By Mark Owen - © 2010
Introduction AND Chapter 1
Interest is the key to life
Interest is the drum and fife -
And any god will do.
(Keener's Manual)
Introduction
A warning, I will not disguise my intentions. This is a book about a pilgrimage - from Christian faith to unbelief. If your faith is weak perhaps you should not read this book. For it will surely raise doubts and, dear reader, that is certainly my aim.
Do you, like so many, truly wish to understand what life is all about?
I cannot promise an ultimate answer to that question but I am willing to share such insights as I have garnered from a long life - a life that once embraced with enthusiasm the mantle of the Christian believer but which, at the halfway mark, rejected that life. And it was a conscious rejection, done with knowledge and with much thought.
The meaning of life is, of course, what religious belief trades on. The answers to life's mysteries - the reason we are here, what is so often termed the purpose of life. If it has a purpose. If it has a meaning! One of the most popular Christian texts of recent times deals with that very subject. Pastor Rick Warren with his bestseller The Purpose-Driven Life seems to think life has a purpose, but then he is a Christian evangelist. So he would think that, wouldn't he?
I expressed a hesitance in promising much. Rightly so - when one comes to understand, as I now do, the awful yet exciting truth that human life has no purpose, and is merely an accident in a vast universe, then what's to know? Of course, religion has no such limitation on its glib answers. It teaches that life proceeds from a superhuman being (notwithstanding the manifold evidence to the contrary) and that it does have purpose. It is, say the preachers, up to humans to discern that purpose and to obey the invisible being who directs it all.
Well, as the sporting people would say, the ball is firmly back in my court. It is up to me to set forth my case and to point to a way forward for us poor humans - wanderers in a vast universe who, bereft of the comfort of purpose, the security-blanket of faith, discover a more satisfying way of living than being slaves of the gods.
The journey I propose taking my readers on will at times be arduous and disturbing but in the end will, I believe, open up a wonderful new vista - of intellectual freedom and ever-expanding horizons. And the power that comes through knowledge, the knowledge of what is real, rather than unreal.
(Note: Bible references are taken from the Revised Version unless otherwise indicated.)
Chapter 1 - In the beginning
'Oh why did I awake? When shall I sleep again?'
- Housman: A Shropshire Lad)
From where does the journey of life begin?
Of course - at birth, you say. You know that now, oh yes, you know it. But you didn't know it then. You knew almost nothing. You were a bundle of unformed sensations and random impulses, all mediated by the emerging impressions garnered through your five senses.
Plunged from a state of non-existence into existence. Pretty terrifying really when you think about it!
Consciousness of our existence, of our self, comes but slowly - it creeps up on one. It is not as if we emerge from the non-formed into the human scene fully conscious, fully comprehending our place in the world and the universe. Such consciousness evolves. We emerge as if from whirling mists, gradually perceiving the objects that make up our immediate surroundings.
Little by little we discover the reality of mother, father, sister, brother and the lady next door. We encounter an animal, a cat or a dog perhaps. And we start to comprehend the rudiments of a much larger world beyond the walls of the place we call home. And, in many of those homes, we are introduced to an incorporeal entity - GOD. Now this is very odd when you think about it because, unlike all the other objects that form part of your existence, this one object we encounter is absent, invisible. There is nothing there, nothing to see, nobody. But most of us in our tender years believe what we are told by parents and teachers and thus GOD becomes as much a part of our world as are our own parents, notwithstanding the lack of evidence for his existence.
Funny this, when you get to think about it. Somehow the trust we have developed in our parents and the physical world into which they have introduced us carries over to the invisible world they tell us about.
Some folk never quite accept what they are told about GOD or else they grow up in homes where parents are unbelievers. Happy are they! I've known a couple of people like that. But for most of us the idea of GOD is readily absorbed into the consciousness, there to remain over the years, of more or less importance, depending on many factors. The small child has neither the time nor the capacity for introspection. Life is here and life is now.
As the years pass we may think more about the issues of life and death and the hereafter. And GOD may loom larger in our consciousness. I recall making efforts to read the Bible at a fairly early age. A lot of words in tiny print! I doubt I comprehended much of what I read. But it was the day of the radio, the era before television ushered in the televangelists, and I was intrigued by several radio preachers and teachers. There was a Catholic program featuring a cleric with the rather forbidding name of Doctor Rumble. He didn't have the airwaves to himself though. Opposing him was a doughty old Irish Protestant cleric, Canon T.C. Hammond, whose program bore the very prosaic title, The Case for Protestantism.
