Index Librorum Prohibitorum and things

The Kingdom of England (Latin: Regnum Anglorum, lit. 'Kingdom of the English' or 'Kingdom of the Angles') was a sovereign state on the island of Great Britain from 12 July 927, when it emerged from various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, until 1 May 1707, when it united with Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain.
On 12 July 927, the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were united by Æthelstan (r. 927–939) to form the Kingdom of England.[citation needed] In 1016, the kingdom became part of the North Sea Empire of Cnut the Great, a personal union between England, Denmark and Norway. The Norman conquest of England in 1066 led to the transfer of the English capital city and chief royal residence from the Anglo-Saxon one at Winchester to Westminster, and the City of London quickly established itself as England's largest and principal commercial centre.[3]
 
England was united in 927 and has more or less been a going concern ever since.  It is the home of people called the English who have been here more or less for ever.  Always happy to welcome interesting people.  Not happy to welcome sick cunts.  I’m sure the sick cunts are more than happy to explain why they are more important than the English and our reading and writing and speech is supposed to be determined by them. 
This may help explain.  Freedom of thought is alien to the Roman Catholic Church.  It assumes control of mind as it does of body.  As I have repeatedly demonstrated by lengthy quotation from the Catechism, and do so again below,  its mad dull brutish fascism was the blueprint for Nazism.  Fortunately it has had no political power in England since 1688, enabling me to grow up in a more or less civilized country called Anglican England. 
I do not give a fuck about the ravings of savages.  Here are some particularly fine ones.
Mortal Sin and the Christian Life 
Understanding mortal sin can make the difference between life and death. 
This is a critical topic to understand! 
This article will tell you what mortal sin is. But this topic is so important, first we’d better look at why you should care deeply about it… 
“How important is this?” 
Mortal sin makes it impossible to follow Christ. 
The very first step in the life of faith is to hear God’s call and answer with the response of faith. This is your response of initial conversion. 
The second step is to become free of mortal sin. 
Why? 
Because mortal sin is a refusal of God’s offer of live and love. It’s that simple. No matter how much you want to love God, no matter how strong you feel your budding faith life is… 
… a single act of mortal sin is a bold declaration that you do not accept God’s love. 
Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him…. Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself. It results in the loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace, that is, of the state of grace. If it is not redeemed by repentance and God’s forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ’s kingdom and the eternal death of hell, for our freedom has the power to make choices for ever, with no turning back. (Catechism, 1855 & 1861) 
That’s why it’s called mortal sin — mortal means “death.” 
He who does not love abides in death. 
(1 John 3:14) 
The topic of mortal sin helps us understand something that isn’t widely believed these days: the connection between our faith and our acts. 
We prove our faith by our acts 
There’s a very dangerous idea floating around: the idea that our faith is somehow separate from our actions. 
Some people seem to think that they’re good Christians even though they’re deliberately committing acts that are seriously, objectively wrong. They still believe that their faith life is alive and growing. 
That is a false belief! 
Pope John Paul II wrote that “The Apostles decisively rejected any separation between the commitment of the heart and the actions which express or prove it….” (Veritatis Splendor, 26) 
In fact, it is specifically by walking the path of a moral life that we accept the free gift of salvation and everlasting life. “Coming to see in the faith their new dignity, Christians are called to lead henceforth a life ‘worthy of the gospel of Christ.’” (Catechism, 1692) 
Since ancient times, the Catholic Church has taught about “the two ways”: 
The way of Christ “leads to life”; a contrary way “leads to destruction.” The Gospel parable of the two ways remains ever present in the catechesis of the Church; it shows the importance of moral decisions for our salvation: “There are two ways, the one of life, the other of death; but between the two, there is a great difference.” (Catechism, 1696) 
What this means is that your actions matter! 
Greatly. 
The doctrine of mortal sin teaches us how to recognize those actions that absolutely destroy the life of faith itself. 
So now let’s take a closer look… 
“So, just what is mortal sin?” 
Mortal sin is death to the soul. 
“Sin” is a thought or action that is, at root, an offense against God. It’s a violation of the great commandment to love God above all else, and to love your neighbor as yourself. (See the main overview of Catholic morality for the big picture.) 
 
Filthy, filthy nonsense.  So making love to your boyfriend makes it impossible to love your neighbour as yourself and to love God above all else.   
Sdually diseased reppulsivbe scunt face fulth 
What Jesus said@: go thou and sin no more 
What Jesus did not say:  
According to the Catholic Church, no person can receive the Eucharist when in a state of mortal sin: 
1457 Anyone who is aware of having committed a mortal sin must not receive Holy Communion, even if he experiences deep contrition, without having first received sacramental absolution, unless he has a grave reason for receiving Communion and there is no possibility of going to confession.[18] 
Some mortal sins cause automatic excommunication by the very deed itself, for example renunciation of faith and religion, known as apostasy,[19] desecration of the Eucharistic species,[20] and "a completed abortion".[21] Those mortal sins are so serious that the Church through law has made them crimes. The Church forbids the excommunicated from receiving any sacrament (not just the Eucharist) and also severely restricts the person's participation in other Church liturgical acts and offices. A repentant excommunicated person may talk to a priest, usually in a confessional, about their excommunication to arrange for the remission. Remission cannot be denied to someone who has truly repented their actions and has also made suitable reparation for damages and scandal or at least has seriously promised to do so.[22][23] However, even if excommunicated, a Catholic who has not been juridically absolved is still, due to the irrevocable nature of baptism, a member of the Catholic Church, albeit their communion with the Christ and the Church is gravely impaired. "Perpetual penalties cannot be imposed or declared by decree."[24] However, "the following are expiatory penalties which can affect an offender either perpetually...."[25] 
Since the mid-twentieth century, some theologians have taught that a person who lives by a constant attitude of charity is unlikely to fall in and out of God's graces without being profoundly aware of the change. The term "fundamental option" arose and is used in a variety of senses.[26][27] 
Pope John Paul II reaffirmed traditional teaching going back to the Council of Trent in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor, as does the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states: "The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, 'eternal fire'." The Catechism then adds: "The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs."[28] However, the Catechism does not by name say a specific person is in Hell, but it does say that "...our freedom has the power to make choices for ever, with no turning back."[29] Most significantly, the Catechism also proclaims that "There are no limits to the mercy of God..."[30] and that "although we can judge that an act is in itself a grave offence, we must entrust judgment of persons to the justice and mercy of God."[29] We cannot see into their mind to know if it was deliberate or committed in full knowledge. Also, like the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, God forgives those who repent sincerely. Vatican II, in its Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, reflects the traditional teaching of the Church on punishment, and on merit or reward for good deeds.[31] 
Mortal Sin is ordinarily remitted by the priestly absolution in the Sacrament of Penance. However, the effectiveness of the absolution is depedent of the acts of the penitent starting with sorrow for sin or contrition. Perfect contrition (or imperfect contrition, also called attrition, in the Sacrament of Penance), coupled with the firm resolution to sin no more and to make recourse to the sacrament of Penance as soon as possible, can restore a person's relationship with God, as well as God's saving grace, that is, sanctifying grace. This teaching on perfect contrition is a reminder that God's mercy and forgiveness is available outside the Sacrament of Penance, yet, also indicates that Catholics who know about Christ's institution of the sacrament of Penance must intend to use it. Any human act that arises from a person's love of God, is inspired by God's prevenient action and is directed to doing as God requires.[32] When perfect contrition is the means by which one seeks to restore one's relationship with God, there must also be a resolution to confess all mortal sins (that have not been confessed and absolved previously) in the Sacrament of Penance.[33] 
What Jesus did not say: a load of voodoo savage gobbledy gook and be brutalized by sick twisted women for the rest of your life. 
And Adam and Eve walked in the cool of the garden and decided they were grown-ups and could decide for themselves.  Ye, the first disobedience of a religion of freaks. 
It’s actually really interesting.  Perhaps there was some subconscious recollection of oestrus.  Could it have happened overnight?  I don’t think evolutionary changes do that, so whwa ton earth was the intermittent stage.  Think I read it happened when we went into the water, so it wasn’t immediately noticeable.  Oestrus in the pet sabre-tooth but blood, he knew about blood, blood never meant anything good.  It meant you were injured.  Was she hurt?  She didn’t seem hurt.  Assuming period cramps are a modern affliction due to lousy posture, for instance, but delfinitely a bit that needs to be sent back to the Design Unit for revamping.   
 
Never love for love is death, the death of the ego of the great big male monkey beating its chest which thinks it orders the world and we’ve all got to be what it says we are.  Thus the repulsive hive mind.  Love and mind trouble the diseased inadequates.  They suggest other people might matter, are not merely pawns on the chess-board to be filled with Troof.  They indicate senile perverted psychopaths are talking complete drivel for which there is not one shred of evidence.   
Just keep spawning the chimpo-whores to insist that it’s criminal evil to to mock, condemn, criticiae aoe-drool for which there is not one shred of evidence.  Just get enough monkeys howling down intellect, reason, love. 
Shall we just have all this again?   
CHAPTER THREE 
MAN'S RESPONSE TO GOD 
142 By his Revelation, "the invisible God, from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends, and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company."1 The adequate response to this invitation is faith. 
143 By faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God.2 With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer. Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, "the obedience of faith".3 
I. The Obedience of Faith 
144 To obey (from the Latin ob-audire, to "hear or listen to") in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself. Abraham is the model of such obedience offered us by Sacred Scripture. the Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment. 
Catechism 
 
 
"The Magisterium of the Church 
85 "The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ."47 This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome. 
86 "Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith."48 
87 Mindful of Christ's words to his apostles: "He who hears you, hears me",49 the faithful receive with docility the teachings and directives that their pastors give them in different forms. 
100 The task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, that is, to the Pope and to the bishops in communion with him 
Catechism of the Catholic Church 
 
Wounds to unity 
817 In fact, "in this one and only Church of God from its very beginnings there arose certain rifts, which the Apostle strongly censures as damnable. But in subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions appeared and large communities became separated from full communion with the Catholic Church - for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame."269 The ruptures that wound the unity of Christ's Body - here we must distinguish heresy, apostasy, and schism270 - do not occur without human sin: 
Where there are sins, there are also divisions, schisms, heresies, and disputes. Where there is virtue, however, there also are harmony and unity, from which arise the one heart and one soul of all believers.271 
What is it, Blair?  Come on, what is it?  Rees-Mogg, Duncan Smith, Fitzalan-Howard, come on, come on, what is it?  It’s a blueprint for fascism.  It is everything at which the free world howled in outrage when represented by Hitler, Stalin, the cadres of North Korea.  Where the fuck do you dirty apes think the Nazis got it from?  This is an insolently fascist, insolently sexist, insolently homophobic institution which is raving mad because it believes it has Truth.  It has no place whatever in modern England.   
Fascism, insolent evident fascism right down to the hive mind called The Good. If you are a secular fascist, you are a pariah.  If you are a religious fascist, it is offence to offend you and an offence to discriminate against you.  Is there any politician so completely stupid that he or she does not think people have noticed that, that there is one law for the ‘devout’ and one for the rest of us, that we’re all supposed to be outraged not at fascism, not at evil, but at the fascist and evil being offended. 
 
‘It has been revealed to us.’  What do these fucked-up baboons think we all are, do they really believe we’re all going to submit to the ravings of peasants and savages. 
 
Specifically the teachings on human relations of these senile and perverted men are derived from a nasty little fairy-story in which a woman brought evil into man’s pure asexual relationship with God, love and sex evil distractions therefrom. 
 
We are once again to be governed by and obedient to psychiatric cases, violent animals convinced they got Troof, cos they got this book, see, and this book’s Troof.  This book and their insane exrapolations.  Here’s some more of the Troof they got.  They’re simply savages.   
 
The sick-boys rampant 
Pope John Paul II: Contraception is so profoundly unlawful as never to be, for any reason, justified... 
“The encyclical of Pope Paul VI on birth control is true and must be followed by mankind. There shall be no rationalization of sin.” - Our Lady of the Roses, October 2, 1976 
 Christ, it’s a mad monkey.
On July 18, 1984, Pope John Paul II stated that Humanae Vitae binds all persons, including non-Catholics: 
“the norm of the encyclical [Humanae Vitae] concerns all men, insofar as it is a norm of the natural law and is based on conformity with human reason.” (St. Peter's, July 18, 1984; see L'Osservatore Romano, July 23, 1984) 
On September 17, 1983, Pope John Paul II gave these powerful words affirming the Church's constant teaching prohibiting contraception: 
“When ... through contraception married couples remove from the exercise of their conjugal sexuality its potential procreative capacity, they claim a power which belongs solely to God; the power to decide in a final analysis the coming into existence of a human person. They assume the qualification not of being cooperators in God's creative power, but the ultimate depositories of the source of human life. In this perspective, contraception is to be judged objectively so profoundly unlawful as never to be, for any reason, justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to maintaining that, in human life, situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God.” 
  
****** 
  
“We warned you over and over again, through years of visitations upon earth--My Mother going to and fro to warn you, that those who have given themselves over to debasement, by the practice of homosexuality, birth control, abortion and all other aberrations that bring sorrow to My Mother's heart--this must be stopped now. There shall be no excuse accepted in Heaven by the saints, nor by My Mother and I, or the Eternal Father and the Holy Ghost, for what you are doing upon earth now.” - Jesus, June 6, 1987  
“Permissiveness shall not be accepted by your God. Sin is sin; there is no compromise for sin. Mortal sin is a grievous offense to the Eternal Father. The Commandments shall be followed without permissiveness.” – Jesus, November 21, 1977 
  
Vatican: “The Church has always taught the intrinsic evil of contraception” 
 
﷟HYPERLINK "https://www.tldm.org/News11/PlanBvideo.htm""The Church has always taught the intrinsic evil of contraception, that is, of every marital act intentionally rendered unfruitful. This teaching is to be held as definitive and irreformable." 
- "Vademecum for Confessors: Concerning Some Aspects of the Morality of Conjugal Life," #4, Vatican Pontifical Council for the Family, March 1, 1997.  
"From the ethical standpoint the same absolute unlawfulness of abortifacient procedures also applies to distributing, prescribing and taking the morning-after pill. All who, whether sharing the intention or not, directly co-operate with this procedure, are also morally responsible for it." 
- “Statement on the So-Called Morning After Pill,” Vatican Pontifical Council for Life, October 31, 2000.  
  
