

### Christianity Killed Christ:

### Science will be the Resurrection

<o>

### Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Jake Lyron. All rights reserved.

The right of Jake Lyron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988 (UK Law).

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

# Contents

Foreword

The Bible Study

The Alpha Course

Scepticism, Narcissism, Spirituality

Another Christian Meeting

The Jehovah's Witnesses

Conclusion

More by Jake Lyron

# Foreword

The title of this book may give the impression that I am against Jesus, but in fact that is far from the case as I have always been a big fan and I write in support of the true spirit of Christ. What I criticise in this book is how Jesus' message of love and truth has been distorted over the millennia by people calling themselves Christians. I write not to destroy Christ's spirit but to help bring him back.

In this book I have hidden the identities of people I have written about by changing their names and various other details. Any similarity between the people I describe and people in real life is purely coincidental.

# The Bible Study

As part of the spiritual exploration I delved into Christianity on a small, local scale. Through a meeting with a local vicar I found out about a nearby Bible study meeting. He had a word with the organisers and I was duly invited along.

It was dark that evening as winter headed our way and I pulled up on my bicycle at the gates of the manor house where the study was to take place. A few others started arriving, one elderly gentleman in a Porsche. I thought to myself is this man coming along to explore Jesus? Will this be an exercise in Christian hypocrisy?

We chatted briefly, the few of us with a couple of elderly ladies and made our way through the gates and up to the house. A lovely house. Rather huge, of beautiful sandstone and set in extensive grounds in an extremely desirable rural location. I would estimate its value at pushing a million pounds, easily.

The man of the house, let's call him Alan, greeted us and called us through to the kitchen. More of the Christian fellowship arrived, all except one were elderly, as I suspected might be the case. It reflected the state of the Christian church in Britain at the time, with dwindling congregations as the numbers of ageing believers drops off as each one leaves Earth for whatever afterlife awaits them at the other side (if any). But they were all nice enough, friendly and welcoming as I was a newcomer. We had small talk and then headed for the drawing room for the study class.

The inside of the house was as beautiful as the outside. Rather grand with the best of everything. The Aga warmed the kitchen, the double stair case overwhelmed the hall and landing. In the drawing room stood a grand piano, plasma screen TV, chandeliers and what appeared to be an actual lion skin hearth rug by the crackling log fire. Apart from the dead body parts on the floor it was lovely.

We sat about the various sofas and chairs and Alan did some welcomes and introductions. The Bible extract for the evening was from the Book of Acts. The section described how, after the death of Christ, the apostles were left to pick up the pieces and formed themselves into the proto-Christian movement, establishing methods for worship and such, the beginnings of the Christian church.

I was loaned a Bible for the evening and people took turns to read from the book. After we had finished the section, Alan directed the analysis and discussion.

Early in the reading things got down to the kind of weirdness which is often present in the Bible with "They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them." [The Bible: New International Version, Acts 2:3]. Alan asked us what we thought this meant; did it actually happen like that or what? The group fell silent. I felt what I perceived as awkwardness. I may be wrong in this, but I felt that inside the individuals there, they were uncomfortable with the bizarre writings. I reckoned that each of them was scared to say what they really felt, that it was embarrassing and incredulous and that no, they did not believe it. As I say, I may be entirely wrong in this assessment, but the silence spoke volumes, at least to me.

The silence suggested to me that each was in fear of saying "that's mad" lest they should be labelled a faithless unbeliever by the group. Psychologists have shown _group conformity_ to be powerful, driving people to agree on things which are unequivocally false. It seemed that it was striking the people here too and bringing cohesion to this group of Christians who were each individually afraid of being shunned by saying they didn't agree. The experience of the moment made me feel sadness for them as I felt the Christian orthodoxy was doing them a disservice, forcing them to absorb falsehoods. I felt rather sorry for them. But it's my interpretation of events; I am still willing to entertain the possibility that I was wrong.

So the tongues of fire went by unchallenged and were accepted as gospel.

The book of Acts went on with more bizarre events such as the sun being turned to darkness, the moon to blood, blood and fire and billows of smoke, people coming back from the dead, people changing the languages they speak, people getting visions in dreams, lords on thrones with a right hand man in a parallel dimension, escaping death, and 3,000 or so people being dunked under water to give them everlasting life.

This was the overall tone of the following section. But the feeling it gave me was of it being very typically Biblical. I felt tired at reading it, like it was the same old stuff that people have been sold for the best part of two thousand years. When I read the wild antics of God with tongues of fire, a moon of blood and so on, it seemed to me that the words may have been written by some ancient scribe and a theological agitator who were so desperate to get people to fear their 'one true God' that they made a whole load of scary stuff up just to impress and intimidate people. We still get occasional compulsive liars nowadays. Some people have no conscience in spinning lies to impress others. They exaggerate and when some naive member of their audience says "Wow! That's incredible!" they get a shot of pleasure inducing chemicals shooting round their brain as they have quite literally enthralled somebody (that is, brought somebody else within their power of control by spinning lies). Our body chemistry gives us this kind of reward. It is a survival trait. To survive, we must control resources, so to train us to do this a lot, our genetic programming gives us pleasure chemicals when we do this – dopamine, endorphins, those sorts of things. So for example, when we go shopping, and buy that huge TV, bring it home and set it up, the chemicals fire off and we feel good because we have brought a new resource into our control, and so better guaranteed our genetic survival. People get that same chemical buzz when they control humans too, because rightly or wrongly, our fellow humans are a resource of sorts which we have to get along with in order to survive. Some people _get along_ with their fellow humans in a system of mutual respect and support, other people are more pro-active with controlling the human resource and are actively manipulative in getting the people around them to serve them in some way.

So the people who wrote parts of the Bible had these same urges to control others, just as people have today. And so they would seek to control people with the written word, and if that meant writing mind-blowing wild fantasies in order to win over a naive audience, then that is what they would do. And that is what they did.

It is sad really, as ancients scriptures often have valuable truths to give us, but they are mixed in with the falsehoods of unscrupulous scribes who have marred the original good message.

The scriptures such as Acts would originally have belonged to an oral tradition, the stories being told by word of mouth over many generations before somebody actually got round to writing it all down. And just as the game of Chinese Whispers works, the original truthful story of what happened will have been distorted each time it was told until before long it wasn't much like what really happened at all. The supernatural parts of Acts didn't happen. Somebody made them up.

I have witnessed this Chinese Whispers effect happening myself. I do it too, though without malevolent intent. I often read short stories which carry a message of wisdom from various belief systems, sometimes Taoist, Buddhist, Christian or whatever. I am sometimes keen to tell people what I have learned so I relate the story which I found useful by word of mouth. But I am aware that I can't quite remember the exact details of the story so I fill in the gaps to try to get the point across. In fact I did this only yesterday. I was trying to teach my son how logical conclusions can be reached from initial premises. My example went roughly thus: "All men have brains. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates has a brain." Two premises reaching one logically correct conclusion. But my son had already heard the correct example and put me right. It should have been: "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal." So, although I was right in showing my son how logic works, I got the famous example of logic wrong. I had no desire to mislead him, but with the best will in the world, I distorted the example until it was different from the very ancient example that is commonly known to philosophers.

So if a simple story can be distorted by one well-meaning man in one telling, we should definitely expect the stories of the Bible to be distorted when they have been told for a far greater length of time and often by people who are delusional and/or malevolent.

But the silence I mentioned in the Bible study meeting, just said to me that instinctively the Christian group knew the tongues of fire had been made up but each was too scared to say.

The Christian church associates strength with believing the 'word of God'. Anybody who questions what appears in the Bible is looked down on as a faithless heathen. Believing wild fantasies is seen as a virtue, so there is built into the system a way in which rational thinking is discouraged, due to social pressure. Social esteem is an extremely powerful force. We all want (and actually to some extent need) others to think we are 'cool'. If they do, then they will cooperate with us – do business with us, help us out, maybe marry us and give us children. So to survive we must have others approve of us. That means we must show to the group that we agree with the group, even if the belief that the group holds is irrational. People do this a lot. And so the Christians have this group conformity pressure to believe the falsehoods. Claiming a part of the Bible to be false is too dangerous – doing so would mean exclusion from the group and that means losing all the genetic survival benefits of working with them, receiving assistance, relationships and possibly children. It is for genetic survival that people believe falsehoods from the Bible.

In the meeting I was looking ahead to something which would be very interesting indeed. Coming up was a strong moral message and I was keen to observe how this group of quite wealthy Christians were going to deal with it.

In Acts, the apostles form their new Fellowship of Believers, what was the beginning of the Christian Church. This has to be true. Every movement has its origins in a small number of people getting together to start the ball rolling. This happened. Whether you are a believer or atheist the truth is the same; a group of proto-Christians did meet and make decisions on how they were going to establish their new movement.

The next line was the part I was waiting for. "All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need" [Acts 2:44-45]. Alan read this out again to the group and asked if we should live like that.

I waited for the response. This was the crux of the matter. Finally, after pages of fantasy and distraction, we got to a couple of lines of Christ's message: give to the poor. I looked at the grand piano, the chandelier, plasma screen TV and hearth rug. I felt the grandeur of the manor house and studied the faces of the Christians in the group. The man who arrived in the Porsche said nothing. Alan waited for comments, but nobody offered one and another loud silence descended on the group. He pushed the question some more, though he seemed quite hesitant himself. It was radical, he claimed to give it all away, but was it necessary to be so radical in today's world? I anticipated the followers avoiding the truth. And they did.

To help gain a clearer perspective on the reality of poverty today, I offered to the group something I had learned from the philosopher and author Peter Singer. In his book _The Life You Can Save: How to Play Your Part in Ending World Poverty_ he referred to studies which have been made as to how much, in money terms, it costs to save the life of somebody threatened with death from poverty. The World Health Organisations efforts to save lives through resolving poverty caused by malaria, diarrhoea, respiratory infections, and measles is calculated to operate at roughly $300 US dollars per life saved [William Easterly, _The White Man's Burden_ (New York: The Penguin Press, 2006), p. 252.] I gave the group the figure and pointed out that together we had enough wealth to save many lives if we chose to do so, and if we followed the example of the apostles from the book of Acts.

These Christians should have welcomed this truth; Jesus himself made no qualms about it, his opinion was clear. "If you want to be perfect, go sell your possessions and give to the poor." he said [Luke 18: 22-25]. He also said that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven [Matthew 19: 16-24]. He said that when we feast we should invite, the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind [Luke 14:13]. He said that come judgement day, God will save those that have fed the hungry, given drinks to the thirsty, and clothes to the naked [Matthew 25: 31-46]. He praised the good Samaritan who helped the stranger in need [Luke 10:33]. More than anything else his message was that we should help the poor.

When I told the group that they could save lives by giving their money away, I felt a tangible awkwardness. People shuffled a little bit and for the most part opted out of the discussion. Alan pushed it along a bit, encouraging that we should explore the issue and himself pointing out that radical charity like that described in Acts was a great challenge.

One woman suggested that people in Third World countries were happy. For a moment I thought that yes they might be happy with less while we in the wealthy west demonstrate vulgar discontent even when we have all the lavish trappings of wealth. But no. It isn't happy when your child may die of malnourishment, when you can't afford to send them to school, when your hut is falling apart from storm damage, when you have to walk miles to fetch clean water, when you have perpetual diarrhoea, when you don't know who will get the next mosquito bite which brings malaria. It struck me afterwards that this was a way for the lady to rationalise away the uncomfortable truth, pretending that things are fine as they are. Which they are not.

There was some discussion about baking cakes to sell for charitable ends. The idea from the Bible that we should give our own money away was rapidly quashed.

It could have been predicted, from the moment the Porsche pulled up at the manor house gates, but I was still sad. In fact, if every Christian was indeed a Christian there would be no poverty. There is plenty of wealth to go around; it has been proven by economists. People are only poor because rich people are selfish.

I felt that Christ had been killed once again in the meeting. "I am the truth" he said, yet the truth about how we can help the poor was destroyed in the Christian Bible study group. They weren't in fact Christians at all. They read the Bible, sing the hymns and pray because that is the way that they can _avoid_ Christ – _Christ the truth_. The people dying of hunger don't want us to pray. They want us to send food. To share our wealth. They want us to embrace the truth, to embrace Christ. They want us to give up Christianity and start being Christians.

About the same time as I was meeting with the Bible study group I met with and listened to another Christian man who was telling the story of a Christian woman who went to meet the Dalai Lama. She asked him if she should convert to Buddhism. His answer was no and that to truly experience spirituality she should explore deeper into her own faith of Christianity. The man explained the reason why by analogy. Faith, he argued, is like a well. If you wish to get down to the water level, you don't dig ten wells each at two metres deep. Instead you must dig one well at twenty metres deep. On first inspection this sounds reasonable, for a while I thought there may be some merit to it so I went away to consider it.

But as I pondered, the argument, I had to conclude it did not reflect reality. Because I personally have learned all kinds of valuable truths from lots of different beliefs – Taoism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and more. So it wasn't true. I thought about the logic of the well analogy. Then an alternative analogy, I reckoned, could be applied to draw the completely opposite conclusion. It goes like this: Faith is like a milk churn. In this large container, what is considered to be the best part of the milk (the cream) rises to the top. To get the best then, we should not drain one milk churn dry, but instead skim off the top layer of cream from numerous churns of milk. Just like the water well analogy, on first inspection it sounds quite reasonable, yet reaches exactly the opposite conclusion as for the wells. The two analogies cannot both be true since their conclusions are mutually exclusive, and that would be absurd, so we can conclude that either one or both of the analogy arguments is false.

Now, my observations in my life add evidence to support the milk churn analogy, so I conclude the well analogy to be false. It is the kind of logical fallacy that permeates religions, and much of the time I spend talking to religious people is spent deconstructing their logical fallacies and trying to get to the truth. Since a logical fallacy is a falsehood, and since Christ said he was truth, then it follows that Christians who argue with fallacies are heretics and they are destroying Christ rather than upholding what he stands for.

