ZAVibes

Focus on the horizon
The bird of truth
comes flying
and perches on your soul

Claws, as sharp
as daggers, cut
through the fabric
of your life

What is left
Is what you are
just little left
of what you were

Christoff Gouws
2003-04-27

I wrote this poem shortly after my brother-in-law died in a car accident in 2003.

He was only 25 years old, recently engaged to his highschool sweetheart, his whole life still lying ahead.

It was horrible to witness the pain and suffering everyone who knew him - especially his parents - had to endure.

What’s even more painful is having to witness how people try to find answers. Why? Why him? Why now? These kinds of questions gnaw at their emotions, faiths, hopes and lives.

How do you explain to them that accidents happen? That people die, no rime or reason behind it, except that statistically we are all living on the edge and that anyone can die at any time and that there’s no higher meaning to it? That nature doesn’t care?

One thing IS clear though and that is that our lives are precious. Extremely fragile and precious.

We should cherish each other while we’re still alive…

You’ve probably heard the famous quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes:

“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions”

This idea - that once you let your mind go outside of a specific frame of reference your mind & thoughts were confined to your whole life - is what let to the writing of this poem.

Culture, Society, Political System, Religion, Moral Zeitgeist, any frame of reference you’re finding yourself in - let your mind soar above it, outside of it every once in a while and you’ll raise your consciousness in ways never imagined.

The only part of you that can ever be free is your thoughts/mind, if you let it…

Libraries have thousands of books on theology and doctrine arising therefrom, there are thousands of books on Christology, there are thousands of books on the Bible and the characters depicted therein; the number of Bibles, Korans and other ’sacred’ books printed run into countless millions and yet all theistic religions and religions which propose life after death depend on one proposition, viz. that there is a spirit world distinct from the physical universe we know through direct experience.

There are two aspects of this conceived spirit world: a spirit god or gods (and a -myriad of spirit creatures ranging from imps, leprechauns, ghosts and fairies to genii, angels and bunyips) and individual ’spirits’ or ’souls’.

As any attempt to define the ’soul’ effectively shows non-existence this aspect will be ignored here and an examination will be made of some of the practical difficulties associated with their presumed existence. We are dealing here with the religious definition of ’soul’, not the loose application of the term ’soul’ or ’spirit’ meaning the personal physical and emotional characteristics which obviously have no existence beyond physical death.

Religious belief assumes that an individual and specifically unique ’soul’ is conferred on each person at conception. In Christian theology the ’soul’ is provided by the god Yahweh so with conception taking place at the rate of about 10 per second it looks like a full time job. There may be many millions of ‘earths’ in the universe with a species equivalent to humans so the enterprise is truly daunting. If all souls were identical the job would be much simpler. Yahweh could go in for mass production and apportion the appropriate amount to each fertilised ovum. Delivery of each soul at the precise moment may conceivably be a real problem.

Perchance all space is composed of living ’soul’ and whenever a spermatozoon penetrates the ovum a bit of soul slips in also. Maybe the characteristics of the soul are determined by its environment. However, this hypothesis is flawed, for space is not confined and would be present even in unfertilised ova.

According to theology, the soul which is not properly nourished withers and degenerates so one must ask what is the appropriate food provided for the ’soul’ pre and post implantation.

As only about a third of all fertilised ova develop to full term one must ask what happens to all the ’souls’ of the aborted ova and foetuses both naturally occurring and induced. Have they been stored in limbo for hundreds of thousands of years (or even the 6000 years of the Creationists) in a state of suspended animation? Will they have to undergo further development before they are resurrected?

At this point another problem arises. When conception takes place theologians confidently assert that the fertilised egg has now been given a living individual ’soul’. From now on everything is plain sailing? Not quite! A certain proportion of fertilised ova divide into twins, triplets and even up to sextets. So what happens about the ’soul’? Does it also subdivide to meet the changed circumstances or are new ’souls’ provided at each division? What say you learned theologians? As the writers of the inspired books had no knowledge of the biology of reproduction they are no help at all.

The concept of human evolution was bitterly opposed by the advocates of religion because it introduced another problem. With the Genesis account of the origin of man the moment of soul implantation was precise. With evolution how could one determine when the soul-less animal had developed into a human with a ’soul’, particularly when the process involved many thousands of years? Most Christian denominations now accept evolution as factual so they have to face defining the stage when ’souls’ were first made available.

