Earth was the centre of the universe. 

Mankind, in the majority, meekly accepted religion's explanation of the geocentric solar system, the Ptolemaic system, over the Heliocentric system, that which actually exists.  Just establishing scientific truths had been a very dangerous exercise for many hundreds of years.  Anyone with a view that differed from the religious establishment was liable to suffer severe punishment; if not a horrible death.  History is littered with the bleached bones of those who steadfastly pursued scientific truths over mythology.  Such is the power of blind faith and ignorance!  Religion boasts of its martyrs, while science simply mourns the loss of yet another brilliant mind.

University also introduced me to a genre of literature to which I was unfamiliar: non-fiction.  I had been 'an avid reader' from childhood.  The delight of a good book and its capacity to create enjoyment was for me one of life's little bonuses.  However, up until university, the nearest I'd come to non-fiction was probably something like 'Chariots of the Gods' by Erich Von Daniken (1968).  When first published, the book gained immediate notoriety and was widely discussed and often hotly disputed in national newspapers.   Parts of the book were serialized and many ordinary people were taken in by its outrageous and spurious claims.  I will even admit to being engaged by Von Daniken's outrageous statements myself.  Such was the power of the Snake Oil Salesman or the Shaman.

Everyone loves a good alien yarn; the plots themselves are not as very different or outrageous as the plots that form the basis for ancient mythology.  Charles Sturt University demanded we indulge ourselves in reading of a more intellectual nature and the required texts were made available at the University Coop Bookshop.  Thank goodness, a wide variety of other reading was also available at the bookshop; my own preference being largely for children's literature.  Browsing the shelves one afternoon, I came across a title:  Jesus the Man by Dr Barbara Thiering (circa 1992). 

The title caught my attention and after reading the synopsis, I purchased the book simply for my own interest.  As it turned out, that was perhaps the first of many such controversial books connected to religion I’d read over the coming years.  Dr Thiering, an academic of some distinction, was not well received by many of her peers on the publication of the aforementioned book.  Her interpretation of the life of the Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, was definitely not in harmony with established views. 

As history has shown repeatedly, any attempt to redefine traditionally accepted religious belief is almost guaranteed to meet with severe displeasure and certain censure.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading her thesis and found her ideas refreshing.  Even to this day, I can see very little reason to suppose her views were not as equally legitimate as those put forward by the all-powerful establishment.  After all, who can overwhelmingly prove any of their proposals regarding the life of a man, who is or was, quite obviously, a 2000 year old construct, at the centre of a fanatical religious and/or political movement: ‘The Essenes’?   Yes, by that I do mean the Jesus story; while possibly loosely rooted in truth is nothing more than a story, made up long after the fact.  Much of the ‘Jesus Story’, the New Testament, was created or completed, possibly 100 years after his demise; if indeed He ever really existed.

America, February the 28^th, 1993 a siege began at the Mount Carmel Centre, Waco, Texas.  That siege ended violently and very publically 50 days later, on April the 19^th.  Worldwide media coverage ensured the fiery carnage was delivered into the secure comfort of our lounge rooms.  For me, it was yet another of those unfathomable 'cult' stories I’d become familiar with over the years.  With each different event, the characters were 'modernized' as their individual stories became familiar to the ordinary people in the streets.  The central player in that particular cult drama was a man by the name of David Koresh (1959-1993), born Vernon Wayne Howell.  

The plot, if one can use that term, supposedly revolved once more around religion; and yet again so much more than just religion was implicated.  The great difference between the ancient and this modern drama, was that the main protagonist was not (as yet) at some later time glorified and turned into a divine cult hero; a hero who would still influence vast numbers of humanity into the future.  Koresh, possibly with some justification, was officially demonized by the FBI and US government.  There were those, particularly in America, who cried: conspiracy; but nevertheless, there existed many verified reports of child abuse and sexual exploitation within Koresh's odious organisation.  Whatever the truth might have been, there was little doubt Koresh bit off more than he could chew when he challenged the American legal and governmental authorities.

Am I drawing a comparison between a character called, Jesus of Nazareth and the likes of David Koresh?  Yes I am.  To me, the cliché: 'One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter' is a perfectly valid statement; albeit open to much idealistic discussion. 

Koresh claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.  Koresh and Jesus appear to have had a few basic similarities; as well as challenging the establishment, both men it seems, had very young mothers.  Bonnie Sue Clark, mother of David Koresh, was a 14 year old single mother when she gave birth.  Similarly, the 'Virgin Mary' was reportedly between the ages of 12 to possibly 16 years old when she gave birth to Jesus, according to answers provided by the Catholic Forum Internet page. 

