-So you’re saying it’s child abuse to give children a religious education?
-Yes, absolutely. There is no such thing as a Jewish, Christian or Muslim child any more than there are Conservative, Labour or Lib-Dem children.
I t was around 2008 and I’d got into the habit of listening to the BBC World Service phone-in show ‘World Have Your Say’ whenever I was home in time. Many of the callers held spectacularly lamentable opinions and were content to reveal themselves unabashed to a worldwide audience on weekdays between 7 and 8pm. On that particular occasion however the guest Professor Richard Dawkins was making a point I hadn’t previously given much thought to and although I’d never heard of him before, he opened my mind to a trove of thinkers and writers.
The whole Judeo Christian thing had never really swayed me with its Bronze Age wisdom penned by men who knew little more about the cosmos than pre-schoolers do today. The far-fetched stories of the Bible did little to quell my natural curiosity and I demanded more satisfying answers than revelation was fit for.
Deliberately setting out to disabuse a believer of their faith was far more interventionist than I ever aspired to but I would no longer allow it to be slipped into conversation unchallenged. In the 90s TV comedy Seinfeld, George Costanza said “it’s not a lie if you believe it”. 
Perhaps not, but belief in something has little bearing on its veracity. If you’re going to assert it, you’d better first see if it stands on its own two feet without the need for coercion and indoctrination. In spite of a charge sheet as long as it is eye-watering in horror, religious claims of moral authority are testament to how deeply woven into society and tradition it is.
However, cuddly white Jesus is an easy target; it’s the shape-shifting world of the ethereal that is much harder to pin down in its self-satisfied gobbledygook world of the mystic. Equally unhindered by facts or anything empirical, it too has a long history of manipulative control and sexual abuse. Behind a smoke screen of incense and candles, it happily cherry picks from a broad selection of ostensibly eastern religions and philosophies while stroking the ego; a kind of pick and mix of crystals, silk prints and other accoutrements of ritual. It may offer one the sense of having discovered one’s own path with a spiritual home brew kit but produces little more than verbal flatulence and tin pot gurus. To confuse matters even further, the word spiritual itself has been so stretched out of shape through over-use that whenever someone defines themselves as such, I am little wiser for it.
Despite all that is known about the character who following a couple of reincarnations/name changes became Osho, it is remarkable just how many memes from Tinder to Facebook contain the souvenir shop wisdom of this con artist. In administering platitudes to his followers he amassed a substantial fortune and a fleet of Rolls Royce cars in the time honoured manner common to many faiths; by demanding his flock relinquish their earthly belongings. Despite being mired in almost every type of controversy from the only ever bio-terror attack on US soil to tax evasion and sexual abuse; he still has a healthy following almost 30 years after his death. It is remarkable how consistently the godly put their supernatural talents to use in financial fraud and getting their leg over rather than anything more broadly beneficial.
Growing up surrounded by quasi Buddhist views of some elasticticity had the good but unintended effect of an inoculation. I came to see such views as merely random stabs in the dark masquerading as quest. Whenever doubts were raised, voices were raised to counter them but doubts linger and discontent festers. The beatific, knowing smile gives way to totalitarian severity all too quickly when awkward questions are repeated.
In my early 20s I tried to align my limited understanding of science with some kind of ‘Within You, Without You’ Beatles type thingamajig that had emerged from dabbling in hallucinogenics but it yielded little beyond the wonders of tripping itself. I attended Buddhist meetings for a short time and although the chanting was rich in tone and quite uplifting, it was probably no more so than that experienced by any devout group in search of enlightenment. Haiku styled wisdom penned in out of use eastern languages left me unimpressed and as always it came down to that abandonment of reason so slavishly called a leap of faith. It might be true I thought but might just wasn’t good enough and my quest fizzled out. Talk was cheap and I had much living to do.
That couple of minutes listening to Professor Dawkins’ admonishing of religious education changed everything for me and although I was unaware at the time, the opening salvo had been fired in an undeclared war of independence leaving a wake of destruction and separation I had never imagined.
