Slaying the Dragon- An Everyman's Rejection of God and Religion: An Everyman's Rejection of God and Religion

First impression: 2012

© Copyright Robert W Griffiths and Y Lolfa Cyf., 2012

The contents of this book are subject to copyright, and may not be reproduced by any means, mechanical or electronic, without the prior, written consent of the publishers.

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ISBN: 978 184771 480 0

E-ISBN: 978-1-84771-586-9

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Y Lolfa Cyf., Talybont, Ceredigion SY24 5HE

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Acknowledgements

Although this book as been inspired by a diverse range of great writers past and present it owes much of its impetus to those closer to home. For her love, patience and belief in me, my partner Claire, who never complained when my mind was lost ‘in the zone’ for hours and days on end. My parents, who are always my ‘rock’ supporting and encouraging all my passions and endeavours. Leighton, my younger brother, who reminds me daily that I take far too much for granted. Bob McKinty, who keenly lent me his ear as well as a pile of his books. All those friends, relatives and colleagues, a list of names too long to include, who have indulged and reciprocated my armchair / barstool ranting in all sorts of places over many a year.

A special thanks also to all those religious practitioners I have encountered in my lifetime, some of the narrow minded, delusional variety and others of the more tolerant, enlightened sort – I couldn’t have done this without them.

‘It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.’

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), British mathematician and philosopher

Introduction

Chilli con catharsis

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion, it is called religion.

Robert M. Pirsig (1929–), American author

Atheism, properly understood, is in nowise a cold barren negative; it is, on the contrary, a hearty fruitful affirmation of all truth, and involves the positive assertion and action of highest humanity.

Charles Bradlaugh (1833–91), British atheist and co-founder of the National Secular Society

With my nose running and my eyes streaming I knew that a good night’s sleep was a remote prospect. A few hours earlier, on my weekly commute home from Romsey to Penarth, my girlfriend Claire had phoned me to say that she was making a chilli for dinner. ‘Make it a hot one, babe,’ I had said and this brief was delivered in spades. When I assumed the horizontal position at about 11 p.m. it felt as though a multitude of fire-breathing demons had decided to partake in a titanic brawl in the packed arena of my digestive system. The only temporary respite came from the fact that we had reached that comfortable stage in our relationship where I was able to unlock the back door and occasionally release a demon or two without recrimination. For the next five hours, desperately trying to empty my mind, all I managed to do was to fill it to breaking point. The significant output of this night of fitful contemplation was that I had mentally mapped out a 15,000-word thesis entitled ‘Why I am an atheist’. The next day, in mid-November 2010, I set about the task of writing it.

The first question is: for what purpose? For the month prior to beginning my thesis, I had read Russell, Dawkins and Hitchens back to back and these esteemed gentlemen had put the ‘meat on the bones’ of the atheistic disposition I had harboured since childhood. I found their famous¹ anti-religion works to be simultaneously inspirational, exhilarating and exhausting. To qualify the latter description, these are writers of global renown, wordsmiths par excellence and I found myself clutching for the thesaurus at the turn of virtually every other page. I felt that I had to unscramble the myriad of concurrently lofty and trifling ideas that the reading had generated for me and give them a structure and meaning that resonated with my upbringing and experience. It is perhaps too much of a cliché to describe the process of putting pen to paper or, more accurately, finger to keyboard, as cathartic, but I will make this suggestion anyway.

The primary objective of the thesis was to inspire my friends to re-examine the undeserved presumption of religion’s respectability. I have one friend who claims that he is a creationist,² another who is a semi-practising Catholic and a couple who are unashamed non-believers like me. Most of them have varying degrees of religious scepticism with two feet firmly planted in the agnostic camp. To me, these agnostics are aspiring atheists in the middle of serving their apprenticeship. If they felt that there was not enough evidence either way to confirm or deny the existence of God, I had a very plain response: they were not familiar enough with this evidence.

Indeed, if the persuasive arguments against God and religion are food and drink to the seasoned, well-read non-believer, they are not, in my experience, to the vast majority of people. It is difficult to establish how many atheist books have been sold worldwide but we can estimate that the number would be in the tens of millions, compared to the billions of people that have had an ongoing exposure³ to the holy books since early childhood. I believe that my circle of friends and acquaintances, mainly lapsed Protestants, are representative of a significant proportion of the total British population, that is, secular, non-church-attending types who, although not convinced that God exists, really hope that he does and are unquestioningly respectful of those that have genuine religious faith. In light of religion becoming increasingly perverse and ruinous in recent times, this book will seek to illustrate why this ‘bury your head in the sand’ position is misguided and potentially dangerous.