"It is not possible to anesthetize the conscience, for example, when it comes to molecules whose aim is to stop an embryo implanting or to cut short someone's life... I invite your federation [of pharmacists] to consider conscientious objection which is a right that must be recognized for your profession so you can avoid collaborating, directly or indirectly, in the supply of products which have clearly immoral aims, for example abortion or euthanasia..." 
- Pope Benedict XVI, address to Catholic Pharmacists, October 29, 2007 
  
  
On June 5, 1987, Pope John Paul II warned clergy and theologians of their grave obligation to faithfully transmit the Church’s teaching on contraception:  “A grave responsibility derives from this: those who place themselves in open conflict with the law of God, authentically taught by the Church, guide spouses along a false path. The Church’s teaching on contraception does not belong to the category of matter open to free discussion among theologians. Teaching the contrary amounts to leading the moral consciences of spouses into error.” 
- "The Church's teaching on contraception is not a matter for free discussion among theologians," L'Osservatore Romano, July 6, 1987, p. 12. 
On September 17, 1983, Pope John Paul II told priests in Rome that “contraception is to be judged objectively so profoundly unlawful as never to be, for any reason, justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to maintaining that, in human life, situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God.” 
- quotation from “The Papal Talk of 17 Sept.,” The [Hartford] Catholic Transcript, David Q. Liptak, January 20, 1984. 
"In fact, just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, with particular reason, he has no such dominion over his generative faculties as such, because of their intrinsic ordination towards raising up life, of which God is the principle. 'Human life is sacred,' Pope John XXIII recalled; 'from its very inception it reveals the creating hand of God.' 
     "In conformity with these landmarks in the human and Christian vision of marriage, we must once again declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun, and, above all, directly willed and procured abortion, even if for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as licit means of regulating birth. 
     "Equally to be excluded, as the teaching authority of the Church has frequently declared, is direct sterilization, whether perpetual or temporary, whether of the man or of the woman. Similarly excluded is every action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible." 
- Pope Paul VI, encyclical Humanae Vitae, July 25, 1968 (#13-14). 
Pope John Paul II: Contraception is so profoundly unlawful as never to be, for any reason, justified (tldm.org) 
In other words they’re terrified the brood-mares will cease to provide the slaves.
 
Yes, o pervert freak who belongs in Broadmoor, I have indeed been on the Pill.  You pathetic loony.  But of course the problem is disgusting apes like Blair take you seriously.  Planning to criminalize artificial contraception are you, monkey?  After all it offends a genuine and sincere belief. 
 
​Anyone who thinks loonies are confined to Islam needs to get a  life. Bobbles and I know that. 

For approximately seventeen centuries men  acknowledged that authority comes only from God, and temporal rulers sought the  approval and the blessing of their bishops who, by divine right, ruled in their  dioceses as  successors of the Apostles. Then came the Philosophists. As always,  the  Power of Darkness used pride to achieve his aims, the pride of human   reason. As always he called the Light, Darkness and the Darkness, Light   (Isaiah 5:20). That is why the Medieval times are now referred to as the "Dark  Ages"; (in fact, the Dark Ages were pre-Medieval), and why  philosophism is  referred to as "Enlightenment". ...When the first battle had been won, the Devil  moved from the religious field into the  philosophical field, and conceived  Rationalism, which put human reason  before Revelation.
Satan’s Master Plan from The Catholic Treasure  Chest 

"First, the wearing of men's dress by women  affects the woman herself, by  changing the feminine psychology proper to women; second, it affects the woman as wife of her husband, by tending to vitiate  relationships  between the sexes; and third, it affects the woman as mother of  her  children by harming her dignity in her children's eyes . . . This  changing  of the feminine psychology does fundamental, and, in the long  run, irreparable  damage to the family, to conjugal fidelity, to human  affections and to human  society."
 That Difficult Question of Immodesty and Women Wearing Men's  Clothing  by Marian Therese Horvat, Ph.D.

When a woman is dressed immodestly, she becomes the temptress for men  Many women will say they wear the modern  fashions because they are more comfortable, and the weather is hot (Remember, it  is very hot in Hell). This brings us to the area of sports. Regretably, all too  many sports  are taboo for us Catholics, not that they are in themselves a sin  or a  near occasion of sin, but because of the skimpy attire that such sports   "require". Think of these sports and the clothes people usually wear  when  playing the following sports or activities: swimming, baton  twirling, tennis,  basketball, dancing (disco dancing and little girls  who take dancing lessons)  and gymnastics. Let us take swimming for an  example, since people usually wear  less clothes when swimming than any  other sport. Swimsuits have no sleeves,  have very low necklines, no  coverings for the legs and usually has the whole  back exposed. When we  think of the saying, "in proportion to the amount of  flesh exposed  mortal sin seems to increase", shouldn't we avoid the bathing  suits like the plaque? Do you think this suggestion is crazy? You say yes, then   let us ask another question. Do you prefer to have the mortal sin of  immodesty  on your soul and the untold number of mortal sins of your  being a temptress or tempter and causing others to sin? 

One might say that our little girls can't do  anything. You are wrong,  because, if you modify the costumes and attire that  the girls wear, in  most cases they can still participate if you are Catholic  enough to  stand up for the proper moral dress code. In addition to the   modifications, our girls can go bicycle riding and horse back riding if  they  have a full skirt and the skirt reaches at least to the middle of  the calf; 
and, of course, skating can be done in a skirt. Our girls  should be pursuing 
lady-like activities and hobbies which will prepare  them for marriage and their 
proper role as mother and wife. They should  be learning to sew, embroider, 
knit, crochet, cook, make rosaries, sing  good Catholic songs and other decent, 
patriotic songs, play musical  instruments (we'll need an organ player 
eventually for our chapel),  paint and draw. Above all they should be learning 
to talk, dress, sit,  walk, stand, kneel, stoop and act like a lady at all  times. Our girls  have many options open to them, if they will only pursue them 
in a moral decent manner.
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/morality/modesty/dress.htm

And so there is the gross deliberate evil falsification of history that presents Islam as foreign strange, and it’s our fault we have a problem with it, when in fact what we have a problem with is that in all major areas, apostasy, heresy, gender, fascism and of course the voodoo men squawking they have a revelation from a mighty god.  it is in essence all too familiar, that which has been rejected, disposed of, got bloody rid as the opposite of the values of the modern free world.  Every scrap of examined, countered, rejected.  Ah, that good ole hellfire religion.  All their dirty little sick  monkey words, ‘blasphemy’, ‘heresy’, ‘apostasy’.  Meaning: you think something different.  You are not mentally caged in a given frame of reference.  Yes, you actually don’t believe any more what you were taught as a child.  Well, so bloody what. 

Mummy, Mummy, why doesn't the Catholic Church execute people like Islam does.
Well. it used to, dear, but a long and bloody revolution stopped it and made it behave.

If there is one thing that should make Medicine resolute but of course has no effect whatever, it is centuries and centuries and centuries of avoidable disease suffering and death  for which religion is solely responsible.  A shaft of lightning from the sky didn’t achieve modern medicine.  The freeing of the mind from the shackles of religious maniacs did.  Many brilliant Classical Arab scientists, many brilliant Classical Greek scientists.  Nothing innate to humans that prevented progress, just filthy smelly evil men jabbering about God.

Harvey was a prominent sceptic regarding allegations of witchcraft. He was one of the examiners of four women from Lancashire accused of witchcraft in 1634, and as a consequence of his report, all of them were acquitted.

That is the Harvey, William, of circulation of the blood fame.  Just think as early as 1634 things were put in the hands of scientists – occasionally.

Or they could consider Ala-al-din abu Al-Hassan Ali ibn Abi-Hazm al-Qarshi al-Dimashqi (Arabic: علاء الدين أبو الحسن عليّ بن أبي حزم القرشي الدمشقي), known as Ibn al-Nafis (Arabic: ابن النفيس), was an Arab physician from Damascus mostly famous for being the first to describe the pulmonary circulation of the blood.   He died in 1288, and was thus  centuries before Harvey.  Or for that matter Mendel, quietly working in the monastery garden figuring out his pea-plants. 

Truly, the earth is not flat

Religion is a multi-faceted affair. Organized religion is the suppression of a multi-faceted, intricate reality. Organized and political religion is largely the official representatives of a bunch of psychiatric cases whose hallmark is that the universe and its inhabitants are as defined by a guy or guys a large number of years ago because 'God' told them that was how the universe (and of course its inhabitants, especially the females ones) are. If you do not believe the earth is flat, you are not a 'real' Jew/Christian/Muslim/Hindu/Sikh etc.

If God a being exists, conversation with It and sundry other beings - Michael? Gabriel? Raphael?- and puh-lease 'It' is the only rational pronoun, must provide hours not to say aeons of delight to Darwin, Huxley, Crick, Watson, Einstein, Schroedinger, sharing Its knowledge of space-time and evolutionary biology, introducing them to other universes in the multiverse where other physical and biological laws apply. Now that's diversity.

To put it more formally, any entity called God must by definition be omniscient and there can be no requirement to pay the slightest attention either  to any product of the human imagination who clearly hasn't a clue or to his followers.  The word you seek is mad.  Madness is generally held to be divorce from reality and such persons dwell in a world that exists only in their heads.

Indeed, if in the course of conversation someone tells you the earth is flat, it does not instantly strike you that he and those who share his mind are critical voices in the running of the nation. If he goes on to tell you he thinks everyone who disparages him and those who share his mind should be locked up, executed or otherwise punished, you may indeed conclude that it is he and those who share his mind who should be locked up for their own safety and that of those around them.

The fight is for a world-view grounded in reality.  The war against flat-earthers has really very little to do with whether there are or are not deities of some kind, indifferent or caring, whether the universe is chaotic or orderly, whether the Beijing Olympics happened concurrently in curved space and so is behind us and the universe as we know it is the result of a ping-pong ball straying into our dimension. The basic proposition to be confronted and defeated is that the universe has to be approached on one's knees. It is all known. While normal people have opinions or theories, put forward propositions, may indeed have strongly held beliefs, the excrement claim to know that which is untenable, that for which there is no shred of evidence, that which is readily countered, that which is rampantly sick nonsense.

The universe, we have from no less a source than Douglas Adams, is like big, man. Yahweh-Allah-Jehovah may at best be deemed a very local, provincial deity, obsessed as he supposedly is by the minutiae of the behaviour of the inhabitants of the third rock from the sun, right down to the menstrual cycle of the human female, where perhaps he is most obviously the figment of the imagination of the primitive human male, with ape-man's obsession with female virginity coming a good joint second with the simple hairy notion that, since he is an incontinent male animal, incapable of either self-control or individuation of the females of the species, those females should be modest in order not to unleash his lust. Nor has Yahweh-Allah-Jehovah had anything to say of late. Perhaps he has cleared off to some other part of the universe and has lost all interest in the human race.

Flat-earthism has very obvious basic tenets:

There is an alpha baboon in the sky whose majesty and whose self-appointed representatives must be spoken of with awe, respect and blah.
This alpha ape, like his human counterparts, requires people on their knees to him saying how wonderful he is.
Creationism
Women and gays belong to different and inferior species; usually this is held true of those of other races also
Heaven and hell and virgins and eternal flames
Frank affirmation of human self-centredness, the assumption the rest of the world revolves around them and is subordinate to them, the unquestioned belief that 'I' is the centre of the universe and they can demand others comply with them, the unquestioned enshrining of pure ego as divine will
Thinking, autonomy, independent judgement of mind and heart. are evil, for the rather obvious actual reason that anyone who thinks regards the ravings of the acolytes of a minority death-cult as sick crap and the given reason, which a child of six can see through, or at any rate a child of six not drugged from birth, that it is the evil of self-will, of thinking one knows better than 'God', or in other words them

"This new concept [multiverse theory] is, potentially, as drastic an enlargement of our cosmic perspective as the shift from pre-Copernican ideas to the realization that the Earth is orbiting a typical star on the edge of the Milky Way."
Sir Martin Rees, 1998, current Astronomer Royal of Britain

There is an enormous range of  views on other planes, other dimensions, other realities, other worlds, other levels of being not least salvation and damnation. None of those is the point. The point is the putrid rejection of what is known of the reality of this world. While the Vatican's last best response to Professor Dawkins is that he is an evil atheist, it simply makes itself a joke, while instead of eagerly embracing his work as a new and fascinating branch of God's multiverse, it instead demands the twisting and corruption of reality to conform with its fantasies.

Somewhat entertainingly, a Cardinal in 1536 felt free to display considerable enthusiasm for the findings of science, though of course the cavemen later gathered to beat up Galileo.

On 1 November 1536, Cardinal Nikolaus von Schönberg, Archbishop of Capua, wrote to Copernicus from Rome:

Some years ago word reached me concerning your proficiency, of which everybody constantly spoke. At that time I began to have a very high regard for you... For I had learned that you had not merely mastered the discoveries of the ancient astronomers uncommonly well but had also formulated a new cosmology. In it you maintain that the earth moves; that the sun occupies the lowest, and thus the central, place in the universe... Therefore with the utmost earnestness I entreat you, most learned sir, unless I inconvenience you, to communicate this discovery of yours to scholars, and at the earliest possible moment to send me your writings on the sphere of the universe together with the tables and whatever else you have that is relevant to this subject ...[71]

It would be rather nice if a British Cardinal wrote such a letter to Prof Dawkins, say,, but I rather think that's not going to happen.. Come to think of it, it would be rather nice if they ever went around expressing enthusiasm for finding out rather than the certainty they know already, not least what people in this country think and believe.
 
It ought to take up two lines underneath last year’s football scores that the free word does not want pre-Enlightenment religion.  Instead there’s supposed to be something wrong with us.  This is all of course carefully cultivated – the Islamophobia machine.  Of course no-one should be harassed for his or her religion but nor should he or she harass those who fail to share his or her peculiar and sometimes repulsive views.    They pocket the rials as they go. 
Yeah, nutjobs yeah, you’re going to close down all the departments of physics, chemistry, biology because they’re unnecessary,  the Truth has been revealed to us.  They got this book, see and it's Troof and they wave their bloody books around and we're all supposed to be frightfully impressed cos they got Troof.  Anything contrary to which of course they regard as lies and deserving suppression.

The truly pathetic and repulsive and with the rise of mass education, libraries, bookshops increasingly ludicrous attempt to control minds that was the Indes Librorum Prohibitorum is I think worth another airing. 