But the man with the well analogy seemed to be a lovely chap, I have no doubt that he thought he was promoting Christian values such as love, truth, compassion, forgiveness and so on. I don't think he was evil, he was simply confused, but his confusion led to him crucifying Christ.

A lot of the time that Christians talk about Christ they are persecuting him. They use the usual defence mechanisms recognised by psychologists to stave off Christ-truth. This argument about the wells was _rationalising_ – a subtle tweaking of truth to make it sound more palatable than it really is. I spend a lot of time studying this kind of distortion of the truth, many people are not even interested, and I still struggle with it. Often the rationalising is so cunning that it passes me by and I can be duped just as easily as the person doing the duping. It is mainly in quiet contemplation after a discussion that I review what I have been told and frequently discover some or other falsehood. The devil at work, as ever. Those dastardly selfish genes trying to survive at all costs. This is why meditation is a great benefit, or as I consider it _quiet contemplation._ This is a truth that does cross the boundaries between many beliefs and sitting in silence for an hour or two each evening has helped me enormously in getting to the truth of whatever has reached me that day.

I looked into my book of logical fallacies to check out the water well analogy, it seemed it was a _non sequitur_ , a common fallacy where the conclusion does not follow the premises. For example "Beaches have sand. People like to walk on beaches. Therefore we should have sand in our houses." So, just because water wells need to be dug fairly deep, it does not follow that in a completely unrelated subject, we should all stick to the religion we were raised into. In fact, it does not logically follow that we should ascribe to any religion at all.

# The Alpha Course

When I started going to the Alpha Course, run by my local Anglican Church, I first read their promotional flyers on the course. One of them had a mock style opinion poll with three tick boxes. The question was "Does God exist?" The first tick box was "yes", the second was "no", the third was "probably". Even before the Alpha Course had got its recruit, they were already crucifying Christ. The tick boxes were biased in favour of belief because they neglected to include boxes for the options "I don't know", "probably not" or even "I don't care." The organisers were preventing people from vaguely thinking that there probably is no God, and since the evidence suggests that is a valid conclusion, the opinion poll was preventing the truth from being considered. A persecution of what I am going to call from here on _Christ-truth_. Think of this term as Christ being synonymous to truth but to differentiate this concept of Christ from the usual Christian concept of Christ I am calling it something different.

The banner for the Alpha Course above the church door used the tag line "Life is worth exploring". The marketing gurus got their job right here. For most people words like 'God', 'Jesus', or 'faith' are big turn offs. I suspect that if they had been honest with their motives and used the line "God is worth exploring" then there would be far fewer people entering the doors to experience their course.

But life, in my opinion, _is_ worth exploring. Exploring is a great adventure. It doesn't require great travel and you never know what wonders you will find on your doorstep. And the marketing consultants spotted people's active curiosity about life and used it to the Church's advantage. On the banner there is a drawing of a man holding a huge question mark, again encouraging people to be curious and seek answers.

In the introductory meeting it wasn't long before the vicar doing the speaking attempted to answer that question mark. Jesus apparently is the answer. He spoke for some while about people who went through their lives feeling empty, that somehow something remained unanswered even after they had gained huge success and wealth. He claimed that that kind of emptiness comes about from not discovering Jesus. It wasn't surprising he said that, but I anticipated that it would take the course longer to try to convert me to Christianity.

The vicar spoke as though this inner question mark is a bad thing and must be answered. But actually it isn't. Life is all about seeking answers, solving mysteries, learning, discovering new things, exploring the great adventure that the miracle of life has given each one of us. It's the puzzle of life which makes it fun, and if the puzzle ever gets solved by someone telling you the answer then the fun stops. If you do a cross word, you don't look to the solution and copy down the words into the grid without considering the puzzles. If you watch a murder mystery film, you don't fast forward to the end to see who did it. If you passed an exam because you cheated, found all the answers then scribbled them down parrot fashion, you would get no joy and no satisfaction from proving you know the answers.

The point is that life _must_ be a mystery for it to be interesting and rewarding. Being told to stop wondering about the meaning of life because Jesus is the answer is in fact incredibly dull. And also it happens to be an incomplete answer.

So the Alpha Course marketing and message contradict each other. With the big question mark on the banner they correctly identified that people get joy from mysterious puzzles, but in their message they went on to destroy that mysterious joy by telling us that the answer is Jesus.

At the first session of the course I sat at the meal next to a regular church goer, a kindly middle aged lady. Let's call her Sonya. If you were to stereotype a church going lady she would probably be it, with mousy hair, glasses, slight build, a bookish kind of job, a very gentle personality and a cardigan. I liked her a lot. We got talking about faith and such and I explained to her how life is a mystery with clues arriving all the while to those who are observant. I mentioned some Latin words I had read on a beam in a pub which said " _in vino veritas"_ – in wine is truth. Most people take this to mean that when somebody has got drunk, they start speaking the truth, which in itself has some truth to it. But I pointed out that it was quite resonant with the concept that Christ said he was the truth and he said that wine was his blood, so perhaps those Latin words were the Christian message which had been disguised and lost. I told her I liked to explore these kinds of things. Apparently she had already done the Alpha Course some while back and she pressed me on spirituality asking to hear about the kinds of things I had discovered along the way. So Sonya still had questions. She had done the course which claimed that Jesus was the answer to those questions, but still her quest went on. The course failed to stop her searching for answers. And that's how it should be. Spiritual growth, or learning, call it what you will, should never cease, it should always make us more tomorrow than we were today.

Curiosity is a powerful tool. Genetically it makes sense for us to be curious. If we are to survive in the world, we must understand the world, then we develop a mental map of the world which is accurate and which we can refer to to make good decisions which help us to live another day. So there is every reason to believe that DNA has programmed us to be curious animals, with a natural obsession with learning. And, if you look into this I reckon you will find that when we solve a mystery we get a shot of rewarding brain chemicals that make us feel good. Then we can get addicted to learning and growing which is exactly what our genes need if they are to survive. Einstein said curiosity was his greatest strength and we should make it ours too if we are going to take the spiritual adventure to the limit.

In the modern world there is a trap which has derailed many people's curiosity and that is the prevalence of falsehoods around us. People spout falsehoods all the time, and we can think we have learned something when we take them on board. We can get the same rewarding feelings in the brain from learning falsehoods which are of no use to us at all. Added to that, the media are obsessed with falsehoods. Go into a book store and you will find at least half of the shelves given over to fiction. People absorb fictional falsehoods with the same obsessive curiosity as they do facts (or perhaps more so). In evolutionary terms, we have not yet evolved to cope with all those published falsehoods and so the brain is often powerless to stop itself seeking out fictional stories because it wrongly thinks that the survival of its DNA will be ensured by learning said falsehoods.

The same applies to biblical stories. I have been reading some ancient Christian scriptures in research for this book and one of the things which strikes me is how often people in those ancient times were 'amazed' by some freakish supernatural event. This is what I am talking about with the brain chemistry unable to discern between truth-curiosity and falsehood-curiosity. No doubt those ancient people when they heard the fantastic stories of miracles and such were indeed literally amazed – as the Oxford English Dictionary describes it: overwhelmed with feelings of wonder. That naive audience absorbed the falsehoods with eager curiosity, unable to tell that the person relating the fantastic story was either lying or was themselves deluded by the story. And so the fictional stories of the Bible got handed from mind to mind with people's curiosity grasping at the falsehoods and their naivety being unwilling to throw those falsehoods out of the window.

So curiosity is essential for the spiritual life, but of equal importance are objectivity, scepticism and discernment. Without those, the curiosity will pull the listener away from Christ-truth. Untamed curiosity destroys spirituality: controlled curiosity will take you on a heading through and beyond the gates of miracle and wonder.

At the second week of the Alpha Course the course-work proper began. The theme for the evening's talk was "who is Jesus?" When the vicar told me the theme my radar picked up that they used the word 'is' rather than 'was' implying that Jesus is still alive, having I guess escaped death by means of his resurrection. But I let the matter pass by.

Before the talk we sat having dinner and I was lucky enough to sit opposite the vicar leading the course. Prior to the meeting I had observed from discussions with other Christians that they seem to have a varied conception of something quite fundamental: the meaning of the word 'God'. So I took the opportunity and asked the vicar what God meant to him. He seemed like a nice man, I expect his Christianity is motivated by a desire to help others, so he smiles a lot in discussions and is very polite. He was so with me, but I had a small inkling that he suspected I was one of those annoying sceptics who turns up at the course just to make life difficult. It wasn't the case, I was there to learn, and what Christians understand by the word 'God' is something I would like to know. In the tradition of the Alpha Course I had a big question mark which needed answering.

So the vicar smiled at my question, but before I knew it, he was asking me what I understood by the word 'God' and what other people had said. I said that I had heard views of God like Gandhi saying "Truth is God", and that some people believe God is a conscious entity who does indeed listen to and answer prayers and fixes things if we ask him nicely. Another Christian woman said God was the totality of understanding, spirituality and such, though I didn't really understand what she meant. So I had (and still presently have) plenty of confusion about the most fundamental part of faith – what is God? It was only in hindsight after he had left his seat to sort out some other business that I realised he hadn't answered my question at all. Why not? It was a straightforward question and it must surely mean something to him. Perhaps in wooing his audience into Christianity he was downplaying the 'G word' lest he should scare me off. Or perhaps he was avoiding an argument with an irksome sceptic. I just wanted to understand, and I still do

After the meal we headed upstairs to the lecture room where we sat in tiered seats for the slide presentation of 'Who is Jesus'. It began with addressing the question of whether Jesus existed at all. This has been a progressively more publicised issue due to sceptics and atheists who have been spreading the notion that Jesus was a fictional character and was never a real person.

The presentation answered immediately this question with the words appearing on the projector screen: "1. He existed." The vicar talked for a while about there being plenty of evidence that Jesus existed in records from the time, both Biblical scriptures and Roman and Jewish historical records.

I don't really have a problem with this. There are lots of ancient notables, Archimedes, Plato, Socrates for instance who have left records and nobody suggests they never existed. So why shouldn't Jesus have existed? Certainly someone or something did indeed inspire the stories of Jesus because those stories exist. Why not a Jewish campaigner who took it upon himself to preach love and who people liked so much that they started calling him their king? Why not? It's quite possible.

What I did have a problem with was that the talk went on to claim that the scriptures were firm evidence of all kinds of things about Jesus including his supernatural powers. Now this starts to fall down. Excerpts from the Gospels were used to show he was a human and had human emotions – anger [Mark 11:15-17], love [Mark 10:21], sadness [John 11:32-36]. It becomes progressively muddy ground.

In the period when the stories of Jesus were first recorded, mostly in the first two centuries CE, there was a heck of a lot of myth mixing up with facts. People would write fraudulent stories which they claimed were written by the apostles, but actually they weren't. Heresy hunters went to great length to try to establish which of the recorded stories were true and should be included in the New Testament and which stories were heresy and would be consigned to the oblivion of the Apocrypha. If you read the Apocrypha you will find many of them contain the same stories that were accepted into the Bible, so there are things deemed to be orthodox truth which exist in the Apocrypha. So could it not be that in this very murky period of unscrupulous prophets and scribes forging documents that some falsehoods got through the net and made it into the New Testament? I am sure this is the case. When you read the Bible a lot of it is so crazy that it was certainly made up. Jonah never lived in a whale, Noah didn't rescue all the animals and there will be no horse riders of the Apocalypse.

So the vicar's position was flawed from the outset. He used extremely spurious documents as 'proof' of the life of Christ. It reminds me of a meme which does the rounds on Facebook. It has a picture of the Bible with the caption 'Proof that God exists', and below that a picture of the children's book _Mr Tickle_ with the caption next to it 'Proof that Mr Tickle exists.' It is perhaps a rudely put argument, but the point is valid: just because it was written down doesn't mean it is proof. People wrote many falsehoods down in the period when Jesus' story was recorded so we cannot rely on those stories to be 'Gospel truth'.

From the perfectly reasonable position that Jesus was a real human, the vicar, without hesitation, went in a completely different direction by using the scriptures as evidence of Jesus' supernatural status: "To have seen me is to have seen God" he said [John 14:9], he was the Messiah [Mark 14:61-62], he was the son of God [Mark 14:61], he was God the Son [John 8:58], and so on. All of this allegedly being proof of Jesus' divine status for the sole reason that it was written down.

More of his supernatural abilities were concluded to be true because it was recorded. The resurrection being one of them. There was, briefly, a list of possible reasons why Jesus' body was absent from his burial tomb when people came to see it. The vicar said that the body could possibly have been stolen by the disciples, by the authorities or by robbers. This was dealt with by the vicar saying that none of these could have been true. That was the thrust of his argument, they simply couldn't be true. It wasn't a great argument.

If you think about it, it is quite feasible that someone removed Jesus' body. His disciples had a motive to steal it and hide it somewhere unknown since Jesus had so many enemies, the disciples would have been concerned that his grave would have been desecrated. As they cared about him they wouldn't have wanted that so they may have moved is body. Or the Roman authorities may have moved it as they saw the hysterical masses running out of control and they may have done the wise thing and hidden the body before any more chaos ensued. In ancient times, there was plenty of relic hunting going on. All kinds of things like bone fragments, dribbles of blood or pieces of the cross would have been valuable to robbers who could sell them for profit to religious pilgrims. So robbers could have stolen the body or perhaps the authorities removed it because they anticipated the robbers would raid Jesus' tomb. These are all perfectly viable options for what happened, yet the vicar dealt with them all with the argument "these couldn't possibly have happened." It literally wasn't an argument at all; it was a statement, a claim with nothing to support it. He made a claim, and if someone asked him "why?" his answer would be "because." I felt a déjà vu from all the times I had had similar discussions with religious adherents over the years. I am genuinely interested to know the truth and find out what these people have to say, but when their arguments are this weak I feel a little sad because I haven't discovered anything. (Well, I have discovered that people's thinking is often flawed which is why religions continue to have power over their minds.)