Doubtlessly, the first obstacle that we encounter in a discussion on atheism is that it is still unjustifiably considered a dirty word. Do you remember that scene at the beginning of An American Werewolf in London when the two leading protagonists walk into the Slaughtered Lamb pub on the Yorkshire moors? As they walk through the front door the patrons stop to turn and gaze at their unwanted American guests with suspicion and bewilderment. I suspect that even in this twenty-first century and age of enlightenment, openly announcing your atheism at a social gathering would produce a similar result. I confess to believing that atheism is viewed, even in quite liberal circles, as an abhorrent way of thinking. When my cousin informed his mother that I had written the thesis, my aunt showed signs of palpable discomfort and immediately asked, in a state of sheer panic, ‘Does his mother know?’ An aunt on the other side of the family took a slightly different approach by simply refusing to believe that I was one of ‘those’. As my dad jested during a barbeque, ‘For a lot of people you might as well replace the athe in atheist with rap or sad as it will create a similar sense of dread.’ This book will work ceaselessly to break down and annihilate these misconceptions.

Initially, I have to assert that atheism, despite the accusation from many of those with faith, is not a religion in itself. In the simplest terms it is an ethos that could have as its T-shirt slogan: ‘Don’t believe anything that isn’t backed up by evidence’. This is equally applicable to any supernatural phenomena, not just a God hypothesis. I believe that Nick Harding effectively gets to the core of non-belief in his book How to be a Good Atheist: ‘Atheism sweeps away false hope, delusion and the reliance on the non-existent. It attempts to solve mysteries not revel in them.’ Therefore, unlike the followers of a particular religion, I am as an atheist not confined to a particular set of beliefs, restrictions and dogma. This intellectual freedom, at the very core of atheism, is one of the many reasons that lead me to perceive it, despite the lingering taboo status, as the only rational, logical and realistic answer to the key questions about our existence. Atheists basically have gone where the data has taken them. The Oxford dictionary definition of an atheist may not go far enough in capturing the real essence of being one: ‘A person who does not believe in the existence of God or gods.’ For me, it obviously follows that not believing in God requires the rejection of religion; I can accuse all religions of being a man-made contrivance. This leads me to highlight another advantage of being an atheist. I am not forced to adopt the inherent prejudice emanating from all religions trying to pedal the exclusive brand of their supernatural deity/deities. What is sacred to one religion is profane and blasphemous to another, so this allows me to consider their belief systems, which have at their core an unsubstantiated ‘invisible man in the sky’ theory, regardless of number of followers or age of origin, as equally invalid. I will sufficiently exemplify throughout this book why religion should be exposed as the fraudulent impostor it truly is.

OK, so I don’t believe in God and think that religion has got it all wrong – no big deal. You may be wondering why my ‘beef’ with religion runs deeper than this. From the outset I will make it clear that I was not fondled by a Sunday school teacher in my formative years. This book is not ‘payback’ and does not represent some form of psychological ‘cleansing’ of a childhood trauma. I was brought up in a largely secular household and those in charge of my nurture pre-adulthood were at worst only mildly religious. In the sub-heading of this book I have described myself as an ‘everyman’ and now is perhaps an opportune moment to elucidate how I define this word. Most notably, the majority of atheist books I have read have been written by philosophers, scientists, academics and former theologians; I am none of these. I class myself as an ordinary guy, brought up in an ordinary home, attending an ordinary state school, but I suppose with an above ordinary level of tertiary education. Also, like many ‘everymen’, I am consumed by both trivial and more meaningful passions. Of the former, mine are rugby, movies and premium alcoholic beverages: namely French wine, American whiskey and Welsh cider. Of the latter, I have, in the broadest sense, a yearning for discovery, knowledge and truth. I believe that religion always has been and always will be the antithesis of all these virtues. It strives relentlessly to imprison our minds in an eternal childlike state, whereas atheism is the ‘grown-up’ key unlocking the door to mental liberation.

