Humanism, atheism and other freedoms

Pope John Paul II - not a well man

According to a new book, Pope John Paul II regularly whipped himself. At other times, and in spite of illness, he slept on a bare floor. This, apparently, makes him eligible for sainthood.

To the faithful, the self-flagellation and hardship, in emulation of Christ’s suffering, are heroic. But outside the warped logic of faith, is there any other context in which this kind of behaviour wouldn’t be regarded as unbalanced?

The details of the late Pope’s masochism come in a new book, Why He Is a Saint: the Real John Paul II. It’s by Vatican official Monsignor Slawomir Oder who will be in charge of the process that will probably end in John Paul II’s canonisation (so it’s probably not a very balanced view of the erstwhile Pontiff).

There could be no clearer illustration of how religious and real-world perspectives do not align.

To the faithful Roman Catholic, John Paul II’s actions demonstrate devotion and courage.

To the ordinary human being, such behaviour seems suspiciously deviant. Indulging in such masochism suggests mental disorder, perhaps with sexual overtones. Masochism, after all, frequently has sexual implications, and in a sect that imposes lifelong celibacy (in theory) on its priests, one might expect many different manifestations of aberrant psychosexual pathology.

Even without such dark overtones, this behaviour still seems odd. To deliberately hurt oneself in emulation of a character in a fictional story is hardly normal, is it? What would we make, for example, of a teenager who chose to live in a wardrobe to honour the story of Narnia? That’s right – we’d get them help. And that’s without them self-harming – a sure sign of psychological issues.

This wouldn’t be the first time that behaviour which would seem odd or unacceptable to society at large is excused by religious adherence. There is a broad spectrum ranging from violent jihad to the Church of England’s recent fight to protect its ‘right’ to discriminate against homosexuals. Right now, in Kansas, a man is claiming that his religious beliefs left him no choice but to murder a doctor.

It’s also worth remembering that, when he wasn’t enjoying a sound self-whipping, Pope John Paul II lived in an environment of fantastic wealth and privilege.

Still, the Roman Catholic church has elevated people to sainthood on any number of feeble premises. It’s a form of marketing. By making people saints, you’re saying, ‘See how our church contains so many good and righteous people’. It helps counter the bad press the church gets for its paedophile priests and its effective genocide-by-AIDS in Africa.

Most organised religions are fundamentally bizarre. They involve a wholesale acceptance of strange and improbable ideas. Most of the time, we let this slide, because many of these ideas have become entrenched as part of the whole patchwork that is our mythological and historical landscape.

But occasionally, something crops up that makes you step back and think, “wow, now that’s weird”. This is one of those occasions, and it’s the clearest sign you could ask for of the gulf between faith and the real world.

I readily admit that I’m not an expert on Christian theology. It’s a tricky subject. There’s so much that is vague, bizarre and self-contradictory in the Bible that making sense of it – if sense is the right word – takes a certain kind of mind and a lot of training.

Take, for instance, Jesus and the manner of his conception.

Mary was ‘visited’ by the Holy Spirit. That’s a polite term for it, as in ‘I gave her a damn good visiting’. The result was that Mary became pregnant without any of that sordid rolling in the hay malarky.

Catholics would have you believe she remained a virgin (let’s leave aside the small matter of Jesus’ brother, James, and other siblings). Not just that, Mary herself had to be free of sin, including original sin, so Catholics had to invent all that silliness about Mary’s immaculate conception. Nor could she die, but instead had to be assumed up to heaven.

It’s all man-made nonsense, of course, but it’s not the particular piece of nonsense I want to deal with here.

Fun-loving trio

No, my problem is with that Holy Spirit fella. He’s one part of that fun-loving trio, the Holy Trinity. The other members, of course, are God and Jesus. Oh, wait…

Presumably, before the Holy Spirit had his night of passion with Mary, the Holy Trinity was merely the Dynamic Duo. There’s not much I can find in the Bible or on Wikipedia about that, but in any case there’s a more pressing problem.

You see, Christianity has long anguished over this Trinity business. I mean, it markets itself as one of the leading monotheistic faiths (of which there are three key brands, but let’s not get into that coincidence). In fact, God is very emphatic about the mono bit – ‘Thou shalt have no other gods but me’ and all that.

