The Happy Heathen: A Teenager’s Escape From Religion

By Ben Carey

Have you been brought up in a religious household? And do you have doubts? Could your parents, your priest, your teachers have got it all wrong? Can their tales of magic, miracles and life after death be reconciled with the solid evidence of the world around you? This booklet examines the reasons why primitive man believed in gods, and then shows how our steady increase in scientific knowledge, accelerating all the time, makes gods redundant. Touching upon how the accident of birthplace determines one's beliefs, the booklet uses the Bible, with its contradictions, its absurdities, its denigration of women and its cruelty, as an exemplar of all the world's scriptures and how they can mislead us.

Yet at the same time, this booklet preaches tolerance – except of the intolerant. There is no denial of the benefits which the more benevolent religions have brought, and the need for tact when dealing with believers is stressed. But at the end, the message is clear: all religions are the superstitions of the wishful-thinking, too many are malign, and atheism leads to contentment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Sep 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805146599

Book preview

9781805146599.jpg

Copyright © 2023 Ben Carey

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Matador

Unit E2 Airfield Business Park,

Harrison Road, Market Harborough,

Leicestershire. LE16 7UL

Tel: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

Twitter: @matadorbooks

ISBN 9781805146599

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Contents

Introduction

Once Upon a Time...

Why People Believe in God

God – in the 21st Century?

The Bible

A Benevolent God?

Dealing with the Response

Morality – the Question of Right and Wrong

Life as an Infidel

The Problem with Religion

Introduction

I went to a pretty awful school. There were no league tables then but, if there had been, the school would certainly have come close to the bottom – just as it does today.

However, there was one teacher more persuasive than most, and he managed to put across an idea which was to stick in my lazy mind. Have opinions of your own, he said. There are always big questions to be answered. Imagine you are Prime Minister. Should we go to war? Should we hang murderers and cane schoolboys? [That was when we did both]. Should we pass this law or that law? Read the papers, read books, ask questions. And after that, make up your own mind.

Well, I tried to do so and quite soon came across one of the biggest questions of all. Did I believe in God? As a small child I suppose I had simply taken God for granted because every one else seemed to do so, and I certainly approved of Christmas and the presents it brought. My school was what is now known as a faith school with lots of services in the chapel, a