The quotation used to open this book was written in 1930 and I believe that if Lord Russell were alive today he would be raising more than an incredulous eyebrow. The scrupulously tested facts of modern science have answered virtually all of the key questions about our existence. I feel that, as a result, God, Jesus, Yahweh and Allah should have accompanied Zeus, Baal and Odin in assuming their rightful place as footnotes in the history of human culture. But alas, religion, on a global scale, still has an all-pervasive influence on governments and public discourse. Indeed, the most powerful country on earth⁴ is frighteningly religious and has all but abandoned the secular principles⁵ on which this nation was founded. It is going way too far to describe the USA as a theocracy, but born-again Christian evangelicalism is deeply entrenched in the corridors of power. There are key decision makers in all branches of government and the military who believe in the literal truth of the Book of Revelations and look forward to Judgement Day with all its apocalyptic trappings as the joyous and imminent endgame. Watching the news and reading the papers over the past decade can perhaps allow me to suggest that in the Islamic world, extremism has a foothold in every nook and cranny. The only conceivable destiny for Islam is a future world in which all infidels have been converted, subjugated or destroyed. I wholeheartedly agree with Sam Harris when he writes in his The End of Faith: ‘Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one.’ The ‘war on terror’ instigated by George W. Bush seemed to be a political smokescreen with much of the rhetoric coming from the US and the Middle East over the past decade reflecting two bigoted and unreasoned faiths picking a serious fight with one another. Many commentators feel that the assassination of Osama Bin Laden is no more than a pyrrhic victory for the West. Greater accessibility to ever more technologically advanced modern weaponry will mean that his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, could be armed with far more than a few loyal ‘foot soldiers’ possessed with basic piloting skills. Biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in the hands of leaders undeterred by the threat of species annihilation and certain of their place in eternal paradise sends shivers down my spine. The fact that we have not been able to eradicate religion means that the human race might have to face the realistic prospect of religion eventually eradicating us.

The UK reader might be thinking that I am scaremongering to score points against religion. Perhaps the situation in Britain, although far from ideal, may be considered less alarming than the US. But if the 2011 Census results reveal that we have become slightly less religious in the past ten years, how will faith respond? Will this ‘back-foot’ position be acceptable or is religious fanaticism, like an insatiably hungry animal, set to pounce in order to feed itself and regain lost ground? Only time will tell. The crucial point I want to make here is that, although for a significant proportion of the British people religious discussion is not on the radar, now is not a time for apathy or a lazy disregard of crucial subject matter. We have indulged the bloated excess of faith for far too long already. If you are the type of person that considers it OK to accept and respect those in our society that blindly believe ancient myths that have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be completely untrue, then please also accept that you are helping to sustain an environment where scripture-based fundamentalism will continue to flourish. It seems apparent to me that politicians in this country do not have the courage to have an intellectually honest dialogue about the obvious pitfalls of faith and grant religion immunity from rational discourse. Consequently, religions know that they can raise their impenetrable shield at will, deflecting any form of criticism that comes their way. I find it ironic that our society advocates religious tolerance when religious scripture does not.

The sense of disillusionment I have with the very existence of religion in our modern society is not a recent emotion for me. There have been a number of parochial, national and international events that have all had the cumulative impact of accentuating my sense of incredulity over the past twenty-seven years or so. I will highlight the most notable of these in chronological order.

My first real memory of the Old Testament came as an 8-year-old boy attending Welsh Methodist Sunday school. This experience, although generally harmless and occasionally enjoyable,⁶ certainly began to sow the seeds of my atheism. A major sticking point for me (which remains today) was the Genesis creation story. ‘But I thought the world was older than 10,000 years; what about dinosaurs and fossils?’ I asked innocently. A deeply unsatisfactory response was flung back to me in my mother tongue, ‘Dinosaurs are joking, just for the films, but the Bible is real.’ Even at this young age, the proverbial alarm bells started to ring. I am able to reflect on a more profound awakening from my Sunday school days. I never sensed the presence of God in chapel; I instinctively knew that he was not there and not watching me. Consequently, I did not fear him either. Every week I was doing my utmost to distract myself from the horrendously dull sermon, as I knew I would not be punished for this flagrant disrespect of the word of God. With hindsight I feel that it was at this time that the loose shackles of my particular religion had slipped off.

Studying A level religious studies at my local comprehensive⁷ in the early 1990s was a real insight into the extent of the biblical ‘blooper reel’. Luckily, being a secular school, religion was, at that level, taught from a critical rather than devotional perspective. A huge number of Jews, Christians and Muslims believe that the transparent fables contained within the Old Testament are the word of God and the literal truth. I find this to be utterly stupefying in light of the numerous inaccuracies and inconsistencies it so blatantly contains. The Old Testament is quite obviously a by-product of an attempt by extremely ignorant and superstitious Bronze Age man to explain the existence that so confounded him. The early chapters of this book will qualify this viewpoint in far more detail.

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 reminded us of witnessing the most shocking pictures in all of television history. I believe that for the majority of people from my generation, the US terror attacks will always eclipse the infamy of all past atrocities induced by religion. Reading history, it may be difficult to empathise with the plight of people living under very different circumstances in the past. But we saw thousands of people murdered as the events unfolded before our very eyes and the memory will be etched into our consciousness forever. Even more shocking to me were the vitriolic scenes of jubilation across the Arab world. The sight of children smiling and jumping for joy after witnessing mass murder made my blood run cold. I immediately thought to myself, ‘We [the human race] have totally screwed it up.’