The idea of the Alpha Course was naturally to make us believe in Jesus. As the vicar introduced us to the course he said "it isn't brain washing." But actually that wasn't true. They do have a fixed agenda. The tagline "Life is worth exploring," became progressively more forgotten as the course went on. In fact, we weren't exploring life much at all, we were being told "Christianity is the right religion, you should follow it." It was disappointing as I like exploring life a lot, but nonetheless I continued to learn as the course went on.

The supposed purpose of the course was to make us think about these religious ideas and change our perceptions. The real agenda was to change perceptions to agree with the Christian teaching. The second evening, about 'Who is Jesus' did indeed change my perceptions somewhat. In the discussion about what happened to Jesus' body, it became clearer to me that it must have been removed by people with any one of a number of motives. The events became more real to me as I perceived it differently. And then, when people were surprised the body was gone, the natural conclusion was that, as prophecy dictated, Jesus had escaped death and was in eternal life. As in the Apocrypha, fantastic made-up tales did the rounds by word of mouth that people had caught sight of Jesus after his death – "therefore he must be the son of God." People do lie like that, and in short order the truth was overwhelmed by the falsehoods and myth and history became difficult to tell apart. Christ-truth was destroyed by the story of the resurrection. People are telling stories today of how they have caught site of Elvis, and that he never died. There's the proof that people make such things up. As is often the case the well-meaning believers are often naive about some people's lack of scruples. Some dodgy people tell lies, and innocent bystanders believe them.

As is so often the case in Christianity, the point has been missed completely. Jesus gave us a priceless message that if we want a perfect world we should be nice to people and animals. It is the message which is important, but most Christians like to ignore the message and instead focus their time on worshipping the messenger. They turned Jesus into their idol thinking that thanking him will get them into heaven, whilst all the while in their personal lives they are not actually living Jesus' message of kindness. They like the illusion that praying, ritual and worship will save us, when the reality is it is strictly our deeds that count. In the _Homilies of Clement_ , one of the books excluded from the New Testament, it reports: "Therefore our Lord Jesus said to one who again and again called him Lord, but at the same time did not abide by any of his commands, 'Why call me Lord and not do what I say? For it is not speaking that can profit any one, but doing.' " [ _Homilies of Clement_ Book 8 7:4] Even in Jesus' own time the problem of Christians worshipping him and simultaneously ignoring his message of love was a problem. And that is still the main problem with Christians today. In fact they are not Christians at all; they are fifth columnists, posing as Christians whilst living a selfish life. If Christians were in truth Christians there would be no poverty, no war or conflicts. As philosopher G.K. Chesterton pointed out, Christianity hasn't failed, it has just never been put into practice yet.

On another point, the second meeting of the Alpha Course changed my perception. In the talk, the matter of forgiveness was discussed. The vicar showed us that God's forgiveness for our sins works in a strange way. He said that if he were to slap Fiona, in the audience, how could it be that James should be the one who forgives him? The vicar said that it didn't make sense, but that is how God's forgiveness works. God forgives us for our sins against our fellow humans. I was, of course aware of this kind of God forgiveness previously, but as the vicar pointed out the absurdity of it, it did indeed seem absurd and made no sense at all.

I don't know if I am old fashioned or what, but I think if the vicar slapped Fiona, then he should apologise to Fiona, and do it in sincerity, then hope for her forgiveness. She then is hopefully noble enough to forgive him and peace can result. There is something inside me that tells me this is how it should be. Is that an unconscious connection with existence, a real spiritual truth?

I explained this apology thing to my son some years ago. I had shouted at him for something I thought he had done wrong. It turned out he was innocent and I was in the wrong and that I had caused him misery by shouting at him. So he was due an apology. I knew it was the right thing to apologise to him, but when it came down to it, I found it very difficult to do. Attached to an apology is a feeling of shame, feeling small, lowly, unworthy etc. Those feelings overwhelm many people who never find the courage to apologise when they have done wrong. To apologise is to be humble, it means putting the victim, for a moment, in a superior position to the self. It is our narcissistic side which absolutely detests to look inferior and that is why people often avoid apologising. Their narcissism is too powerful; they cannot allow themselves to look small. And because much of the time people refuse to apologise, the conflict they are in remains and peace can never descend on the relationship.

It strikes me that expecting God to forgive our wrongs is in itself wrong. It means allowing our narcissism to rule over us, and that victim never gets their personal apology, an apology which in reality would lead to peace. I don't ascribe to the Christian notion that we should ask God's forgiveness. It doesn't make sense. The more the vicar tried to convince me that this was the right way to live, the more it seemed irrational and the clearer became my understanding that we should apologise to the person, not to God. Apologising to God feeds narcissism. It's what narcissists love, never having to admit to being at fault, never facing public humiliation, but instead whispering a few prayers that nobody can hear and then wrongly thinking that that will solve the problem.

I believe that this idea that God forgives is one of the reasons Christianity was so successful in catching on, not because it makes us better people but because it makes us worse. It's exactly what selfish people want. They _want_ to carry on with their selfish ways then not have to face up to the person they have wronged but apologise instead to an invisible friend and then get away with their crime and in fact get rewarded by being allowed into heaven. As it encourages people not to apologise to the person they have wronged, it is a step away from the peace process not towards it.

Look at it another way. If God is all knowing and if we apologise to the person, then He will see that. Then the all-knowing God will know we have done the right thing, he will like us and be more willing to let us into heaven when we die. So if you believe in God, then the answer is the same as for the atheist – we must make our apologies to the person.

As part of the process of peace, the person who has been wronged also needs humility, because they must accept the apology. By accepting an apology they are admitting that the person apologising can rise again from their lowly status to be on the same level as the wronged person. Both the one apologising and the one forgiving must have humility for peace to prevail. Both parties must have strength to overcome their innate narcissism which fights to appear superior. It is a very deep spiritual exercise. Many people fail to meet the challenge. If we want a truly deep experience we need to understand these hard-wired urges in our minds, which ultimately are driven by our genetic make-up. But this kind of deep understanding is not to be found in primitive ancient texts. Christianity, by encouraging us to accept a rudimentary and often flawed understanding, prevents us from growing closer to the truth. It diminishes our spiritual growth rather than promoting it. If you wish to experience spirituality then the Alpha Course tag line is right in encouraging us to explore life. But the course content itself is flawed as it encourages us _not_ to explore life.

But I do believe Christ was right in encouraging us to forgive our enemies. What then, do we do if someone has wronged us but will never apologise? If forgiveness comes only after an apology then peace can never reign. This, perhaps, was Christ's genius in suggesting we extend the olive branch and forgive their wrongs, whether they apologise or not. It makes a lot of sense on several levels.

There is a Buddhist saying that anger is like a hot coal, when you hold on to it, it is only you who gets burned. This is right. When people hold on to their anger for a very long time it wrecks their lives destroying their relationships, making them bitter, aggressive people who nobody can get on with. Contrary to that there are people who have been severely wronged and who never received apologies who live happy, peaceful lives because they realised the foolishness in holding on to anger. I remember an American veteran of the America – Japan war speaking on television about how he had suffered horrific cruelty when he was kept as a prisoner of war by the Japanese. He overcame his anger because he said it only harms the self. He let the anger go and so he was able to forgive his captors even without an apology. Christ was right in telling us about the need to forgive.

With a deeper understanding of the wrong-doer comes an increased ability to forgive. When my dad was alive he was often a cruel bully and as a child I lived in fear of him. But in my thirties I gained a deeper understanding of the man and I could see how he was never taught about love and kindness from his parents, so he was lost and unable to know how to love his own child. With that understanding I came to realise he was less an aggressor, but more another victim of his love-less upbringing and without effort I began to feel sorry for him and my anger towards him naturally dissipated.

Does that mean my Dad was an innocent victim then and did no wrong? No, that wasn't the case either. Although he was indeed a victim at times, it would be a logical fallacy to think he was either a victim or a perpetrator. Given two different options when other options exist is a false dichotomy. He could have been either a victim or a perpetrator, or simultaneously both of them, or perhaps neither one. In fact, my Dad was a victim and a perpetrator, at different times. So concluding a person is one or the other is a simplistic falsehood.

My Dad was guilty of various wrongs against numerous people, and it would have been of no use to say "it's okay Dad, I can see you were wronged, so you can carry on doing wrongs to others." The assessment of victim or perpetrator pertains to individual events and cannot be attached as an assessment of a person's entire life. Judging deeds requires plenty of thought and insight into how the human psyche works and how an individual's past experiences have coloured their attitude towards others. There is no simple answer. When wronged, we can hope for an apology, but we cannot demand one. We may have to make do with forgiving a person without the apology.

Assessing our own guilt is different to assessing other people's. It strikes me that although we can let others off the hook to a degree because they may themselves have been victims, we cannot do this for ourselves. I don't know how I know this, but it seems to me to be true. How can I tell somebody else that I don't have to apologise, because my Dad was mean to me when I was a child? There may be some truth in it, but letting ourselves off in this way is open to abuse. We rationalise all the time to turn unpleasant truths into more palatable falsehoods. Sometimes we may be more successful at lying to ourselves than we are at convincing others of a lie. It is such cloudy territory to know for certain the morality of a deed, when our psyche is so willing to deceive itself. We cannot rely on others to be our judges as they may have their own agenda. If they share the same guilt for a wrong doing then they may lie to us and tell us there was no wrong.

Psychotherapists and counsellors have some use in assessing the morality of our deeds, them having an external and objective viewpoint. This can work, but often the system fails as these practitioners are human too and like any humans they do make mistakes. It may be that they themselves have inadequate standards of morality, in which case their assessment of us will be distorted. Finding a good practitioner is, in truth of fact, not as easy as we would hope.

The best way to assess the morality of one's own deeds is to consult Christ-truth. That is, absolute reality. Analyse the observations. Did the deed cause another person or animal suffering or a loss of some kind? Was there a reward of some sort for the self, either in gained resources or in gratification? If so, then it was probably an immoral act. But to consult with Christ-truth in this way will mean embarking on the hazardous path of righteousness. (And even at the mention of the word I feel a shudder.) The selfish gene will distort our perceptions, telling us there was no wrong, and we will be tempted to believe it, just as the Devil tempted Jesus. It takes enormous strength to fight against the selfish gene to get to the moral truth. It takes humility to accept one has done wrong, to overcome the sense of shame which so often overwhelms us. It requires courage to sacrifice the self for the benefit of another. We all fail in such attempts at times. But the pay-back for the arduous work of doing the right thing is to have the weight of guilt lifted off our shoulders. If you choose the path of conscience, rest assured, in the long run you will be rewarded. It will be your due.

In the ideal of the peace process, there should be confession, apology, forgiveness and atonement. But it is an ideal and often human feelings are too overwhelming for the process to work perfectly. A person may never find the courage to apologise, being too fearful of the humiliation and shame. Confessing may, in some instances, only serve to make matters worse. Our selfish desires may prevent us from doing the work of atonement.

But in regards to apologies, people often overlook the issue of guilt. Psychologists recognise that for some people guilt can be overwhelming and can damage their lives. Other psychologists recognise it as a healthy phenomenon and people who accept their guilt are motivated to correct their transgressions. When they have done so, their minds can be at rest. Psychologists divide guilt into classes.

There is _neurotic guilt_ when the person really has no need to feel guilty. For example, if whilst driving slowly through town a child runs out in front of your car when you had no chance to see them and they are injured, you may feel guilt. But since the accident was outside of your control and you were otherwise driving carefully, that guilt would not be justified and it would be neurotic guilt. However, if you were driving at forty in a thirty zone past a school at closing time, and you knocked a child down, then you would indeed be guilty of dangerous driving and you would probably experience _existential_ _guilt_. There is also _anticipatory guilt_ , the preferred option, which steers you away from future transgressions. It amounts to the same thing as having a conscience.

So we should feel existential guilt and anticipatory guilt, but we should not feel neurotic guilt. Guilt has a bad press in some self-help books with some psychologists wrongly suggesting we should never feel any guilt. Guilt is there to bind society together into a peaceable community and it should not be ignored. To make peace we must welcome our existential guilt, work with it and follow it through to apology and atonement.

What the text books sometimes overlook is the positive knock-on effect of apologising for our guilt. Because when we have corrected the wrong in that way, the guilt can be lifted. It surprises me how often people ignore the fact that they can escape their guilt by doing the right thing. I see people all the time try to escape the fact that they have done wrong. They lie, they avoid awkward topics of conversation, they make excuses. Apparently for many people evading existential guilt is a huge priority.

But they can't escape it forever. As life goes by, those wrongs tend to build up rather than diminish and as the end of life approaches a great weight of guilt can grow onto the shoulders of the individual. It is a sorry position to be in. When death becomes imminent, the weight of guilt grows exponentially and becomes unbearable.

Many people think they can dodge their guilt, but when faced with their own mortality, the guilt resurfaces and becomes a frightening experience. I have seen people facing their death who have gone into panic trying to right the wrongs of their life because, even though throughout their life they thought there would be no God to judge them, they suddenly realise that there just might be a God and the prospect of heaven or hell suddenly becomes a lot more real to them. They become frightened and try to make good their wrong deeds.

It sounds rather maudlin perhaps to be pointing to this prospect, but actually it is not, it is good news. None of us ever has to end up with a guilt-ridden death, because we have the option today of making up for our wrongs. There is nothing to stop any of us going through the confession – apology – forgiveness – atonement process and removing that guilt to make our passage out of this mortal existence as painless and peaceful as possible.

