Book

This book aims to confront our readiness as a society to impress theological ideas on to young children, and our acceptance of the tenets of theology within the political system. Serious questions are asked of religion’s specially protected sensitivities, given religion’s demonstrably fictitious foundation.

The first two chapters of this book have been used as material for a presentation which I have called ‘Just Suppose’. The presentation has been delivered as a lecture to several Humanist Groups within the UK; below is a sample of the feed back from these lectures.

“…This presentation was very professional, very convincing and very well received. We strongly recommend it.”

“I am writing to thank you again, on behalf of Essex Humanists Group, for your most interesting presentation. It was quite evident that you are extremely knowledgeable and have spent considerable time and effort in researching and gathering your material. One of our members commented that ‘Just Suppose’, broken down into smaller sections, would make an extremely good course for secondary school pupils and also other humanist and secularist groups.”

“As you will have detected on the night, your presentation 'Just Suppose' was very well received by our members and a number of them have asked me to convey their thanks to you and have asked how they might obtain further information about your work. We were very impressed with the level of professionalism in the production especially the visuals in the slide show which made the line of argument easy to follow. I would have no hesitation in recommending this presentation to anyone with an interest in the history of religion and the origins of Christianity”

“I am writing to thank you for your interesting and informative presentation last night. Your talk went down very well and provoked quite a discussion. Indeed the meeting went on longer than usual -- a good indicator of the level of interest in the subject! We really appreciate your efforts and wish you every success with promoting your ideas more widely. They deserve to be heard. You should definitely go for something on the box!”

Mike Flood: Chairman, Milton Keynes Humanists.

Following a presentation to the members of South Place Ethical Society, I was invited to submit 3,000 words which were then duly published in the SPES ‘Ethical Record’ magazine, Vol. 115 number 4, May 2010.

Astonishing Credulity will appeal to all who have purchased for enjoyment, or counter argument, material from the likes of: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Karen Armstrong, Melanie Phillips, Sue Blackmore and Daniel Dennett.

The subject matter of this book evolved out of a personal interest in mythology and theology. However, I myself am secular, and have always been secular, coming from a non-religious family background. I have never considered the religious stories to be anything but stories. In point of fact, I see no real distinction between mythology and theology; save one is considered past defunct beliefs, and the other presently held beliefs.

With this book I aim to create an argument that could be used to convince the powers that be in our country today that we, as a society, should not allow the theological world access to developing young minds through the school curriculum; particularly when such access is used to promote the acceptance of personally held theological beliefs. I formed the view that: if it could be demonstrated that the main figure head of Christianity is not a character from history, it would be sufficient to use as the opening for a wider debate on the role of religion within the school curriculum and its inclusion in political issues. From this standpoint I believe the book successfully confronts head on the claim from the Church that we cannot use an argument from silence to claim the character ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ did not exist in history. That is: the Church claim that just because there is no contemporary corroborative writing about the character, of which there is not, does not prove he did not exist. It is interesting though to consider that, if the character did not exist, there would, by default, be no contemporary corroborative writing about him.

The Church as an organisation therefore feels impregnable behind this “you cannot use an argument from silence” wall. I take the reverse approach. I claim, and demonstrate, that literature does exist which reveals Jesus, as in ‘Jesus Christ’, existed as an allegorical character long before the dates attributed to the Jesus character from the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts in the New Testament; thereby proving the five books to be updated fictional stories of an ancient allegorical myth, as opposed to factual biographies.

Having presented the case for a mythical, as opposed to a historic Jesus the book then demonstrates how theological belief evolved from ancient astrology. I present many parallels with naked eye astronomy and mythology. I also demonstrate how these links have found their way from ancient mythology, to form the base line stories in present day theology. The book then tackles the issue of how these newly created theologies came to be entrenched into the psyche of mankind.

So, that being the main content of the book, what is the rationale behind the book? I wish to promote the idea that “Religious Theology” is quite simply just “Iron Age Ignorance”. That is, it was an acceptable description of how the world works, given the knowledge available at the time that description was fashioned. But it was a theology formed in all ignorance of what we now know today. Just as we should also accept that our current scientific view of how the universe works is acceptable today, given the knowledge we have amassed to date. But this view will undoubtedly be seen as ignorant by the people of the fifth millennium, given what man will find out about the universe over the next two thousand years; things we, do not yet know. If we can accept this argument, then it follows that we simply should not be teaching “Iron Age Ignorance” to our children in our schools as stated fact. Moreover, we should promote the view that Christianity is: “a massive literal misinterpretation of ancient allegorical stories, on a global scale”.

The book is priced at £6.00 plus postage and packaging. If you would like to purchase a copy please send an email in the first instance to: mike.lawrence100@ntlworld.com