Thou didst not come down from the Cross when they shouted to Thee, mocking and reviling Thee, "Come down from the cross and we will believe that Thou art He." Thou didst not come down, for again Thou wouldst not enslave man by a miracle, and didst crave faith given freely, not based on miracle. Thou didst crave for free love and not the base raptures of the slave before the might that has overawed him for ever...I too prized the freedom with which Thou hast blessed men, and I too was striving to stand among Thy elect, among the strong and powerful, thirsting "to make up the number." But I awakened and would not serve madness. I turned back and joined the ranks of those who have corrected Thy work. I left the proud and went back to the humble, for the happiness of the humble. What I say to Thee will come to pass, and our dominion will be built up. I repeat, to-morrow Thou shalt see that obedient flock who at a sign from me will hasten to heap up the hot cinders about the pile on which I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For if anyone has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou. To-morrow I shall burn Thee. Dixi.'"
Dostoevsky: The Grand Inquisitor
Truth nailed upon the cross compels nobody, oppresses no one; it must be accepted and confessed freely; its appeal is addressed to free spirits...A divine Truth panoplied in power, triumphant over the world and conquering souls, would not be consonant with the freedom of man's spirit, and in the mystery of Golgotha is the mystery of liberty….Every time in history that man has tried to turn crucified Truth into coercive truth he has betrayed the fundamental principle of Christ.
Nicholas Berdyaev
No, they really don’t’ like people who come to hinder them.
Witch hunts
Burning of three witches in Baden (1585), painted by Johann Jakob Wick
Burning was used by Christians during the witch-hunts of Europe. The penal code known as the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina (1532) decreed that sorcery throughout the Holy Roman Empire should be treated as a criminal offence, and if it purported to inflict injury upon any person the witch was to be burnt at the stake. In 1572, Augustus, Elector of Saxony imposed the penalty of burning for witchcraft of every kind, including simple fortunetelling.[60] From the latter half of the 18th century, the number of "9 million witches burned in Europe" has been bandied about in popular accounts/media, but has never had a following among specialist researchers.[61] Today, based on meticulous study of trial records, ecclesiastical and inquisitorial registers and so on, as well as on the utilization of modern statistical methods, the specialist research community on witchcraft has reached an agreement for roughly 40,000-50,000 people executed for witchcraft in Europe in total,[62] and by no means all of them executed by being burned alive. Furthermore, it is solidly established that the peak period of witch-hunts was the century 1550-1650, with a slow increase preceding it, from the 15th century onwards, as well a sharp drop postceding it, witch hunts having basically fizzled out by the first half of the 18th century.[63]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_burning
 
You think the fucks who burned witches liked being told they couldn’t burn witches any more?  It is not accidental the fizzling out of witch hunts coincided with the Enlightenment.  How fortunate for women that rational men achieved governance rather than damaged animals; today’s damaged animals of the fascist fake Left would of course have drooled: But it’s their culture!  But it’s their religion!  You can’t interfere with religion!  It’s what the Bible tells them to do!
 
It is indeed: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ Exodus 22:18
Well, I mean, God said.  God’s Word, innit. Of course it mustn’t be mocked. Tell me, you evil rat-faced animal, tell me all about it, how it's perfectly serious that and we must all have respect for those who think witches should be murdered.

After all the peasants and savages of UCH take it seriously.  Holy Bible, innit.  You can't laugh.

Nowadays of course instead of first burning books, they destroy the witch who upholds the books.

The movement for ordination of women as priests in the Roman Catholic Church understands the sexual sickness that pollutes it.

In a preface to the book written on October the 7th 1946 (!!) Fr. Montague Summers has some amazing things to say. After asserting that the writings of the two authors, "are well approved by many learned men, Pontiffs, Saints, and Theologians alike’’, he praises the virtues of the "Hammer of Witches":
“One turns to it again and again with edification (!) and interest. From the point of view of psychology (!), from the point of view of jurisprudence, from the point of view of history, it is supreme. What is most surprising is the modernity of the book. There is hardly a problem, a complex, a difficulty, which they have not foreseen, and discussed, and resolved...with the greatest clarity, with unflinching logic with scrupulous impartiality (!)(Ibid,1948 Preface, pg. ix-x).

 Yet, this is the book which describes in the most lurid details imaginary sexual orgies between penis-toting devils and human witches (all proved from Scripture, of course). This is the book that sanctioned limitless torture to extract confessions from the accused. It is a book full of superstitious belief, sadistic cruelty, bigotry and hatred for women.

 It is sad to reflect that while so many harmless books were put on the "Index" of forbidden books, a book of this nature was continuously reprinted with an approving Bull of Innocent VIII (1484 AD) to give it ecclesiastical authority.
http://www.womenpriests.org/theology/hammer1.asp

The second branch of the woman question, which of necessity follows directly after that of gaining a livelihood, is that of a suitable education. The Catholic Church places here no barriers that have not already been established by nature. Fénelon expresses this necessary limitation thus: "The learning of women like that of men must be limited to the study of those things which belong to their calling; The difference in their activities must also give a different direction to their studies." The entrance of women as students in the universities, which has of late years spread in all countries, is to be judged according to these principles. Far from obstructing such a course in itself, Catholics encourage it. This has led in Germany to the founding of the "Hildegardisverein" for the aid of Catholic women students of higher branches of learning. Moreover,nature also shows here her undeniable regulating power. There is no need to fear the overcrowding of the academic professions by women.In the medical calling, which next to teaching is the first to be considered in discussing the professions of women, there are at the present time in Germany about 100 women to 30,000 men. For the studious woman as for others who earn a livelihood the academic calling is only a temporary position. The sexes can never be on an equality as regards studies pursued at a university.Catholic Encyclopaedia: Women (1912)
In fact anyone who can read understands it@ http://www.dillsplace.com/tertullian-women-in-canon-law-1912-and-mulieris-dignitatem-1988.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authors_and_works_on_the_Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum
Bacon, Montaigne, Descartes, Hume, Loicke, Kant, Mill, is there anyone the dirty old apes didn’t ban.  The Index of Forbidden Books was abolished in 1966.

All the senile old freaks in the Vatican therefore grew up with the idea people could be told what they may read.   Dictating to others is automatic to them.  Civilized people were appalled by Nazis burning books.  You think it worried the dirty old apes?

I doubt the great Catholic universities of Europe, from Rome to Dublin, paid the slightest attention, but that’s not really the point.  Few went to university and the many were not supposed to read books that might make them think

Copernicus was banned for 200 years until 1835. Les Miserables – perhaps you saw it on stage – was banned until 1959. 

Faced with this nonsense in their local bookstores, I’d be guessing the thinking Irish would have popped over the water, filled their cabin trunks in Dillon’s as it then was and popped back.  Or taken a flight to Paris. Customs?  As in the guy in a uniform checking your luggage?  Possibly it depended on the individual officer; if you met a zealot, you had a problem.What a bookshop stocked would also have depended on the proprietor?

Books, savages, barbarians, philistines, books that civilized people read to find out what other people think and give themselves things to think about, books, which spark mental activity and change minds. 

The Catholic Church is of course two distinct entities pretending to be one, the Grand Inquisitor and the Prisoner.  Jesus never forced himself on anyone.

Books: I have hundreds of the things, though rather fewer than I did have, since the barbarians presided over my having to dispose of half my parents’ library.

Not one bloody book nutters think contains Troof and with which all other books should broadly concur.

Scrofulous old baboons howling and beating their chests, It is forbidden.  The Holy Church is not to abused!  Islam is not to be offended!  The Great Me who am perfect am not to be told there is anything wrong with me.

Join the fucking real world.

Come on, Johnson, you can do it, tell the sick old animals how to bloody behave in the company of civilized people.  I mean, you did go to Eton, you must know how to behave in the company of civilized people, however hard it is to discern from your usual behaviour.  Just tell these filthy brutes how to behave.  These foul degraded subhumans who think everyone is property, everyone is to be frightened of Master exercising unaccountable and so criminal power over those who displease him. 

Grotesque ludicrous obscene little men waving their bloody wizened cocks at me. 

What they all hate is human.  Left unterrorized, human thinks, human wonders if the angel really spoke to Mohammed, human wonders if Jesus really rose from the dead, did the Red Sea really part?  Anyone who breaks the paper-thin bars of the cage because then the whole diseased mechanism of terrorism and control falls apart. 
I2089 Incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it.
A bunch of vicious evil old men who lord it over savages who actually believe that you are flawed, sinful, self-willed if you reject their garbage and think the rest of us are fucking savages too or should be made to be and into the hands of these scum total in their contempt for the sovereign liberty of the individual Blair delivered me to be butchered and destroyed.

It has to be a prosecutable offence to place an Englishwoman, a British subject, under the authority of a hostile fascist foreign power, the Church of Rome.  I'm sure Blair would know.

It's my mind,  you vile little animals, and it’s a far better one than yours because you don’t have mind, you are walking corpses, zombies, automatons.  Nothing moves between the ears. 
Nothing the filth hate and fear more than a free and functioning mind, someone capable of question, argument.

Depraved baboons who can’t stand people thinking, eho love nothing more than the sweet docile obedient intellectually incapable with sealed skulls, impervious to all fact, reason, morality, unreachable by love and mind, unreachable by human means, who just parrot the filth with which they have been indoctrinated.

Scum who refused to learn.  The idea of any of these creatures having a degree is of course sick

Read you ludicrous mong filth, you dirty shit-filled vile little animals  but of course you can’t, not without moving your lips, how you learn in your mong-holes reading from books with large print and lots of pictures.  Can’t cope with whole books with no illustrations because you’re intellectually incapable.  Desperate to fuck over the University, establish yourselves as the intellectual elite of the nation, and that’s just doctors, spass-boys like Whelan and Ardeshna.  They’d all be a huge joke if they weren’t butchers, murderers, psychopaths and traitors, but hell, they’re a huge joke anyway. 

Yes the original texts here had paragraphs.  Pasting has glitches I can’t be bothered to resolve.

