The Mythology of God

By Derrick van Zyl

Man has been creating gods for the last 40 000 years in order to make sense of himself and to explain life as it was primitively perceived before science developed, knowledge expanded and with it our factual understanding of where we come from, who we are and how we came to be here on our little blue planet. Not a single god had anything to do with creating you or anything at all for that matter. Not even your god, the one you were brought up and indoctrinated with.

This book is an attempt to firstly explain how the universe was formed. How planets, and eventually us, evolved over a period of 13.73 billion years based on facts, derived from science, verified, peer reviewed and corroborated and by also coming to the same conclusions using vastly different methods as opposed to creationist fairytales and superstition.

If you understand the basics of evolution, then the second part in which Islam and Christianity are exposed for what they are, may give you some perspective of how ‘religion poisons everything’, in the words of the late great Christopher Hitchens.

This book, is not only a consciousness raiser regarding the delusion that religion imposes and the biblical past and current violence it perpetually perpetrates, despite its desperate claims to the contrary, but also hopefully, will help to eradicate its theocratically, skewed fundamentalism where extremism finds its wings. It’s a book about truth. It is about morality and intellectual honesty and unveiling the mask of religion and exposing the delusion of blind faith through reason.

Exposing these religions with their ‘cult like’ delusional inaccuracies cannot be underestimated. Our future, as a species depends on it.

In the words of Stephen Roberts: ‘When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.’

Put your belief in people and love. Imaginary gods do not deserve them.

“The amount of research that went into this book is prodigious – exceeding what I have seen in volume and scope in all of the PhD theses that I edited over the years!”

Editor’s comment

• Language: English
• Publisher: Derrick van Zyl
• Release date: Nov 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370393664

Book preview

The Mythology of God

The Mythology of God

WHY AND HOW

RELIGION HARMS HUMANITY

Derrick van Zyl

CHALLENGING BELIEFS

Copyright © 2017 Derrick van Zyl

Published by Derrick van Zyl Publishing at Smashwords

First edition 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Published by the Author using Reach Publishers’ services,

P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631

Edited by Tony van der Watt for Reach Publishers

Cover designed by Reach Publishers

Website: www.reachpublishers.co.za

E-mail: [e-mail]

For information regarding the permission to reproduce selections

of this book please email [e-mail]

Cover Picture of ‘The Sombrero Galaxy’, M104, NGC 4594 in Infrared Light, 29 light years away from Earth. Its centre is known to consist of a Supermassive Black Hole. Courtesy of the Hubble Telescope and the Space Telescope Science Institute.

‘In the 1910s, Vesto Slipher discovered that the spectra of several galaxies, including the Sombrero Galaxy, are redshifted. Slipher’s spectra were among the first observations of the expansion of the universe, one of the key pieces of evidence for the Big Bang Theory.’ (Wikipedia).

Just because this Black Hole is ‘invisible’ does not mean it is not there. Knowledge and Science have proved its existence without any doubt whatsoever. God on the other hand, has remained invisible since mankind gained consciousness when we evolved on the plains of Africa. Since the beginning of time, there has been no proof of God whatsoever, and until the end of time, there never will be.

When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,

you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Let me elaborate…

This book is dedicated to those who have the vision and courage to look beyond the perception of myth and delusion and dare to seek the truth, through reason and knowledge. However painful and arduous such a journey may be, the reward is greater, the freedom, refreshingly liberating.

I am accused of doing grievous injury to thousands who have found safe anchorage in the history of Faith. What would we say to the mariner who, having found that a dangerous coast was wrongly charted, held his peace? Men like myself are engaged in charting the seas through which the ship of humanity sails; should we be silent when we find facts which run counter to cherished beliefs?

Silence in such a case is cowardice. 

Darwinism and What It Implies

Sir Arthur Keith

A man’s ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

Albert Einstein

Most people, I believe, think that you need a God to explain the existence of the world, and especially the existence of life. They are wrong, but our education system is such that

many people don’t know it.

Richard Dawkins

Fear believes - courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and prays - courage stands erect and thinks. Fear is barbarism - courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils and in ghosts. Fear is religion, courage is science.