We come now to the effect of the physical on the immaterial ’soul’. How do they interact? Does the ’soul’ determine the destiny of the person or does the physical body, with its multitude of differing functions, determine the fate of the ’soul’? We do not know if ’souls’ are considered everlasting because the Bible, the infallible text-book of many ages says both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Here again theologians disagree. Some think the physical world cannot influence the spirit world, some think the spirit world determines the physical world and some think the influence is in both directions.

Atheists and Freethinkers can find no evidence of a spirit world but seek to learn as much as possible about the physical universe. Strangely when religious people testify to seeing returning souls the apparitions are always clothed so it follows that things which Atheists see as materialistic and very physical have their counterparts in immaterial material.

We come now to the growth of ’souls’. Do they grow and age or remain static? Is the ’soul’ of an aborted fertilised egg the same as that of the person who dies after reaching old age? What about disfigurements caused by accidents? The disciples are reported as saying that Jesus still had the scars of the crucifixion.

Where is the domicile of the ’soul’? Is it spread throughout the body or housed in some specific spot? If throughout the body what happens when limbs are lost?

Christians are convinced after much weighing that ’souls’ have no weight so there is no body weight loss at death but Christians are not sure where the ’soul’ goes. Here again the Bible gives several conflicting answers “absent from the body, present with the Lord”; “the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall arise”; ‘the soul that sinneth it shall die”; “the smoke of their torments ascendeth for ever”.

The idea of souls in spiritual bodies being tormented for ever in spiritual flames with spiritual smoke does stretch the imagination somewhat! The idea of reincarnation of the soul in some other physical body brings in another element It almost makes it mandatory to kill as many of the most horrid creatures as possible so that ’souls’ are liberated and hopefully enter higher life forms.

Finally, where is the blessed abode of ’souls’ - the mansion where they live for evermore? Is it up there in the stratosphere, on this earth, or in the infinite expanse of space at near absolute zero temperature? Could it just be that a large proportion of the human race is still being conned by charlatans?

If humans have no ’soul’ then all the rigmarole associated with religion is silly humbug and unworthy of humankind.

“I have been . . . suspected of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the Sun is the center of the universe and immovable, and that the earth is not the center of the same, and that it does move . . . I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic church.”

Galileo Galilei’s Recantation, June 22, 1633

This story was posted on Landover Baptist Church’s Website a while ago. Finally the church (well, at least this one!) says something truthful! Now they just also need to realise that MEN also don’t have souls…

Landover Baptist Creation Scientist, Dr. Fred Neiman, announced findings related to his research into the female soul early this week. “The absence of either salvation or condemnation for women finds extensive support in the Word of God.” He reported. “Jesus said that the sole reason God created women in the first place was to provide company and service to men (1 Corinthians 11:9), God determined that men would be lonely living alone, so he created women purely to keep men company and serve their needs (Genesis 2:18-22). Women are therefore completely subordinate to men (1 Corinthians 11:3). It stands to reason, though, that once men enter the Kingdom of Heaven, they will be one with God, and will no longer be lonely and in need of mortal companionship. Thus, the reason behind having women will no longer exist. Women, like the members of the animal kingdom, will fall by the wayside.”

Dr. Neiman went on to say that, “once men reunite with their maker, they will no longer be burdened with the care of women. After all, women were inferior creations from the start. Women are fond of self-indulgence (Isaiah 32:9-11). They are silly and easily led into error (2 Timothy 3:6). They are subtle and deceitful (Proverbs 7:10; Ecclesiastes 7:26). They are zealous in promoting superstition and idolatry (Jeremiah 7:18; Ezekiel 13:17, 23). And they are active in instigating to iniquity (Numbers 31:15-16; 1 Kings 21:25; Nehemiah 13:26). It was the inherent weakness of women that led them to be deceived by Satan (Genesis 3:1-6; 2 Corinthians 11:3; 1 Timothy 2:14). Consequently, women were cursed from the start (Genesis 3:16). There is simply no room in heaven for such flawed and inadequate beings.”

Pastor Deacon Fred warned the congregation that there was no reason to be alarmed. “Dr. Neiman’s conclusions still need to be formalized,” he assured. “I am certain that our team of religious experts will find some way around these Scriptures.” Some of the women present were visibly shaken by the report. A teary eyed Sister Taffy Crockett said through choked sobs, “I’ve heard of colored women not having souls… but me? NO! This is outrageous!”