Thomas Paine (1794) The Age of Reason Source: From Constitution Society, where the full text is available. HTML Mark-up: Andy Blunden.
TO MY FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I PUT the following work under your protection. It contains my opinions upon Religion. You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it. The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall. Your affectionate friend and fellow-citizen , THOMAS PAINE Luxembourg, 8th Pluviose, Second Year of the French Republic, one and indivisible January 27, O. S. 1794. PART FIRST IT has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my thoughts upon religion. I am well aware of the difficulties that attend the subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to a more advanced period of life. I intended it to be the last offering I should make to my fellow-citizens of all nations, and that at a time when the purity of the motive that induced me to it, could not admit of a question, even by those who might disapprove the work. The circumstance that has now taken place in France of the total abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of everything appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive articles of faith, has not only precipitated my intention, but rendered a work of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest in the general wreck of superstition, of false systems of government, and false theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true. As several of my colleagues and others of my fellow-citizens of France have given me the example of making their voluntary and individual profession of faith, I also will make mine; and I do this with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man communicates with itself. I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. But, lest it should be supposed that I believe in many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them. I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive any thing more destructive to morality than this? Soon after I had published the pamphlet Common Sense, in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion. The adulterous connection of church and state, wherever it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually prohibited by pains and penalties, every discussion upon established creeds, and upon first principles of religion, that until the system of government should be changed, those subjects could not be brought fairly and openly before the world; but that whenever this should be done, a revolution in the system of religion would follow. Human inventions and priestcraft would be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed and unadulterated belief of one God, and no more. Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike. Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all. As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some other observations on the word revelation. Revelation, when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man. No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it. It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication – after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him. When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so. The commandments carry no internal evidence of divinity with them; they contain some good moral precepts, such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver, or a legislator, could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention.* [* It is, however, necessary to except the declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children; it is contrary to every principle of moral justice.] When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes too near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second-hand authority as the former. I did not see the angel myself, and, therefore, I have a right not to believe it. When also I am told that a woman called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not; such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it; but we have not even this – for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves; it is only reported by others that they said so – it is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief upon such evidence. It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given to the story of Jesus Christ being the son of God. He was born when the heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story. Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new thing, at that time, to believe a man to have been celestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited with hundreds: the story, therefore, had nothing in it either new, wonderful, or obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed among the people called Gentiles, or Mythologists, and it was those people only that believed it. The Jews who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited the story. It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian church sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which was about twenty or thirty thousand: the statue of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus; the deification of heroes changed into the canonization of saints; the Mythologists had gods for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything; the church became as crowded with one, as the Pantheon had been with the other, and Rome was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient Mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud. Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practised was of the most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of morality had been preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many years before; by the Quakers since; and by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any. Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or any thing else; not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his own writing. The history of him is altogether the work of other people; and as to the account given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. His historians having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground. The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told exceeds every thing that went before it. The first part, that of the miraculous conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity; and therefore the tellers of this part of the story had this advantage, that though they might not be credited, they could not be detected. They could not be expected to prove it, because it was not one of those things that admitted of proof, and it was impossible that the person of whom it was told could prove it himself. But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension through the air, is a thing very different as to the evidence it admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the womb. The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon-day, to all Jerusalem at least. A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; and as the public visibility of this last related act was the only evidence that could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to the ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas did not believe the resurrection, and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I, and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas. It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it. Who were the authors of it is as impossible for us now to know, as it is for us to be assured that the books in which the account is related were written by the persons whose names they bear; the best surviving evidence we now have respecting that affair is the Jews. They are regularly descended from the people who lived in the times this resurrection and ascension is said to have happened, and they say, it is not true. It has long appeared to me a strange inconsistency to cite the Jews as a proof of the truth of the story. It is just the same as if a man were to say, I will prove the truth of what I have told you by producing the people who say it is false. That such a person as Jesus Christ existed, and that he was crucified, which was the mode of execution at that day, are historical relations strictly within the limits of probability. He preached most excellent morality and the equality of man; but he preached also against the corruptions and avarice of the Jewish priests, and this brought upon him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order of priesthood. The accusation which those priests brought against him was that of sedition and conspiracy against the Roman government, to which the Jews were then subject and tributary; and it is not improbable that the Roman government might have some secret apprehensions of the effects of his doctrine, as well as the Jewish priests; neither is it improbable that Jesus Christ had in contemplation the delivery of the Jewish nation from the bondage of the Romans. Between the two, however, this virtuous reformer and revolutionist lost his life. It is upon this plain narrative of facts, together with another case I am going to mention, that the Christian Mythologists, calling themselves the Christian Church, have erected their fable, which, for absurdity and extravagance, is not exceeded by anything that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients. The ancient Mythologists tell us that the race of Giants made war against Jupiter, and that one of them threw a hundred rocks against him at one throw; that Jupiter defeated him with thunder, and confined him afterward under Mount Etna, and that every time the Giant turns himself Mount Etna belches fire. It is here easy to see that the circumstance of the mountain, that of its being a volcano, suggested the idea of the fable; and that the fable is made to fit and wind itself up with that circumstance. The Christian Mythologists tell us that their Satan made war against the Almighty, who defeated him, and confined him afterward, not under a mountain, but in a pit. It is here easy to see that the first fable suggested the idea of the second; for the fable of Jupiter and the Giants was told many hundred years before that of Satan. Thus far the ancient and the Christian Mythologists differ very little from each other. But the latter have contrived to carry the matter much farther. They have contrived to connect the fabulous part of the story of Jesus Christ with the fable originating from Mount Etna; and in order to make all the parts of the story tie together, they have taken to their aid the traditions of the Jews; for the Christian mythology is made up partly from the ancient mythology and partly from the Jewish traditions. The Christian Mythologists, after having confined Satan in a pit, were obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable. He is then introduced into the Garden of Eden, in the shape of a snake or a serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar conversation with Eve, who is no way surprised to hear a snake talk; and the issue of this tete-a-tete is that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the eating of that apple damns all mankind. After giving Satan this triumph over the whole creation, one would have supposed that the Church Mythologists would have been kind enough to send him back again to the pit; or, if they had not done this, that they would have put a mountain upon him (for they say that their faith can remove a mountain), or have put him under a mountain, as the former mythologists had done, to prevent his getting again among the women and doing more mischief. But instead of this they leave him at large, without even obliging him to give his parole – the secret of which is, that they could not do without him; and after being at the trouble of making him, they bribed him to stay. They promised him ALL the Jews, ALL the Turks by anticipation, nine-tenths of the world beside, and Mahomet into the bargain. After this, who can doubt the bountifulness of the Christian Mythology? Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in Heaven, in which none of the combatants could be either killed or wounded – put Satan into the pit – let him out again – giving him a triumph over the whole creation – damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, these Christian Mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together. They represent this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at once both God and Man, and also the Son of God, celestially begotten, on purpose to be sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her longing had eaten an apple. Putting aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity, or detestation by its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to an examination of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a story more derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom, more contradictory to his power, than this story is. In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the inventors were under the necessity of giving to the being whom they call Satan, a power equally as great, if not greater than they attribute to the Almighty. They have not only given him the power of liberating himself from the pit, after what they call his fall, but they have made that power increase afterward to infinity. Before this fall they represent him only as an angel of limited existence, as they represent the rest. After his fall, he becomes, by their account, omnipresent. He exists everywhere, and at the same time. He occupies the whole immensity of space. Not content with this deification of Satan, they represent him as defeating, by stratagem, in the shape of an animal of the creation, all the power and wisdom of the Almighty. They represent him as having compelled the Almighty to the direct necessity either of surrendering the whole of the creation to the government and sovereignty of this Satan, or of capitulating for its redemption by coming down upon earth, and exhibiting himself upon a cross in the shape of a man. Had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is, had they represented the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit himself on a cross, in the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his new transgression, the story would have been less absurd – less contradictory. But instead of this, they make the transgressor triumph, and the Almighty fall. That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived very good lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime), is what I have no doubt of. In the first place, they were educated to believe it, and they would have believed anything else in the same manner. There are also many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by what they conceived to be the infinite love of God to man, in making a sacrifice of himself, that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden and deterred them from examining into the absurdity and profaneness of the story. The more unnatural anything is, the more it is capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration. But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born – a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun, that pour down the rain, and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator? I know that this bold investigation will alarm many, but it would be paying too great a compliment to their credulity to forbear it on their account; the times and the subject demand it to be done. The suspicion that the theory of what is called the Christian Church is fabulous is becoming very extensive in all countries; and it will be a consolation to men staggering under that suspicion, and doubting what to believe and what to disbelieve, to see the object freely investigated. I therefore pass on to an examination of the books called the Old and New Testament. These books, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelation (which, by the by, is a book of riddles that requires a revelation to explain it), are, we are told, the word of God. It is, therefore, proper for us to know who told us so, that we may know what credit to give to the report. The answer to this question is, that nobody can tell, except that we tell one another so. The case, however, historically appears to be as follows: When the Church Mythologists established their system, they collected all the writings they could find, and managed them as they pleased. It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings as now appear under the name of the Old and New Testament are in the same state in which those collectors say they found them, or whether they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them up. Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books Gut of the collection they had made should be the WORD OF GOD, and which should not. They rejected several; they voted others to be doubtful, such as the books called the Apocrypha; and those books which had a majority of votes, were voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all the people, since calling themselves Christians, had believed otherwise – for the belief of the one comes from the vote of the other. Who the people were that did all this, we know nothing of; they called themselves by the general name of the Church, and this is all we know of the matter. As we have no other external evidence or authority for believing these books to be the word of God than what I have mentioned, which is no evidence or authority at all, I come, in the next place, to examine the internal evidence contained in the books themselves. In the former part of this Essay, I have spoken of revelation; I now proceed further with that subject, for the purpose of applying it to the books in question. Revelation is a communication of something which the person to whom that thing is revealed did not know before. For if I have done a thing, or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have done it, or seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write it. Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon earth, of which man himself is the actor or the witness; and consequently all the historical and anecdotal parts of the Bible, which is almost the whole of it, is not within the meaning and compass of the word revelation, and, therefore, is not the word of God. When Samson ran off with the gate-posts of Gaza, if he ever did so (and whether he did or not is nothing to us), or when he visited his Delilah, or caught his foxes, or did any thing else, what has revelation to do with these things? If they were facts, he could tell them himself, or his secretary, if he kept one, could write them, if they were worth either telling or writing; and if they were fictions, revelation could not make them true; and whether true or not, we are neither the better nor the wiser for knowing them. When we contemplate the immensity of that Being who directs and governs the incomprehensible WHOLE, of which the utmost ken of human sight can discover but a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry stories the word of God. As to the account of the Creation, with which the Book of Genesis opens, it has all the appearance of being a tradition which the Israelites had among them before they came into Egypt; and after their departure from that country they put it at the head of their history, without telling (as it is most probable) that they did not know how they came by it. The manner in which the account opens shows it to be traditionary. It begins abruptly; it is nobody that speaks; it is nobody that hears; it is addressed to nobody; it has neither first, second, nor third person; it has every criterion of being a tradition; it has no voucher. Moses does not take it upon himself by introducing it with the formality that he uses on other occasions, such as that of saying, “The Lord spake unto Moses, saying.” Why it has been called the Mosaic account of the Creation, I am at a loss to conceive. Moses, I believe, was too good a judge of such subjects to put his name to that account. He had been educated among The Egyptians, who were a people as well skilled in science, and particularly in astronomy, as any people of their day; and the silence and caution that Moses observes in not authenticating the account, is a good negative evidence that he neither told it nor believed it The case is, that every nation of people has been world-makers, and the Israelites had as much right to set up the trade of world-making as any of the rest; and as Moses was not an Israelite, he might not choose to contradict the tradition. The account, however, is harmless; and this is more than can be said of many other parts of the Bible. Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel. We scarcely meet with anything, a few phrases excepted, but what deserves either our abhorrence or our contempt, till we come to the miscellaneous parts of the Bible. In the anonymous publications, the Psalms, and the Book of Job, more particularly in the latter, we find a great deal of elevated sentiment reverentially expressed of the power and benignity of the Almighty; but they stand on no higher rank than many other compositions on similar subjects, as well before that time as since. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/paine/works/age-reason/ch01.htm
CN.I. Bukharin and E. Preobrazhensky: The ABC of Communism Chapter 11: Communism and Religion § 89. Why religion and communism are incompatible
'Religion is` the opium of the people,' said Karl Marx. It is the task of the Communist Party to make this truth comprehensible to the widest possible circles of the labouring masses. It is the task of the party to impress firmly upon the minds of the workers, even upon the most backward, that religion has been in the past and still is today one of the most powerful means at the disposal of the oppressors for the maintenance of inequality, exploitation, and slavish obedience on the part of the toilers. Many weak-kneed communists reason as follows: 'Religion does not prevent my being a communist. I believe both in God and in communism. My faith in God does not hinder me from fighting for the cause of the proletarian revolution.' This train of thought is radically false. Religion and communism are incompatible, both theoretically and practically. Every communist must regard social phenomena (the relationships between human beings, revolutions, wars, etc.) as processes which occur in accordance with definite laws. The laws of social development have been fully established by scientific communism on the basis of the theory of historical materialism which we owe to our great teachers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This theory explains that social development is not brought about by any kind of supernatural forces. Nay more. The same theory has demonstrated that the very idea of God and of supernatural powers arises at a definite stage in human history, and at another definite stage begins to disappear as a childish notion which finds no confirmation in practical life and in the struggle between man and nature. But it is profitable to the predatory class to maintain the ignorance of the people and to maintain the people's childish belief in miracles (the key to the riddle really lies in the exploiters' pockets), and this is why religious prejudices are so tenacious, and why they confuse the minds even of persons who are in other respects able. The general happenings throughout nature are, moreover, in no wise dependent upon supernatural causes. Man has been extremely successful in the struggle with nature. He influences nature in his own interests, and controls natural forces, achieving these conquests, not thanks to his faith in God and in divine assistance, but in spite of this faith. He achieves his conquests thanks to the fact that in practical life and in all serious matters he invariably conducts himself as an atheist. Scientific communism, in its judgements concerning natural phenomena, is guided by the data of the natural sciences, which are in irreconcilable conflict with all religious imaginings. In practice, no less than in theory, communism is incompatible with religious faith. The tactic of the Communist Party prescribes for the members of the party definite lines of conduct. The moral code of every religion in like manner prescribes for the faithful some definite line of conduct. For example, the Christian code runs: 'Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.' In most cases there is an irreconcilable conflict between the principles of communist tactics and the commandments of religion. A communist who rejects the commandments of religion and acts in accordance with the directions of the party, ceases to be one of the faithful. On the other hand, one who, while calling himself a communist, continues to cling to his religious faith, one who in the name of religious commandments infringes the prescriptions of the party, ceases thereby to be a communist. The struggle with religion has two sides, and every communist must distinguish clearly between them. On the one hand we have the struggle with the church, as a special organization existing for religious propaganda, materially interested in the maintenance of popular ignorance and religious enslavement. On the other hand we have the struggle with the widely diffused and deeply ingrained prejudices of the majority of the working population. § 90. Separation of the church from the state The Christian catechism teaches that the church is a society of the faithful who are united by a common creed, by the sacraments, etc. For the communist, the church is a society of persons who are united by definite sources of income at the cost of the faithful, at the cost of their ignorance and lack of true culture. It is a society united with the society of other exploiters such as the landlords and the capitalists, united with their State, assisting that State in the oppression of the workers, and reciprocally receiving from the State help in the business of oppression. The union between church and State is of great antiquity. The association between the church and the feudalist State of the landowners was exceedingly intimate. This becomes clear when we remember that the autocratic-aristocratic State was sustained by the landed interest. The church was itself a landlord on the grand scale, owning millions upon millions of acres. These two powers were inevitably compelled to join forces against the labouring masses, and their alliance served to strengthen their dominion over the workers. During the period in which the urban bourgeoisie was in conflict with the feudal nobility, the bourgeoisie fiercely attacked the church, because the church owned territories which the bourgeoisie wanted for itself. The church, as landowner, was in receipt of revenues extracted from the workers - revenues which the bourgeoisie coveted. In some countries (France for instance), the struggle was extremely embittered; in other countries (England, Germany, and Russia), it was less fierce. But this conflict explains why the demand for the separation of church and State was made by the liberal bourgeoisie and the bourgeois democracy. The real basis of the demand was a desire for the transfer to the bourgeoisie of the revenues allotted by the State to the church. But the demand for the separation of the church from the State was nowhere fully realized by the bourgeoisie. The reason is that everywhere the struggle carried on by the working class against the capitalists was growing more intense, and it seemed inexpedient to the bourgeoisie to break up the alliance between State and church. The capitalists thought it would be more advantageous to come to terms with the