Robert G. Ingersoll

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Glossary

The Big Bang And Cosmological Evolution

Space Ship Earth And Planetary Evolution

The Evolution Of Life On Earth

The Bible And Christianity

The Psychogenesis Of Religion

Concepts Of Metaphysics In A Parallel Or Multiple Universe

The Immorality Of Religion

Our Children, Zeitgeist, Universal Consciousness And The Future Of Mankind

Quotes And Concepts From A Rational And Atheist Perspective

Preface

It is not your fault for believing.

From a human evolutionist and psychological perspective, it is our ‘factory, default setting’ and it is how we are ‘made’. Our predisposition towards a belief system or religion is directly attributed to our genetic and memetic past when we evolved into a conscious and thinking species and asked ourselves who ‘made’ us and where we come from. And so we invented over 3700 gods since that time, with many of them going out of fashion down the ages. Roughly 90% of the world’s population, irrespective of colour, creed, race or gender, either draws comfort and peace or inflicts pain and suffering, in defending or going to war because of it.

Most people don’t really want the Truth. They just want constant reassurance that what they believe is the Truth.

The majority of the world subscribes to

religion in some form or other.

Early humans grasped naturally at the concept of a creator or higher power, and over time, enforced, reinforced, enhanced and intensified that dogmatic belief system through repetitive social rituals and ceremonies in adoration and praise of their god, irrespective of what that god may be or what it may represent. From an creationist perspective (and I refer here to the three monotheistic Abrahamic religions) there has been absolutely no evidence for God other than a book, written more than 2000 years ago and the belief system it inspired that directly told us where we come from. On the opposite end of the scale, evolution has a detailed description, empirical proof, of more than 13.73 billion years of history that tells us exactly where we come from. Which would you as a thinking human being believe – the fossils buried in the rock strata that tell a tale of evolution that is verified in the different ages of that stratification around the globe or, those of a black book, the origin of which is dubious at best, starting more or less with a fable of two nudists and a talking snake? The factual evidence proves the Bible to be inconsistent and incorrect regarding our origins, without any doubt whatsoever, and we shall look closely at that evidence in later chapters. Creationists will, without doubt and without any hesitation whatsoever, dismiss facts recorded in millions of published scientific works by millions of extraordinary scientists in many different fields, in favour of a single canonised book, written by 44 individuals. Reason and rational thought will be discarded and dismissed in favour of the comfort that religion brings them. Religious apologists will try to merge or incorporate biblical text with evolutionary facts, which in turn is inconsistent or directly contrary to the doctrine that the Bible or the Quran tries to advocate.

More than 87.5% of the people on this planet are religious, whether that religion be Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism or Buddhism, to name but a few, and less than 2.5% of the world’s population is atheist.

Religion and the belief in some Deity or God is inherently part and parcel of the human condition due to many factors, and in this book I aim to demonstrate and explain in a condensed, clear and rational way, as best as I possibly can, how the process of cosmological, planetary and eventually human evolution took place, how religion was formed, its inherent symbiosis with mankind and how the future could look with, or without it.

I will make reference to, and cite renowned and decorated authors in their respective scientific and philosophical fields of how we came about and what shaped the 7 billion of us alive today.

When I am asked, mainly by Christian followers, why I think and believe as I do, I find it restrictive to verbally explain or elaborate on such a vast subject. I cannot encompass my answer in a few words or sentences, so in part, the explanation of my non-conformity or free thinking positivist ideology is hopefully answered in this book. It may also not change the mindset of many, in fact most theists, but what it will definitely do, is let those who think the same, know that they are not alone.

Nature, Evolution, Religion and Science remain the most fascinating subjects as they address the most fundamental questions that any thinking human being can ask him or herself: Where are we from, why are we here and how do we fit into the universe?

It is not my intention to offend anyone in writing this book.

Evidence and logic are my yardsticks. Science and reason supersede beliefs and the ‘feelings’ associated with those beliefs.

Belief without evidence is, after all, just a belief.

If your ‘feelings’ are affected when reading this, then I apologise, but that is the price we have to pay for a better humanity, a society in which truth supersedes myth.

I would rather live with the painful truth of reason, rational thought and its reality based on fact, than live with

the beautiful lie of religion.