When you gain a deeper understanding of the dark side of human nature it becomes easier to forgive. The selfish gene is extremely powerful and many people are unable to resist the hold it has over them. If you see the drunk in town who lashes out with his fist at another person, you aren't really seeing a person who is bad: you are seeing a person who is not in control. Their anger is genetic, the chemicals rushing round their body which drove them to aggression are hard-wired; they do not have complete control over it. And with the additional loss of control from being drunk, that person is less guilty and more a victim of their body chemistry. In a very real sense, they have had their free will diminished and they should be judged more leniently as a consequence.

This diminishing of free will due to genetic make-up has now become enshrined in law. Geneticists have identified one particular selfish gene, called the 'warrior gene' which gives people a propensity for aggressive behaviour. Scientists have found that when that gene is present and the person had a childhood of abuse, then the two factors combine and make the person extremely aggressive, diminishing their free will. In America, this situation has already been used to reduce the sentence of one such man who killed, with the court decision reduced from premeditative murder to manslaughter. As a result the killer escaped the death sentence.

So when we deal with these judgements with our fellow humans, we need to remember just that – that they are human. They have degrees of these selfish genes in them, so where then is the line between wrong-doer and innocent bearer of a selfish gene? All cases are unique, but in judging we need to take into account that the wrong-doer's free will has often been diminished due to their innate genetic coding.

When you look more closely at sin, it is not so straightforward as good versus evil. I had a female friend who was in the process of a divorce from her husband. It was fairly acrimonious with regular rows. She said her husband had told her she was a bully. She was telling me about their next planned meeting when she was planning to shout at him for something. I said "Don't do it. Be loving towards him." She looked a little taken aback. In fact this lady did partake in slight bullying. When I told her that I liked to go mountain walking she replied "There's not much to it is there? Just put one foot in front of the other!" and she laughed. It felt like a disparaging remark, but otherwise she was quite a nice person.

The next time I saw her was after her meeting with her husband and she said she had made an effort to be nice to him. "I saw a visible melting," was how she described his reaction to her kindness. She had been brave enough to hold out the olive branch of peace and as a result their relationship, such as it was, improved and they went on to have a divorce which was less painful than it would have been.

The point of the story is that this woman was indeed something of a bully, though not a very vicious one, but importantly I think there was no malice in it. Her behaviour had been 'led astray' and she was mistakenly making quips which served to make others look foolish, which she thought were humorous. All it took was a little education to get her to realise that kindness is the best way. I suspect that this may be the case for most acts of cruelty by the rest of us; they are rarely meant to be cruel but more often we can wrongly believe those acts to be the right way to live. That is, our we are more often simply led astray rather than being malicious.

In other people, however, there is indeed malice and that is another matter. This kind of disorder has been found by psychologists to be virtually incurable. That is tragic as it is personality disorders such as this which cause by far the most suffering in the world.

You won't find much about this in the Bible. At the introductory session of the Alpha Course, the vicar addressed claims that Christianity was ancient and out-dated. Well, although he tried to convince us of the contrary, it is to a significant degree true. Times move on, but scriptures never do. If the vicar wishes to improve on the dwindling congregations of his church, then he needs to accept the reality that Christianity is indeed out of date and start making some changes. With the new era of science, global media, education and communications, the ordinary human is becoming more sophisticated and less inclined to accept religious dogma. It is truth which is the threat to Christianity. And since Christ is truth, it is Christ which is undermining Christianity. Christ is bringing this religion down to replace it with Christ-truth. I don't personally try to change Christianity; Christ is already doing that job for me.

The third week of the Alpha Course was directed at the question "Why did Jesus Die?" Before the talk we had our customary meal and the good cooks made vegan versions of the pasta and the apple crumble for me and my son. When one of the meat eaters asked why I had gone vegan I said it was kinder to the animals. I didn't mention that eating dead bodies was also disgusting as I guessed that might be a truth too far. The vegan food was good and I explained to him that it was a misconception that vegan food is bland, pointing out that virtually every food or drink ingredient we use to make things taste good is vegan. He conceded that was true. An injection of Christ-truth for a Christian; whether he was receptive or not I don't know but I have my doubts. In fact, it is not possible to be a true Christian without being vegan since it is a scientific truth that veganism is better for health and wellbeing for both people and animals.

The woman who was the head chef for the Alpha Course was herself a vicar and I had met her before. On that occasion her distinct lack of Christian values was all too apparent. I wrote about it in my other book _The Shrink from Planet Zob_ , this is what I put (the description of the impressionist woman referred to has been altered to conceal her identity, although the overall message remains the same. Any similarity between the person described and a real person is purely coincidental):

I was having a drink in a remote village pub in the Scottish Highlands. There were a group of us in the bar, several women and me; one of them was a vicar at a nearby church, there were also the landlady and a barman. We were sitting with our drinks making casual conversation, when a woman came into the pub. She promptly offered us a few impressions of famous celebrities from the television, but she was making a rather poor job of it. There were some folders of papers under her other arm, and it transpired that she had arrived to recruit the pub into a money raising effort for a local hospice charity. But this woman was unusual. Not only was she poor as a mimic but she had an air of oddness about her. Her face was drawn and expressionless and her eyes were somewhat wide and staring. She was noticeably thin, and was slightly dishevelled, with straggly long blond hair which was turning into dreadlocks. When she addressed the landlady and the barman her manner was over-loud and she seemed to talk over people and not fit in with the situation. It seemed likely that the woman might have a mental disorder which was creating her oddness, though I wouldn't hazard a guess as to what it might have been. (Oddness is recognised by psychiatrists as a possible sign of mental illness [James Whitney Hick, _50 Signs of Mental Illness_ , Yale University Press, 2005].

The group of women were quick to spot this. When the woman tried to talk about the charity she was promoting, the vicar suggested that she go and talk to some people in another room. The woman left, and the vicar said to the barman, "Aren't you going to thank me for getting rid of the odd-bod?" The group talked about the woman while she was out of the room and the landlady plotted to tell her that the pub was closing early so they could get rid of her and carry on happily with their conversation. It was a lie. I sat and observed.

The woman returned to the bar to talk some more about the charity. She said she was planning to do her impressionism live on radio the next day. The group of women fell into disparaging comments so I made a point of loudly applauding the odd woman and laughing at her joke, exclaiming, "That woman is a genius!" She came to talk to the group and the hostile comments continued. The landlady suggested she should go off and visit some other pubs, and the vicar said, "Haven't you got a home to go to?" I tried to cut a path through the negativity and asked the odd woman about her charity work. I noted the time for her radio slot, making sure my warmth was visible to the other women there. When it was my time to leave I stood up and shook the woman's hand thanking her for all her good work. The vicar looked at me and fell silent.

Sure enough, the next day the odd woman was as good as her word and made her radio appearance publicising her fund raising events. She still sounded somewhat eccentric, but she achieved a life-long ambition and performed her impressionism live on air. I laughed out loud.

It was clear to me that this was a case of prejudice and stigma. The woman, who may have had mental health problems, was being treated as a second class citizen, being encouraged to leave a public house. But what was she _in reality_? She was a slightly odd woman who was very generously giving her time up for a worthwhile cause. And that was a healthy thing to do.

And what was the vicar _in reality_? The incident reminded me of Christ's words from his most important sermon, The Sermon on the Mount. In the first of the beatitudes he said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven..." [Matthew 5:3] This was the first line, so it must have been highly significant to Christ. The word _poor_ used here derives from an Aramaic word _'ányâ_ (in Hebrew _'anî_ ), which translates as bent down, afflicted, miserable or poor [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02371a.htm retrieved 10/5/2011].

I am in disagreement with some Christian interpretations, but to my mind the people who are really poor in spirit are those with mental illness. If you had chronic depression you couldn't be much more bent down, afflicted or miserable. So here, in the most important line of the most important sermon from the world's largest religion Christ said, "Blessed are the mentally ill." But this was totally overlooked by the woman who was on the pay-roll of the Christian church. She wasn't only indifferent to our charity worker, she was actively hostile – cruel and selfish. A 2004 government report into social exclusion and mental health backs up the importance of spiritual groups for some people with mental illness: "Research has shown that aspects of spirituality are linked with beneficial mental health outcomes and are consistently related to greater life satisfaction, happiness, morale and other indicators of well-being." [ _Mental Health and Social Exclusion,_ Social Exclusion Unit, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 2004].

The vicar then, had a greater responsibility than most to look after the odd woman in the pub, but she failed in her duty.

So who was the person who was mentally ill? Lies are always a strong sign that cruelty and selfishness are around, and the landlady lied about the pub closing time: a clue that she was in fact ill. In reality, our odd charity worker was far more healthy, and indeed Christian, than the group of ordinary women who considered themselves to be mentally well. No them and us... yet again.

The same government study into social exclusion and mental illness concluded that people with long-term mental illness are among the most excluded in society and that exclusion has a major bearing on their mental health: "Mental health problems can be both a cause and a consequence of social exclusion." The study defined the core of social exclusion as a "...lack of participation in mainstream social, cultural, economic and political activities..." Visiting a public house would certainly count as a social or cultural activity, and so our friend's expulsion from the pub was, by government standards, an example of social exclusion. The study stated that "Being in work and having social contacts is strongly associated with improved health and well-being..." and went on, "Social isolation is an important risk factor for deteriorating mental health and suicide. Two-thirds of men under the age of thirty-five with mental health problems who die by suicide are unemployed."

The study identified stigma as a main cause of social exclusion: "Stigma and discrimination against people with mental health problems is pervasive throughout society. Despite a number of campaigns, there has been no significant change in attitudes." The report called for "...the acceptance of people with mental health problems as equal citizens."

So the women in the pub had a responsibility. Their actions could have made the impressionist's health worse by excluding her, but the flipside of the coin is that they could have maybe improved her health by including her as part of their community. Mental illness is caused or cured by wider society - by ordinary people who perceive themselves as healthy.

Again, the lady vicar in the pub preached Christianity but failed to put it into practice. It is a common trait of Christians today, hypocrisy and failing to live Christ's message of love. Christianity killing Christ. It's an age old problem, Gandhi noted it too when he said "I like your Christ, I am not so keen on your Christians."

At the Alpha Course meeting, the vicar and speaker began his after dinner talk with a discussion of the cross being at the heart of the Christian faith. He made mention of various celebrities who wore the cross as a fashion item and went on to point out the absurdity of wearing a model of a torture and execution device for fashion. He was right. As he correctly pointed out people would never think to wear a noose or an electric chair on a pendant, so why do they do the same thing with the cross of the crucifixion? The fact that it has become fashionable is indeed absurd, but the cross really is the right symbol for Christianity as Christ's life was all about persecution and nothing symbolises that more than the crucifixion.

The talk identified that God has 'a problem', and that is, all us humans who he created in his own image are sinners one way or another. Be that lying, adultery stealing, violence or whatever. And 'the solution' of course was that when Jesus died he bore all our sins for us and gained us forgiveness from God so that we can be accepted into the Kingdom of Heaven when we die. Provided of course that we accept Him as our Saviour. Prior to Jesus, the rule was that an animal would be sacrificed in a temple and the person wishing to redeem themselves would make confession over the animal, then slaughter it and so the sins would be passed to the animal and the person would be sinless and go to Heaven. If you think about it, it's quite cruel to give sins in that way to an innocent animal, but that didn't seem to worry the people of the time. Cruel too, of course, that the animal was murdered.

But with Christianity coming along, this old fashioned way of transferring sin was found to be wrong, and of no use, and so it was said Jesus became the new sacrifice to God to take our sins upon himself – the 'lamb of God'. "God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood." [Romans 3:25] _._

For many people this is the perfect 'solution' which is actually a perfect con-trick. The bottom line is that you can spend your life doing wrong, but so long as somewhere near the end of your life you say "Jesus is my saviour" then you get rewarded in Heaven. It strikes me that this system of redemption is open to abuse.

After the talk we had our discussion group. Only a small group, one of whom, Sonya was directing the discussion. She began the chat.

"What did you all think about Jesus' death?"

The group went silent and I felt the need to help out by starting the discussion moving.

"It was a shame," I said, "but it was text book scape-goating. When you do nice things, you get attacked. Persecution."

I was anticipating seeing some nods of approval or maybe an "of course" but nothing came and the others in the group looked at me blankly. I elaborated a little on the idea of good guys and women getting attacked, but still nothing came.

After they had listened a little I sense awkwardness in them and I watched as Sonya seemingly tried to steer the conversation back on to the topic in hand, Jesus dying for our sins. In the group, me and my son were the only 'free-thinkers', the rest of the group were Christians. As I made silence for the others to speak, they went on to discuss how our sins had been taken on to Jesus and how we need to accept him as our saviour, the one true God.

It seems wrong, this notion that he will save our sins if we ask nicely. Again Christianity has distorted the message of Jesus. Jesus was all about _doing_ not _talking._ Here are some chapter and verses to validate that Christ was annoyed with people who talked the talk but did not walk the walk: "For even the Hebrews who believe in Moses... are not saved unless they abide by what has been said to them." [8 Clement 5:1], "Whether it is left to the personal decision of each individual whether he will perform good deeds, the reward rightly falls to those who do well." [8 Clement 5:2], "There is no salvation in believing in teachers and calling them Lords. [8 Clement 5:4], "Therefore our Lord Jesus said to one who again and again called him Lord, but at the same time did not abide by any of his commands. 'Why call me Lord and not do what I say?' For it is not speaking that can profit any one, but doing." [8 Clement 7:4, translation of these quotes by Georg Strecker, in Wilhelm Schneemelcher, _New Testament Apocrypha,_ vol. 2, rev. ed.: Cambridge/Louisville: Lutterworth/Westminster/John Knox. 1991) 504-40], "For he says 'Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord" will be saved, but only the one who does righteousness.' " [2 Clement 4:2], "...just as your body is visible, so too your soul should be clearly seen in your good deeds." [2 Clement 12:4], "he that does good comes to the light," [4 John 3:21]. The _Homilies of Clement_ from which most of these quotes were taken was excluded entry to the New Testament, being deemed to be apocryphal. Was this an early distortion of the Christian faith by the heresy hunters? Did they omit these verses because they didn't like the idea that to follow Christ we actually have to _do_ something, not just say a few prayers?