Pastor did have some comforting words for the ladies of Landover. “I personally want to assure all female members of this church that until we examine Dr. Neiman’s research to our complete satisfaction, consider yourselves saved.”

When a society believes in a fiction, they use it to justify other actions. After a short Google query, I found just a couple examples:

A pig caused hundreds of Indians to kill one another in 1980. The animal walked through a Muslim holy ground at Moradabad, near New Delhi. Muslims, who think pigs are an embodiment of Satan, blamed Hindus for the defilement. They went on a murder rampage, stabbing and clubbing Hindus, who retaliated in kind. The pig riot spread to a dozen cities and left more than 200 dead.

This swinish episode tells a universal tale. It typifies religious behavior that has been recurring for centuries.

Ronald Reagan often called religion the world’s mightiest force for good, “the bedrock of moral order.” George Bush said it gives people “the character they need to get through life.” This view is held by millions. But the truism isn’t true. The record of human experience shows that where religion is strong, it causes cruelty. Intense beliefs produce intense hostility. Only when faith loses its force can a society hope to become humane.

The history of religion is a horror story. If anyone doubts it, just review this chronicle of religion’s gore during the last 1,000 years or so:

– The First Crusade was launched in 1095 with the battle cry “Deus Vult” (God wills it), a mandate to destroy infidels in the Holy Land. Gathering crusaders in Germany first fell upon “the infidel among us,” Jews in the Rhine valley, thousands of whom were dragged from their homes or hiding places and hacked to death or burned alive. Then the religious legions plundered their way 2,000 miles to Jerusalem, where they killed virtually every inhabitant, “purifying” the symbolic city. Cleric Raymond of Aguilers wrote: “In the temple of Solomon, one rode in blood up to the knees and even to the horses’ bridles, by the just and marvelous judgment of God.”

– Human sacrifice blossomed in the Mayan theocracy of Central America between the 11th and 16th centuries. To appease a feathered-serpent god, maidens were drowned in sacred wells and other victims either had their hearts cut out, were shot with arrows, or were beheaded. Elsewhere, sacrifice was sporadic. In Peru, pre-Inca tribes killed children in temples called “houses of the moon.” In Tibet, Bon shamans performed ritual killings. In Borneo builders of pile houses drove the first pile through the body of a maiden to pacify the earth goddess. In India, Dravidian people offered lives to village goddesses, and followers of Kali sacrificed a male child every Friday evening.

– In the Third Crusade, after Richard the Lion-Hearted captured Acre in 1191, he ordered 3,000 captives — many of them women and children — taken outside the city and slaughtered. Some were disemboweled in a search for swallowed gems. Bishops intoned blessings. Infidel lives were of no consequence. As Saint Bernard of Clairvaux declared in launching the Second Crusade: “The Christian glories in the death of a pagan, because thereby Christ himself is glorified.”

– The Assassins were a sect of Ismaili Shi’ite Muslims whose faith required the stealthy murder of religious opponents. From the 11th to 13th centuries, they killed numerous leaders in modern-day Iran, Iraq and Syria. They finally were wiped out by conquering Mongols — but their vile name survives.

– Throughout Europe, beginning in the 1100s, tales spread that Jews were abducting Christian children, sacrificing them, and using their blood in rituals. Hundreds of massacres stemmed from this “blood libel.” Some of the supposed sacrifice victims — Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, the holy child of LaGuardia, Simon of Trent — were beatified or commemorated with shrines that became sites of pilgrimages and miracles.

– In 1209, Pope Innocent III launched an armed crusade against Albigenses Christians in southern France. When the besieged city of Beziers fell, soldiers reportedly asked their papal adviser how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel among the captives. He commanded: “Kill them all. God will know his own.” Nearly 20,000 were slaughtered — many first blinded, mutilated, dragged behind horses, or used for target practice.

– The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 proclaimed the doctrine of transubstantiation: that the host wafer miraculously turns into the body of Jesus during the mass. Soon rumors spread that Jews were stealing the sacred wafers and stabbing or driving nails through them to crucify Jesus again. Reports said that the pierced host bled, cried out, or emitted spirits. On this charge, Jews were burned at the stake in 1243 in Belitz, Germany — the first of many killings that continued into the 1800s. To avenge the tortured host, the German knight Rindfliesch led a brigade in 1298 that exterminated 146 defenseless Jewish communities in six months.

– In the 1200s the Incas built their empire in Peru, a society dominated by priests reading daily magical signs and offering sacrifices to appease many gods. At major ceremonies up to 200 children were burned as offerings. Special “chosen women” — comely virgins without blemish — were strangled.