And so theologians have had to come up with some very convoluted, clever, indeed downright devious ways of getting around the problem of there being three versions of the one God. Yes, they say, there are three entities or manifestations, but they are simply different facets of the same thing – God the father, God the son and God the Holy Ghost.

In the Credo (or Nicene Creed, if you prefer), this is made explicit. In the original version of the creed, formulated in Nicea in 325CE, believers simply state that they believe in the Holy Ghost. But in the Constantinople version of 381CE, the creed was expanded to avoid any unpleasant misunderstanding. The Holy Ghost, it says, “proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified”. In both versions, Jesus is, “begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father”.

One substance. Hmm.

And so it seems that, in effect, Mary spent the night with God. And given that Jesus is part of God … well that raises some difficult questions, doesn’t it? One assumes that the Holy Ghost is nothing but a convenient invention of members of the early Christian church to get around the problem of Jesus begetting himself, and having sex with his mother into the bargain.

Anyone who has written a novel or screenplay will recognise the huge plot problems in the Christian story. And most will have little time for how poorly these have been resolved by later contortions and rewrites. We humans have made up this story but can’t seem to make it work at any logical level. Of course, that doesn’t always worry believers: most just throw up their hands and declare it a mystery and not for us to know.

Some Christian sects have avoided the problem by simplifying the story of Christ and what interpretations they make from it. For example, many do not insist on Mary’s virginity. In any case, this was only ever the product of a mistranslation of the alleged prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, where the Hebrew word almah, which carries no connotation of virginity, became the Greek word parthenos, which means ‘maiden’ and might imply purity.

But some powerful sects, most notably Roman Catholicism, take a hardline, one might say fundamentalist, view. In the process, their excuses and explanations take on ever more bizarre forms.

I think Uta Ranke-Heinemann expressed it best. She is a theologian who holds the chair of History of Religion at the University of Duisburg-Essen. She was, for a while, Professor of Catholic Theology at Essen, until fired by Pope John Paul II for daring to insist on a theological, rather than biological, interpretation of the Virgin Birth. Still a Christian, she departed from mainstream faith, insisting that the Bible and the Trinity are the products of mankind, not God, that Jesus was human, that hell, the devil and original sin are all fabrications and that the crucifixion was, in effect, a form of pagan human sacrifice. She said:

Catholic moral theology has lost much of its prestige … It is a folly that poses as religion and invokes the name of God, but has distorted the consciences of countless people. It has burdened them with hair-splitting nonsense and has tried to train them to be moral acrobats, instead of making them more human and kinder to their fellow men and women … Its theology is no theology and its morality is no morality. It has come to grief on its own stupidity.

Uta Ranke-Heinemann’s book, Eunuchs for Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality and the Catholic Church, is available from:  Amazon.co.uk |  Amazon.com

It’s strange how many people are surprised by the answer to the question: what do atheists do at Christmas? Because, of course, that answer is: pretty much the same as anyone else.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Hell, it’s not even November yet and he’s talking about Christmas.”

Well, it’s because of the publication of a new book: The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas edited by Ariane Sherine. Here’s the description from Amazon:

42 atheist celebrities, comedians, scientists and writers give their funny and serious tips for enjoying the Christmas season. Last year, Guardian journalist Ariane Sherine launched the Atheist Bus Campaign and ended up raising over GBP150,000, enough to place the advert ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life’ on 800 UK buses in January 2009. Now Ariane and dozens of other atheist writers, comedians and scientists are joining together to raise money for a very different cause. The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas is a funny, thoughtful handbook all about enjoying Christmas, from 42 of the world’s most entertaining atheists. It features everything from an atheist Christmas miracle to a guide to the best Christmas pop hits, and contributors include Richard Dawkins, Charlie Brooker, Derren Brown, Ben Goldacre, Jenny Colgan, David Baddiel, Simon Singh, AC Grayling, Brian Cox and Richard Herring. The full book advance and all royalties will go to the UK HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust.