So the Christian idea that accepting Jesus as the saviour by means of speaking is incorrect, it has to be measured by actions throughout one's lifetime. If God is all knowing, he wouldn't be so stupid as to believe somebody accepted Jesus as saviour just because they said it. People often lie, and some people would think they could get away with lying to God. If judgement day ever did come, God would look at a lifetime of deeds and assess the person on that basis. Accepting Jesus as your saviour means making the decision to live a moral life. There is no need whatsoever to say you live according to Jesus' moral message; you must only demonstrate it through actions. If you speak moral language which doesn't translate into moral living then you are a hypocrite.

It was interesting that during the vicar's presentation on Jesus dying for our sins, that he said not everybody believed it worked like that and apparently the apostle Paul said it was (to quote the vicar) "nonsense". He glossed over that, but it was interesting. If Paul's opinion made it into the Bible, how come Christians didn't accept it as the truth? Like other things in Christianity it doesn't make sense.

Escaping blame by saying a few words is the easiest option. It is, in fact, the option of the sociopath. It is no wonder that Christianity caught hold so rapidly, it allowed people to think they could have eternal life in heaven if they made no effort in their mortal life but at the end simply said sorry to God. It's having the cake and eating it; living a selfish life then getting the reward afterwards. I don't believe a real god, if there were one, would allow this kind of easily abused system to prevail.

Yes, accept Jesus as your saviour, by all means, and to show you mean it, scrutinise your every deed and make them progressively more moral as you grow throughout your life. That is the real way you accept Jesus as saviour. And if you act like that, he quite literally would be humanity's saviour since those actions would heal the sick, feed the poor and bring an end to conflict. It's the doing that brings salvation. Then at the end of your life, rest assured an all knowing God would see your good deeds and you will get your reward. As Marcus Aurelius correctly pointed out many centuries ago, the solution is the same whether you are a believer or atheist. If you don't believe in God, then live a moral life and you will be remembered fondly in the hearts of those you leave behind. If there is a God, then your moral life will gain you the reward of eternal happiness in heaven. Whether there is a God or not is completely irrelevant, the answer is the same: live a moral life.

In the Alpha Course I found it frustrating (as I do in most conversations with Christians), because the 'believers' spend all their time cogitating on whether Jesus is the solution or not and how we should pray and what types of rituals we should use etc. They spend all their time discussing the messenger and the message delivery system and they spend very little time discussing the actual message – that we should be nice to people. But that's how they like it. Arguing over who is God's messenger allows them to avoid discussing morality itself and so they don't have to face the uncomfortable truths that we should love our enemies, forgive people, give to charity and so on. In reality, Christianity as messenger-worship destroys Christ's message of love. It never took us closer to Jesus, it took humanity further away.

In the discussion group at the third Alpha Course meeting, our director of conversation, Sonya, talked about how she imagined God would guide her through her sins. She said she couldn't conceive of a God who would look down on her, wagging his finger and making her feel ashamed for what she had done. Instead, she imagined a God who would put his arm round her shoulders as a very loving friend and gently guide her into more moral action. The point resonated. In the field of therapy known as _person centred counselling_ , one of the key qualities of the counsellor is that they must demonstrate to their client _continuous positive regard_. They must be 'on the client's side' at all time, accepting the client, warts and all, always wanting the best for the client and always anticipating that the client can change to become a more grown and able individual. I could see from Sonya's comment that a damning God would deviate from this approach and would only serve to alienate the subject of God's judgement. Looking down on the sinner generates shame and psychologists recognise that shame inhibits growth and drives a person to hide from the truth, in fear of public humiliation. Individuals for the most part desire to be accepted by the group, so in judgment, whether that be by God or by the counsellor, the judge has to make it clear that they are on the individual's side all the while. God or the counsellor must be the person's unshakeable ally who will always want the best for them. Only with such steadfast love can the individual be encouraged to grow. I recall one counsellor explaining this approach by analogy. She said, if God wanted somebody to take off their overcoat, he might try to create a storm to blow it from the person's back. But the person would react by pulling the coat on ever tighter and the wind would fail to take it from the person. Instead, it would be more effective for God to let the sun shine brightly, and in that warmth the person would freely loosen their coat and take it off themselves.

The judgement of God or in the counselling process is the same, either way God or the counsellor must _love_ the person to engender growth and that is how Sonya perceived God's judgement when she made her comment to the group. She was right. But how often in our lives do we judge others harshly and damn them into shame, when it would be more effective to love them towards a life of growth and moral living?

It strikes me when I talk to Christians that they can sometimes be somewhat meek, and perhaps brow-beaten individuals who seek hope in their lives through religion. I surmise many of them are trying to cope with cruelty they have received from others and sometimes they can seem quite neurotic as a result. They may have been persecuted by sociopaths who have blamed them for all and sundry deeds, blame which was never fully deserved. It seems that God's forgiveness could benefit such neurotic people, removing that blame from their shoulders when the people in their lives are not providing the forgiveness they need. For them, perhaps, the idea of God's forgiveness does them a good service in helping them to cope. They can assuage their undeserved neurotic guilt and live better, happier lives as a consequence.

I missed the next couple of Alpha Courses, but then returned anew to continue the exploration. Over the dinner the various religious folks paused to compare smart phones, and watching them I wondered if a simpler cheaper phone and a pencil and pad would have sufficed. I thought about the poor people in Africa and remembered that in his book _The Life You Can Save,_ philosopher Peter Singer explained how a life can be saved for less than the price of an iPhone.

Then we headed next door for the talk which, this week, was to be on the Bible. But first the vicar handed out slips of paper with text on. I thought we may have to say prayers, but no, the team decied we would all sing a song about Jesus. The vicar pressed play on the backing track and I knew the dalliance with the Alpha Course was over for me. "Life is worth exploring" the banner had said, and that was why I had arrived. "It's not brainwashing" the vicar said at the introductory evening, and so I persisted. But now, the exploration had morphed into worship. I shouldn't have been too surprised, but I was disappointed as exploring is interesting. But I sang along anyway, and felt like I was back in school having to mumble hymns which I had no interest in whatsoever then and still don't now. In those days I doubt even the teachers had any interest in worship, but they did it anyway as it was 'the done thing'. Group conformity. At least nowadays my old school virtually never engages in worship although by law they must do so on a daily basis, which should by statute be "of a broadly Christian nature". Thank goodness the head teachers are growing out of religion even if the vicars and politicians are not.

At the end of the painful Christian rock song we had the talk on the Bible which was given by a man who was a lay reader at the nearby cathedral. I haven't read the Bible in detail and I don't desire to do so, but I have dipped in now and then and gained a sufficient gist of it. When I have glanced at it I have found a very mixed bag of writings, some things pertinent to an aspect of life but some things, like the Book of Revelations, just (let's be frank) off-the-wall mad.

When I dip into the Bible I get a distinctly 'heavy' feeling, which is really the very opposite of what you might call inspired. I feel like I am walking through treacle, through so much boggy terrain which slows down the learning process. I crave insights, but the supernatural content of religious books like the Bible just gets in the way and I just think what's the point? Throughout the evening I got the growing feeling that I was in the wrong place. I had arrived with good intentions to learn about the Christian religion, but I ended up surrounded by enthusiastic Christians when I had assumed I would be amongst ordinary non-Christians who would be there to learn something. I think I was the only person who was not a Christian, other than seemingly a group of students who arrived on the first night but were never seen at the Alpha Course again. I felt a bit of a fraud, though strictly I was not a fraud since I never claimed to be a believer and was invited in to explore and followed the invitation in earnest. Nonetheless, the feeling was uncomfortable and I couldn't bear it any longer and resolved for that night to be my last visit to the course.

In the discussion group after the talk we delved further into the Bible. The man leading the group read a section from the Bible, from the Gospel of Mark [4:1-20]. It was the parable of the sower who spreads seeds in various places. The ones on the rocky ground did not grow, the ones surrounded by thorns didn't grow either. Only the ones with good soil can establish roots and grow. We were asked what it meant to us.

I offered that the metaphor of the seed was used a lot in Biblical scriptures as a symbol of how we are to grow. In ancient times they lacked the science and advanced terminology to describe the process of growth which comes down to psychological processes, and so they had to explain it all in terms which ordinary people of the day could understand by making metaphors about things they were familiar with. As I saw it, the importance of roots shows how we must establish our core philosophy, the root of our understanding before we can grow towards our potential. Christians would of course say that root of understanding is the Christian faith. I would disagree; I would say our foundations of belief must reside in reality and morality. When we place our faith in truth and moral action, then all else should follow. It is a simple creed, to follow only two concepts, but it reaches a long way. Few people follow that kind of philosophy and I don't claim to follow it perfectly myself either.

The man leading the group said that the parable of the sower shows we must have our roots in the Bible. We don't, of course, there are many decent and kind people who never read the Bible so the man's claim doesn't mirror the observations.

In the parable, the various weeds which surrounded some of the seedlings were analogous to the influence of other people which can stifle our understanding and prevent us from growing. This is undeniably true. In my book _The Shrink from Planet Zob_ I dedicated a chapter to how our moral actions are influenced by people around us; social psychologists have recognised this for many years. _Group conformity_ is the jargon for how people copy those around them and it is incredibly powerful. Most people will draw their moral lessons from the social norms into which they are placed. If the creed of the group is to be good, they might be good, but if the group says do bad things, and that that is okay, then they will do that.

It struck me that it would be an interesting exercise to sift through the Bible and re-tell all the stories in a scientific fashion, seeing the message from the text and reframing it in a psychological context. If I had the time or inclination I could do this myself but I don't find the subject particularly inspiring so I will probably never get around to it. In any case, if one did write such a book you would probably find Christians would hate it and ignore what you have said, and secularists would naturally have little interest and not read it either.

And that was about the end of the Alpha Course for me. They seemed on the whole to be quite pleasant people, I dare say they wouldn't want to harm others, but the spotlight of absolute truth shines a harsh light. They still are addicted to their expensive smart phones and such, they still needlessly murder animals for food. But that's Christ-truth for you. As he said, he is the light the truth and the way, and when he shines, what he reveals is quite shocking and in his light most Christians are revealed not to actually be totally Christian. The distinction is worth understanding more precisely. I don't believe the people on the Alpha Course were bad people, I believe they have been simply led astray. Scientists have found that the scale of people from evil to pure morality follows a bell-shaped curve, with a few of the most evil people at one end, in a minority, the bulk of people somewhere in the middle and a small minority of extremely moral people at the other end. Experiments have shown that the people in the middle can be made more moral by some kinds of training or education [New Scientist 2939 19/10/2013 pp 28, 29]. I believe the Christians are in this section. I don't think they want to cause harm, even though they actually often do. I doubt they are malicious. I feel they just need better education to show them the truth of morality. Unfortunately that kind of education is rare since the established religions, the educational system and society at large all tell us that we do not need to embrace extreme moralities like veganism or giving your possessions away to the poor. Education works in part like group conformity, people will learn morality if they fit in with the group, but the opposite also applies that if the group is amoral, then they will lack morality too. The groups around us at present, including religions, offer inadequate moralities.

But Christians are not going to become educated in morality if their only source of moral education is the Bible. The vicar at the talks said Christianity stands accused of being out-dated, well actually to a large extent that is true. If the world needs guidance it needs that relating to the mass media, the Internet and social networking, third world poverty, the destruction of our environment, modern warfare, terrorism, cyber bullying and so on, and most of that is missing from the Bible.

The thing that led me into the Alpha Course, the exploration of life, turned into the preaching of an ancient, unchanging religion. The whole point of exploring is that you don't know where it is you are headed - to discover new territory. The Alpha Course singularly failed in this promise, as it was going over the same ground that has been trod for nearly two thousand years. For me it was a minor exploration. I didn't know what I would find on the course, but I do now - more Christianity. When it became apparent to me what the course was – a different banner with the same content – the exploration was over and I bowed out.

#  Scepticism, Narcissism, Spirituality

A Christian woman I was talking to complained to me that when she was on the course herself, she found that the organisers found it very difficult to argue against the sceptics who would turn up. I have seen this myself. I met with a group of sceptics once and the organiser of the group spent a considerable amount of time talking about the various religious meetings he had gone to where he had ended up in fierce rows with people. He boasted about how in one Muslim meeting, he had told them all that Mohammed was a rapist. Needless to say, it got very heated and ended with the police being called in to restore peace. I listened to this sceptic man for some hours and slowly came to understand that he had no desire to explore life, meaning, truth and other such intangibles. It was clear he sought out confrontations because for him is was a sport. He enjoyed the conflict.

For many sceptics, the argument has a darker motive. For some of the people who are wont to argue are in fact teaching. They may meet somebody who is wrong on some point, then they offer the correct truthful viewpoint in the hope of enlightening their audience and to help them have a better life as a result. But I felt this sceptic wasn't like that. It didn't strike me that he was a benevolent teacher of truths, but instead, he gained pleasure from making others look foolish. He wasn't there to raise people up, he was there to crush them down. He enjoyed arguing with logic and rational ideas because the religious people he argued with would often argue with illogic and falsehoods. So it was relatively easy for him to look superior because he had good reasoning on his side much of the time. (As for Mohammed being a rapist, I know nothing about the subject, I am merely reporting on the events with the sceptic). When the truth helped him win some of his arguments he got that zing of superiority, his brain chemistry made him feel good and he got addicted to making people look stupid. He was arguing for the wrong reason; not to enlighten, but to cause suffering.

I explained the situation of scepticism to the Christian woman who had seen them cause havoc on the Alpha Course. Scepticism is a powerful tool, and is essential if we are to find Christ. But it can be used for both good and for dishonourable purposes.