– Also during the 1200s, the hunt for Albigensian heretics led to establishment of the Inquisition, which spread over Europe. Pope Innocent IV authorized torture. Under interrogation by Dominican priests, screaming victims were stretched, burned, pierced and broken on fiendish pain machines to make them confess to disbelief and to identify fellow transgressors. Inquisitor Robert le Bourge sent 183 people to the stake in a single week.

– In Spain, where many Jews and Moors had converted to escape persecution, inquisitors sought those harboring their old faith. At least 2,000 Spanish backsliders were burned. Executions in other countries included the burning of scientists such as mathematician-philosopher Giordano Bruno, who espoused Copernicus’s theory that the planets orbit the sun.

– When the Black Death swept Europe in 1348-1349, rumors alleged that it was caused by Jews poisoning wells. Hysterical mobs slaughtered thousands of Jews in several countries. In Speyer, Germany, the burned bodies were piled into giant wine casks and sent floating down the Rhine. In northern Germany Jews were walled up alive in their homes to suffocate or starve. The Flagellants, an army of penitents who whipped themselves bloody, stormed the Jewish quarter of Frankfurt in a gruesome massacre. The prince of Thuringia announced that he had burned his Jews for the honor of God.

– The Aztecs began their elaborate theocracy in the 1300s and brought human sacrifice to a golden era. About 20,000 people were killed yearly to appease gods — especially the sun god, who needed daily “nourishment” of blood. Hearts of sacrifice victims were cut out, and some bodies were eaten ceremoniously. Other victims were drowned, beheaded, burned or dropped from heights. In a rite to the rain god, shrieking children were killed at several sites so that their tears might induce rain. In a rite to the maize goddess, a virgin danced for 24 hours, then was killed and skinned; her skin was worn by a priest in further dancing. One account says that at King Ahuitzotl’s coronation, 80,000 prisoners were butchered to please the gods.

– In the 1400s, the Inquisition shifted its focus to witchcraft. Priests tortured untold thousands of women into confessing that they were witches who flew through the sky and engaged in sex with the devil — then they were burned or hanged for their confessions. Witch hysteria raged for three centuries in a dozen nations. Estimates of the number executed vary from 100,000 to 2 million. Whole villages were exterminated. In the first half of the 17th century, about 5,000 “witches” were put to death in the French province of Alsace, and 900 were burned in the Bavarian city of Bamberg. The witch craze was religious madness at its worst.

– The “Protestant Inquisition” is a term applied to the severities of John Calvin in Geneva and Queen Elizabeth I in England during the 1500s. Calvin’s followers burned 58 “heretics,” including theologian Michael Servetus, who doubted the Trinity. Elizabeth I outlawed Catholicism and executed about 200 Catholics.

– Protestant Huguenots grew into an aggressive minority in France in the 15OOs — until repeated Catholic reprisals smashed them. On Saint Bartholomew’s Day in 1572, Catherine de Medicis secretly authorized Catholic dukes to send their soldiers into Huguenot neighborhoods and slaughter families. This massacre touched off a six-week bloodbath in which Catholics murdered about 10,000 Huguenots. Other persecutions continued for two centuries, until the French Revolution. One group of Huguenots escaped to Florida; in 1565 a Spanish brigade discovered their colony, denounced their heresy, and killed them all.

– The Anabaptists, communal “rebaptizers,” were slaughtered by both Catholic and Protestant authorities. In Munster, Germany, Anabaptists took control of the city, drove out the clergymen, and proclaimed a New Zion. The bishop of Munster began an armed siege. While the townspeople starved, the Anabaptist leader proclaimed himself king and executed dissenters. When Munster finally fell, the chief Anabaptists were tortured to death with red-hot pincers and their bodies hung in iron cages from a church steeple.

– Oliver Cromwell was deemed a moderate because he massacred only Catholics and Anglicans, not other Protestants. This Puritan general commanded Bible-carrying soldiers, whom he roused to religious fervor. After decimating an Anglican army, Cromwell said, “God made them as stubble to our swords.” He demanded the beheading of the defeated King Charles I, and made himself the holy dictator of England during the 1650s. When his army crushed the hated Irish Catholics, he ordered the execution of the surrendered defenders of Drogheda and their priests, calling it “a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches.”