church, to buy its prayers on behalf of the struggle with socialism, to utilize its influence over the uncultured masses in order to keep alive in their minds the sentiment of slavish submissiveness to the exploiting State. ('All power comes from God.') The work which the bourgeoisie in its struggle with the church had left unfinished was carried to an end by the proletarian State. One of the first decrees of the Soviet Power in Russia was the decree concerning the separation of the church from the State. All its landed estates were taken away from the church and handed over to the working population. All the capital of the church became the property of the workers. The endowments which had been assigned to the church under the tsarist régime were confiscated, although these endowments had been cheerfully continued under the administration of the 'socialist' Kerensky. Religion has become the private affair of every citizen. The Soviet Power rejects all thoughts of using the church in any way whatever as a means for strengthening the proletarian State. § 91. Separation of the school from the church The association of religious propaganda with scholastic instruction is the second powerful weapon employed by the clergy for the strengthening of the ecclesiastical régime and for increasing the influence of the church over the masses. The future of the human race, its youth, is entrusted to the priests. Under the tsars, the maintenance of religious fanaticism, the maintenance of stupidity and ignorance, was regarded as a matter of great importance to the State. Religion was the leading subject of instruction in the schools. In the schools, moreover, the autocracy supported the church, and the church supported the autocracy. In addition to compulsory religious teaching in the schools and compulsory attendance at religious services, the church had other weapons. It began to take charge of the whole of popular education, and for this purpose Russia was covered with a network of church schools. Thanks to the union of school and church, our young people were from their earliest years thralls to religious superstition, this making it practically impossible to convey to their minds any integral outlook upon the universe. To one and the same question (for instance concerning the origin of the world) religion and science give conflicting answers, so that the impressionable mind of the pupil becomes a battle ground between exact knowledge and the gross errors of obscurantists. In many countries, young people are trained, not only in a spirit of submissiveness towards the dominant régime, but also in a spirit of submissiveness towards the overthrown autocratic, ecclesiastico-feudal order. This happens in France. Even from the outlook of the bourgeois State, propaganda of such a kind is reactionary. The programme of bourgeois liberalism used to contain a demand for the separation of the school from the church. The liberals fought for the replacement of religious instruction in the schools by instruction in bourgeois morality; and they demanded the closing of schools organized by religious associations and by monasteries. Nowhere, however, was this struggle carried through to an end. In France, for instance, where for two decades all the bourgeois ministries had solemnly pledged themselves to dissolve the religious orders, to confiscate their property, and to forbid their educational activities, there has been one compromise after another with the Catholic clergy. An excellent example of such a compromise between State and church was the recent action of Clemenceau. This minister in his day had been fiercely opposed to the church. In the end, however, he forgot his hostility, and personally distributed orders of distinction among the Catholic clergy as a reward for their patriotic services. In the struggle for the exploitation of other lands (the war with Germany), and in the domestic struggle with the working class, the bourgeois State and the church have entered into an alliance, and give one another mutual support. This reconciliation of the bourgeoisie with the church finds expression, not merely in the abandonment by the bourgeoisie of its old anti-religious watchwords and of its campaign against religion, but in something more significant. To an increasing extent, the bourgeoisie is now becoming a 'believing class'. The forerunners of the contemporary European bourgeoisie were atheists, were freethinkers, were fiercely antagonistic to priests and priestdom. Their successors have taken a step back- wards. A generation ago, the bourgeois, though they were them- selves still atheistically inclined, though they did not believe in religious fairy tales, and though they laughed covertly at religion, nevertheless considered that the fables must be treated with respect in public, since religion was a useful restraint for the common people. Today, the scions of the bourgeoisie are not content with looking upon religion as providing useful fetters for the people, but they have themselves begun to wear the chains. Under our very eyes, after the November revolution, the liberal bourgeois and the members of the professional classes crowded into the churches and prayed fervently to that which in happier days they had regarded with contempt. Such is the fate of all dying classes, whose last resource it is to seek 'consolation' in religion. Among the bourgeoisies of Central and Western Europe, which still hold the reins of power, a similar movement in favour of religion is observable. But if the bourgeois class begins to believe in God and the heavenly life, this merely means it has realized that its life here below is drawing to a close! The separation of the school from the church aroused and continues to arouse protest from the backward elements among the workers and peasants. Many of the older generation persist in demanding that religion should still be taught in the schools as an optional subject. The Communist Party fights resolutely against all such attempts to turn back. The teaching of ecclesias- tical obscurantism in the schools, even though the instruction should be merely optional, would imply the giving of State aid to the maintenance of religious prejudices. In that case the church would be provided with a ready-made audience of children - of children who are assembled in school for purposes which are the very opposite of those contemplated by religion. The church would have at its disposal schoolrooms belonging to the State, and would thereby be enabled to diffuse religious poison among our young people almost as freely as it could before the separation of the school from the church. The decree whereby the school is separated from the church must be rigidly enforced, and the proletarian State must not make the slightest concession to medievalism. What has already been done to throw off the yoke of religion is all too little, for it still remains within the power of ignorant parents to cripple the minds of their children by teaching them religious fables. Under the Soviet Power there is freedom of conscience for adults. But this freedom of conscience for parents is tantamount to a freedom for them to poison the minds of their children with the opium which when they were young was poured into their own minds by the church. The parents force upon the children their own dullness, their own ignorance; they proclaim as truth all sorts of nonsense; and they thus greatly increase the difficulties which the unified labour school has to encounter. One of the most important tasks of the proletarian State is to liberate children from the reactionary influence exercised by their parents. The really radical way of doing this is the social education of the children, carried to its logical conclusion. As far as the immediate future is concerned, we must not rest content with the expulsion of religious propaganda from the school. We must see to it that the school assumes the offensive against religious propaganda in the home, so that from the very outset the children's minds shall be rendered immune to all those religious fairy tales which many grown-ups continue to regard as truth. § 92. Struggle with the religious prejudice of the masses It has been comparatively easy for the proletarian authority to effect the separation of the church from the State and of the school from the church, and these changes have been almost painlessly achieved. It is enormously more difficult to fight the religious prejudices which are already deeply rooted in the consciousness of the masses, and which cling so stubbornly to life. The struggle will be a long one, demanding much steadfastness and great patience. Upon this matter we read in our programme: 'The Russian Communist Party is guided by the conviction that nothing but the realization of purposiveness and full awareness in all the social and economic activities of the masses can lead to the complete disappearance of religious prejudices.' What do these words signify? Religious propaganda, belief in God and in all kinds of supernatural powers, find their most grateful soil where the institutions of social life are such as to incline the consciousness of the masses towards supernatural explanations of the phenomena of nature and society. The environment created by capitalist methods of production has a strong tendency in this direction. In capitalist society, production, and the exchange of products, are not effected with full consciousness and in accordance with a preconceived plan; they proceed as if they were the outcome of elemental forces. The market controls the producer. No one knows whether commodities are being produced in excess or in deficiency. The producer does not fully understand how the great and complicated mechanism of capitalist production works; why crises occur and unemployment suddenly becomes rife; why prices rise at one time and fall at another; and so on. The ordinary worker, knowing nothing of the real causes of the social happenings amid which his life takes place, readily inclines to accept the 'will of God' as a universal explanation. In organized communist society, on the other hand, the realms of production and distribution will no longer contain any mysteries for the worker. Every worker will not merely perform his allotted portion of social work. He will in addition participate in the elaboration of the general plan of production, and will at least have clear ideas upon the matter. Throughout the entire mechanism of social production there will no longer be anything mysterious, incomprehensible, or unexpected, and there will therefore be no further place for mystical explanations or for superstition. Just as the joiner who has made a table knows perfectly well how the table came to exist and that he need not lift his eyes towards heaven in order to find its creator, so in communist society all the workers will clearly understand what they have produced with their collective energies and how they have produced it. For this reason, the mere fact of the organization and strengthening of the socialist system, will deal religion an irrecoverable blow. THE TRANSITION FROM SOCIALISM TO COMMUNISM, THE TRANSITION FROM THE SOCIETY WHICH MAKES AN END OF CAPITALISM TO THE SOCIETY WHICH IS COMPLETELY FREED FROM ALL TRACES OF CLASS DIVISION AND CLASS STRUGGLE, WILL BRING ABOUT THE NATURAL DEATH OF ALL RELIGION AND ALL SUPERSTITION. But this must by no means be taken to imply that we can sit down at our ease, satisfied with having prophesied the decay of religion at some future date. It is essential at the present time to wage with the utmost vigour the war against religious prejudices, for the church has now definitely become a counter-revolutionary organization, and endeavours to use its religious influence over the masses in order to marshal them for the political struggle against the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Orthodox faith which is defended by the priests aims at an alliance with the monarchy. This is why the Soviet Power finds it necessary to engage at this juncture in widespread anti-religious propaganda. Our aims can be secured by the delivery of special lectures, by the holding of debates, and by the publication of suitable literature; also by the general diffusion of scientific knowledge, which slowly but surely undermines the authority of religion. An excellent weapon in the fight with the church was used recently in many parts of the republic when the shrines were opened to show the 'incorruptible' relics. This served to prove to the wide masses of the people, and precisely to those in whom religious faith was strongest, the base trickery upon which religion in general, and the creed of the Russian Orthodox church in particular, are grounded. But the campaign against the backwardness of the masses in this matter of religion, must be conducted with patience and considerateness, as well as with energy and perseverance. The credulous crowd is extremely sensitive to anything which hurts its feelings. To thrust atheism upon the masses, and in conjunction therewith to interfere forcibly with religious practices and to make mock of the objects of popular reverence, would not assist but would hinder the campaign against religion. If the church were to be persecuted, it would win sympathy among the masses, for persecution would remind them of the almost forgotten days when there was an association between religion and the defence of national freedom; it would strengthen the antisemitic movement; and in general it would mobilize all the vestiges of an ideology which is already beginning to die out. We propose to append a few figures, showing how the tsarist régime paid over the people's money to the church; how the church was directly supported by the common people, who drained their slender purses to this end; and how wealth accumulated in the hands of the servants of Christ. Through the synods and in other ways the tsarist government annually supplied the church with the average amount of 50,000,000 roubles (at a time when the rouble was worth one hundred times as much as today). The synods had 70,000,000 roubles to their credit in the banks. The churches and the monasteries owned vast areas of land. In the year 7905 the churches owned 1,872,000 desyatinas, and the monasteries owned 740,000 desyatinas. Six of the largest monasteries owned 782,000 desyatinas. The Solovyetsky monastery owned 66,000 desyatinas; the Sarovskaya, 26,000; the Alexandro-Nevskaya, 25,000; and so on. In 7903, the churches and monasteries of Petrograd owned 266 rent-producing properties in the form of houses, shops, building sites, etc. In Moscow, they owned 1,054 rent-paying houses, not to mention 32 hotels. In Kiev, the churches owned 114 houses. Here are the stipends of the metropolitans and the archbishops. The metropolitan of Petrograd received 300,000 roubles per annum; the metropolitans of Moscow and of Kiev were paid 100,000 roubles per annum each; the stipend of the archbishop of Novgorod was 370,000 roubles. There were about 30,000 church schools, and these were attended by 1,000,000 pupils. More than 20,000 teachers of religion were 'at work' in the elementary schools of the Ministry for Education. Everyone knows that the autocracy supported the Orthodox church as the dominant and only true church. Many millions of roubles were raised by taxing Musulmans (Tartars and Bashkirs), Catholics (Poles), and Jews. This money was used by the Orthodox clergy to demonstrate that all other faiths were false. Under the tsarist régime, religious persecution attained unprecedented proportions. In the population of Russia, for every hundred inhabitants there were (besides the 70 Orthodox), 9 Catholics, 11 Mohammedans, 9 Protestants, 4 Jews, and 7 of various creeds. As for the number of the Orthodox clergy, the following were the figures for the year 1909: The 52,869 churches of Russia were served by Archpriests 2,912 Priests 46,730 Deacons 14,670 Readers 43,518 In the 455 monasteries were Monks 9,987 Lay-brethren 9,582 In the 418 nunneries were Nuns 14,008 Lay-sisters 46,811 Total 188,218 The figures relate exclusively to the Orthodox church. A similar parasitic caste is found in every nation, though of course, professing some other religion. These masses of people, instead of extracting vast sums of money from the population in order to promote popular ignorance, would have been able, had they been engaged in manual work, to produce immense quantities of values. The socialist State, when its economic apparatus has been perfected, will introduce labour service for the clergy as for all unproductive classes, so that they will have to become workers or peasants. Of the State revenues paid to the church under the tsarist régime, more than 12,000,000 roubles went every year to the urban and rural clergy. It is plain enough why the reverend fathers were opposed to the separation of the church from the State, since this implied the separation of a dozen million roubles from their pockets. This sum, however, was but a fraction of the clerical incomes, which for the most part were derived from professional fees, land rents, and interest upon the capital of the church. No one has been able to ascertain the precise amount of the revenues of the Russian church. Approximately the sum may be considered to have been 150,000,000 roubles - at a time (we repeat) when the rouble was worth one hundred of our present roubles. A considerable proportion of this income is still paid by the people to the clergy.
Socialism and Religion (1905) Of course no-one in the world has ever kicked clerical ass before, never ever, I'm mad, a freak, trying it on. Present-day society is wholly based on the exploitation of the vast masses of the working class by a tiny minority of the population, the class of the landowners and that of the capitalists. It is a slave society, since the "free" workers, who all their life work for the capitalists, are "entitled" only to such means of subsistence as are essential for the maintenance of slaves who produce profit, for the safeguarding and perpetuation of capitalist slavery. The economic oppression of the workers inevitably calls forth and engenders every kind of political oppression and social humiliation, the coarsening and darkening of the spiritual and moral life of the masses. The workers may secure a greater or lesser degree of political liberty to fight for their economic emancipation, but no amount of liberty will rid them of poverty, unemployment, and oppression until the power of capital is overthrown. Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of the people, over burdened by their perpetual work for others, by want and isolation. Impotence of the exploited classes in their struggle against the exploiters just as inevitably gives rise to the belief in a better life after death as impotence of the savage in his battle with nature gives rise to belief in gods, devils, miracles, and the like. Those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught by religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man. But a slave who has become conscious of his slavery and has risen to struggle for his emancipation has already half ceased to be a slave. The modern class-conscious worker, reared by large-scale factory industry and enlightened by urban life, contemptuously casts aside religious prejudices, leaves heaven to the priests and bourgeois bigots, and tries to win a better life for himself here on earth. The proletariat of today takes the side of socialism, which enlists science in the battle against the fog of religion, and frees the workers from their belief in life after death by welding them together to fight in the present for a better life on earth. Religion must be declared a private affair. In these words socialists usually express their attitude towards religion. But the meaning of these words should be accurately defined to prevent any misunderstanding. We demand that religion be held a private affair so far as the state is concerned. But by no means can we consider religion a private affair so far as our Party is concerned. Religion must be of no concern to the state, and religious societies must have no connection with governmental authority. Everyone must be absolutely free to profess any religion he pleases, or no religion whatever, i.e., to be an atheist, which every socialist is, as a rule. Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen’s religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated. No subsidies should be granted to the established church nor state allowances made to ecclesiastical and religious societies. These should become absolutely free associations of like-minded citizens, associations independent of the state. Only the complete fulfilment of these demands can put an end to the shameful and accursed past when the church lived in feudal dependence on the state, and Russian citizens lived in feudal dependence on the established church, when medieval, inquisitorial laws (to this day remaining in our criminal codes and on our statute-books) were in existence and were applied, persecuting men for their belief or disbelief, violating men’s consciences, and linking cosy government jobs and government-derived incomes with the dispensation of this or that dope by the established church. Complete separation of Church and State is what the socialist proletariat demands of the modern state and the modern church. The Russian revolution must put this demand into effect as a necessary component of political freedom. In this respect, the Russian revolution is in a particularly favourable position, since the revolting officialism of the police-ridden feudal autocracy has called forth discontent, unrest and indignation even among the clergy. However abject, however ignorant Russian Orthodox clergymen may have been, even they have now been awakened by the thunder of the downfall of the old, medieval order in Russia. Even they are joining in the demand for freedom, are protesting against bureaucratic practices and officialism, against the spying for the police imposed on the "servants of God". We socialists must lend this movement our support, carrying the demands of honest and sincere members of the clergy to their conclusion, making them stick to their words about freedom, demanding that they should resolutely break all ties between religion and the police. Either you are sincere, in which case you must stand for the complete separation of Church and State and of School and Church, for religion to be declared wholly and absolutely a private affair. Or you do not accept these consistent demands for freedom, in which case you evidently are still held captive by the traditions of the inquisition, in which case you evidently still cling to your cosy government jobs and government-derived incomes, in which case you evidently do not believe in the spiritual power of your weapon and continue to take bribes from the state. And in that case the classconscious workers of all Russia declare merciless war on you. So far as the party of the socialist proletariat is concerned, religion is not a private affair. Our Party is an association of class-conscious, advanced fighters for the emancipation of the working class. Such an association cannot and must not be indifferent to lack of class-consciousness, ignorance or obscurantism in the shape of religious beliefs. We demand complete disestablishment of the Church so as to be able to combat the religious fog with purely ideo logical and solely ideological weapons, by means of our press and by word of mouth. But we founded our association, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, precisely for such a struggle against every religious bamboozling of the workers. And to us the ideological struggle is not a private affair, but the affair of the whole Party, of the whole proletariat. If that is so, why do we not declare in our Programme that we are atheists? Why do we not forbid Christians and other believers in God to join our Party? The answer to this question will serve to explain the very important difference in the way the question of religion is presented by the bourgeois democrats and the Social-Democrats. Our Programme is based entirely on the scientific, and moreover the materialist, world-outlook. An explanation of our Programme, therefore, necessarily includes an explanation of the true historical and economic roots of the religious fog. Our propaganda necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism; the publication of the appropriate scientific literature, which the autocratic feudal government has hitherto strictly forbidden and persecuted, must now form one of the fields of our Party work. We shall now probably have to follow the advice Engels once gave to the German Socialists: to translate and widely disseminate the literature of the eighteenth-century French Enlighteners and atheists.[1] But under no circumstances ought we to fall into the error of posing the religious question in an abstract, idealistic fashion, as an "intellectual" question unconnected with the class struggle, as is not infrequently done by the radical-democrats from among the bourgeoisie. It would be stupid to think that, in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of the worker masses, religious prejudices could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods. It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion that weighs upon mankind is merely a product and reflection of the economic yoke within society. No number of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can enlighten the proletariat, if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism. Unity in this really revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth is more important to us than unity of proletarian opinion on paradise in heaven. That is the reason why we do not and should not set forth our atheism in our Programme; that is why we do not and should not prohibit proletarians who still retain vestiges of their old prejudices from associating themselves with our Party. We shall always preach the scientific world-outlook, and it is essential for us to combat the inconsistency of various "Christians". But that does not mean in the least that the religious question ought to be advanced to first place, where it does not belong at all; nor does it mean that we should allow the forces of the really revolutionary economic and political struggle to be split up on account of third-rate opinions or senseless ideas, rapidly losing all political importance, rapidly being swept out as rubbish by the very course of economic development. Everywhere the reactionary bourgeoisie has concerned itself, and is now beginning to concern itself in Russia, with the fomenting of religious strife—in order thereby to divert the attention of the masses from the really important and fundamental economic and political problems, now being solved in practice by the all-Russian proletariat uniting in revolutionary struggle. This reactionary policy of splitting up the proletarian forces, which today manifests itself mainly in Black-Hundred pogroms, may tomorrow conceive some more subtle forms. We, at any rate, shall oppose it by calmly, consistently and patiently preaching proletarian solidarity and the scientific world-outlook—a preaching alien to any stirring up of secondary differences. The revolutionary proletariat will succeed in making religion a really private affair, so far as the state is concerned. And in this political system, cleansed of medieval mildew, the proletariat will wage a broad and open struggle for the elimination of economic slavery, the true source of the religious humbugging of mankind. Notes [1] See Frederick Engels, "Flüchtlings-Literatur", Volksstaat, Nr, 73 vom 22.6.1874.
No, ir’s not like dealing with animals.  It is dealing with animals to whom language and reason are meaningless. 