Those estimates are based on known historical details from that period, although there seems to be no confirmed record of Mary's actual age for when she gave birth.  Such shocking revelations today quickly bring cries of protest and accusations of pedophilia.  It’s strange how Christian organisations never make such facts publically known.  The abuse of young females still occurs in these modern times.  Arranged marriages, condoned under the guise of cultural or religious rights, see young girls married off to mature-age or even old men.  Nothing much has changed in the past 2000 years, obviously.

The human race has a funny habit of glorifying certain historical characters whilst demonizing others, depending on who is interpreting the past events and the motives behind those interpretations.  As with any good story, the underlying plot(s) always involve manipulation, usually through group dynamics.  Power plays centreing around politics and /or mythology/religion and stronger characters using weaker ones to achieve personal ambition(s).  Fear, superstition, coercion and emotional blackmail are also inevitably tied up in those scenarios.  No less influential is the inherited nature of superstitious belief as each generation ensures its own progeny is indoctrinated with similarly updated institutional views.  Such indoctrination not only propagates the specific teaching, but also generates and strengthens the group or movement as a whole.

It is worth reiterating; there still remains substantial doubt as to the existence of Jesus as a real person.  Whether he existed or not is irrelevant to this essay, nevertheless, the creation of the allegory surrounding His character seems to have occurred some 100 years after His death; as noted above. 

In addition, Christianity, as a movement, didn’t become officially sanctioned until nearly, 400 years after His alleged crucifixion.  Such a set of statements, naturally, draw howls of protest from those who call themselves 'committed Christians'.  Nonetheless, those are the facts as they are available today, for those who would wish to query them.  Also, as pointed out previously about such ‘unsavoury facts’, Christian organisations avoid publicizing such startling or touchy information.

Who knows, perhaps in some 90 years time, an unknown group with a vested (financial) interest will rewrite history with David Koresh as the Divine Saviour raised once more, just like the original model.  To then add insult to injury, that same group might arrange for another breakaway Seventh Day Adventist sect to become the established and recognised representative of mainstream spiritual religion 400 years hence.  It has happened before, Groundhog Day all over again, again, again!

My time at university passed quickly and my knowledge and understanding of the world and people around me grew.  Naturally, my reading requirements widened over the years to include not just educational aspects, but psychological papers, geographical, historical documents and many other interesting items; information to be stored for a time of quiet mental reflection.  As always happens, one eventually forgets more than one seems to remember!  Nevertheless, technology gathered pace and the amount of information readily available increased exponentially with passing years.  It had become crystal clear to me by that time that there were at least two important factors to be considered in relation to religion. 

Quite simply, in the first place one had to decide if organised religion of all creeds held any serious value and secondly as a side issue, if organised religion wasn't the answer, was there still a case to be made for one God or a 'spiritual' Creator?  Indeed, was or is there a spiritual world or a mystical realm into which the human race has very little insight?

Throughout this essay I have largely avoided major topics such as religious fanaticism and its extremes.  Records concerning such subjects abound on the Internet; The Sanctuary of Lourdes, The Doomsday Cults, the extremes of Islam, Catholicism or the Protestant Churches, and an embarrassment of organisations who would associate themselves with making massive amounts of money out of human misery, gullibility and fear. 

Humans are, without doubt, given to astounding degrees of credulity; to delve into the reasons for those weaknesses would require volumes for that subject alone.  People are the product of their environments and some are luckier than others; some are simply wiser or more cautious.  But overall, many of us are content to be led in many aspects of life, rather than question and lead.  We seem readily susceptible to superstition over common sense!  If proof of human gullibility is an issue, there are many examples one could quote.  For example, can you imagine hundreds of people gathering daily to view and pay homage to the shadow of a fence-post?  In 2003, just such an incident occurred at Dolphin Point, just north of Coogee Beach in NSW, Australia.  After the 'illusion' was reported in the local press, many 'pilgrims' (mainly Catholic) gathered to worship daily at what they considered to be a vision of the venerated Blessed Virgin Mary. 

Vandals were eventually drawn to the spot and subsequently destroyed the 'remarkable' fence posts.  Whilst the Catholic Church never officially sanctioned the vision, there were those who were so convinced of its miraculous substance, they petitioned the New South Wales government to build a chapel on the spot.  Needless to say, no official credence was ever attached to the event and it soon became un-newsworthy.