Add to these rival defenders of the faith - both claiming to represent Christianity's mainstream - was a rather odd group whose beliefs were quite widespread at one time - the British Israelites. Doubtless my Anglophile bent attracted me to this group. They believed the Lost Tribes of Israel had dispersed and were now to be found among the British and American peoples.
Meanwhile, in a quest for knowledge I delved into a fascinating volume, Kellett's History of Religions. Clearly I was seeking something but was more captivated, I think, by the novelty of religion than by any deep desire for enlightenment. Dedicated Christians would view this period of my life and say that I was really 'seeking Christ' and one day it did seem that I had found him. I was, as they say, 'converted to Christ' or Born Again.
The experience of conversion was life-changing (that's what they always say) but not necessarily in the positive way promoted by Christians. The life change affected many things. It saw me abandon my chosen career. It saw me become involved with various Christian organizations. It found me a like-minded wife and it led us into 'Christian service.' I became deeply involved in the Christian milieu but maybe my faith was not as solid as would have appeared to many in those days. Canon Hammond, whose radio talks I relished, once spoke about 'spurious conversions.' Well, he was a Calvinist and Calvin's dogma of the elect must embrace the possibility that the seemingly elect may after all be fakes - spurious. Clearly I was one of the fake Christians.
The years passed. Children came into our lives. Christian service gave way to regular jobs. And the drift set in. A familiar story. Many will recognize it. And many rediscover their faith at some point. But I didn't.
Not that I didn't try. Indeed, as the years passed I became concerned when I realized how far I had drifted from my religious roots. Finally I faced up to the fact: I had to be absolutely honest and examine the situation. I knew all the dogma in an intellectual way. I was pretty good at finding my way around the Bible. I knew the language of Zion but the heart had gone out of the experience. Now a choice lay before me - if Christ was indeed the Son of GOD then I needed to repent and return to the faith I had once embraced. And then came this thought: the central fact of the faith revolves around the Resurrection. 'If Christ be not raised from the dead,' as St Paul (reputedly) said (I Corinthians 15: 17), then Christian faith is vain. The Resurrection of Christ is indeed the central rock of the Church's faith even if some who call themselves Christians cast doubts upon the doctrine.
I decided to study the Resurrection story closely. I emphasize here that I did not at this point study any books - only the Bible itself. I set to work to write up in parallel the accounts in the Gospels of the Resurrection events, the events leading up to it and those that came after. It was not long before I realized that this - as I then thought - impregnable rock of certainty was by no means so certain. A careful study of the accounts of this supposedly pivotal event will soon demonstrate the frailty of the evidence (see Appendix).
This was the beginning of my enlightenment. At last the fog that first began clouding my vision as a dependant infant and which had reached fever-pitch when I was a young adult began to clear.
I re-read much of the Bible at this time, both Old Testament and New, and realized that I had been one of the army of the deluded. It soon became apparent that this much-lauded book is in fact a farrago of myths and legends, mixed in with a little (very little, as I would soon discover) real history.
Gradually from then on a truth emerged - far grander than the fairy stories engraved on holy plates by religion. As for the latter, take this one piece of profundity:
Moreover thou shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains . . . The length of each curtain shall be eight and twenty cubits, and the breadth of each curtain four cubits: all the curtains shall have one measure. Five curtains shall be coupled together one to another; and the other five curtains shall be coupled one to another. And thou shalt make loops of blue upon the edge of the one curtain from the selvedge in the coupling . . . (Exodus 26: 1-4, and it continues like this with a long series of instructions.)
These directions come directly from GOD, so Moses claims, but then is Moses a real character? In any event the deity seems to be preoccupied with minutiae. But go to astronomy or to paleontology and one will discover a far grander story than the trivia of the Bible. Even a study of history, real history that is, and the people of history, the Galileos, the Shakespeares, the Beethovens, the Einsteins, and the story of the evolution of life, plants, animals, humans, is a stunning one.
And it is also a scary one.