Spiritual 'awakening' has a strong relative/competitive edge to it and competing is what narcissism is all about. Narcissists have to look superior to other people - the _absolute_ state of their being is irrelevant. They can often be unenlightened in absolute terms, but so long as they can convince others that they are relatively enlightened when compared to others, that is all they want. When they appear superior they get the rewards – people will be drawn into their thrall. They will have supporters who may help them out, people may be in fear of them, so their conflicts will diminish, people may be inclined to do mutually beneficial business with them if they appear to be wise, powerful, benevolent. Narcissists desire to be at the top of a 'ladder of social esteem'. They crave high esteem from others, so that they can control others. And spirituality pertains to social esteem a great deal. People may revere those with high spiritual standing – the Pope, the Dalai Lama, clergy men and women, Zen masters and so on. So the narcissists wish to convince those around them that they have great spiritual powers. To dupe their audience they may talk in lofty terms, using obscure theological language which only the elite of believers can understand. To everyone else, being often naive, the exotic mystical words may give the impression that "Wow! This guy really knows what he is talking about!" Which he may not. But that is how narcissists are, they love to pontificate and when what they are saying degenerates into meaningless pseudo-spiritual nonsense which nobody can understand, they can just turn to their critics and say "Well, you wouldn't understand - you're not enlightened," or "you have not been chosen," or "you are not a believer," or "you don't have sufficient faith." It isn't true. If something is worth knowing, then it should be easy to explain it. As Einstein said: "If you can't explain it simply, you haven't understood it properly." When the narcissist's critics expose the truth by saying it is nonsense, the narcissist damns the critic with social disapproval by saying they are not spiritually developed. And the onlookers don't want to look foolish too, so they side with the spiritual fraudster, afraid that if they speak the truth he will bully them too.

Religious narcissists love the supernatural. Because it is _unfalsifiable_. That is, they can make a mystical magical claim about something they did, but you cannot prove it to be false. I once met a lady vicar who was on sabbatical from her church in South Africa who related an anecdote about the Holy Spirit at work in her life. She told the story about when she and another Christian woman working for the Red Cross were in dire need in a remote village in Uganda. The villagers there knew she was there working as a Christian missionary and begged her to heal their various afflictions – broken legs, deafness, back ache and so on. Things took a turn for the worse when they wouldn't let the two women leave until they had performed the miracles. So she decided they would pray their way out of the situation. They prayed, and according to the vicar, the people's problems all became healed. The crippled man walked, the deaf man regained hearing, the back ache stopped.

This story is unfalsifiable. Nobody is able to consult with the villagers to see what really happened, or if anything happened at all, since it was so far away from the England where the vicar told the story. We can only have the vicar's word for it. Now, you could say, that this is wonderful news. There is no need now for modern medicine since we can just pray and everyone will be fine again. But if you put the vicar to the test you will find that praying doesn't heal people at all. Experiments have shown this to be a fact [H. Benson _et al_., "Study of the therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients," _American Heart Journal_ 151:4, 2006, pp. 934-42.] And what happens if you do pray for a blind man to see, and he doesn't see? The vicar will say "Ah, well, God didn't want him to see."

The miraculous healings the vicar described never happened. The vicar is a fraudster. But I saw other Christians listen to the story and absorb it all like spiritual sponges. People are often naive about the unscrupulous side of human nature, what psychologists call _psychopathy_ , the disorder of the psychopath. I suspect most Christians are essentially nice, well-meaning people. The trouble is people often judge others on how they themselves are. So a cruel and selfish person will be cynical about others and will believe that everyone has devious motives and should not be trusted. More kind hearted individuals, by contrast, will assume everyone else is like them and is kind, generous and honest. Both viewpoints are incorrect. For the most part people are a mix of good and bad. But the generally kind nature of most Christians who hear stories of miracles happening meant that they would not for one moment entertain the idea that stories of miracles are told by religious fraudsters who desire to appear wise and spiritually advanced. The vicar who told me about the healing miracles crucified Christ by peddling falsehoods and other Christians audience allow people like her to get away with it because of their own naivety.

A lot of Christians can be too trusting in this way, unaware that some of the time the clergy have nefarious intentions. Not all of them, of course, but I think it is more common than people realise. If you need evidence of the immorality of some religious leaders, go to Google and type in "child abuse" and "Catholic priest", you will find plenty of cases of such things.

Part of the reason that amoral people become spiritual leaders is precisely _because_ people will think they must then be decent, honest and kind, because that is how a person in that job is perceived. The illusion of the title vicar (or similar) is enough to overwhelm the senses of many people and they can be blinded from the truth. Treacherous people sometimes seek out moral positions to help spread the lie that they are benevolent. No doubt people thought Dr Harold Shipman was a kind person, since he was a doctor of medicine and had taken an oath to help people. It turned out he was murdering his patients by the score. Finding Christ is about seeing through the illusions to get to the truth, and status is one of the illusions we must fight against.

This problem of corrupt Christian leaders was identified in _The Coptic Apocalypse of Peter_ , one of the ancient scriptures which was not included in the New Testament. It predicts that heresy will become accepted doctrine in the Christian Church: "And they will be ruled heretically. For some will blaspheme the truth and proclaim evil teaching." The books identifies the clergy as the root of the problem: "And there will be others of those who are outside our number who name themselves 'bishop' and 'deacons,' as if they have received their authority from God... Those people are dry canals." [translation of James Brashler and Roger A. Bullard, from _Nag Hammadi Codex VII_ (Nag Hammadi Studies, 30)) ed. Birger Pearson (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996)] The metaphor of water as flowing with truth applies, i.e. beware of the clergy as they will not give us the truth. As it was the religious leaders who decided which books made it into the New Testament, it can be conjectured that they would have a motive to exclude this book from the Bible. It is not clear territory, but whoever wrote the book did identify that clergymen may bear false witness to Christ.

Back to the Bible class. In the Bible study meeting, towards the end, there came the prayers section. An old copy of the Bible was handed around the circle of Christians and each in turn, whilst holding it said their prayer to the group. I wanted to say something about fixing poverty and went over it in my head while the Bible changed hands towards me. As it approached the fear of speaking overwhelmed me and I decided I could not speak. But lo, when the Bible fell into my hands a miracle happened and I was driven to speak.

"I pray that people remember that miracles are a result of our actions," and then I referred to a line from the Qur'an, "trust in God but tie your camel first."

As I spoke the words, the lady of the house watched me, and with the advice on tying a camel she let out a small snort of laughter. I guess it was in derision but I am not certain. I felt it fell on deaf ears in any case.

A couple of days after the Bible study I was referring to my copy of the Peter Singer book I referred to previously - _The Life You Can Save_ , to find the references I mentioned in the meeting. I felt the urge to come together with the Christian group and see if we could explore how we could put Christ's message of giving to the poor into action to save lives. The book contains plenty of useful information for how to go about this so I decided to drop my copy into Alan's post box with a note attached. In the note I said we could explore how to help save poor people, I directed him to page nineteen of the book which lists the various times Christ said in the Bible that we should give to the poor, and I attached my phone number for Alan to call me to discuss what we should do. Alan was suffering stress from his job, having time off to get himself back together. I felt that he may have been having a spiritual crisis. Clearly he believed in Jesus as his saviour, yet he had a highly paid job with all the trappings of wealth in his home. I suspected the crisis was in his mind, trying to resolve the conflict between Christ's message of giving to the poor and his affluent lifestyle. When he drew us to the sections of the book of Acts where the apostles gave away their wealth, I felt he was implicitly referring to his own wealth and asking the group for their advice on what he should do. But the group was inclined to hold on to wealth too, so they were the wrong people to ask.

In my note to Alan I made mention that living a life of honourable giving and love has a return in promoting wellbeing in the one doing the giving. This has been identified in experiments by psychologists; it is that 'inner glow' that people sometimes refer to when they talk about acts of kindness. So Alan's state of anxiety and depression may have been a result of him not living the Christian message of giving. I hoped that if he knew that sharing his wealth may resolve his spiritual malaise that it would encourage him to let go of that wealth for the greater good. Sadly, my offer of working together to help the poor never happened.

#  Another Christian Meeting

In the exploration to find the truth about Christianity I bumped into one lady, quite elderly who seemed to have some sensible things to say and we got talking about such things as mental health, God and so on. It transpired her particular branch of Christianity was in the process of deciding what they would do about mental health. I shared some insights and broadly outlined the conclusions I reached in my book _The Shrink from Planet Zob_. In the research for writing that book I discovered that most people with mental health problems had received forms of abuse from somebody close to them with personality disorder. It was often a parent or sibling, or other relative or friend. Mental health problems are often ignited by stress and stress is the main product which comes from receiving the hostile processes of a person with personality disorder. The theories in the book identify personality disorder as the biggest problem on earth. Not only does it cause mental health problems in others, but it is also the root problem behind such diverse issues as war, poverty, the environment, animal abuse, and corruption in politics, the media and corporate activities. All this was within the scope of the work of my Christian friend, and since I was an activist on these things I was keen to help her Christian group with their work on mental health. So I offered my services in the hope that by cooperating we could empower each other to make a bigger positive difference in the world.

The discussion started well enough. I reckoned that the psychologists' notion of personality disorder would be akin to a religionist's view of evil so it seemed we had the same interest, but just by different language. As the discussion went on I started to get that background tension which I had experienced so often in talking campaign matters with other people. The discussion, which began by flowing and uniting on truth, started to become an argument. As I told her about the difficulty therapists' have with changing people with personality disorder, she retorted with claims that the truth I described was only how I saw it and that others within her faith would view the truth differently.

My shoulders dropped. This is a common argument, that truth is a matter of perception. In fact, truth is absolute, and as a Christian herself she should have known that.

In the room where we met there were green chairs and the wall was in white emulsion. I suggested the lady should stare at a green chair for a while then to look at the wall. When we did so, because of the way that the eyes adjust to colour, the wall for a few seconds seemed to have a tint of red to it. This happens with other colours too. Stare at yellow for a while and you will see a purple wall, stare at blue and you will see an orange wall. You could have three people staring individually at green, yellow and blue and when they turn to the white wall they will see it respectively red, purple or orange. Three people with three different perceptions. The wall cannot possibly actually be red _and_ purple _and_ orange, since it can only be one and not the others. That proves there is an illusion at work and the _perceptions_ of the wall must be in error. All the while, the _absolute_ truth is that the wall is white.

The example shows how perceptions cannot be relied upon and that truth must all ways be external and absolute. Christians often talk about the 'absolute truth' of Christ, and actually they have a point. They might say we should all be Christians, and they state it as an absolute truth.

The 'should' statement requires clarification. A 'should' clause must always be preceded by a conditional 'if' clause, which in common parlance is usually implied and not explicitly stated. For the religious person arguing that Christianity is the right way, the 'if' clause might be "if we want to make a heaven on Earth, then we should ..." "Heaven on earth" is one way of putting it, or you could say, have the best quality of life on earth, or make life better, or whatever language is used.

So is the statement true: "if we want to make a heaven on Earth, then we should all follow Christ"? It is a bit of a vague question as he said a lot of different things, but certainly if we want to eliminate poverty then we should follow Christ when he said give to the poor. And if we lived the Christian message on that point there would certainly be no poverty. So on that point the correctness of following Christ is an absolute truth.

What about war and peace? Well as Christ said we should love our enemies that surely must work at resolving conflicts. We should follow Christ on that one _if we want to build a heaven on Earth._ That's an absolute truth too. Christians often say Christ's way is an absolute truth. 'The absolute' makes an appearance in other faith's too. They talk about it in Hinduism for example.

People get very confused on this absolute truth thing. But they _want_ to be confused. It is a way of crucifying Christ – denying the absolute truth. So let's say that our 'if' clause relates to needless suffering. Most people I reckon would initially agree that we _should_ aim for a world without any needless suffering. So that gives us our 'if' clause, what then does the 'should' clause that follows tell us about how to live? Well, for example, we can say "If we want an end to needless suffering, then we should stop eating animals."

Now the absolute truth becomes a real bother for many people, since most people like to eat animals. But using them in that way does indeed cause much suffering, and so the person who initially wanted a world without needless suffering turns around and begins to argue for a world _with_ needless suffering. And to argue their position they may claim that truth is a matter of perspective. So if I said we should stop eating animals, they will say "that's your perspective." And they will hope the argument stops there. Absolute truth becomes very uncomfortable when we actually look at it and the people who live in accord with absolute truth are in the vast minority (and I don't claim to be perfectly 'there' myself). As Christ said he was the truth, to be Christians we must follow absolute truth. But people who call themselves Christians do not always do that. They don't always follow Christ, they don't always give their wealth to the poor and they certainly don't always give up eating animals. In one of the Christian scriptures which ended up in the Apocrypha, _The Gospel of the Ebionites_ , Jesus said "I have come to destroy the sacrifices. And if you do not stop making sacrifice, God's wrath will not stop afflicting you." [Epiphanius, _Panarion_ , 30, 16, 4-5] At that time, sacrifices of animals were the source of meat, and this lesson was taken by the Ebionites in the second to fourth centuries, to mean we should not eat meat. Thus they lived with a vegetarian diet. The same message was conveyed in the _Homilies of Clement_ , where it was written "we ask him (God)... that we do not eat dead flesh, that we do not touch blood, that we wash ourselves clean from all defilement." Those two scriptures were excluded from the Bible, but were they ruled out because the heresy hunters of the day quashed them because they themselves were so hooked on their animal derived diet? One book which promotes a vegetarian diet which did make it into the Bible was _Genesis._ In it, it was said: "And God said, 'Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed, which _is_ upon the face of all the Earth, end every tree, in which _is_ the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.' _"_ [Genesis 2:29] So if you believe the scriptures God told us not to eat animals. Eating meat has a cost to the animals and a benefit to the meat eater. So was Christian vegetarianism obliterated by those early Christian leaders?