They could provided there were due process and the rule of law be hanged,   I prefer my way or at least so far as we so far have the technology and psychological development, freak their fractured fragile brains with holograms, synthesizers, amplifiers, VR
Extract from The Anile Heir © 2006.I, Ysabel Jehan Howard, hereby assert and give notice of my right under s.77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act1988 to be identified as the author of this book
 
Meanwhile at Hokabi...What happened at Hokabi Camp was an accident, no part of anyone’s game-plan.  Sardun seized the moment with shattering consequences.  The business of Hokabi was payroll and pensions.  It was about as innocent and domesticated as this man’s army gets, a calm and cheerful place when a lot of bright young men are grateful to the army for giving them the opportunity to hone financial and IT skills at a premium in Kadun and so be sure of not just a job for life but a good job for life.  There were cats.  They set a tone.  No funny stuff: funny stuff from either side would not - will not - be appreciated at Hokabi.  Contrary to rumours that later abounded, Hokabi was actually not teaching top-level infiltration of world finance or plotting to hack Azt.  Approximately 99.9% of those on both sides with ears to the ground didn’t even know it existed.  It would probably have sat the whole thing out if the Minister’s cousin hadn’t been an accountant.
The Minister’s cousin was promoted and posted to Regional HQ.  Hokabi was within his command.  As new brooms do, he set out to visit each of his charges in turn.  The stink of cat piss somewhat upset him.  He tried to conceal he was the Minister’s cousin, the element of surprise, you know.  His name, an uncommon one, was something of a give-away. 
Oh shit, thought Hokabi. 
Nonetheless, Hiulan-Tan had grudgingly to admit, the place was efficient, damned efficient. He tried to pick holes and found none.  That was not the point!
We won at Caniba.
The cats nodded.  In other words they’ll be looking for an easy kill.
What would be really good would be to get half Corsin here.
 Always wanted to be live bait.
Hiulan-Tan fulminated to his cousin.  Corsin at this point reckoned they had bigger fish to fry than 1700 book-keepers.  Assuredly this could be nothing that required their personal attention.  The Minister was informed Corsin were more than happy to leave the operation to the chaps on the ground.
 
 
The middle of Vaudos has little enough to recommend it in human terms, the tap-water, you will recall, being brown, and the people at best sullen, but against all the odds it insists on being pretty, and so ventures into the tourist industry.  Some leagues distant from Hokabi, over yonder hill and through ye woods that line the valley, there is a reasonably decent hotel - too many leagues distant, it is hoped, for the arrival of a party of senoki to raise suspicion.  They are traders in something or other, shit, what are we traders in, gentlemen’s outdoor attire, and are looking to combine business with pleasure, have a few days in the country before putting on our oxygen masks and venturing into the nearest large town, Cabutin, to do some trading.  
My Cioulis, however, arrived at Hokabi.  Of course he wasn’t my Cioulis then, nor for some years yet, and both of us would probably have hissed with laughter at the idea we were meant for each other.  What’s that again about war making strange bed-fellows. Cioulis, they learn, is the new (wait for it) Deputy Welfare Officer, the Welfare Officer himself being a cat approaching retirement.  A younger man needs to be trained up.  Most people in the south don’t think the Army of All-Kadun can even spell Welfare.  True, they are not much concerned with mums dying, girlfriends two-timing or families being evicted but everyone mostly sane likes to know someone in Welfare, especially when a base in under attack. Since an attack is said to have succeeded when the ‘Welfare Officer’ is 40-carat rat-shit, the skinny dark lieutenant attracts intense if cautious interest, it being not immediately clear what he is.  The nice furry sergeant in Stores is wiser in the ways of the world.  Lad’s a tree.  Oh right, they’ve sent us a tree.  What is this!  Lovely smell of pine.
An older, greyer tree walks out of the woods and has a long talk with the senior cat.  Sardun (the earthpower equivalent of PANTHER) have one or two party-tricks.  Passing themselves off as Cult is one.  It won’t fool Corsin, but it may fool lesser adepts (depends how lesser) and it has its uses, such as confusion to the enemy and giving your furry friends vital extra minutes in which to scarper.  Of course it has its drawbacks too.  Adepts can pretend to be fooled and draw you into a trap.  Another one is deflecting assault into trees.  Make a note of those woods.  They are going to matter.
The senior cat in turn drives Cioulis way off into the woods, out of range of wandering minds that might pick up the vibes and wonder what the hell is going on.
They get out and grin at each other.
“One duels, sir?” asked Cioulis.
“Nice one.”
Traditional Cult means to pick a fight, overture to separating your sanity from your mind.
There was a convenient tree-stump, on which Gar-stangis reclined, a huge black cat with yellow eyes, dreaming in the afternoon sun. 
The sun went out, all light, all warmth, the cat will be skewered, skinned - no.
Starburst blew the darkness apart, fragments falling to the ground like ash, then evaporating.
Cioulis seized fragments before they hit the ground.  They swelled, burst, pouring liquid filth without end. The cat will choke, drown.
The cat leapt for Cioulis’ throat, knocked him to the ground, landed on his chest.
Cioulis who is Death will put out its eyes.
“Very good,” said Gar-stangis.  “Now the heavy stuff.”
They grinned at each other again.
Death looms project fear, terror, pain, anguish, torment.  A grinning skull fills Gar-stangis’ mind, its maw open into which he will, he must fall, a forked red tongue flickering to and fro in anticipation.
Gar-stangis searched for the weakness, the crack, the vestige of humanity and found none, so starburst once more blew the skull away.  Behind it only was utter darkness, though he sensed nasty wriggly things in it and the smell was foul. This is the grave.
Again and again he zapped Cioulis, until at last there was a chink of light.  PANTHER talons tore apart the darkness, revealing finally a silver birch in a field of flowers. 
“Real-time,” said Cioulis, “at this point I’m dead.”
(A silver birch is the symbol of Sardun and, as you know if you’ve been paying attention, earthpower after-life a field of flowers.)
“Now teach me,” said Gar-stangis.
Somewhere in the cavernous depths of the headquarters of VILE, small, tubby and balding said, “They’re going to do what?  Is this a private party or can anyone join in?”
“More the merrier, sir.”
Another young officer arrives sniffs the air, do I detect a whiff of cat , some tom been spraying?  It is of course a very old joke, that or some variant of.  It doesn’t necessary identify an adept of the seventh degree; it may identify any part of the gamut of hostility to PANTHER; ratters, you will recall, should stay in the barn. It may even signify a cautious desire for further acquaintance. Few on any side can probe without revealing themselves but most of them can pick up the scent on the breeze.  You can never be absolutely sure what you’re walking into.  Some places initiation rites are banned outright, (not that that ever stopped them taking place) others that is derided as terribly sissy.  Harmless fun.  There are old jokes about trees too.  Saws, axes, logging tend to come into them.  Sardun can’t be relied upon to see the funny side, and so these are made less often.    
New brooms sweep in.  Discipline becomes stricter, punishments harsher; bureaucratic idiocy more prevalent, but there are no attempted arrests or firing-squads, nothing to provoke confrontation.  This is partly because of the old game of male dogs sniffing each other’s arses, trying to find out what the other guys can do without finding it out the hard way, and partly because H-T frankly would rather Corsin was doing this (and even they lost).  Clearly these moggies are not those moggies but anything feline is to be approached with caution.
Kinsquol is approaching, a time traditional for bonfires on hill-tops.  It just depends what they’re burning.
Not too far from Hokabi, one of the senoki traders was very taken with a run-down property, not much more than a chalet, a wonderful place to bring his non-existent children in the summer holidays.  Of course Sardun aren’t going to hang around interminably in the woods waiting for the Cult to do something.  They are pro-active.  They are dynamic. They are going to do something first.  When they’ve worked out what.  But the chalet is useful.  Suppose it rains.  Cioulis is looking over my shoulder even as I write.  I point out I’m only faithfully recording what he told me the guys said at the time.  In short, at this Point P, no-one exactly knew how Corsin were to be tempted out of Azt.
Kinsquol means very different, or in other words diametrically opposite, things to different people.  Neutrally, it is the festival of the winter solstice, the shortest day.  As such, it has been celebrated in earthpower since rather before the year dot.  They called it the Day of the God, in irturbi M’niba-gar-Altan, as opposed to the summer solstice which was the Day of the Goddess, the nadir of the year and its zenith. The fine minds of the Cult have the solstices as the zenith of and birth of death.  For reasons that elude me, the entire continent calls the two solstices and the two equinoxes by their Cult names. They are the four Days Celebrant and what you do is party. Some people say it’s false etymology.  Kin - family - geddit.
 