                

Seeing the Light - the definitive moment:

There are no prizes for guessing at this point, my opinion of organised religion is low to non-existent.  For the most part I consider all such organisations to be more concerned with their own continuance and financial solubility than with the welfare of their individual members.  There are of course exceptions and there are those within such organisations who do carry out some remarkable charitable work. 

However, I think such individuals would be equally magnanimous whether or not they were attached to religious groups.  Also, there are those who have a basic psychological need to simply serve others.  There are no simple answers to such subjects; it is all part of life's rich pattern.

As to the other aspects under consideration: is there some sort of creator or spiritual world worth taking into consideration; those ideas took me a longer to arrive at a conclusion which satisfied my own needs.  Predictably perhaps the answers started to drop into place through a passage I read in a book.  At the time of reading, I was so impressed by the words in front of me; I was moved to record the following notes below, followed by the passage in question.  I make no apology for quoting that passage, word for word, here in this essay. 

Religion has never satisfied my ‘curiosity void’ as to the timeless questions, what comes after this life and what indeed is this life all about?  Religion has never offered me any great 'spiritual comfort' either, simply, perhaps, because I don’t really go for the idea of there being some sort of personified spook lurking within my body, waiting around for me to cark it before my soul leaps into the ether to sit on a fluffy white cloud; there to watch the world go by until the world eventually ceases to exist.  The following passage makes more sense to me than all the ethereal afterlife stories offered up by various religious organizations.  After reading it I wondered why anyone would want a more complex or mystical explanation; or some sort of touchy-feely parable to ease their (often painful) passing from this mortal coil:   Davy Jones

Bill Bryson:  ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ 2005 pp.176, Ch. 9: The Mighty Atom.  Bryson rattles on about the properties of atoms a couple of times in his book, but the magic thing is I found great comfort in the basic logic conveyed by such a simple scientific explanations that runs like this…

…The great Caltech physicist, Richard Feynman, once observed that if you had to reduce scientific history to one important statement it would be:  ‘All things are made of atoms’.  They are everywhere and they constitute everything.  Look around you.  It is all atoms. Not just the solid things like walls and tables and sofas, but the air in between.  And they are in numbers that you really cannot conceive.

The basic working arrangement of atoms is the molecule.  A molecule is simply two or more atoms working together in a more or less stable arrangement…

At sea level, at a temperature of 0 degrees Celsius, one cubic centimetre of air (that is, a space about the size of a sugar cube) will contain 45 billion-billion molecules. 

And they are in every single cubic centimetre you see around you.  Think how many cubic centimetres there are in the world outside your window; how many sugar cubes it would take to fill that view.  Then think how many it would take to build a universe.  Atoms, in short, are very abundant. 

They are also fantastically durable.  Because they are so long-lived, atoms really get around.  Every atom you possess (in your body) has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you.  We are each so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms, up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested, probably once belonged to Shakespeare.  A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven and any other historical figure you care to name…

So, we are all reincarnations, though short-lived ones.  When we die, our atoms will disassemble and move off to find new uses elsewhere, as part of a leaf or other human being or drop of dew.  Atoms themselves, however, go on practically forever.  Nobody actually knows how long an atom can survive, but according to Martin Rees it is probably 10³⁵ years, a number so big that even I am happy to express it in mathematical notation…

Errata Note - "the nuclei of every atom you possess has most likely passed through several stars" "Jupiter Scientific has done an analysis of this problem and the figure in Bryson's book is probably low…ALSO… It is likely that each of us has about 200 billion atoms that were once in Shakespeare's body, etc."

Bryson's book - A Short History of Nearly Everything, was one of the best selling popular science books around in 2005.  I would recommend reading it, to anyone with an interest in the world around them.  Copies if still in print were available in both paper and hard-back.

The revelation in the above text permanently solidified my viewpoint.  It was as if a door had opened onto a new world.  The answers were so simple, so obvious and yet so elusive for all those years.  The beauty of the explanation never failed to amaze me.  

Perhaps that was how 'the faithful' felt when they, saw the light!  However, as always happens, once one question seemed to have been answered a dozen others swiftly become apparent.  I thought much on what I’d read in Bryson's book over the next year or so and sought to answer other questions that had cropped up.