– Ukrainian Bogdan Chmielnicki was a Cossack Cromwell. He wore the banner of Eastern Orthodoxy in a holy war against Jews and Polish Catholics. More than 100,000 were killed in this 17th-century bloodbath, and the Ukraine was split away from Poland to become part of the Orthodox Russian empire.

– The Thirty Years’ War produced the largest religious death toll of all time. It began in 1618 when Protestant leaders threw two Catholic emissaries out of a Prague window into a dung heap. War flared between Catholic and Protestant princedoms, drawing in supportive religious armies from Germany, Spain, England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, France and Italy. Sweden’s Protestant soldiers sang Martin Luther’s “Ein ‘Feste Burg” in battle. Three decades of combat turned central Europe into a wasteland of misery. One estimate states that Germany’s population dropped from 18 million to 4 million. In the end nothing was settled, and too few people remained to rebuild cities, plant fields, or conduct education.

– When Puritans settled in Massachusetts in the 1600s, they created a religious police state where doctrinal deviation could lead to flogging, pillorying, hanging, cutting off ears, or boring through the tongue with a hot iron. Preaching Quaker beliefs was a capital offense. Four stubborn Quakers defied this law and were hanged. In the 1690s fear of witches seized the colony. Twenty alleged witches were killed and 150 others imprisoned.

– In 1723 the bishop of Gdansk, Poland, demanded that all Jews be expelled from the city. The town council declined, but the bishop’s exhortations roused a mob that invaded the ghetto and beat the residents to death.

– In 1801 Orthodox priests in Bucharest, Romania, revived the story that Jews sacrificed Christians and drank their blood. Enraged parishioners stormed the ghetto and cut the throats of 128 Jews.

– Late in the 19th century, with rebellion stirring in Russia, the czars attempted to divert public attention by helping anti-Semitic groups rouse Orthodox Christian hatred for Jews. Three waves of pogroms ensued — in the 1880s, from 1903 to 1906, and during the Russian Revolution. Each wave was increasingly murderous. During the final period, 530 communities were attacked and 60,000 Jews were killed.

– In the early 1900s, Muslim Turks waged genocide against Christian Armenians, and Christian Greeks and Balkans warred against the Islamic Ottoman Empire.

– When India finally won independence from Britain in 1947, the “great soul” of Mahatma Gandhi wasn’t able to prevent Hindus and Muslims from turning on one another in a killing frenzy that took perhaps 1 million lives. Even Gandhi was killed by a Hindu who thought him too pro-Muslim.

– In the 1950s and 1960s, combat between Christians, animists and Muslims in Sudan killed more than 500,000.

– In Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978, followers of the Rev. Jim Jones killed a visiting congressman and three newsmen, then administered cyanide to themselves and their children in a 900-person suicide that shocked the world.

– In 1983 in Darkley, Northern Ireland, Catholic terrorists with automatic weapons burst into a Protestant church on a Sunday morning and opened fire, killing three worshipers and wounding seven. It was just one of hundreds of Catholic-Protestant ambushes that have taken 2,600 lives in Ulster since age-old religious hostility turned violent again in 1969.

– Hindu-Muslim bloodshed erupts randomly throughout India. More than 3,000 were killed in Assam province in 1983. In May 1984 Muslims hung dirty sandals on a Hindu leader’s portrait as a religious insult. This act triggered a week of arson riots that left 216 dead, 756 wounded, 13,000 homeless, and 4,100 in jail.

– In Nigeria in 1982, religious fanatic followers of Mallam Marwa killed and mutilated several hundred people as heretics and infidels. They drank the blood of some of the victims. When the militia arrived to quell the violence, the cultists sprinkled themselves with blessed powder that they thought would make them impervious to police bullets. It didn’t.

– Today’s Shi’ite theocracy in Iran — “the government of God on earth” — decreed that Baha’i believers who won’t convert shall be killed. About 200 stubborn Baha’is were executed in the early 1980s, including women and teenagers. Up to 40,000 Baha’is fled the country. Sex taboos in Iran are so severe that: (1) any woman who shows a lock of hair is jailed; (2) Western magazines being shipped into the country first go to censors who laboriously black out all women’s photos except for faces; (3) women aren’t allowed to ski with men, but have a separate slope where they may ski in shrouds.

It’s fashionable among thinking people to say that religion isn’t the real cause of today’s strife in Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, India and Iran — that sects merely provide labels for combatants. Not so. Religion keeps the groups in hostile camps. Without it, divisions would blur with passing generations; children would adapt to new times, mingle, intermarry, forget ancient wounds. But religion keeps them alien to one another.

