'We are not supposed to know who or
what God is, or where he came from, for God is supposed to be a mysterious and unknowable being. Instead, we are told that the essence of religion is to have faith in this elusive being, and faith, too, in
the Church as the sole intermediary between man and God. Thus we are steered away from the knowledge of origins, and are instead sold faith as a substitute for it.'
(Preface to When The Gods Came Down)
'Personally, I have always been a sceptic of religions and the faith on which they rely for their support. I have always been struck by the incredibly naivety of those who would imagine 'God' as a Beneficent Being, who
is watching over us, as if to intervene for our personal or common good. Personally, I have always been more impressed by scientific evidence than by religious revelations. If God had intended us to place our trust
blindly in the orthodoxy of the priests, or to shut down our mental faculties in response to an irrational primeval impulse, He would surely not have given us more than one billion brain cells to work things out for
ourselves.'
(The Phoenix Solution p. 417)
'I personally view 'religious belief' as a fool's paradise, because it involves a belief, or faith, in something which is, by definition, unknown. I, on the other hand - as
one who aspires to the status of Homo religiosus sapiens - search not for 'religious belief' but rather for 'religious knowledge'.'
(When The Gods Came Down p. 408)
'This combination of faith and mystery has
worked extremely well for the Church during the past two thousand years, but only because of poor education and superstition among the masses... The rational man of the 21st century wants to know who he is and where he
came from, and he expects to be told exactly how God created mankind. He does not want to be told "sorry, but it's a mystery".'
(Preface to When The Gods Came Down)
'Ironically, as we enter the 21st century ad, it
is science rather than religion which is providing the necessary insights into our past. It is science which has determined the age of the Earth as 4.6 billion years. It is science which has explained how we evolved
from earlier creatures by a process of natural selection (now accepted by the Church after a 140-year period of reflection). It is science which has dated the first hominids to several million years ago and
Homo sapiens
to less than 200,000 years ago. And it is science which has introduced us (via genetic studies) to a 'most recent common ancestor' of all mankind, known as 'mitochondrial Eve'. In all of these matters, science has begun to bind us back to our long lost past, and has thus become more religious than religion itself.'
(Preface to When The Gods Came Down)
'Today, the Old Testament exercises a profound and powerful grip on Western consciousness - so much so that one is almost forbidden from questioning its veracity. And yet
anyone who has studied the history of religion recognises that the Old Testament is but one of many ancient religions, and that the Hebrew God was but one of many ancient Gods.'
(When The Gods Came Down p. 211)
'What would the Old Testament become if we were to regard it in its proper context - as one particular religious perspective among many such perspectives in the ancient world, and a minority view to boot?'
(When The Gods Came Down p. 211)
'What if we were to suppose... that the Old Testament was not the Word of God, as revealed to the priests, but rather the words of the priests, as revealed to the masses?'
(When The Gods Came Down p. 211)
'we revisited a number of biblical legends... and we came to some shocking conclusions. In every case - every case without exception - we discovered that the Bible was not telling the
whole truth, but, on the contrary, was muddling along with a series of half-truths or outright lies.'
(When The Gods Came Down p. 246)
'It is no exaggeration to say that never before in the history of religion had
man actually set down in writing such a package of half-truths and outright lies.'
(When The Gods Came Down p. 358)
'... by a strange quirk of history, and an unlikely marriage of convenience, the old Hebrew
scriptures acquired an importance far out of proportion to the minority sect which had produced them. A dissenting voice in the ancient world had become a dominant voice in the Christian world, and a book full of
half-truths and lies - aimed originally at the Israelites only - was set to influence the thinking of intelligent men throughout the Western world for millennia to come.'
(When The Gods Came Down pp. 359-60)
'I do
not wish to criticise the Bible in any way. Perhaps it is better to criticise ourselves for being so naive as to think that the Hebrew priests would actually have exposed their priestly secrets in writing for all to
see. That has never been the way of the world...'
(When The Gods Came Down p. 247)
'All in all... the Hebrew priests had some very understandable reasons for telling the Israelites a mixture of lies and half-truths
about a religious heritage which they had once shared with all the pagan peoples of the ancient world.'
(When The Gods Came Down p. 249)
'the New Testament story of Jesus Christ... was written in the form of an
ingenious esoteric parable - a parable which only made sense to those who had been initiated into the secrets of the ancient Mysteries.'
(Preface to When The Gods Came Down)
'Few were those who ever discovered the
full esoteric truth behind the Christian gospels, and even then they would never have dreamt of putting anything in writing to challenge the official dogma of the Church.'
(When The Gods Came Down p. 360)
'Surely
the Church must have inherited the secrets which reveal what their religion is all about.'
(When The Gods Came Down p. 308)
'It might be presumed that confirmation of the exploded planet theory by NASA would
delight the Church, since it would prove that the holy scriptures were based on a reality, and it would prove that God had actually existed, and had breathed his quintessential breath of life into all living things...
But would the Church really be so welcoming of such news? I suspect that this might not be the case.'
(When The Gods Came Down p. 370)
'It seems to me that the Church is in a 'no win situation'. If the exploded
planet theory is proven to be wrong, its entire religion will be seen to be based on a groundless myth. But if the exploded planet theory is proven to be right, the Church will still have to admit that many aspects of
Christianity are half-truths, lies or imaginative myths.'
(When The Gods Came Down p. 370)
'The idea that we might be under threat from random cosmic catastrophes tends to conflict with the belief that God placed
mankind in charge of a physically perfect 'created' universe, where He constantly watches over and protects us. Thus does religion veil reality.'
(The Phoenix Solution p. 402)