So, a worthwhile cause and a fun read. Yet it probably won’t be enough to satisfy one group of people apparently intent on being confused by the idea that atheists celebrate Christmas at all. Yes, I’m talking about journalists. According to a recent bulletin from the British Humanist Association:

The BHA has started getting the yearly media calls about humanists at Christmas. Many journalists seem utterly confused by the concept that someone can have a turkey (or nutroast) dinner, decorate a tree, see family and friends and give and receive gifts yet still be non-religious … we try to explain to journalists is that there is nothing hypocritical about enjoying oneself over a certain period whilst at the same time believing that we are not celebrating the birth of anyone’s messiah.

Let’s face it, for the majority of people – particularly in Western Europe – the religious significance of Christmas is nominal at best. The nativity is a great story, that we can all enjoy at the level of a fairy tale. And we can all have a wonderful time singing carols while knowing that the message they convey is an ancient fiction.

We each decide what Christmas means for us. For many people, it’s about getting together with family. For others, it’s about having a holiday with lots of good food, booze and gifts. I’ve even known non-religious people attend Midnight Mass (I did it once myself, at Truro Cathedral: an amazing spectacle but I found it deeply creepy). And, being humanists, many of us will take the time to reflect on those less fortunate than ourselves and do something about it.

And even if you’re a Christian, it doesn’t pay to dig too deeply into the genuine meaning of Christmas. I’m sure we’re all aware by now that its origins are pagan – a celebration of the Winter solstice and the rebirth of the year.

And many of the symbols of Christmas – Xmas trees, yule logs, Santa – are pagan, too. Or Roman. Or Victorian inventions. As a festival, then, what we’re celebrating is largely the Christian theft of an older ritual.

So let’s forget about all that silly supernatural nonsense. And why not buy The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas as an Xmas present for someone you love – someone intelligent who will appreciate the irony.

The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas is available from:
 Amazon.co.uk |  Amazon.com

Update: For some more excellent atheist reading this Xmas – and the perfect gift ideas for the humanist in your life – check out our Top 6 Books for Atheists this Xmas.

The UK arm of the Alpha organisation has a poll on its website’s home page – does god exist? And when I visited the site, the response was pretty overwhelming: 96% of the 87,602 voters had said … NO.

And that’s surprising, because Alpha is a Christian organisation dedicated to getting people to believe in god. It’s an evangelical outfit with a soft voice, which uses low-key indoctrination techniques to suck in the vulnerable and credulous. It’s love-bombing for the iPod generation.

I’ve no doubt that, soon, the poll will be taken down or, um, ‘adjusted’ somehow. But just so you can enjoy what I experienced, here’s a screengrab (I’ve enlarged the relevant bit to ensure it’s readable):

Meanwhile, the ‘Belief’ section of The Guardian newspaper ran a poll (due to close on 22/10/2009) which asked the question, ‘Can you be good without God?’. With one day to go, the results were that 93% said ‘Yes, of course. You don’t need religion to be morally driven’. So much for ‘no morality without religion’.

Update 23/10/2009: The number of votes is up to 154,500 and the percentage of No votes has increased to 98%! Looks like the Alpha people have their work cut out…

Evolutionary studies have brought some bad news for certain types of evangelical Christian. According to new research, large broods lead to low-quality offspring, who then seek out low-quality mates.

Clearly, this is bad news for the Quiverfull movement. Adherents of this conservative, evangelical lifestyle promote large families as a way of populating the world with more Christians. Alas, it seems that what they may actually achieve is an increase in the world’s supply of idiots. Whether this is a good or bad thing for the continuation of the Christian faith will depend on your point of view.

The results of the research – which involved zebra finches – surprised the researchers, too. Scientists always believed that females of any species would always seek out the best possible males with which to mate. It turns out, however, that the female finches tended to mate with males of their own level. Low-quality females went for low-quality males – birds whose songs weren’t quite up to scratch or whose plumage was maybe a tad tatty.

Large broods have a tendency to result in larger numbers of low-quality females, because of the competition between siblings.

So where does this leave Quiverfull? Given that members of extremist cults tend towards intra-sect breeding, if not actual inbreeding, can one expect an inevitable decline in IQ levels among these Christian families?

A Brazilian archbishop has provoked a storm of protest through an act of excommunication. He expelled a woman from the faith – and condemned her to eternal torture – for failing to prevent her nine year-old daughter from having an abortion.

This heartless behaviour by Archbishop José Cardoso Sobrinho has itself been roundly condemned by politicians and even some theologians.