Anything that divides people breeds inhumanity. Religion serves that ugly purpose.

This short article was written by Sam Harris in March 15, 2007 and really makes a few good points (as Sam always seems to be able to do) about faith and faith’s followers

PETE STARK, a California Democrat, appears to be the first congressman in U.S. history to acknowledge that he doesn’t believe in God. In a country in which 83% of the population thinks that the Bible is the literal or “inspired” word of the creator of the universe, this took political courage.

Of course, one can imagine that Cicero’s handlers in the 1st century BC lost some sleep when he likened the traditional accounts of the Greco-Roman gods to the “dreams of madmen” and to the “insane mythology of Egypt.”

Mythology is where all gods go to die, and it seems that Stark has secured a place in American history simply by admitting that a fresh grave should be dug for the God of Abraham — the jealous, genocidal, priggish and self-contradictory tyrant of the Bible and the Koran. Stark is the first of our leaders to display a level of intellectual honesty befitting a consul of ancient Rome. Bravo.

The truth is, there is not a person on Earth who has a good reason to believe that Jesus rose from the dead or that Muhammad spoke to the angel Gabriel in a cave. And yet billions of people claim to be certain about such things. As a result, Iron Age ideas about everything high and low — sex, cosmology, gender equality, immortal souls, the end of the world, the validity of prophecy, etc. — continue to divide our world and subvert our national discourse. Many of these ideas, by their very nature, hobble science, inflame human conflict and squander scarce resources.

Of course, no religion is monolithic. Within every faith one can see people arranged along a spectrum of belief. Picture concentric circles of diminishing reasonableness: At the center, one finds the truest of true believers — the Muslim jihadis, for instance, who not only support suicidal terrorism but who are the first to turn themselves into bombs; or the Dominionist Christians, who openly call for homosexuals and blasphemers to be put to death.

Outside this sphere of maniacs, one finds millions more who share their views but lack their zeal. Beyond them, one encounters pious multitudes who respect the beliefs of their more deranged brethren but who disagree with them on small points of doctrine — of course the world is going to end in glory and Jesus will appear in the sky like a superhero, but we can’t be sure it will happen in our lifetime.

Out further still, one meets religious moderates and liberals of diverse hues — people who remain supportive of the basic scheme that has balkanized our world into Christians, Muslims and Jews, but who are less willing to profess certainty about any article of faith. Is Jesus really the son of God? Will we all meet our grannies again in heaven? Moderates and liberals are none too sure.

Those on this spectrum view the people further toward the center as too rigid, dogmatic and hostile to doubt, and they generally view those outside as corrupted by sin, weak-willed or unchurched.

The problem is that wherever one stands on this continuum, one inadvertently shelters those who are more fanatical than oneself from criticism. Ordinary fundamentalist Christians, by maintaining that the Bible is the perfect word of God, inadvertently support the Dominionists — men and women who, by the millions, are quietly working to turn our country into a totalitarian theocracy reminiscent of John Calvin’s Geneva. Christian moderates, by their lingering attachment to the unique divinity of Jesus, protect the faith of fundamentalists from public scorn. Christian liberals — who aren’t sure what they believe but just love the experience of going to church occasionally — deny the moderates a proper collision with scientific rationality. And in this way centuries have come and gone without an honest word being spoken about God in our society.

People of all faiths — and none — often change their lives for the better, for good and bad reasons. And yet such transformations are regularly put forward as evidence in support of a specific religious creed. President Bush has cited his own sobriety as suggestive of the divinity of Jesus. No doubt Christians do get sober from time to time — but Hindus (polytheists) and atheists do as well. How, therefore, can any thinking person imagine that his experience of sobriety lends credence to the idea that a supreme being is watching over our world and that Jesus is his son?

There is no question that many people do good things in the name of their faith — but there are better reasons to help the poor, feed the hungry and defend the weak than the belief that an Imaginary Friend wants you to do it. Compassion is deeper than religion. As is ecstasy. It is time that we acknowledge that human beings can be profoundly ethical — and even spiritual — without pretending to know things they do not know.

Let us hope that Stark’s candor inspires others in our government to admit their doubts about God. Indeed, it is time we broke this spell en masse. Every one of the world’s “great” religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the Koran get almost every significant fact about us and our world wrong. Every scientific domain — from cosmology to psychology to economics — has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of Scripture.

Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music.

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