It informs us that we stand alone in this vast and at times terrifying universe. No wonder people find comfort in religion, in an all-powerful father figure. (We may, of course, not be the only life in the universe; many think there are other worlds yet to be discovered, but to date there is no evidence whatever of their existence.)
And at least we can behold something tangible around us - the sun, the moon, the planets, the stars. There is nothing tangible offered by religion. Nothing real. The only substance in the prognostications of the purveyors of religious belief is - 'faith' ('Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen.' - Hebrews 11:1).
All very well to have faith. But let's have a look at an example of faith in action. The people who listened to those detailed instructions for making curtains had faith in Moses but that faith was betrayed. You'll remember - or many will - the episode when Moses was about to meet with GOD and get his hands on the stones bearing the Ten Commandments? In Exodus 9:11 GOD tells Moses (so we are informed) that on the third day on the mountain GOD will come down 'in the sight of all the people on Mount Sinai.' (We'll leave aside the fact that the Bible also says that all this occurred in another place - In Deuteronomy 5, the mountain upon which Moses met with GOD even masquerades under a different name, Mount Horeb! Debate has raged on and off over the centuries as to the location of Sinai/Horeb but the issue remains unresolved.) In any event the amazing encounter didn't happen. The people didn't get to see GOD after all and as a result rebelled against their leaders. It appears they had been lied to.
Now these considerations raise a question I must try to answer. Isn't the paradigm by which I now live just as much a matter of faith as that which energizes the spiritual life for Christians, Jews, Hindus or Muslims? On the surface - yes. But surely when one constructs a mental framework for one's life it is eminently sensible to draw on factual material in doing so? For some curious reason humans seem to have a tendency to seek answers in the complex rather than the simple, to prefer an esoteric rather than a materialistic view of the world. I am reminded of Occam's Razor, otherwise known as the law of parsimony.
And all too often they rush in, spurred on by the emotions of the moment, a climax of a long period of restless searching for 'something' or as the result of life's crises. I recall reading how a young and successful Australian jockey became a Born Again believer. The man had come through a difficult period in his life. There has been health problems with his small daughter, he had received a nine months' disqualification from riding, and his marriage was shaky. He was ripe for the preacher's magic touch when he entered a church one day and 'committed his life to Christ' - as they love to say.
Whether through the huge evangelistic crusades, conducted under canvas, or by the insidious voice of the televangelist, people are caught at vulnerable moments and succumb to the siren call of a better life. We all want that! But, be warned, the cure is often worse than the complaint. The better life may be a mere chimera, a fleeting boost with continual recharges of one's security blanket needed through the fellowship of like-minded believers. The need to reinforce belief is the very reason Christians are so often exhorted to meet together in fellowship. The preachers may not admit it but subconsciously they are worried that the magic will fade, and with it their stipend!
But alas, as I was to discover, all this is a dream, religious faith is the product of an evolution of ideas that has occurred in parallel with the evolution of mankind itself. Religion did not descend from some invisible heavenly realm, fully formed. Religion, like everything else, evolved and the path of that evolution can be traced in broad outline. I shall attempt to do this in the next chapter. But before moving on let us look at yet another example of faith misplaced - this time in our own era.
Around 1978 in the mountain region of New Mexico (USA) a terrible family tragedy occurred. William Orr, 48, a lecturer in psychology at Mansfield State College, Pennsylvania, died from carbon monoxide poisoning. His 13-year-old daughter, Annette, also died from the same cause. His wife, Lillian, 44, was charged with child abuse and his three other daughters, aged 7, 11 and 12, all nearly died of starvation.
The reason for this tragic episode was religion. Mr and Mrs Orr were known for their deep religious faith and suddenly Mr Orr gave up his post and the family embarked on a journey by caravan, apparently with some religious purpose in view. Upon its side was painted the slogan: 'Kichanou Nichla-Wana-Teak-O. Servants of the Holy Family. Neuro Kenesis the miracle cure!' Their faith was sadly misplaced. Along the way, in freezing temperatures, they ran out of petrol. They were penniless and soon ran out of food. On the back of the van was a sign reading: 'We have no money or means. We serve God and men in a vow of charity. We need gas, food, money.' The father and 13-year-old girl died as the family sat huddled about a charcoal heater inside the van; killed by the fumes.
Reportedly passers-by had tried to help but the family, evidently trusting God for a miracle, refused all offers of aid.