Nothing mythological, supernatural, imaginary, suppositious and fictitious will ever stop me from highlighting a doctrine or philosophy that is not only intellectually dishonest,

but ultimately harmful to humanity.

I do not disrespect you as a person, I disrespect religion, because I believe that ultimately it is extremely harmful and detrimental to our species, in fact to the wellbeing of all species on our fragile world, despite the Oedipal or Electra illusionary comfort it brings to the believer. To insult a nonentity or an immoral doctrine by exposing its flaws is, in my book, not even an issue. Blasphemy is a victimless crime. The concept of ‘militant atheism’ is also a nonsensical one. Unlike religion, I have not burned believers at the stake, tortured them on racks until they confess, crashed planes into buildings, or blown myself and others up at a checkpoint or a market. My efforts (at least to theists) might be seen as simply asking questions that religion can’t answer.

If you, as the reader, take with you only one or two core concepts that rational thought and reason provide, one or two facts that science has proved, or simply to use logic to question what you may or may not believe, then we have contributed to a better world. Humanity is better off knowing, as knowledge leads to a more caring, compassionate humanity. Our species and thus all species gain from what we think, what we know, what we learn – and what we do or do not do with it. We are the guardians of our planet; there is no interventionist god that will intervene, assist or magically fix what our past has broken. Our future will have the same outcome if we don’t change.

There has never ever been violent action for a non-god. Most militant actions throughout history have, in fact, been taken in defence, or for a god. Or in the name of a god. I am merely highlighting the aspects of an immoral doctrine. The moral ‘high ground’ cannot possibly be held by any of the three major religions. Over the course of the three hundred-odd pages that follow, I will try to explain why I think so.

Your beliefs do not define who you are, your behaviour does. It is not what you believe that makes you a good person, it is what you do, that does.

It is ironic that when discussing or debating this subject on a social platform like Facebook, insults from so-called ‘Christian’ folk are very often viciously hurled at non-believers from behind anonymous desks and keypads when reason is abandoned, usually because they have no answer and ad hominem is then implemented (an argument made personally against an opponent, instead of against the opponent’s argument).

Non-believers are even called fools and often the verse from Psalm 14:1-3 is quoted: ‘The fool says in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none that does good. The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any that act wisely, that seek after God. They have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt; there is none that does good, no, not one.’

If even a fool knows that there is no god, is there hope for those who think there is one?

What many Christians forget is what is said in Matthew 5:22: ‘Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.’ Christians who love insulting non-believers with the verse from Psalms, do not know their Bible very well and risk burning in hell, as in Matthew, purely for the sake of insulting a non-believer or a believer in another god or religion.

Whether you are Muslim, Judaist or Christian or believe that you should worship monkeys, trees or the moon, your offence (if any) should be perceived in terms of questioning your religiosity and how deeply seated it is within the human psyche, and rather let logic, intellect and science be the common denominator, ultimately converging again with human compassion, caring and love which ultimately define who we are and our moral obligation, not only to our species, but also to the others that inhabit our planet. It is always ironical how desperately believers bring love into an illogical doctrine whose core concept is founded on exactly the opposite in terms of the horror of most of the Old Testament, as displayed and enacted by its ruthless god. The New Testament is also not much different, where this being sacrifices his own child (sic), a human sacrifice, in order to save those, yet to be born, from the sin he created in the first place when he introduced a talking snake to a female nudist who wanted to learn and taste the fruit also created by this god. I will expand on this in later chapters.

Neither should the believer be seen as a bad person – this is not what I am saying. A random quote from Criss Jami, a modern existentialist philosopher, is appropriate here: ‘The theistic philosopher has a tendency to devalue insufficient world views, ideologies, and quite often common sense for the greater good, and in such cases, one should not be discouraged when seen as a bad guy. If he stresses over man’s perception of a righteous heart, then he has given his heart to man.’

You as a person should not be perceived as bad because you embrace a flawed theosophical doctrine. The underlying sentiment in human nature is essentially an inherent beneficial reciprocity (which is evolutionary) for the betterment of humanity. Let that knowledge, understanding and compassion and, most of all, love be your guide. Your benevolence utterly and completely surpasses your belief, despite the incorrect perception that one can be good only when you have God.