The girl was repeatedly raped by her stepfather over a period of at least three years. The stepfather has not been excommunicated. That retribution was saved for those who displayed compassion and understanding towards the girl – her mother and the doctor who performed the procedure.

What is surprising, though, is that people are surprised.

Sobrinho acted correctly – at least within the strictly limited boundaries of his world.

A religion is defined (and differentiated from others) by its belief system – its rules, its doctrine. The particulars of any one religion lie at the root of its claim to be the only true religion. They are what falsify all other faiths.

These rules and boundaries exist because they are the means by which the specific faith declares “this is who we are and what we stand for”. They are claimed as truths before which we must all yield. They are also the framework for the faith’s claim to morality.

This raises a problem. Although religious believers often lay claim to a moral superiority, the fact is that this doctrine represents a straitjacket. It denies the believer many avenues of moral, ethical, empathetic and humanitarian action.

Adherents must act according to these rules, otherwise they are not true believers. In that context, Sobrinho not doubt understood that excommunication, however immoral and uncaring it may seem to the rest of us, was unequivocally demanded. The basic tenets of the faith trump all humanity.

Now, it’s entirely possible that some bigwig in the Roman Catholic church – the Pope himself, perhaps – might override this decision. It’s happened before when such an act of faith has resulted in a PR nightmare for the church. What what would that mean for the religion?

If matters of doctrine become flexible, they also become meaningless. These matters are not defined and guided by reason. They are deemed to be eternal ‘truths’. As soon as they are seen to be alterable, in the interests of good publicity or other less spiritual motives, then they reveal the entire faith as hollow.

This might go some way to explain the diminishing of religions like Roman Catholocism. Either they remain rigid, true to their core beliefs – and thus reveal themselves as uncaring, inhuman and irrelevant to modern life. Or they adapt, and thus admit that the ‘eternal truths’ at the heart of the faith are nothing of the sort.

It’s a stark choice – to be irrelevant or meaningless.

The BBC series ‘Around the World in 80 Faiths’ has come to an end, and it seems like it was not a moment too soon.

Not that it was a bad series. Far from it. As a whirlwind tour of all varieties of mankind’s credulity, it was highly entertaining. The problem was that it was (perhaps necessarily, given the number of faiths) disappointingly superficial.

The presenter, Anglican vicar Peter Owen Jones, seemed to do his best to engage with each faith, though it was easy to see how he was predisposed to like some more than others. However, it was hard to shake the impression that this was little more than religious tourism of the most shallow kind.

Even when Owen Jones seemed to attempt to pursue a more profound question, it was usually done and dusted within a couple of minutes of airtime. Take, for example, his acknowledgement in the last programme of Martin Luther’s vile anti-semitism – a model that the Nazis referenced and on which they built. Owen Jones made a show of being guilt-ridden by this dark and shameful part of his own faith, because he was, that evening, to share a meal with Jews. When he brought up the subject over dinner, his Jewish host gave a generous response – that acknowledging the problem was the first step to solving it. This was, perhaps, more indicative of traditional Jewish hospitality than a highly developed philosophy. Owen Jones’ response was to treat the camera to one of his trademark gormless smiles and a statement to the effect that ‘that’s alright then’.

This was typical both of the programme’s superficiality and Owen Jones’ tendency to be easy on both himself and spirituality in general. He never really asked tough questions or delved with any seriousness into the causes or motivations of the faiths he briefly visited.

As the series progressed, he seemed in more and more of a rush. Perhaps his year-long odyssey was exhausting him, but by the last episode he seemed to be doing little more than name-checking faiths, with little attempt to explain their significance. His coverage of the Sami people in Finland, for example, amounted to little more than sitting in a tent with a shaman, grunting a little and banging a drum. He seemed unaware that joiks, the Sami’s unique musical form, is far more complex and rich than the simple chanting in which he momentarily indulged himself. Ray Mears covered this fascinating culture in far greater depth and with much more empathy, and did so as just part of a single programme.

The last programme was also marred by a naked display of prejudice. Predictably, the target of this bias was atheism.