Once one accepted the obvious basics facts as laid out above, it then followed quite naturally that there arose a need to go back and get a grip on the other basics like: how did life occur on Earth, and how did it evolve.  If one discounted the obviously phony mythological arguments presented by religions, then it followed one must, if answers are to be found, proceed down the road as laid out by science and physics.  Anyone going through this process will find that there are a thousand feasible avenues to follow as parts of the puzzle fall into place.  Be assured, there are many very well-educated people in this world only too pleased to share their sound scientific knowledge with you.  Their books occupy the shelves in our bookshops and libraries; their work is well written and well researched, with a wider reading audience in mind.

My new starting point from there was to get to grips with evolution.  My favourite author for those biological conundrums was Professor Clinton Richard Dawkins, the British ethologist*, evolutionary biologist and prolific author. (*study of animal behaviour) 

Richard Dawkins is one of those controversial people I mentioned earlier, whose views really disturb and threaten his adversaries.  (See: http://richarddawkins.net/)

Published in 2004 - The Ancestor's Tale - rightly described as: One of the richest accounts of evolution ever written - answered many of my questions.  I have read most of Dawkins' published works, and can honestly say that I have benefitted immensely from his superior wisdom over the years.

Whilst I didn't realise the fact when I started reading Dawkins, it turned out that he is also a powerful advocate for atheism.  I only wish with hindsight, I'd had some of his responses committed to memory all those years ago when overwhelmed by the Jehovah's Witness propaganda.  The God Delusion - 2006 - was one of the most amusingly refreshing, politically and religiously incorrect books I have ever had the pleasure to read.  Naturally, once one becomes aware of the availability of such publications, the door opens to other tomes of a similar nature.  That in turn opens the door still further to a miscellany of sound views; one begins to realise, there are those out there who have walked the same paths seeking real answers.  Not only have they walked those same paths but they have found sensible, logical answers, and aren't afraid to speak out, sharing their hard won knowledge with the world at large.

Whilst I could spend an eternity reviewing books, I will resist the temptation to do so here.  Suffice to say dear reader; if you want answers don't be afraid to seek out other views even if they don’t harmonize with your current views.

In 2006 aged 62, due to ill-health, I took early retirement.  In an effort to keep myself occupied, for a short while I studied Philosophy with the Open University. 

My first area of study was the period known as: The Enlightenment, which began circa 1650 and heralded the coming of our modern age of thinking and reasoning.   Uppermost during that period was the power-struggle between the Catholic Church and free-thinking men and women who disagreed with the dogma that had constrained intellectual development for centuries.  Governments, royalty and religion, all at war with a variety of intellectual European individuals who were prepared to risk all to bring sanity and freedom to a morally bankrupt world. 

It was a period of history in which anyone with a modicum of rational curiosity should become more aware.  Not only was that period the beginning of modern philosophy, it also witnessed the blossoming of the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of modern science! 

The ‘church’ and religions were forced to relinquish a stranglehold over the laws of physics and ownership of the universe through a self-proclaimed alliance with 'God'.  The human race at last began to uncover the real mysteries of our natural world.  The mythical shrouds that had smothered intellectual development for hundreds of years were finally being stripped away.

Following, The Enlightenment, my course plunged me backwards in time to the Ancient Greeks.  Amazingly, it was there I found yet more evidence of not only human ingenuity - but also of human gullibility and malleability.  The human race is indeed a strange multifaceted creature!  On the one hand so capable of powerful decisive intellectual achievements and yet, on the other, so quick to fill the dark gaps of ignorance with garbage, fashioned by those who would manipulate others for personal gain! 

Amongst the Ancient Greeks, I found many important groups, including: the Atomists, Mathematicians, especially geometry, Astronomers, Scientists, Poets, Healers, Agriculturalists, the beginnings of Western Culture, Religion, and of course, Mysticism!   The very roots of many of today's religious fables are embedded there and even long before that time.  Adam and Eve appeared under different mystical names, the Great Flood, under a different legendary circumstance and naturally Creation itself, under an embarrassment of myths. 

For mankind, there is nothing new under the sun.  If one is to understand the complexities of human beliefs and characteristics, exploring history and pre-history becomes virtually unavoidable.

                

Arguments Must Withstand Critical Examination:

It is worth pausing at this juncture to discuss some of the gems put forward in support of the existence of God.  As my explorations into religions deepened, so too did the demands for more thorough research.  I can't go too deeply into the pros and cons of each argument as there are, quite literally, volumes written on each one.   Those arguments have a history dating back hundreds of years. 

There appear to be five central arguments used by theists.  Those arguments are described as being negatively existential.  The word 'existential' relates to observable reality; therefore by adding the word 'negative', it simply becomes a way of saying: the arguments are neither observable nor provable!  