 
It didn’t just fall into their laps: the Cult placed it there. The Minister wants to know how his dear brother is doing.  Doubtless there will be something special laid on for Kinsquol.  Really, one can have too much of the city, a few days in the country perhaps.
To this, of course, the pretty well universal reaction was oh fuck, Huilan-Tan not wishing to admit his operation was still at the reconnaissance stage. 
The CO in such situations is a cipher.  This one will run with the hare and hunt with the hounds which makes him basic crud, but human crud.  Hiulan-Tan tells him Cioulis and the cats are to be arrested.
If Hiulan-Tan and cronies hadn’t been rather stupid, slightly afraid and grossly arrogant, they would have decided to leave the prisoners to Corsin, but they were all three and wanted to make their mark by handing over broken and beaten men.
The prisoners were summoned to their presence and slouched in washing behind their ears or polishing his branches as the case may be.
“You understand what awaits you,” said Huilan-Tan.
“Do tell.”
“You will be devoured.”
“That could be interesting.”
“You are insolent.  Let us teach you obedience.”
“That could be even more interesting.”
The Cult attacked their minds and was so to speak thrown off and sent flying across the room, but all their attention was fixed on Cioulis doing his adept of the seventh degree bit, complete with flickering forked tongue.
“Fools,” said Cioulis.
“They understand nothing,” said Gar-stangis contemptuously.
“You have failed the test,” sneered Cioulis.
In the ensuing confusion Huilan-Tan and his five cronies found themselves under arrest.  Naturally he is screaming very loudly about the Minister.
“That will not protect you.”
What do we do now?  Fortunately we don’t have to anything because Sardun arrive dressed in their best Cult kit and order a total evacuation, rumour of an explosive device planted by insurgents.  Can’t be too careful with the Minister on his way.  Cioulis and the cats are promptly rearrested, Hiulin-Tan and cronies are removed for medical attention. It’s probably worth reiterating that most of these guys are about as near the average office-worker  (or at any rate the average irturbi office-worker: you have yet to meet Tingle, Mitch’s PA) as anyone under arms gets, they are not planning total war, they are a little confused and they have no desire to be blown up. Nor of course do they wish to give or to be seen to give the authorities anything less than their fullest co-operation. The evacuation is conducted to the south of Hokabi.  Cioulis, the cats and Sardun lay fuses, spill petrol and sincerely hope any god who happens to be around on this his day will smile upon their endeavours. 
They pile the inert bodies of Huilan-Tan and friends in a lorry, then piled in themselves and drive away very, very fast, though whether Huilan-Tan knows anything worth finding out probably depends on whether the Minister survives the current encounter.
Boom!  The whole of Hokabi becomes a raging inferno.  The smoke billows into the skies.  Probably see it in Azt.  What was that again about covert ops?
Distinctly bizarre messages promptly reach Regional HQ, about a bomb disposal squad, poor chaps must all be dead, fortunately we were evacuated - what the fuck are you talking about?  And the bloody Minister is on his way?  Of course we’ll pick you up - if this isn’t some mad joke, a hoax.  Confusion to the enemy!
The Minister’s plane abruptly lands in a field.
We must investigate, he chitters.
Meaning we must, think Corsin.  Whatever has happened at Hokabi, clearly there is nothing still alive.  Clearly also leaving the Minister in a field with a small armed guard is leaving the Minister vulnerable.  Surely he must see this.  He does indeed.  Clearly this has been a botched attempt on his life!  They suggest he return to Azt.  He must speak with his brother!  His brother doesn’t answer his phone. This is not immediately construed as sinister since phones can be forgotten in rapid evacuations but contact is made with the evacuees and Huilan-Tan cannot be found. Brief mental images are exchanged of a charred body.  It may be he is on his way to us, says the Corsin captain soothingly.  Even as they stand chatting in a muddy field they are mind-scanning, but there is nothing in range.  Everyone assumes that any ‘insurgents’ involved would have gone south to Vasucula and are probably there by now but obviously the evacuees must be interrogated to get the full story.  They get airborne again, fly round the fire and land south of what I suppose you could call the fire assembly point, coinciding with the arrival of the guys from Regional HQ.  Corsin deliberate.  Clearly there are no minds here worth a fart but if there is an enemy what it wants us to do is camp inches from the Vasucula border.  Let us all repair to HQ.  In the morning we shall oversee the forensic investigation.  Oh, and let us have some fighting-men to search the area and surround the place. 
Cioulis and the guys had linked up with other units of Sardun, handed over their captives to them for delivery to Van-senok and turned south again.  Two units of VILE moved up from Vasucula.
What followed, Cho was to say dreamily, was probably the greatest mind-war Kadun had seen for 600 years.
While the regular guys ran around leaving no stone unturned and doing their utmost to look efficient and impressive, Corsin scanned.  Bloody nothing.  They are not fools.  They did not for a moment relax their guard. 
“Obviously arson, sir,” the forensic guy was saying.  A werewolf snapped at him.  He flinched.  “Sorry, sir, thought I saw...”
“You did, you did,” said the Corsin officer with enormous enthusiasm.  “Really, children, is this the best you can do?”
Undoubtedly we have company but where the fuck are they?
For a moment they were still out of range.  One werewolf!  They do not dare - got them!
Concerted assault was directed at our heroes and deflected into the trees.
The response was the growling of huge cats.  That was actually a recording.  Things have moved on a bit in 600 years.  There are amplifiers. 
Concerted assault was directed by our heroes and Corsin deflected it into ordinary guys. 
For some it was like a shaft of lightning hitting their brains.  For others it was giant bears about to tear out their brains.  The werewolves came in their hundreds, snapping and snarling.
Some members of the Cult are superstitious, actually believe the Great Master shall enfold them in his embrace.  The average member of Corsin is about as superstitious as a block of wood.  They enjoy death (at any rate other people’s), they enjoy pain (at any rate other people’s), they like being evil.  There is nothing so outré as to not be attributable to tricks of the mind.  They therefore don’t mind too much being under constant attack by werewolves.  They are illusory, they are disposable and they are bloody annoying.  And who forgot to pack the silver bullets, mutters one officer, zapping another trio of bloody curs into oblivion. But they understand the point of this deranged assault. They can force the regular guys into action but pretty fucking useless they will be under werewolf attack.  To put up a werewolf shield depletes the mind-power available to mentally eviscerate the foe. 
An army of the dead rose from the earth and began to march forward.  It became cold and dark.  Corsin were rather irritated at having to do this, realizing the net result was to scare the shit out of their own guys with probably zero effect on the enemy, but they wanted to see what the enemy would do.  The enemy shattered the corpses and sent down a rather nasty shower of rotting flesh, bone and cerement, which Corsin gathered into fireballs sent bouncing towards the woods, which were caught in mid-air and returned to senders, who hastily quenched them, and also got flat.  Corsin do not expect to be shot at because they do not expect anyone opposing them to retain the power to pull a trigger.  Once again concerted assault was directed at minds that rolled over in the sunshine and patted butterflies with their paws.
Suddenly there were voices in the air (another recording).  You guys really like fire, don’t you, fire to burn the senoki witches, fire to purify, fire to kill the trees, fire to smoke out the witches, fire to destroy the evil.  There was the sound of women screaming.  Pain.  Pain really does it for you, doesn’t it, terrible pain.  Bears were tearing open Corsin’s faces, eating their brains.  Deflected.
They knew now.  Fucking Sardun.
A wall of fire was being pushed slowly towards them.  It seemed prudent to retreat, even as they pushed it back and a rain-storm blew up.   Now they understood the trap.  Behind them lay the wreck of Hokabi.  What was behind that?  Plenty of cover in which to find out. The fire was edging closer.  Real or illusory?  Did it matter?  Very few people, even in Corsin, can be engulfed by a wall of flame and not feel something. So now Corsin are crouched behind half-walls, rubble, fallen beams, facing south and throwing everything they have to the south, fog, hail, Death in the air paralysing everything it touches (trying to) and now they come out firing and the enemy is very close, and mind attempts to strangle mind, the fog clears, reforms, clears, reforms but too many of Corsin are dead or dying or resisting mental death to hold it and at the end four members of VILE are dead and 23 of the 27 members of Corsin.
One of the survivors asks: Do you take prisoners?
No, says Sardun, but VILE says fine. 
There is such a thing as intelligence, guys.  You may know it all.  We don’t.
They won’t talk!
They might, they might.
The PANTHER guys sigh.
Depends who’s talking to them
?  Cho wants to meet these guys.
Ah, says Sardun. 
The Corsin survivors look at each other.
May we ask what imprisonment entails?
Hours of interrogation on the sun-drenched shores of Vasucula surrounded by people in shorts who can fry your brains if you so much as blink out of place.
I do not doubt it.
If you want to return to Kadun to take your chances, we shall be happy to oblige.
I think we have a deal.  There remains the matter of leaving Kadun.
We have that figured.
Why did I doubt it.
Just remember this is pointed at your brain.  Don’t even think of trying it.
The Corsin guy grins.
Especially at the border?
Especially at the border.
Always wanted to travel.
Sure, you’re just regular guys.
Meanwhile, Cioulis and his now rather weary companions have turned the wall of flame into smoke and fog to hinder the regulars from deciding to be heroes and turned and started to drive like fuck for Van-senok.  There’s supposed to be an air-lift out of this and there, we hope, it is.
The flier skids to a halt and unmistakable Fidubis get out.  Long straight black hair.  Deep tans.  It might have been the earrings.
“Imperial Airlines is boarding now.  Well done, you!”
 
…………….
 
“The people of Carlin aren’t going to be affected much.  Except around here.  The guys in the village know what to do.
     Phase One you guys here won’t be directly involved.  That doesn’t mean interesting things won’t be going on all around you. Keeping your wits about you may not be entirely simple. You’ve all received training on the unusual, so I’m going to quickly run through what you already know to make sure you know it!  Sorry.   Lots of juicy detail this time.
     Sound is one of the ways humans work out what’s going on around them.   It can be hard enough working out where sound is coming from in normal circumstances, never mind when people like me are playing with all-round systems, synthesizers, distortion.  The opposite of sound is, startlingly enough, silence.  The silence of a country night in which there is nothing but maybe the odd owl hooting and Corsin swearing with rage.  You can’t tell what’s going on in practically total silence either.  Your ears are not going to have a fun time.  They’ll be frantically seeking for solid fact and there isn’t any. 
     Accept no order, hint, suggestion, instruction of any kind from anyone who isn’t a real live physical human you can see.  No public address system.  Certainly not Corsin.
There will also be an assault, a heavy assault, on what you see.  Corsin are not going to get close enough for anything nasty, at least not close enough to you. Slightly freaking images don’t have to be gross.  Do remember there are no wolves in Carlin!”
The howls of a pack in full cry filled the air.
Followed by images more substantial than the last ones of huge golden wolves.
“Preferably it’s night.  They look even better in moonlight.”
Sure, Sarat…
“Ignore anything that is no normal part of the fields of Carlin, no natural part.  Note I’m not saying regard it as a movie.  People can get engrossed, absorbed in movies. Of course you could regard it as a boring movie.  I need you quiet too, so you can’t chat to your mates during the boring movie.  Yawn.  Make daisy-chains if you can find any daisies. Just remember there’re no pretty lights in fields, no music. There are certainly no wolves. There aren’t many trees. This is not Van-senok!  You are not in impenetrable forest.  There are no wolves, bears or lynxes.  Especially not lynxes bounding across the floor of the Ciletij Senate and heavily armed bears surrounding the HQ of the Sivalin Bank.  Nor of course are Maya and I  - yet – entertaining in the Jumesit.  You will see and hear things that are funny.  I’m asking you to ignore them too.
  “There aren’t even any hadin.  Zani and Narulis are not here.  Kaminua and Asyrion are absent.  The floods will be real, talent for irrigation, but they’re happening up at Sta-venon. The explosions you’ll hear are diverting the Gensi.  I’ve left a few things out.  You get the gist.”
“The special effects department has worked overtime on this one.   If you’ve ever seen the sun rise through stained glass you know that beauty is also a distraction  – “
If you have ever what? 
“Take a good look at your surroundings and hang on to them.  Tents, hedges, boxes, a particularly good-looking tree.  Clock the position of the sun.  If it’s a clear night, clock the moon and stars.  Stay centred, stay cool, and stay quiet.  You are a guy in a field in Carlin.  That’s reality.  Hang on to it.”
WTF, Sarat!  Hi-tech war!
“I haven’t finished. As you know, but of course a lot of people don’t, when you get into Vaudos initially you’ll link up with the special forces guys already there who will be among the few people who actually know what’s going on there.”
OK, we vamoose.  Don’t want to trip on the wiring!
Who said there was wiring! The signal’s in Dabida, right?
Vasucula, Var-sega’.
Scram.
Yessir!
That’s it, said Sarat.
Boss-time, Sarat!
You’re not moving, said Sarat.
He turned to B+P.  Get them thrown out, could you, please.  Ever ever so politely, of course.
I think we were just leaving!
            Catch up with you later, said Sarat.
            Hang on, what about Vaudos?
            No, said Sarat.
            Get in from Dabida!
            You’ll find the gallant army of Dabida lining the border.  Don’t want my local difficulties spilling over.  Or escaping.  Same with Vasucula.  Try Ciletij.
            Real coup, said Baz, our brave reporters have accompanied treasonous Ciletij forces into Kadun.
            “Guess we get to see pix of your travels!”
            “I know this will amaze you.  They have journalists in Vaudos.”
    
            Cho and Amida looked at each other.
“The music was released long ago.”
“Can one release the music from the Isles?  Is it finite?”
“Fidub is not a man-made object!”
“Does that matter?”
“We shall see.”
 
Have we, asked Bris, fully considered the implications of ‘Sarat is a real modern young guy’?
It is obvious the images are not real!
The extent to which the little monkey brain knows that when a wolf is coming for its throat.
I do not guarantee I shouldn’t flinch!
Corsin, surely.
Biter bit?
Let us see. Why has he told Azt all that?
Rock-solid has to be what he’s told the guys already.
If he’s told it them. 
I think I see –
Some are more readily confused.  I think we can take that as solid.
 
“A readiness to act,” said Bal suavely. “They should not be lost in contemplating the music of the spheres!”
“He did say – his kind of war – “
“We may assume every word of that was directed at Corsin. Get me every crazy out of it story about the Window you can find.” 
“If there is one thing clear, Sarat does not sound as if he thinks he’ll be dead in the morning!”
“I do not think that is on the menu!”
“Every word of that was directed at the guys in Vaudos.”
“Or of course Ciletij.”
 
Roll up, roll up for the greatest show on earth. 
“We’re taking bets,” said Vax.  “What is IT, what is the other matter.”
 
But Corsin had stopped.  We’d thought they might.  Not only had they stopped but they appeared to put their feet up and have a snooze.  This was because it had finally dawned on them that they didn’t have the faintest notion of exactly what they were walking into.  There is no hurry.  Let us think.  The Window worried them.  Indeed the Houses contain many ancient artefacts.  That hadn’t been what Ban-razit had meant.  He’d meant the mosaic in Vaudos, the images of which had been said to and indeed had changed while you gaped at them, in consequence of which about 400 years ago someone had a hissy fit and smashed it.  That wasn’t exactly what he’d meant either.  The wall now adorned with a few shards of mosaic together with slivers of paint and plaster had been covered by a tapestry while the House was occupied; despite the wall’s being reputed to contain a hidden entrance, it had been plastered and painted, plaster and paint that had or was reputed to have shattered in the night into crumbs.  Is this a secret passage? I hear you cry.  Well, possibly, but since repute was that no-one who entered it had ever been seen again, presumably not one of immediate use to anyone and in any case no-one had ever seen or felt for anything even dimly resembling an entrance.  From the point of view of Corsin, the sole point of Sarat’s spiel had been telling them about the Window, the rest being irritating but scarcely critical.  They realized they were going to waste time and energy locating the actual attacks in a flurry of imagery.  They too can make holograms.  The most worrying thing about the Dacunine Window was not some crazy out of it story but the simple historical fact every tour-guide thinks he or she knows: that it  is a replica of the Sun Window in the shrine at M-P (it’s not, as the use of a single brain cell would demonstrate: the Sun Window doesn’t have triptychs of Narulis running off with Brig and a panther reclining at the foot of a silver birch celebrating Hanif-Altan).  The little cunt is Fidubi.  Which bloody Window is he talking about?  Then of course there is the simple historical fact that the Cult had never gained so much as a toehold on Fidub. Sarat’s cheerful babble had made Corsin very unhappy indeed. 
 
 
Karmen, Saban and a great many extras streamed into Vaudos, apparently under cover of impenetrable forest.
“Forest approaching, sir.”
Anyone else would have laughed.  It is a little too serious for that.
Then we must burn it.  The forest became a wall of fire, but unfortunately not their wall of fire: it continued approaching. Progression stayed.
OK, they’re behind the fire.  Can’t do much from there.
 
Corsin had paused.  Not of course that they didn’t intend to continue, but they had thought it prudent to contemplate further what they were going to continue into.  Either it was the most enormous bluff or for fuck’s sake what.  From their centuries, eons of knowledge of this war was markedly absent any enemy commander warning his forces against beauty and laughter.  But they knew they could spend centuries, eons, trying to figure it and began to move again.
 
The Window worried them.  Slightly.  Not a lot because everyone was supposed to be dying in torment before they got that far. He will move the Army to surround the House?
Why has he kindly told us the road is blocked?
Why has he kindly told  us to order their surrender?
Why has he apparently told us exactly what he’s going to do?
So the press-fiends all flew to Fidub.  Well, all right, no, of course they didn’t, but from the state of Cho’s front yard it seemed they had.
“He doesn’t confide in me,” said Cho.
“I do not think we believe that.”
“Try harder,” said Cho.
“That would be our ageist conditioning!”
“Could be,” said Cho.
 