In a series about faith, presented by a priest, I wasn’t expecting to see much coverage of atheism – let alone to see it presented as one of the 80 ‘faiths’. The only mention I’d seen so far (I missed one episode) was a rather sneering reference in the first programme which made the mistake of assuming that atheism is inherently reductionist and hostile to a sense of wonder. It is, of course, quite the reverse: but shedding the blinkers and restriction of religious dogma, it gies one the freedom to enjoy the full splendour, complexity and mystery of the universe.

Atheism, of course, is not a faith in that in does not require the suspension of rationality to believe in something for which there is no evidence. So counting it as one of the 80 faiths was, at best, a misrepresentation – one is tempted to use the word ‘lie’, and I’m not sure that I shouldn’t. Worse, Owen Jones decided to represent atheism by conflating it with communism, or more specifically, Stalinism.

This is a cheap trick, not uncommon among believers. Yes, Stalin both espoused and enforced atheism. But that does not make his actions or beliefs atheist. They were Stalinist. Stalinism was a totalitarian regime that, to aid its own survival, had to stand in conflict with other totalitarian regimes – notably, religion. Stalin’s repression of religion was ideological – and that ideology was communism, not atheism.

To use the excesses or characteristics of Stalinism to describe atheism – to equate the two – is not just logically and intellectually absurd, it is deeply dishonest. One might just as easily characterise and represent Christianity by the burning of witches.

Atheism is a philosphical (not religious) viewpoint – it is not a ideology. (And it should be noted that the richness of humanism, its history and philosophy, received only the curtest of passing mentions.) The tawdry trick employed by Owen Jones was the most obvious example of his prejudices coming to the fore. Of course, he wasn’t always called to the cloth: he is, in that respect, a convert. And it is typical of converts to turn their hate on what they may perceive as their own former inadequacies and on what they fear most.

Owen Jones also raved about the resurgence of spirituality in Russia (though not necessarily the old established faiths) without ever really questioning why this should be so. As presented, the implication was simply that, once the enforcement of atheism was lifted, people naturally return to religion. His interview with the token atheist went a very small way to suggesting an alternative – but not far enough.

Religion feeds on fear and uncertainty, and there has been plenty of both in post-communist Russia. People crave the stability of ceremony and community, and churches are happy to provide both. Hence people turn to the church – whatever church – not because the religion is offering something that is right or profound, but simply for the protection and comfort it provides. In this environment, an invisible pink unicorn or Flying Spaghetti Monster will function as well as Christ or Mohammed.

It would have been interesting if Owen Jones had thought to question the political and sociological forces at work. But his brief was very narrow and, being a believer, he is deeply biased towards believing that the embrace of supernatural ideas and submission to religious dogma are natural and right and trump everything else. This unwillingness to look further is a characteristic of the fundamental problem religion has with truth.

This series would have been so much more interesting, so much more valuable and profound, if Owen Jones had made his voyage alongside a humanist, or scientist, or psychologist. Then we could perhaps have had some answers to the key question, ‘why?’. But I don’t think Owen Jones would have had either the courage or honesty to do this.

A blanket lifting of excommunications by the Pope has had the effect of bringing back into the Roman Catholic church a bishop who also happens to be a notorious Holocaust denier.

Richard Williamson, from Britain, was one of four bishops appointed more than 20 years ago by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who was himself ousted from the Roman Catholic church for his refusal to accept ‘liberal’ reforms such as the abandoning of the Latin Mass.

Now Williamson is back in the club, in spite of the fact that he is a forthright Nazi apologist. According to the BBC:

Bishop Richard Williamson recently told Swedish TV: “I believe there were no gas chambers. I think that two to three hundred thousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers.”

The Vatican has said that the four bishops – who also include two Frenchmen and one Argentinian – have agreed to accept current Catholic teachings and papal authority. And that’s enough to save them from everlasting torment. Aligning themselves with some of the greatest mass murderers in history isn’t a problem, it seems.

Clearly the Roman Catholic church will take anyone these days. Maybe it’s a reaction to their dwindling numbers.

One has to wonder about the morality and ethics of a sect where a willingness to accept dogma and the word of the boss is deemed far more important than, say, the truth. Or simple decency. Or, for that matter, morals.

The Roman Catholic church was always far too cozy with the Nazis. During the war, the Pope liked to send Hitler birthday greetings and there is plenty of evidence of colusion. After the war, the Vatican was implicated in helping leading Nazis to escape. But one would have hoped that they’d have got over their infatuation with (other) vicious totalitarian regimes. Not entirely, it seems.