Just as specialisation occurs in natural selection, so mankind’s natural genetic pre-disposition is to specialise, and this could ultimately bring about the extinction of the species unless there is change. We shall look at Spaceship Earth’s course and how we need to seriously alter, or rewrite the ‘handbook’, not only from an environmental and ecologically sustainable perspective but also a total paradigm shift or ‘zeitgeist’ of universal planetary consciousness and the way we think.

Religion, culture and survivalist subconscious dogmatic ideals are trapping us in this ‘perpetual religious matrix’ in which we find ourselves, without knowing that we are in it. We have to evolve and change to become cognitively aware that each one of us has a role to play in the inception and formulation of a zeitgeist of some kind. Its inception would be the natural formation of a subconscious, intellectual, scientific, humanist and philosophical nature and not formal acknowledgement of an official, reality-based structure. Our morality imposed on it, only to the degree of our understanding of morality which also has to undergo some transformation after the damage that biblical influence and archaic superstition such as the dogma of religion has done to us, will be explored in Chapter Seven. I am not saying here that one should be immoral, in fact quite the opposite.

From the moment that time began, to the evolutionary forces that shaped human life to this point, some mythical superbeing, whether Yahweh, Allah, Krishna or the Gitche Manitou of the native American Indians, could not possibly have had any influence whatsoever on this process. I shall clearly demonstrate that ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘it’, depending on your culture and where you are geographically located, simply cannot and does not exist. We all pray to the ‘right’ God and we will go to war and kill over who has the better imaginary friend – and therein lies most of our planet’s problems.

You are good without God. If you had to lose your religion, do you think for one single moment that you would turn into a serial killer or start abusing your husband, wife or child? No, you will not. You are Good without God, naturally. Your belief does not make you a better person – it is what you do, that does.

Mankind is an enlightened species and we are empowered to dream, to explore life and learn all that the universe has to offer – and we should do so, free from the encumbering load of religious doctrine and all the baggage it brings with it. The subconscious moral ‘angst’ to which its empty sophistry so viciously demands obedience, and the reward, a heavenly afterlife or a burning eternal hell. Religion is inherently intellectually dishonest and we brought it upon ourselves; it is our own doing and we should undo it, if not for ourselves then for our children! From a theist or even an agnostic perspective, the argument that religion is or should be used beneficially in utilitarian terms, for example faith-based institutions like aid givers who provide shelters and food for the homeless, is essentially a good thing. However, in doing so in the name of an invisible being who has yet to prove his, her, or its existence, one is being intellectually dishonest and giving credence to the delusion with which mankind has burdened itself. Utility versus truth.

‘Faithless’ institutions, which in many cases do more for the poor and the homeless, are refreshingly liberated and intellectually honest with their purpose, based on true altruistic motives of mankind simply being good to itself. These institutions do not include or hold to ransom any deluded religious reciprocity in terms of the illusion of a fabricated, mythical reward or an eternal hell in the next life. They are being truthful to themselves and they express true altruism, which in itself is an evolutionary trait and one which we will look at later in this book. Live now and live good.

The atheist perspective or viewpoint is based on science and knowledge about the natural world, on reason and on rational thought. Theism assumes. It is not for the atheist to prove the non-existence of an invisible being or a non-entity, but rather for the theist to prove its existence – and to date there has been no evidence for this other than faith, and faith is not proof.

Faith is the belief in things without evidence. If you had evidence, you wouldn’t need faith. Faith is the absence of reason. It is not a virtue, and in respect of religion, should not be respected at all.

Unexplained events or so called ‘miracles’ are also in no way proof of God.

Which of the 3700 monotheistic gods created by man should take the credit for this phenomena? Every theist or deist would without doubt claim that their god is responsible for this ‘miracle’ or unexplained event. Most unexplained events have been explained through the steady march of science, like the plague, killing between 75 and 200 million people in the 1348 to 1350 outbreak. It was not as a result of God’s anger, but a far smaller culprit named Yersinia pestis, a bacterium carried by rodents. There are many more examples of pure unenlightened ignorance, but as science itself grows, teaches and educates, so unexplained events diminish and thereby the concept of an interventionist god is inconveniently reduced for the believer.