The absolute Christ-truth is the most inconvenient thing on Earth. Little wonder that Al Gore called his film _An Inconvenient Truth_ , it was referring to the inconvenience of absolute Christ-truth when it tells us we should stop burning so much fossil fuel (if we want heaven on Earth).

In my discussion with the Christian lady about the green chairs and the relative perspective of the colour of the white wall, I touched on the 'if' clause of heaven on Earth. I observed her body language, her tone, her sentences. It all went down-hill, sadly. I was hoping for an open discussion, an exploration of truth with two people surrendering preconceptions to discover Christ-truth together. But it fell into argument. Another avenue for improving life on Earth was closed. But it was still a learning opportunity. It helped me see through the fallacy that in order to make positive change we need to be a member of a group. There is nothing to stop you going out today and meeting somebody in need and giving them your loving kindness. Why do you need to go to Church to do that? You don't of course. Neither do you need to work in a mental health unit to help somebody with mental health problems. You don't need to be in the 'Jesus Army' to provide soup for people living on the street. You don't need to be a Buddhist to be vegetarian. You don't need to be sworn in as a Muslim to run an ethical business. You don't need to pay Greenpeace membership fees to send an article on climate change to your local paper. You don't need to attend meetings of Friends of the Earth to cycle more than you drive and to encourage others to do the same.

The absolute Christ-truth is that if the action makes the world a better place then you should do it. You don't need the say-so of the group; let Christ-truth be our guide. Let Him shepherd us directly without hearing his guidance third hand via some minister or guru. Now _that_ is true faith. That kind of spirituality is not for the faint hearted. But it is the most exciting, liberating, invigorating way to live.

This is something of a circular argument. Because I still say we should follow Christ-truth, but we should not automatically follow old style Christianity. But you can be a Christ-truth-Christian without going to Church, without praying, without singing hymns, without being baptised, without drinking from a chalice or any of the ritualistic business. The assessment of whether we are truly Christians or not is judged by our deeds relating to others around us, not in how many rituals we are involved in. Whether we believe in a divine spirit watching over us or not, the answer is the same. If there is a spirit God watching us from heaven, then He is not going to be so easily duped by people who go to Church once a week, sing hymns and pray, then spend the rest of the week being cruel and selfish. If such a God is all knowing he will see through that con trick, and it amazes me that so many 'believers' think they can get away with fooling a spiritual God in that way. A conscious God (if there were one) would judge us by how we live, how loving we are, how much we listen to our conscience and so on. As a leader of the Quakers pointed out – who would God be interested in: a good atheist, or a cruel believer?

We can't take our spirituality from a group or another person, we must experience it direct. Just like the three people staring at different colours, seeing the white wall in different shades, each group will tell us something different. And since those points of view all differ, they cannot be absolute truth. The groups sever the link between the self and the Absolute. To a significant extent, groups don't foster spirituality, they destroy it. Buddhists will say don't kill animals, Islam will say slaughter animals while they are conscious but don't eat pigs. Christianity says eat pigs, and those who are not baptised do not have an afterlife. Atheists say there is no afterlife and there is no soul in any of us. Hinduism says we have a soul and should worship idols. Judaism says do not worship idols, and don't eat octopus, but do eat cows. Each group has something different to say, and that is why those messages are nothing more than perceptions of how we should live, and so should not be trusted. To experience spirituality, we need to leave the groups and foster a direct relationship with the truth, whether you call it Christ-truth, Tao, scientific observations or whatever. We must trust external reality and reason more than we trust the groups. Break free of so-called 'relative truth' and embrace the Absolute. 'Relative truth' is a crucifixion of Christ-truth.

I used to think that saving the world was like a chain. It is a series of events, one linking to the next like a chain, and like a chain, each event was absolutely critical because if any of the links broke, the complete chain becomes useless and the better world we hoped for could not happen. I now realise the error in this.

We cannot rely on any person to be a link in our chains. So again, any chain that relies on a group of people to put it into effect may be doomed to failure. When I tried to enlist the support of others into a chain I was merely side-stepping the responsibility, being momentarily steered by the dark side. Instead, we are better off when we take personal responsibility for helping others. The buck stops with the self. As Einstein said "the world is a dangerous place not because of people who do evil, but because of good people who look on and do nothing."

The guilt and involvement in helping others begins with a choice. Every person must first ask themselves the same question: _will I protect others from suffering?_ When the choice is made it sets the pattern for life. It's the choice we are all faced with: love or hate, good or bad, righteousness or selfishness, truth or lie, the eternal paths of life.

From the choice will come smaller choices of which paths to take. From those choices will come suffering or salvation.

Group membership is a kind of distortion of absolute truth. There is no group which any one person will fit into perfectly since people are so incredibly diverse. So becoming part of a group may mean forgoing a certain understanding of the world just to fit in. But if that understanding is true and useful, then a part of Christ-truth has been killed off in the process. This applies to religious groups. Christians don't actually believe everything that their particular denomination of Christianity says, but they are forced to go along with it because the group holds that credo. Psychologists call it _group-think,_ when individuals in a group absorb some or other falsehood just because it was growing within the group and the individuals wish to fit in. Group-think dominates religions and makes individuals accept all kinds of irrational beliefs.

The fact that people are so diverse is evident from what happened to Christianity in nearly two thousand years since its inception. Christianity has split again and again, so we now have Methodists, Latter Day Saints, the Evangelists, the Unitarian Universalists, the Baptists, Roman Catholics, Quakers, Pentecostals, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Anglicans, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox and so on. The list goes on seemingly forever. But they are all just perspectives, what they would call 'relative truths' which are not truths at all. Christ stands absolute. He and what he stood for are not relative. So all these denominations are not the creations of Christ, they are the creations of humans; they are the religions which killed Christ-truth. These denominations are deviations from absolute truth, and being deviations, they contain some falsehoods. We do not go to heaven if we drink wine, or are submersed under water, or if we say Hail Mary, or if we sing hallelujah, or whatever. Those differences are the falsehoods that don't lead us to Christ, they lead us away. And being falsehoods, they are usually the work of the selfish gene.

Back to the Christian lady and the green chairs/white wall illusion. Lovely as this lady was, clearly a very compassionate and intelligent woman, she herself fell for the falsehood that truth is relative and she argued that view with me. She spent a life time studying and apparently following Christ and had been very active in her Church and helped lots of people with her loving kindness. But when her ideas were under the spiritual microscope, it turned out she was crucifying the God she thought she adored.

#  The Jehovah's Witnesses

As research for this book it was my original intention to 'try out' all the available denominations of Christianity in my local area. I tried a few but they were mostly much of a muchness and eventually I got bored with the research.

The evangelists' worship was the usual Bible readings and songs of worship but it seemed that the main difference was the congregation tended to sing with their hands up in the air.

I attended the Methodists' worship around Easter. There was much talk about palm leaves in the sermon and again they sang songs of worship, but it wasn't so astonishingly different that it was deserving of a new denomination. At least that's how it seemed.

I got the impression that the innumerable denominations of Christianity were rather pointless and I found it difficult to understand why those Christians claimed to be different at all. The whole point of Christianity, it seems, is to follow the teachings of Christ which broadly speaking means love and forgiveness. Why is it necessary to argue over it all? The answer is that there is only one truth – Christ-truth unifies. The divisions are all built on falsehoods.

It reminds me of an Irish joke about denominations which I will relate but will have to muddle through the language of it somewhat as I am not that familiar with religious terminology.

Two men meet in a bar in Belfast, Northern Ireland. They do not know each other and so they get talking:

Man 1: "So what religion are you?"

Man 2: "Christian."

Man 1: "Great so am I, what denomination?"

Man 2: "Protestant."

Man 1: "Great, so am I. Which Church?"

Man 2: "The reformed Church."

Man 1: "Great, so am I. Which reformed Church?"

Man 2: "St Peter's."

Man 1: "Great so am I. Which St Peters?"

Man 2: "St Peter's Adventists."

Man 1: "Great, so am I. Which service do you attend?"

Man 2: "Thursday."

Man 1: "Great so do I. Which aisle do you sit in?"

Man 2: "The left aisle."

Man 1: "Too bad, I sit on the right." And he shot the other man.

The joke illustrates how futile and ridiculous religious divisions are. The whole business about a guy coming to Earth asking everyone to be nice, forming a religion then the religion splitting into hundreds of different denominations is quite bizarre if you stop and think about it.

Finally, I took a look at the Jehovah's Witnesses, one of the most controversial denominations of Christianity due largely to their frequently unwelcome efforts to proselytise from house to house of an evening.

There was a public service on at the local Kingdom Hall of the Witnesses so I attended that. The hall was quite full, and although many of the congregation were quite elderly I was surprised to see so many younger people there.

As with the other denominations there were songs of worship and readings from the Bible and I started getting a déjà vu about the whole thing. There wasn't much to report.

Then the meeting changed into the reading of _The Watchtower_ , the Witness's magazine. They read a lengthy section all about what they call the 'pioneer work', which is actually the door to door ministry when they attempt to convert people to their faith. It was all very positive about the whole thing, about how it led people towards hope and away from lives of debauchery and such. They claimed that giving service in this way helped to reinforce the faith of the witnesses and gave them a stronger more fulfilling experience. There was no mention of the fact that they had a reputation for annoying people in this way.

In the worship I looked around at the congregation and thought to myself that these people are different to most people I know. When they are told something supernatural they seem to believe it without question. It seems then that they are quite naive and unaware that the people teaching them are either themselves deluded or are malevolent and take pleasure in convincing people to believe in falsehoods. I felt sorry for them. I felt particularly sorry for the children who were there. I watched them being brain-washed, being given irrational beliefs and it broke my heart. The children, not understanding, and attempting to please their parents spoke over a microphone about the wonderful coming of Jehovah. I could have wept. As they grow, their illusions will seem completely real and in all likelihood they will grow to become adults who will pass on the same illusions to their own children.

I have met Witness's before. I worked for one Witness woman. She told me about the perils of blood transfusions (as you may know, Witnesses refuse to have transfusions as it is against their belief). She told me there is nothing more dangerous than blood as though that made the issue quite clear. Actually there is something more dangerous than blood and that is a lack of blood.

Another two witnesses came to my home for a while when I was a young man. I recall them saying that all the ancient remains of our _Homo sapiens_ ancestors, such as _Homo erectus_ could be fitted inside one coffin, claiming that to be proof that the theory of evolution is wrong. In fact, there are few fossils since these species lived on land and that meant their remains were subject to erosion by weather and would soon be destroyed. By comparison, most fossils are of marine animals and plants since that is the environment where their remains fall to the sea bed and are buried and preserved.

Another Witness woman knocked on my mum's door when I was there doing some work. She said to me: "Haven't you noticed how there are more earthquakes recently?" She was steering me into the idea that Jehovah's Judgment Day is imminent, something which the Witnesses are fixated on. I tried to point out that the Earth has been around for billions of years and our sample of earthquakes taken from a few decades is not representative of the entirety of geological history. It fell on deaf ears of course. It would do because the Witnesses believe the Earth to be around six thousand years old. This was worked out by adding up the ages of the characters in the Bible from Adam and Eve to the most recent descendent of theirs named somewhere in those pages. I wouldn't say that any religious person is stupid, but it is fair to say that the belief that the Earth is a few thousand years old is rather foolish given the evidence. There are literally mountains of evidence – mountains made up of rocks some of which can be dated to billions of years old.

In the Kingdom Hall, after about an hour and a half of the religion I looked at the _Watchtower_ extract and found it was going on for another two pages. I couldn't really take any more of it, the whole experience was draining my energy with so many nonsensical ideas so I felt I wouldn't miss much if I left early, and I did.

When I stepped outside the hall, it was a beautiful bright autumn day. The sun was shining, the air was clear and I felt joy. It was like stepping from the darkness of a confused illusion into a promising reality and I felt great relief to be out. Another religion that had not filled me with inspiration but had sapped my spiritual strength.

One of the first things I saw as I left was over on some distant hills where wind turbines were steadily rotating and churning out their free energy. Then on house roofs there were solar panels, more than I had seen previously. I thought that the reason they were there was not because of religion and prayer; sustainable energy is taking off because of the hard work of scientists, engineers, environmental activists and politicians. If everyone sat and prayed for Jehovah to fix it, it would never get done.

It reminds me of a viral meme on Facebook. It was a picture of two hands held together in prayer with the caption: "Prayer – so you can do jack-shit about the problem and still make it look like you really care."

Then I went to the supermarket. I looked at the newspapers with their tired headlines about the latest celebrities who had made minor slip ups and how we should be all shocked. I saw reports of fighting around the world. And I thought, what are the religions saying about this kind of stupidity? It seemed not much. Then I went to the fridge section and bought some dairy free cheese and thought about the lack of religious concern for the welfare of animals and the hypocrisy of preaching love then killing and eating our animal friends.

In the same week that I visited the Jehovah's Witnesses I read in _New Scientist_ an interview with the neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland [ _New Scientist_ 30/11/2013, 2945]. Her science based understanding led her to accept that we are nothing more than the product of chemical activity in our brains - blobs of grey matter. Where many people are disturbed and depressed by this idea, she is not, as she pointed out: "Now, at the end of it, what's going to happen? I will die and that's it. And I like that idea, in a crazy sort of way." I understand the point; you can't have much more peace than non-existence. It's quite appealing if you think about it, it just means overcoming our natural fear of death.

# Conclusion

Anglican Church leaders in Britain admit that their Church is in crisis. In November 2013 at the Shropshire Churches Conference the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey said "we ought to be ashamed of ourselves, we are one generation away from extinction – if we don't invest in young people there is going to be no one in the future," pointing at how the Church had failed to bring youngsters into its services [ _Daily Mail_ , 19/11/2013 pp 1-2]. Judging from my experience with the Alpha Course, I am not surprised, they continue to offer uninspiring and repetitious religious dogma, but with a different banner hanging outside the church.