I’m watching the BBC series ‘Around the World in 80 Faiths‘ with great fascination and enjoyment. Anglican vicar Peter Owen Jones is an engaging, entertaining and (up to a point) honest guide to the world’s rich variety of spiritual wackiness.

Peter Owen Jones

Owen Jones ‘heard the call’ 15 years ago, having previously spent his time running discos and advertising campaigns. According to the BBC’s website, this rustic padre feels that the Church of England “is too much a faith of the head and not enough a faith of the soul”. This televised journey, then, is a search for the pure spirit of the divine and how it manifests itself in so many ways.

As our guide, Owen Jones is remarkably willing to immerse himself in beliefs and practices very alien to the genteel rituals of an Anglican service. Sometimes he is moved, sometimes bemused and (so far – I’m three episodes in at this point) only once really disgusted. A voodoo ceremony at which animals – including a kitten and a puppy – were bloodily sacrificed left him very disturbed. His revulsion, it seems, was not on theological grounds but simple humanitarian ones and was easily shared by atheists like me. Believe all the hocus pocus you like, but leave the kitten out of it.

Naturally he has his limits. As a believer, Owen Jones is rather too willing to see people – and feel himself – moved by the holy spirit where a more neutral observer might witness hysteria, hyperventilation or simple credulity.

On the whole, though, Owen Jones is accommodating and open. Indeed, the only note of disdain so far was reserved for atheists. He said something to the effect that we infidels would regard all these manifestations of the divine as a “form of disease”. I’m not sure if Owen Jones is aware of the variety of attitudes towards religion among atheists, or whether his generosity of spirit simply stops short of those who don’t share his belief in the divine. Either way, it’s worth noting that not all of us consider religious belief per se to be a disease or shared dementia. In fact, I believe that a predisposition to spiritual experience is a natural result of evolution – a subject to which I will return in a future blog.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the series, keen to know if Owen Jones will address the one big question that so far he has avoided. There seems to be a implication, from what he has said, that the prevalence of religion across the world means that there is a common phenomenon behind it – no less than the divine itself. This is an argument that crops up often: if so many people believe in a divine spirit, it must be there.

This, of course, is poor logic. There is an obvious counter argument which hinges on the fact that the very nature of religious belief is exclusiveness. Religions are not mutually compatible. You cannot accept more than one. You must, by that token, believe that all the others are wrong. And yet there are thousands of separate religions and, within each faith, many variations of the type. The divisions between them are so hotly debated that the supremacy of one over another is often expressed violently, at the cost of many lives and much suffering.

And it’s self-evidently true that they can’t all be right. At most, there could be only one true faith. Therefore, even if you are a believer, you must believe that the vast majority of faiths are … well … nonsense. No matter how fervent your faith in your god and your prophets and your mythical tales, you have to contend with the simple fact that the majority of people in the world – even the religious ones – think that what you believe is rubbish.

How would we recognise the true faith? For me, a key test would be reliability. If a faith is real, it should work – not now and again, not in strange and oblique ways, but reliably and repeatedly. And yet we know that no faith matches this criterion. Prayers and imprecations are, at best, a hit and miss affair. Even the most extreme piety, the most self-abasing unctuousness, only rarely seems to deliver results. And if a faith really was the genuine article, then surely it would seem self-evident. Everyone would flock to it. All others would fall away.

The faithful, of course, get around these problems with a blinding array of excuses and prevarications. Chief among these is the idea that we are being tested. Yes, even supposedly loving gods, who are keen to bring us to their ethereal bosoms, enjoy tormenting us – to an extent, in fact, which means that most of us will fail.

Now try applying common sense to this situation. If even the faithful insist that the vast majority of religions are wrong – indeed, all but one of them – then it stands to reason that there is a very good chance that all of them are. As we’ve already seen, if you pick any one faith you’ll find most of the people in the world are against it. You can do this for every religion.

So, if all the religions are demonstrably wrong, and they all have the divine as their common thread, the inescapable conclusion is that the very concept of the divine is itself wrong. It might be a delusion. It might be the ‘misfiring’ (as Dawkins would put it) of part of our psyche (which is kind of where I’m heading with the evolution thing). It might simply be that we poor mammals are simply not up to the task of comprehending the entire universe and must weave stories to accommodate what we can’t fully grasp.