I have repeatedly been asked why I wrote this book. The book in itself is the answer to that question, but the shortened version of my answer, is as follows:

It is because I care. It is because we (there are many others like me) do not want to see our fellow human beings subjected to an intellectually dishonest and self-enriching serfdom of mythical devotion to an imaginary and invisible being whose fundamentals are so clearly and utterly flawed. You should rather be spending your time with your partners, your spouses and friends and family, people whom you care for and love, instead of worshipping a deity or myth (sometimes in lavishly huge cathedrals and churches) fabricated and conceived in the minds of primitive desert dwellers in a time of extreme hardship and suffering. I am not writing this for financial gain but for the principle or cause. Exposing and challenging irrational beliefs, superstitions and proselytising reason and rational thought in a sea of fundamental theism, is in fact a lonely one. You are not going to win a popularity contest.

What makes this a challenge is also that many theists would often close their eyes and ears to the deafening sounds of reason and cling to their belief, as illogical or unreasonable as it may be. Having been indoctrinated since childhood, many absolutely believe it to be true, without any doubt, and real, and they feel it. Feeling is an emotion and an emotion can overpower reason. We see emotion occurring daily in people’s lives, often to their own detriment.

One might very well venture to say that this atheistic perspective is in itself like a religion, a faith if you will. My answer to that is simple: we do not have a godhead or doctrine to which we pray, or worship, or make sacrifices to. We do not symbolically eat the flesh and drink the blood or pray or congregate or gather in the name of a god. Our atheistic ethos is to humanity and mostly humanist values based on truth, reason, rational thought and science, and to the knowledge learnt from it. Knowledge that pulled us out of the dark ages of crusades and inquisitions, of witch-hunts and the suffering of women and children, and the mindless misery and mental and physical poverty associated with archaic primitive religious concepts, perpetuated and carried through the ages. Knowledge that levitated us above a flat earth, beyond its limiting boundaries of oxygen and gravity, to space, exploring and exposing the secrets of our origins, exposing myth for what it is and revealing truth and the majestic wonder of the universe as it is and was, obtaining those answers which we as a conscious thinking species continuously seek.

Subjection to this thoughtless, anti-intellectualised religious piety is perhaps the worst moral ‘sin’ that humanity can impose upon itself. Perhaps unbeknown to yourself, the worst horrors of violence and subjugation are being perpetrated against the human race at this very moment. As you read this, men, women and children are being abused and murdered by fundamentalist extremists (Christian, Muslim and Jewish to name but a few) in the name of a god and the religious doctrines associated with that god.

This book, is not only a consciousness raiser regarding the intellectual dishonesty and the delusion that religion imposes, as well as the violence it perpetually perpetrates, but will also hopefully help to eradicate its theocratically skewed fundamentalism. It’s a book about truth which aims to unveil the mask of religion and expose the delusion of blind faith through reason. It’s about escaping the cultish clutches of its ‘numinosity’ (being filled with the presence of a supernatural force), beyond the logic of rational thought, making reason irrelevant, to pacify our natural human xenophobic tendencies, giving fear of the unknown a sword; a sword which could ultimately turn on its owner.

After having many discussions (from ministers to Muslims and everything in between) I simply cannot sit by and watch how this terribly destructive force and the nature of its malevolent division destroys what is inherently good in humanity, despite the illusion and comfort that religion brings to many individual believers. Just because we are not exposed to its harsh daily, deadly reality, from a relatively protected environment (in terms of experiencing or witnessing its followers fighting and killing and dying, the very moment as you read this, each believing they are doing so for their personal and better imaginary friend), does not alter the fact that religion is not good, that it is in fact the worst moral choice any human being can possibly make. The claims by religionists that its benevolence supersedes the negative aspects are clearly refuted here. Religious apologists who refute or defend biblical literacy, or more specifically the literal interpretation of the Bible or Qur’an by claiming that it reflects another time or another era and that we should not translate it or perceive it in that way today, are completely missing the point. Literal, Authentic, Figurative or Imaginative, it still depicts its progenitor as a ruthless, jealous dictator and therein lies the fundamental immorality, cemented in the very foundations of the Old Testament’s dehumanizing, misogynistic horror. These books depict and illustrate all the emotions that human beings are capable of, which indicates and asserts the fact that the Bible was manmade. How can these gods be jealous or vengeful or dictate sexual behaviour, put a price on women and slaves and impose dietary restrictions on its creation? Men do those things.