But leaders do recognise that there is a need for moral and hopeful leadership from a church. The Most Reverend John Sentamu told the Synod that while the Church still argued over having women bishops, they had spent too long "arguing over words and phrases, while the people of England are left floundering amid meaninglessness, anxiety and despair."

In the lead up to Lord Carey's warning, census figures showed decline of more than ten per cent in a decade in numbers of people who ascribe to Christianity. The figures were 72 per cent of the British population ascribing to Christianity in the 2001 census which fell to 59.3 per cent in 2011. Congregations are running at half the numbers of the 1960's and in the two decades to 2013 Catholic attendances have declined similarly. Another sign of the times was when In October 2013 senior British judges ruled Christianity outside the arena of court proceedings. President of the Family Division Sir James Munby said "the days are past when the business of judges was the enforcement of morals of religious beliefs."

Times are a-changing, but Christianity is not. In the UK the Church tried to block same sex marriages but the government went ahead with it. They still block the appointment of women bishops and the government again may step in and force the Church to make changes there too.

Change or growth? Ask the clergy if they should change and there will be many who say "no". But ask them if they should grow and the answer might be "yes". But change and growth are the same thing. The Church needs to grow; that is, it needs to change. Lord Carey recognised this. In the same speech at the Shropshire Churches Conference he said "I am convinced that churches can grow, must grow and should grow." Bang on the nail. But will they? Maybe, but I suspect it will be slow progress.

The problem with growth is resistance, and ironically those who call for change will meet the same resistance that killed Christ.

The problem is this. The world needs to grow, that is a given. We need to grow from war to peace, from poverty to prosperity, from divisions to unity, from a damaged environment to a healthy one, from suffering to healing for all life on Earth. And that growth means that individuals must grow. For example, we shouldn't resort to violence, we should recycle more, we shouldn't tell slanderous lies. And so on. Church growth actually comes down to individual growth. So when they say for example, the Church needs to grow to include women as Bishops, what happens 'in the field' is that some or other clergyman or woman in the laity must change their mind to let that woman become a bishop. The point is that growth of the institution is in reality, growth of individuals. Now the problem becomes more precise, because when you tell an individual they need to grow, it bruises their ego, it makes them feel small by illuminating their mistake. And to preserve their status they resist the call to growth. It is in fact narcissistic resistance.

We shouldn't assume narcissistic resistance to growth is something unusual; it isn't, it is by far the norm rather than the exception and we are all guilty of this at some time or other. It was this resistance that killed Christ. When he said "you should make peace," and so on, he bruised the egos of the people he was addressing. He made them look small and guilty so to preserve their status, they killed the messenger. And that's all Christ was, just a messenger of love. The narcissistic resistance which led to Christ's death will be the same narcissistic resistance that will inhibit the growth of Christianity. Ironically, when Christians resist the call to growth, they are resisting Christ. They are in reality not Christians at all; they are frauds. Christ is truth, the truth is that the Church needs to change; anyone who resists the truth of change is therefore resisting Christ. Resisting Christ-truth that is.

In Lord Carey's address, he pointed to humanity's loss of direction when he said: "There is so much violence, too many divided families, too little job security, too many young people with nothing to aim for. It is still the case that people are looking for spiritual fulfilment." I feel that he is correct here. Apparently more than sixty per cent of people in the UK believe in some kind of 'higher power', though it is common nowadays for people to say they are 'spiritual but not religious'. In 2013 14.1 million people in Britain said they had no religion, the figure in 2001 was 7.7 million [ _Daily Mail_ again p.2]. It strikes me that there is some kind of spiritual vacuum here in Britain, left by the failure of dogmatic religions which refuse to change with the times.

I want to believe that people want spiritual leadership, but do they? The people I meet on a daily basis seem pretty indifferent either way. They get by. They go to work, watch the telly, raise their kids and not many people seem to show much interest in spirituality. My son reports that virtually none of his school mates are religious or believe in God, only the one or two who were raised into a faith based household by their parents.

But wants and needs are different things. Even if people don't want spiritual leadership, we may well need it. People often seem confused about reality. We suffer from illusions which harm us and the other people in our lives. Often we have been led astray by deluded leaders of innumerable beliefs. We might fall into superstitions like astrology or false religions all of which will cause suffering. Or we might take our moral compasses from other people. The blind lead the blind and people will stumble into social norms of behaviour which cause suffering for humans, animals and the environment.

So what should we do? Well, for the while it pays to educate ourselves. It is a choice to go it alone and break free of Christianity or from any other belief system. Actually, the choice is whether to follow Christianity or Christ, because the two are quite different paths.

Much of the Christian message is dogma which has been handed down unchanging from the scriptures recorded nearly two thousand years ago. But the problem with scriptures is that they can never change. Or in more specific terms, the Bible can not grow. So the choice for us is either to grow with Christ-truth or remain stultified with Christian dogma. The only spiritual path which exists is the spirituality of reality, and that is synonymous with the Christ-truth which I have been talking about. The name is immaterial; the point is to follow reality revealed to us by observations, logic and reason, i.e. by science. Of course, all faiths claim to be the only spiritual path, just as I have done here, but the difference is that the spirituality of reality is the only one which is always backed up by evidence. If evidence arrives which reveals an error in the spirituality of reality, then the spirituality will change to incorporate the new truth. The spirituality of reality grows: dogmatic religion does not.

Should we lament the fall of Christianity? No. Although it is still on the rise in some developing countries, in the developed, traditionally Christian countries it is in decline. But it isn't atheism which is destroying Christianity, it is Christ himself. People are becoming wiser; in fact people are growing. With a more sophisticated understanding they are coming to realise that much of the Christian message doesn't make sense. With better education and freedom in democracies, people are being allowed to think for themselves and becoming better able to assess the veracity of any given religion. And when they grow closer to the truth they are in fact growing closer to Christ. It is because they are starting to follow Christ-truth that they are giving up on Christianity.

It is the spirit of Christ-truth which is running the campaign. It is present in science where the quest for Christ-truth is the very purpose of science itself. Christ-truth is the spirit of Christ – truth is Christ's blood and body. Truth is pervading our education, politics and steadily the media. It cannot be destroyed. As Buddha said: "Three things can not long be hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth." It is inevitable. Falsehoods can always be disproved: truth can not. So Christ-truth will always have the edge.

With the march of technology Christ-truth can travel round the world like a viral meme. Activists are spreading Christ-truth all around the Internet, on Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia. True, the forces of darkness spread their falsehoods in these places too. But with the evidence on its side, Christ-truth can eventually win any argument.

This book is really somewhat academic; it is merely a commentary on what is already happening. The spirit of Christ – that is _truth_ – is alive and well and is spreading around the world. All I do here is show people what is happening. It will happen whether or not anyone reads this book.

If the Christian Church is wise, it will grow. It has a huge resource which is ripe to be used. With properties in every town and many villages, it has a platform to step from in campaigns to teach love to the masses. As it is, it is in danger of losing this advantage, because of individual 'Christian's' resistance to growth; that is, their resistance to Christ.

So the real spirit of Christ is still with us, and it is truth, particularly moral truth. But we need to be clear about what that means. As Gandhi said: "Truth is God" and we need to be clear that that is distinct from the notion that "God is truth." What we are considering is that it is _truth_ that we must follow and truth is found from observations and logical reasoning. So for example, the Jesus in the Bible may have said we should pray to God. But the observations are that praying does not solve problems for us, though it can offer us comfort. So Christ-truth does not request that we should pray, since it is not true that prayer gets results. But there are other things which Jesus is reported to have said which are true and which are therefore the spirit of Christ. For example, the call to forgive our enemies. Psychologists (that is, scientists) have shown this does work for creating peace. If carried out, it can eliminate conflicts. Added to that, forgiveness can help reduce feelings of anger, a source of psychological trauma for the individual as well as a source of conflict in the group.

So when we follow Christ we should be following scientifically observable truths, and that is not always the doctrine which is promoted in the Bible. Science brings us Christ-truth – science is the resurrection.

Although we are saying truth is Christ, when it comes to moral truths it is harder to distinguish truth from falsehood. This is due to the fact that the selfish side of us all will try to destroy moral truths with falsehoods, something we all do to some extent. It is our selfish gene which, for the most part, attacks moral truth with falsehoods and as such, it is the selfish gene which is the opponent of Christ-truth.

Christianity is, more than any other faith, the one which is most allied to the concept of morality, to the point that people will claim to be Christian because wearing the badge shows them in a good light. More than ninety per cent of prison inmates in America claim to be Christians. They are not, since nowhere did Christ ever condone criminal activities. Those people lied, because claiming to be Christian was one way they could portray themselves as moral people.

The theology is relatively straightforward to see, provided we make the choice to follow truth, i.e. to follow Christ. The problem is that very few people make that choice and are often powerless against the overwhelming psychological forces of the selfish gene. Very few people escape the pull of the selfish gene to truly experience free will.

The selfish gene detests the light of Christ-truth and it will attempt to persecute and extinguish moral truth whenever it can. The crucifix is very fitting for Christianity as it is a visual emblem of the persecution which most true Christians will receive at some point in their lives. You will see the persecution of Christ-truth in the way moral crusaders are attacked in the media, in how vegetarians and vegans are labelled as 'Nazi's', in the way political activists are imprisoned for calling for freedom, in the way environmentalists are called 'tree huggers' or 'do-gooders'. Though Christ-truth is still at large, doing its work of love, persecution is still very much the norm in the world. Philosopher Arthur Schoppenhauer correctly described this when he said "Truth [Christ-truth] passes through three stages: first it is ignored, secondly it is violently opposed, thirdly it is accepted as self evident." We see stage two, the violent opposition, going on continually. And Christians are presently violently opposing Christ-truth at this strange and rapidly accelerating epoch for humanity.

Christians attacking Christ is nothing new, it goes all the way back to the crucifixion. Didn't Christ say on the morning of his death that his apostles would deny him three times before the cock crowed? It happened then and it happens now.

And we are all a part of the movement of Christ-truth. If we have faith in Christ-truth and wish to see a better world, then we cannot ignore it: _we must act._ We must live love and truth and spread the message. Share this book for example. As Einstein said: "The world is a dangerous place not because of people who do evil, but because of others who look on and do nothing."

If we do nothing, then we will continue in a world of suffering. If we act to help the world, then at the end of our lives we can look back at our life content in the knowledge that we played a part in making the world a better place. We want to leave this world without the burden of guilt. That ease of conscience is the best thing to have when we leave this one life we are given on our beautiful planet Earth. Only action can achieve this.

To discuss this book use hashtag #scienceresurrection.

# More By Jake Lyron

All ebooks by Jake are available in formats for any computer or digital device.

### The Holy Grail's Lost Meaning: Symbol of Receptiveness to Truth and Love

In this book Jake develops a new theory of the Holy Grail. He examines receptiveness as it appears in a range of spiritualties and in the science of psychology and brings together the clues to examine the grail as a symbol of receptiveness. This spiritual _tour de force_ covers plenty of ground including links to Kabbalah, Taoism, Zen and Greek mythology. Links to the heart symbol are revealed as well as the story of Da Vinci's _The Last Supper_ as described in Dan Brown's _The Da Vinci Code._ The book is often free to download and has been well received: "your life may never be the same" "ground-breaking" "robust" "compelling" "will change your life". Find out what all the fuss is about, search the title and download your free copy. Use hashtag #grailreceptive.

### The Shrink from Planet Zob: Psychiatry for a Mad World

This book examines the psychology of global issues – war, poverty, mental health, the environment, politics, education and more. It earned Jake a national **Mental Health Hero Award** for his contribution to the field of mental health. The factual sections of the book are mixed with the humorous storyline of Dr Zab, the shrink from planet Zob who came to Earth to fix our crazy world. The findings are controversial and often shocking, as Sir Ranulph Fiennes (the world's greatest living explorer) commented:

" _Lyron's evidence that genetic psychopathy is dominating the world is compelling and revelatory and the havoc it wreaks is beyond measure. The factual content will challenge the best of us but when you need it most the fictional thread will make you laugh out loud. An important book to take the world forward."_

You may find the eBook edition free to download - Google the title. Use hashtag #theshrinkfromplanetzob.

### Hugh Manitee's Book of Memes: Change the World - Write a Meme for this Book!

This book is a spin off from _The Shrink from Planet Zob_ as it features in the storyline. It is a selection of thought provoking essays from celebrities, authors, philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists and others, part of the movement for a sane world. It is free to download so Google the title and get a copy today.

### An Armchair Exploration of the Universe: How a Contracting Universe Could Create Love from Chaos

Jake explores the nature of the Universe, questioning the Big Bang Theory and offering an alternative explanation for how the cosmos works. Removing the limits from thinking creates a broad exploration of existence uniting such disparate concepts as gravity, love, genetics, social psychology and entropy. After an exploration like this the Universe may never look the same again. Google the title to obtain your copy. Use hashtag #armchairuniverse.

### Escape the Matrix: Breaking Free of Illusions for an Authentic and Meaningful Life

In this critique of civilisation in the early 21st century Jake questions where we are going with the ever increasing dominance of super-consumerism and unbridled technology. Humanity, it is argued is sleep walking into a method of information control similar to the computer control in the film series of _The Matrix_. Jake questions if this path we are stumbling down is truly creating happiness and shows how living a more simple life closer to nature and with traditional values is more likely to generate feelings of wellbeing and harmony.

### Living the Spirituality of Reality: Experiencing Truth in the Universe

This book is a collection of short philosophical essays illustrating the concepts behind Jake's 'spirituality of reality' with everyday examples. Drawing from various established beliefs, science and psychology Jake makes sense of the world around us and maps out a way of living with authenticity, clarity and meaning. Use hashtag **#spiritualityofreality**.

For more books by Jake search online for his name.