Corsin too had not been idle, satisfied with same old, and had sought to perfect the mist, which rendered them invisible to sight, though not to mind or feeling; half an antenna could identify a freezing deadly cold. Thus they had to be kept to the road, in case they used the mist, so the bombers knew where they were. The Battle of Carlin was essentially decided at Junction 7 on the highway when Corsin prepared to execute their cunning plan of leaving the highway and found they couldn’t  and it was won by sheer numbers.  They had been promised air-cover but clearly all hell was breaking loose overhead.  It was not an easy road from Azt, potholes, flood,  PANTHER and Sardun in front of them, behind them, at their sides, keeping  them to the road, a simple trick, impeding the turn of vehicles, but you have to be bloody brave to do it (Cioulis, I love you!) because it puts you within scanning reach, all street-lighting extinguished, an irritating grind of same old as the ground opened up before them, fireballs rained down upon them, flood waters drowned them.. The whole fucking time Then the real bombs started.  I don’t think it can be said Corsin were ever good-tempered but by the time they were 20 nani away they were in exceedingly bad moods, and also depleted in number. It hadn’t helped that the bombers had suddenly wheeled away, replaced by fighters sky-writing Sarat rules, OK! as they gave him total air-cover. The whole of FAF had turned out.  As they say, PANTHER with wings. The so-called blockade of Car-sandis was simply KAF and FAF waiting for lunch.
 
The music began, lilting, ethereal, exquisite.  Ho hum, thought Mitch.  I ignore you, little tune. Worse they could not begin to tell from which direction it came, since it appeared to and in fact did come from every direction.  The sounds of the country night could not be eradicated, the death-squeak of small rodents, the bark of foxes, the hoot of owls.  They provided a pleasing counterpoint.  They couldn’t find the music, so they couldn’t zap it, and it seemed to absorb same old, screams of terror, the voice of Death.   Some of them detrucked and fanned out.  They scanned. Nothing.  One of their number, collaped to the ground, dead as a doornail, then another.  They went rigid, scanned again.  Nothing.  A cursory examination of the corpses appeared to show bullet wounds, one in the leg, one in the shoulder, not apparently fatal injuries.  A deadly poison, therefore!  20 more fell, picked off from the rear.  That still left an awful lot of Corsin but hardly an awful lot of Corsin feeling inviolate.  Sarat’s voice, mocking, courtesy of the all-round, picking you off like flies, aren’t we. That was PANTHER again (PANTHER and allies).  PANTHER don’t usually use conventional weapons because there aren’t usually enough of them around to cover the guys shooting.  Sarat began to recite something which not a lot of people actually  understood, since it was in irtubi. Maya began to sing: Come, hadin, come, come not alone, come Hadin, come!  Shall Zani fail, shall Zani quail, oh no not he, our brave Zani, come, hadin, come!   I am Zani’s heir, you know. Kind of inflammatory, Maya. Find them!  Various people afterwards confessed to thoughts along the line of all for senior officers to be in the front line, perhaps not this senior, this front.  Making themselves targets. Seani had felt it, everyone felt it, a stiffening throughout the camp.  He, OK, but she.   But where are they?  Hang on to reality!  Recordings: They could be in Zur!  But we know they aren’t. PANTHER went on picking off Corsin.
After that thngs got a bit confusing
The distant howling of wolves, rapidly becoming less distant: they hove into view, bounding across the lush green fields of Carlin. Not a few people rapidly discover the mantra remembertherearenowolvesincarlin. I feel, there is no other word for it, thought Mitch, I feel  I am in the forests of Van-senok.  I feel the power of the trees.  I feel the trees are moving remorselessly toward Corsin to bury them.  Are we not guys in a field in Carlin? murmured Corsin. But they couldn’t quite shake off the illusion that ahead of them and all around lay impenetrable forest. Let it burn!  But the trees absorbed the fire, real fire.  The wolves bounded parallel to the IA and went on bounding until the pack leader launched himself at the Corsin commander’s throat.  Instantly zapped of course, but it didn’t do any good. Fried.  The wolves began to fall, scorched metal.  One weapon stripped from these cunts!  The scorched metal turned into panthers.  Zapped. One particularly large panther stood over Krarlik with its teeth in his neck.  The illusion long enough for a voice not many people recognized as Baya’s to call out, “Sarat! Time for dinner, darling.”  The panthers changed into walking trees, which happened to be silver birches, which as fast as they were zapped turned into a silver coronet above a silver chair.  “That’s my chair,” said Sarat and now the images are coming so fast that Corsin zaps only to find it’s back. On the chair nestles a panther cub. “They came, the skull-faces, but we laughed.”  Sarat or is it Narulis but no it must be Sarat because they didn’t have bin-bags in Narulis’ time sighs and gathers up a broken ragged figure of Death at his feet and chucks it in the garbage and now here is Azt, slime-covered, rotting, rat-infested, needs a good spring clean, says Maya, with bucket and mop surrounded by bottles labelled disinfectant, pesticide, rat poison.  Azt is transformed.  My Silver City, says Sarat.  It doesn’t look shimmering and ethereal, but rather more like an advertisement for washing-up liquid; there is the product bottom right labelled PANTHER.  PANTHER PROTECTS flashes onto the image.  KILLS ALL KNOWN GERMS.
Tar put his head in his hands, then looked up, helpless with laughter
Even I, said Cho.  What is technology, what is the other matter!
They really put their pretty little brains together for this one, didn’t they.
Consulting a schoolbook map had shown the world where the army was and now Corsin tried to swing round to fire.
 
WTF
 
The music began again, no longer cutesy but wild, alive, a fire over Carlin,and preventing their turning, above which hung the hologram from Caniba of the Rabbiters’. Then the Window.  Narulis stepped out of the Window, or was it Sarat, shaking his hair back; Begone, creatures of the Pit! Corsin began to hurt, their heads hurt, their bodies hurt, but they rallied “They’re the real pervs,” said Maya.  “Total BDSM.”  Narulis said, “I’m a brash Fidubi brat who used to keep a lot of hamsters and thought he was going to be a vet.”  Sarat again, mocking, going to die, are we, suffer nameless torments at the hands of the Great Master.  The ground became alive with light, sparkling, glittering, moving, a lighted fuse making its way towards Corsin, spreading as it went, until it seemed whole meadows were alive, but not a fire, and they knew it for what it was and tried to run but could not, stripped of all power and rather uncomfortable, especially their feet.
“Round ‘em up, guys,” said Sarat.
IAF were back, skywriting.
Sarat rules, OK!
 Three cheers, His Imperial Majesty!
Three cheers, Her Imperial Majesty!
They’re rather cute aren’t they, they were both a bit bewildered.  After a while they got the hang of the idea they were supposed to have put themselves in extreme peril, though they insisted they hadn’t. Since even Saban insisted that few would have tried that particular stunt, the majority won.  Well, it is a democracy. 
 
Right good at IT, our Sarat.  It became important because devoid of class or nationality; what Kadun needs, a modern lad good at IT. 
 
I have no words, said Mitch. Karula looked cynical and disbelieving.
 
Burnt-out bodies, burnt-out tank, well, it’s for sure there was a real war here.
 
Overheard: don’t care if he bloody eats hamsters, meself.  What a lad!
 
It’s a long way  to Azt!  Not through Carlin.
You do realize he has half, three-quarters of the military poised to take Azt.
I realize he has humiliated them in front of the whole world.  How long does he have to live?
 
Sarat and Maya made their way slowly to the House.  Smile for the camera.  Don’t they make a lovely couple.  Please, Sarat, please, in front of the Window. The Master and Mistress of Kadun posed in front of the Window on the front-page of practically every newspaper in the world.
 
On opposite sides of the ocean Bal and Varchulan darling contemplated the headlines and thought, oh, what do I do now
 
He screwed the dumbasses!   Burnt-out tank, burnt-out bodies on the road to Azt.
Don’t they make a lovely couple!                 Sarat and Maya in front of the Window.
Sarat rules, OK!                                             Panther cub on the chair
Three cheers their Imperial Majesties           Sarat with garbage bag, Maya with mop bucket and disinfectant
 
The crwd parted as Cho appeared
Reckon as lad did right good job.
 
Later, when finally they got ten seconds alone, after hearing the whole story, Cho scrutinized him with huge amusement. 
You realized something, young freeborn citizen of Fidub.
Baz did, said Sarat. The music in the glass had to be the singing of the Isles.  If it wasn’t it would have been a tougher ride.  It is.
“You heard Hanif-Altan from the Sardun side.”
It wasn’t a question.
But Cho was still puzzled.  Many cats have passed through Carlin.  Conventional wisdom had remained that the music was released long ago.
“Who detected the music?”
“Sardun.”
Cho laughed.
“Our metaphysics then splintered, shattered, a pile of broken glass.”
“That’s not the most important thing right now.”
“To you, perhaps.”

SHIT, MAN, THEY WON'T EVEN STATE THEIR PROBLEM IN THE AGORA.
As Socrates said...
but if any man says that he ever learned or heard anything privately from me, which all the others did not, be assured that he is lying. . Apology: 33b
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0170%3Atext%3DApol.%3Asection%3D33b
 
Cf John 18:20 Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing.
Doubtless transparency is supposed to be the bizarre and quaint invention of a silly little woman.  As with so many things, this of course is a wonderful index of the total lack of contact these wonders of academe have ever had with any civilized life.
Socrates: ..., instead of being angry with themselves, and say that “Socrates is a most abominable person and is corrupting the youth.”  And when anyone asks them “by doing or teaching what?” they have nothing to say, but they do not know, and that they may not seem to be at a loss they say these things that are handy to say against all the philosophers, “the things in the air and the things beneath the earth” and “not to believe in the gods” and “to make the weaker argument the stronger.” For they would not, I fancy, care to say the truth, that it is being made very clear that they pretend to know, but know nothing.  Apology: 23c-d
cf Matthew 23: 27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.
Socrates: many things which are, as I maintain, unworthy of me—such things as you are accustomed to hear from others. But I did not think at the time that I ought, on account of the danger I was in, to do anything unworthy of a free man, nor do I now repent of having made my defence as I did, but I much prefer to die after such a defence than to live after a defence of the other sort. For neither in the court nor in war ought I or any other man to plan to escape death by every possible means. In battles it is often plain that a man might avoid death by throwing down his arms and begging mercy of his pursuers; and there are many other means of escaping death in dangers of various kinds if one is willing to do and say anything. But, gentlemen, it is not hard to escape death; it is much harder to escape wickedness, for that runs faster than death. . Apology: 38e-39a
There is such a thing as integrity.  That too doubtless is supposed to be my bizarre personal invention.  Loonies expect me to cower and crawl and lie because they had the power to club my spine.
Socrates: False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. Phædo 91
Create a false frame of reference, an illusory reality.  And of course anyone who thinks a belief-system that shapes the reality of human beings and so dictates the frame of reference in which they interact with other human beings cannot be questioned, challenged, derided is out of his or her tree
Alternative versions of unprovable supposed realities are not by the way false words.  Whether these goons whose notion of a fact is something they have been told is true have any way of distinguishing false words is an interesting question.
Perhaps they should be asked to write an essay.  How about.  'Is there any difference between writing about the gods of the ancient world as though they were and perhaps still are real and writing about Yahweh-Allah-Jehovah as though he was and perhaps still is real?'
Socrates: In every one of us there are two ruling and directing principles, whose guidance we follow wherever they may lead; the one being an innate desire of pleasure; the other, an acquired judgment which aspires after excellence. Phaedrus
Of feeding one's itsy-bitsy ego with a delusional notion of its dominance over the rest of humanity, yup.
The defining element here of course is the possibility of change implicit in the much-quoted – at least among those who can quote anything – Socratic dictum 'I do not know'.  I may think, believe, reason that, but I do not know.  It is this that despite the sexism of  Classical Greek society made it possible that Athens + Jesus would have resulted in feminism contrasted with the dead-heads of the Abrahamic faiths who claimed they knew, they were certain, no question, no doubt possible, let alone permitted.
Like UCH really.  It is the utter absence of 'I do not know' that makes these goons totally unfit for any real university, their dead-head conviction everything is fixed, authority cannot lie, power cannot be in the hands of criminals,  everything is known, no questions are needed – lies freely rule.

 
Don't suppose they have much time for Plutarch either: For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.
 
How, after all, can they have trained minds, when they show no signs of having any minds at all?

All you can do, destroy, butcher, attempt to murder beause you're fucking spastic animals, repulsive filthy mindless wordless self-obsessed animals. 

Attempted murder
Criminal Attempts Act 1981, s.1(1) Effective from: 27 July 2009 Triable on indictment
Maximum: Life imprisonment This is a serious offence for the purposes of s.224 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 Specific aggravating factors
Factors indicating higher culpability
the fact that the victim was particularly vulnerable, for example, because of age or disability mental or physical suffering inflicted on the victim the abuse of a position of trust the use of duress or threats against another person to facilitate the commission of the offence the fact that the victim was providing a public service or performing a public duty  
Certainly a, b, c and e, and probably d too. 
 
But of course the law doesn’t apply to Linch, Goldstone, Naylor et al.
 
I do assure persons known and unknown that nowhere in British law does it say that if the victim is a woman no serious crime can be held to have been committed for assuredly it is the purpose of woman to be used as a punchbag by men, women are simply children to be beaten if we disobey.
 
Beyond despicable.  Etc.   Run entirely on their own rules which connect nowhere with the reality of the society around them. 
 
Ah, the Great Penis in the Sky, is its satisfaction, sexual and otherwise for the pain of women, for injury to women, sated? Has ’god ‘ had an orgasm over crippling me, like his human slaves. Does he, like its human slaves sit sweating with ecstasy that he has succeeded in crushing intelligence, learning, reason, in breaking a woman’s body, in wrecking her life, thus they sit in an orgasmic glow at how wonderful and powerful they all are, to have achieved desecration, how clever, how inspired and inspiring to have targeted a single woman with an elderly and infirm widowed mum where I am medically vulnerable, how awesome to have succeeded in crippling me and obtained total silence on the subject, that’s real power, that is, and of course the only ‘god’ the orc respects is bestiality, force and I’m supposed to be impressed, in awe, I and all England in awe of violence, of force, of corruption,  of the Great Alpha Baboon in the Sky who crushes humanity.  If that’s ‘god’, you can keep him.   England does not want to know.  The juggernaut continues uncaring, all to be fed to Moloch.

Just bring a charge of attempted murder against the cuntheads, Linch, Goldstone, Naylor, Fenton, Boden, Rowley, Saunders, sick filth who can only destroy. Butchers, murderers, perverts, dirty little perverts, psychopaths, throw them all into bloody Broadmoor.  Sick-boys aren't you, Linch, Goldstone, Naylor, Rowley, sick-boy kinky-boys do what they like with women, sick-boy kinky-boys don't think it's necessary to speak to a woman.  Dirty filthy squalid little sick-boys and their repulsive smelly kinky-bitches with yellow infected cum running down their kinky-bitch legs as they get off on being obedient, dirty smelly little kinky-bitches.