The first of those arguments is the ontological argument, first developed by Anselm of Canterbury (1033); which in essence claimed 'There is no greater being than the greatest being'.  The assumption is plain, that there is in fact a 'greater being'.  No concrete detail is given as to the identity of that being: God!  

No indication of what is required to become a 'greater being' is given nor indeed if one can be demoted or promoted to the rank of 'greater being'.  The bald assumption is simply that, there is a GREATEST BEING; therefore, obviously, there can be none greater.  This is wordplay and pure semantics that have satisfied religious organisations and those who supported them for centuries.  Shroud the arguments in ambiguity to baffle the peasants.

The next in line is the cosmological argument, which uses the somewhat frivolous argument: there is no thing that came from nothing! 

Then, to fill the void of ignorance, the argument unashamedly suggests one must arrive at the conclusion, because nothing can come from nothing, GOD must have first created the universe!  Again, no proof is forthcoming and no detail about where this spontaneous god might have appeared from!  The argument is circular and leads to the obvious question: where then did God come from?  But you aren't supposed to ask that question; rather, one must simply accept that this is how it is.  The standard answer to this question, given by religious organisations is: God is outside of time.

Third, the teleological argument: an argument for the existence of God (or a creator) based on the apparent design and purpose of the universe (intelligent design).  This argument gets bogged down in some very human emotional mire. 

In the first place; why does there have to be a purpose for anything?  In a radio interview on cosmology, just this past week, I heard the interviewer ask the interviewee: what was the purpose of a black hole?  I had to think hard to compare that question to a list of the stupidest questions I'd ever heard!  One might as well ask: what is the purpose of the universe?  As far as the human race is concerned the answer: NOTHING would be more than adequate.  Perhaps the universe and/or a black hole, does have a function appertaining to physics.  Then again, perhaps we as supposedly intelligent beings should be magnanimous enough simply to accept that, in the bigger picture, nothing really has a predetermined purpose.  One day our sun will pass its 'use by date', and as stars do, it will run out of fuel, expand and swallow the inner planets, before collapsing back and eventually forming into a white dwarf star.  The human race won't even be a memory by that time; so what was the purpose of the human race?  Purpose, is a word that insinuates use.  Use: means there must be a relevant object.  A tool is used to do a job:  a kettle is used to boil water: a car is used to travel.  A word is a human sound that expresses an idea, uttered to convey meaning. 

In the universal sense a 'word' means nothing.  Maybe that's too hard for some people to bear.  Maybe some individuals have to have an intrinsic purpose to get out of bed.  I think that's another area of debate altogether.  However, the matter is always open to discussion!

                                Alice came to a fork in the road.  "Which road do I take?" she asked.

                                 "Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.

                                 "I don't know," Alice answered.

                                 "Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."

                                ~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

The teleological argument fails just as easily as all the other arguments and for much the same reasons.  Such arguments are formed by people with hidden intentions and mischievous agendas. 

Their arguments are created to convince the ignorant of the apparent irrefutable authority of mythological theories (superstitions).  Such arguments are constructed with the minimum effort and a total lack of substantive proof.

The fourth argument, the metaphysical or moral argument implies: there are no moral values in a godless world. 

This is another complex area when one starts to study it, because much is involved in the moral values and principles of the human condition.  The argument assumes that without God (a god), morality would not be possible.  This type of argument annoys me immensely.  It presumes that to have moral principles or to be capable of making an ethical decision, one must be attached to some form of religion, a religion which pays homage to an imaginary spiritual leader.  This spiritual leader has, according to the religious organisation(s), provided a set of rules to which we must all adhere.  Those who do not abide by those rules are of course marked as immoral and incapable of making principled decisions.  This same disparaging line of thought is applied by the religious when they talk directly about atheists or non-believers.  Similarly, the same harsh judgment is applied to secular communist or socialist political states, often labelled: godless states.  Such pompous rot just highlights the arrogance of certain groups in society, who place themselves in a morally elevated position, simply because of their own misguided and unsubstantiated beliefs.  Obviously, this moral argument is nothing short of errant nonsense.  There are countless examples, ancient and modern, of genocide and human butchery being carried out in countries that are anything but secular.  There are also examples of many secular cultures and organisations that have the highest of moral codes.  Evil has no boundaries.