Reading the newspaper in March 2002, I had another one of those ‘you’ve got to be kidding me’ moments. Fundamentalist Christian evolution-deniers had taken control of a state-funded secondary school in England. Astonishingly, creationist teachers at the city technology college in Gateshead were undermining the scientific teaching of biology in favour of persuading pupils of the literal truth of the Bible. With religious tolerance dramatically overstepping the mark, teachers were free to present evolution merely as a ‘theory’ no different from the idea that the world was made in six days. I had seen the movie Inherit the Wind which fictionalised the Scopes Monkey trial that had taken place in Tennessee in 1925. Denying the teaching of evolution in 1920s’ Bible Belt America was one thing, but this was twenty-first century Britain. The UK government was sanctioning, or at least turning a blind eye to, impressionable young minds being exposed to fallacious teaching in the name of religion.

A Welsh poet and author named Patrick Jones caused a major kerfuffle in Cardiff pre-Christmas 2008. He had been invited by the Welsh Assembly to read his allegedly ‘blasphemous’ poetry selection Darkness Is Where the Stars Are. Christian campaign groups, venomously opposed to criticism and freedom of speech it seemed, protested and lobbied until the event was eventually cancelled. Also, the bookshop, Waterstone’s, pulled a planned reading at its city centre store to avoid ‘disruption’ after it was contacted by religious campaign group Christian Voice. I was absolutely seething at this cowardly capitulation. Even worse, I received a letter through the post from one of these campaign groups which started with something along the lines, ‘I’m sure you are as disturbed and disgusted as I am about the planned poetry reading… etc.’ This example of supremely presumptive arrogance was not that surprising to me as religions have a very long tradition of telling people how to think.

Whilst on holiday with my girlfriend and her family in Florida in 2010, a Christian pastor from this state, Terry Jones, planned a Koran book burning for 11 September. It became big global news with Mr Jones being widely condemned, even by the president. The evening that the story broke we were eating dinner at a steakhouse and having some banter with a rotund, jovial waiter named Chris, who had built up a good rapport with us. ‘One of your local boys has caused a stir; what an idiot,’ I said, with a smirk on my face. The mood immediately shifted and Chris, instantaneously losing his sense of humour, found it very hard to conceal his disdain. He began his retort, ‘Well, I am a devout Christian…’ but then trailed off. Clearly, in support of the pastor’s plans the waiter did surprisingly have enough nous to realise that his usual born-again diatribe might not go down well with foreigners. I also, against my natural inclination, decided to back off. With only the starter finished I did not relish the prospect of Chris’s homemade special sauce on the burger ordered as my main course. OK, so this may not be the most profound anecdote, but it raises an important question. Why are the faithful, who claim to bask in the euphoria of Jesus’ love, so desperately intolerant of criticism?

Finally, the papal visit to the UK in September 2010 presented me with a seemingly endless number of shout at the TV moments. I was unimpressed when a Catholic priest was asked to comment on what he thought were the main virtues of Pope Benedict XVI. ‘Well, he is a man of tremendous faith’ was the depressingly predictable response. But what is spiritual faith if not an admission that we should idly release ourselves from the burdens of proof and logic? The Pope, in one of his speeches, also thanked Great Britain for its efforts in fighting the ‘evil’ Nazis and their attempt to create a ‘godless society’. What about Hitler’s concordat with the papacy in 1933? This was a marriage of convenience between the Führer and the Pope in order for them to unite against their common enemy: namely the communists. Benedict XVI conveniently failed to mention his faith’s disgraceful record of complicity with the Nazis. He also had the audacity to advise us that we need to stem the tide of aggressive secularism in this country. He was obviously feeling a bit threatened and peeved that his historical predecessors were able to simply light a flame under those who challenged their authority. I feel that the supreme pontiff and his Catholic church will always serve as a suitable standard bearer for the monumental hypocrisy prevalent in religion as a whole.

These illustrations from personal experience have encapsulated many of the broad themes that will be covered in this book. More specifically, I will strive vigilantly to answer four fundamental questions that have been on my mind for a long number of years:

1) Is there any compelling evidence for the existence of God?

No. Chapters 1 to 8 will critique what religious believers assert is the ultimate evidence supporting their supernatural God hypothesis. The ancient creation myths, written in the Old Testament to explain human existence will be pitted against the facts provided by the real, verifiable, knowledge-based disciplines available in the twenty-first century, that is, cosmology, physics, evolutionary biology, chemistry, history, archaeology and anthropology. Even the most rudimentary discernment of the scientific method, supported by a huge dose of logic and common sense, will expose the holy book as a humiliatingly inaccurate piece of fiction.