Does Religion have any benevolence to mankind?

I do admit that it has beneficial placebic properties which pacify and comfort our primitive oedipal, evolutionary minds, but this in no way negates its universal malevolent past and the violent foundations on which its stone tablets are based and from which they are carved – and also incidentally and conveniently broken by its very author when he started killing thousands of innocent infants on many occasions with his own hand as specifically mentioned in this book.

Spirituality is often perceived to be of a religious nature when, in fact they are two completely separate issues. Religionists often confuse or merge the two, identifying their own spirituality or numinous experience with that of the god they perceive or believe in. Religion is without doubt much more destructive to our species than its purported benevolence, and the evidence is empirically clear and apparent.

Pascal’s wager states in short that one should, despite reason and rational thought, still believe in the existence of a god and ‘live as though God exists’ reaffirming one’s faith. If God does not exist, then you are no worse off in death, but if he does, then you gain eternal life. My problem with this is that it presupposes that whoever subscribes to that concept, in essence inadvertently admits that that faith is not a genuine faith and that one is not truly and sincerely ‘faithful’ to that God. This is because some reciprocity is expected in terms of a comfortable afterlife. According to scriptures, those who do not have genuine faith are not eligible to enter a post-life heaven or mythical nirvana. According to Jesus you have to fully be indoctrinated with religion and have true faith to enter heaven, as he states in Matthew 7:21-23: Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

It seems far more plausible and logical to give theoretical physicists, scientists, archaeologists and Nobel Peace Prize winners the benefit of the doubt than blindly believing the one and only canonised version of 44 misogynist, primitive sand dwelling authors who lived around 2000 years ago and thought that the wheelbarrow was the pinnacle of human achievement. A twelve-year-old girl today knows more about the universe, its structure and where we come from, than all of those primitive 44 misogynist, nomadic sand dwelling men, whose books were included in the Bible and who claimed divinity, clutching onto a mythical hope in a harsh and cruel landscape. A book that was retrospectively written to affirm miracles, a book that is unverified, unscientific, unproven in many respects, an immoral fairytale/ horror story, as opposed to a million proofs stating the opposite in terms of evolution and what science and knowledge has proved.

Noah, Jonah and other bizarre tales are exposed for what they are, fairytales. The Ten Commandments have scientifically been proved to have absolutely no divinity whatsoever, neither has Jesus – he was in fact the Father of God because he was the main progenitor of his mythological father. Immaculate conception, virginal births, the Koran and Islam, the Bible and the horror of the Old Testament, all get more than a casual perusal. The origins of our universe without a cause or creator, the Big Bang, Cosmological, Planetary and eventually Human Evolution come under scrutiny and our genetic past is traced right back to the San Bushmen in Africa. The scientific exploration of our origins is explored as opposed to two nudists and a talking snake. Early man, the inherent delusional psychosis of belief systems and the ‘God Gene’ that sadly evolved with us when we became a conscious, thinking species are exposed by works of Sigmund Freud and Frederick Feuerbach. The morality of religion is questioned, and heaven and hell, multiple and parallel universes in a metaphysical universe are considered. Our children and the future of our planet without religion is questioned. Our Altruistic Evolutionary traits reinforce our Humanist values of basic reciprocity and ultimately determine the fact that we are a moral species. Our only immorality is in fact, our own ‘manmade’ gods and the various religions associated with them.

Atheists have never started any religious war, killed in the name of any religion or their respective gods, nor will we, even in opposition, but we will stand victorious against religion without raising a finger. Religion is destroying itself and we are the third largest and fastest growing demographic on the planet, i.e. those not affiliating themselves with any organized religion. The first being Islam and then Christianity. Reason, rational thought, the end of delusion and most of all love for humanity will prevail.

Douglas Adams, rationalist, humanist, author,