Whatever the explanation for our tendency towards superstition, if we are honest we must at least acknowledge the possibility that at the heart of the world’s religions lies … nothing. That the divine is merely a common and rather simple device employed by the other thing we all share – our brains. So far, this is what Owen Jones has failed to do. Oh well, just sit back and enjoy the wackiness.

A furore in Germany over an Islamic scholar’s claim that Mohammed might not have existed highlights a fundamental difficulty in many religions – that they emphasise faith and dismiss calls for proof while simultaneously basing their beliefs around alleged facts.

The two most problematic faiths in this regard are Christianity and Islam. Both, of course, claim Christ as a once-living prophet. A critical tennet of Christianity – at least for the vast majority of Christians – is that Jesus was the embodiment of god on this earth. Similarly, for Muslims, it is vitally important that Mohammed was a real person who took dictation from the Archangel Gabriel.

There is a fairly long tradition in Christianity of examining the historicity of Christ. We all know that there is no documentary evidence for his existence. Even the biblical ‘evidence’ is contradictory. The Gospels offer conflicting portraits, depending on the agenda behind their creation and subsequent amendments. And the Epistles portray a figure who is far more consistent with a mythological character, ‘existing’ in the lowest realm of heaven (where, according to the theology of the day, demons lived) than a human who walked the same earth as ourselves. In short, no amount of historical research is able to settle the question of whether Christ ever lived, while rational analysis of the texts and the lack of supporting evidence would suggest that he didn’t.

Muhammad Sven Kalisch, chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Münster, has applied similar historical analysis to Mohammed. And he’s come up with a similar result.

“My position with regard to the historical existence of Muhammad is that I believe neither his existence nor his non-existence can be proven,” he said. “I, however, lean toward the non-existence.”

The problem this creates is that it would seem to invalidate the Qur’an. According to Islamic tradition, the Qur’an was the result of Mohammed being visited by the Archangel Gabriel on many occasions, starting in 610CE and lasting until 632CE. Mohammed himself did not write down what was said to him: he was illiterate. At first, Islam was largely an oral tradition, though certain of Mohammed’s followers each wrote down parts of what they heard. It was only two years after the Prophet’s death, when the new faith had already started to factionalise and war had killed many of those who had learned the Qur’an by rote, that the first caliph, Abu Bakr, ordered the whole text to be written in a definitive version. A single copy was created. Twelve years later, the third caliph, ‘Uthman, ordered additional copies to be made. This ‘Uthmanic Codex is regarded by most Muslims as the canonic text. The Qur’an, then, has some advantages over the Christian Bible in terms of textual integrity.

Of course, what the Qur’an actually says is open to wider interpretation. And if Mohammed did not exist, where did the text actually come from? Muslims believe that the Qur’an is the infallible and unalterable word of god. It is important to them that these words were dictated directly from god’s representative and that they have been captured accurately.

Kalisch takes a less literal and more spiritual approach.

“All the various sacred books are the product of human minds and experiences,” he said. God exists and works on a more spiritual level, he insists. Sacred texts should be approached as expressions of our relationship to (and, perhaps, desires for) a deity. They are also products of their time and place (which is why, for example, the flood story in the Old Testament mentions no animal that wouldn’t have been known to inhabitants of the Middle East).

That’s not going to please many Muslims. One of the great attractions of religion is that it offers certainties in an uncertain world. If the canonical texts of your chosen religion turn out to be nothing more than the works of humans striving to find answers and shape their relationships with god, then much certainty is removed. All becomes open to interpretation. The easy answers to difficult questions are taken away.

Once believers acknowledge that there are no facts at the heart of their faith, they must also face the uncomfortable consequence that they can no longer claim superiority. If the New Testament is simply a mythical tale, if the Qur’an is based on ideas spun around a mythical story, that breaks the direct link with god and belief becomes nothing more than a fanciful notion or wishful thinking. And so, believers find themselves insisting on at least one physical truth at the heart of their belief – that Christ and/or Mohammed walked the Earth. It is a shame for them that they are unable to verify even this one basic fact.