Finally, the transcendental argument boldly assumes: there is no atheist in the world!  This argument endeavours to prove the existence of God by arguing that logic, morals and science eventually takes for granted a theistic worldview.  How such a statement actually proves anything is not indicated. 

Again, there is the supposition that there is a God and therefore, He would (in His beneficence) naturally confer these virtues upon everyone on this insignificant speck of cosmic dust we call home. I can't in all honesty comment further on what, in my opinion, is simply waffling; I leave it to the reader to make a personal decision.

So, there you have it, albeit a synopsis, the major arguments put forward by religious bodies and theologists for the existence of (a) God!  Naturally, this then carries on to debates about upon whom the obligation lies to prove the case for God's existence!  In my view, that's a no-brainer, the salesman's job is to sell the product.  Religion 'sells' God; if it wants the public to buy the goods the onus must lie with the church to prove its case.  In my opinion, none of the above arguments can withstand any level of critical examination.

Science has thus far found no evidence to support the rather undefined concepts of a need for a creator of some formless description.  Also, the reader should carefully note, there is no such thing as settled science! 

As much as some politicians would have us believe, for their own political gain that ‘settled science’ is so; in fact, all scientific results are provisional!  All scientific results are always open to challenge. 

All genuine scientific results depend on such a strict regime simply to validate their findings and establish the building blocks of reliable scientific knowledge; and still those results can be challenged any time new or conflicting information comes to light.  

                

In Conclusion:

As I settled into retirement I sought a hobby with which to occupy my time.  Astronomy seemed like a good choice, although I knew little or nothing of the subject.  Paradoxically the topic has provided me with many more of the missing pieces to add to my personal quest.  The Universe is an enormous place.  Its very existence remains a mystery to us at this time.  Its complexities hold all the answers, but in spite of all our piffling technological advances, we understand very little of what we are or what surrounds us.  ‘Reality’ itself is a mystery.  The more one knows, the less one understands.  Pandora's Box is much like a Russian Doll; inside each box lays another, containing a new and more complex mystery.  On evidence, I'd say whilst there are mysteries to solve human curiosity, given time, will reveal all.  Maybe we won't like what we find.  I am convinced we won't find any sort of creature or intelligence, whose sole purpose is to create universes.  A creature, which according to religions, can exist forever, outside of time itself, as some sort of benign, or possibly malevolent, overseer;  a creature that, in its spare time sends instructions to this particular planet advising inhabitants how to lead their short lives.

Whilst much remains untold in my story, enough has been written to outline a sketch.  Hopefully, some of my remarks will prompt the reader to explore their own pathway and break any rusted-on bonds created by childhood brainwashing.  At the end of the day we are here at the behest of nature.  Our purpose is simple: to procreate and regenerate; to live and then to die; so that ‘life itself’, the chemical mystery continues, not the irrelevant individual.

As a species, we are blessed or cursed with crude intellectual capacities that enable us to survive in a comparatively hostile environment; intellect to the human race is as the tooth to the tiger.  One of the side effects of that crude intellectual capacity is a magnificent imagination.  We can create mind-boggling stories, which lacking logical explanation we then choose to weave into our individual realities.  Our individual reality is open to embellishments of all kinds; embellishments that soothe and satisfy our restless curiosity. 

Sometimes understanding the actual 'boring' reality of science and physics is just too difficult and too boring.  It is easier and requires no thought or questioning on our part, to value and accept established cultural myths and legends. 

Religion, superstition and ignorance always go hand in hand; and religious organisations prey shamelessly on ignorance and fear.  Death is a fact of life, and while the process of dying might be painful, death itself should not be feared.  There is no afterlife in which to be rewarded or punished.  Life is too short, grasp it in both hands and live your life to the full. 

Remember the Golden Rule: Do as you would be done by.

There is much I could add in the way of opinion and my personal quest will no doubt continue on diverse paths.  However, I feel I have in these few pages outlined my meandering pathway through life and shared a few of my own experiences.  I am the sum of those experiences.  Nothing comes easily or cheaply in this life.  If you want knowledge then seek it.  Read, discuss, research, learn to think and discover.  But most importantly; make life's decisions your own.  I place these pages on the table of dreams for your perusal.

Davy Jones - 14th December 2011 �" Revised & Updated �" March 2015 & August 2015

                

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Author's Note

One in a series of autobiographical essays - each with a thread that runs throughout the essay. Views expressed are my own (naturally)

Reviews

[Aleksey M]

Read through the first paragraph and will go through the rest of it once I've got a bit more time. This is a topic I enjoy so I'm looking forward to the read!