The 2084 Precept

by Anthony D. Thompson

  He came back to the table and sat down, poured himself a coffee and gave me that pleasant smile of his again. I took a deep breath, something I have done a thousand times during these sessions, here we go again, another description of what we get up to on this planet of ours.

  "I think I will provide you with a brief prologue, Jeremy," I began, "before I start dealing with the facts of our beliefs, religions and superstitions per se. And I will stick to the facts, by the way, those that I know about anyway. And please bear in mind that not only am I a cynic, I am also an agnostic. And so irrespective of any views I may or may not hold, I neither believe nor disbelieve in anything which I am unable to substantiate."

  "A personal characteristic with whose logic I fully concur," said Jeremy. "We will just be dealing with the facts then."

  "There are certain proven realities," I said, "of which we are well aware, Jeremy. We are aware, for example, of the fact that the universe—the one we know about, that is—is approximately 13.7 billion years old. And we know that the Earth was formed from a coagulation of rocks and dust just over 4 billion years ago. We also know that the human animal, by which I mean the 'anatomically' modern human animal, evolved about 200,000 years ago in the region we now call Africa. And that that was the moment when, among other things, modern speech skills began their prolonged development. And by the time we arrived at 50,000 years ago, evolution had produced the 'behaviorally' modern human animal whose communication methods were eventually to balloon into an estimated 500,000 languages; of which, however, only about 4,000 are still in use today."

  "You, as a species, still use 4,000 different languages? Today? In other words, you still can't all communicate with each other?"

  "That is so, I am afraid. For example, the most linguistically complex nation on the planet is Papua New Guinea, which has over 700 languages in active use today for a population of only 7 million."

  "An average of one language per 10,000 inhabitants?"

  "Yes. But then, most of the world's languages are very localized ones. Nobody really concerns himself with the fact that the population of Udmurtia, an area in the western Ural mountain region of Russia, speaks Udmurtian. You could say that nowadays we have about thirty languages or so in use by the most important population groups, although some of these groups are quite small: Greece, Holland or Croatia for example. I mention the speech skills because they are one of several attributes which distinguish the human animal from the other animals on our planet, and we need to be able to understand that if we are going to talk about beliefs and how they have been able to grow and form an integral part of our social structure."

  "Fair enough," said Jeremy, "I am listening."

  "Human beings are one of what we call the 'mirror-test' group of animals, namely higher-level animals capable of recognizing themselves in a reflection of themselves. Most human beings achieve this capability at around the age of eighteen months. Modern anthropology supports the Darwinian theory that the difference between human minds and other 'mirror-test' animal minds is one of degree and not of kind. In other words, our brains are not 'different'; the human one just happens to be more advanced. Similar as to how you describe your brain, Jeremy, when comparing it to mine."

  Jeremy raised his eyebrows, ran his hand through his hair, and smiled.

  I continued. "Many religious doctrines, however, reject this outright, stating that our brains are indeed different and that they are also supplemented by something called a 'soul', which they describ as a nebulous and disembodied spirit whose existence, needless to say, cannot be proven but must be believed in."

  "And so where is this taking us, Peter?"

  "It is taking us to the fact that the human being is notable, among other things, for his desire, inane or otherwise, to explain all phenomena, including the inexplicable. And to the fact that our sophisticated communication skills, both in verbal and written form, enable us to interchange ideas, perceptions and abstract thoughts in general on just about everything. And not only interchange—we frequently want others to agree with our own personal views and sometimes we actually compel them to do so, using either force or propaganda. And we do all of this using specific tools, namely philosophy, mythology, the sciences, mass slaughter—including religious wars—and, last but not least, religion itself."

  "Ah, we have finally arrived at the subject itself."

  "Yes, and I'll get straight to it, don't worry. Religion is a 'belief' system, as opposed to a knowledge-based system. The belief is directed towards a sacred, divine or supernatural concept and the object of that belief can be a god, or a group of multiple deities, or a non-theistic concept such as karma. The majority of humans today belong to one of the monotheistic, or single deity, religions, the two most important ones being Christianity and Islam. The Hindus, who constitute the planet's third largest religious group, believe in 33 gods. In fact there are still some Hindus who refuse to believe in a transcription error in their holy scriptures and they continue to believe that there are some 33 million gods."

  "Interesting. Different opinions."

  "Yes, and there are plenty of those, Jeremy. All of these religions are subdivided into differing sects and sub-sects and sub-sub-sects, hundreds of them—and that is absolutely not an exaggeration. Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Methodists, Baptists, Anglicans, Mormons, Greek Orthodox, Jews, Presbyterians, Sunnites, Shiites, Wahabistic, Salafistic, and a whole host of others, take your pick. Each of these hundreds of groups and sub-groups has different interpretations, traditions and rites relating to their overall belief. These religions also have their own 'prophets', some shared, some not, whose preaching was what created the religions in the first place, and why they came into existence. One of the most recent founding prophets was a person called Joseph Smith Jr., the creator in the 1820s of Mormonism, although that particular Christian sect has had several more prophets and apostles since then, including the ones still alive today. Mormonism itself happens to be a branch of the Latter Day Saint Movement, another Christian sect, but we don't need to go into these kind of details today, Jeremy. We can’t. We would never finish."

  "Quite. I can imagine. You humans certainly know how to complicate everything. But tell me, what exactly is it that these belief systems offer you?"

  "Offer?"

  "Yes. I mean, there must be some incentive to cause people to want to believe, mustn't there?"

  "Ah yes…I see what you mean. Well, I suppose you could say that the incentive is that you are told you are not actually going to die. That is the main prize. A fantastic prize, wouldn’t you agree?"

  "Wow! I certainly would. That sounds really nice."

  "It may sound really nice, Jeremy, but it is a double-edged sword. It relies on the carrot and the stick theory, as you will see."

  O.K., go ahead."

  "With pleasure. Let me take Christianity first. This religion is based on the belief that God created the human race a long time ago and that thousands of years later he determined that things had not gone the way he had intended them to. So much so, that he (whichever sub-sects’ version of 'he' you prefer) decided to send his son to the planet as a human being—or at least in the form of a human being—in order to fix things, or at least to try. The son would be called Jesus and the decision was taken that he would be born as an illegitimate child and on top of that, he would not have a human father. A biological father, that is."

  "Why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why would he send his son in human form, and why would his parents not be married, and why would he have no biological father?"

  "I don't know."

  "But you believe that's how it was?"

  "Jeremy, I need to insist that I am an agnostic. I am just sticking to the facts as I was taught them. I neither believe nor do I disbelieve. I just don't know. If you want me to say that I hold it to be perfectly possible, then my answer is yes."

  "But why create things in this constellation, in this particular way?"


  "I don't know."

  "O.K. Please continue."

  "Well, the son was born and was murdered at a relatively young age by the human beings whose ways he had been sent to try and change. Or to try and SAVE as religious doctrine has it."

  "Ah. So do I understand that he didn't actually manage to save you?"

  "No. But his father is a very benevolent God and so we were allowed to continue living and retain our chances of being saved on the condition that we modified our activities accordingly—or at least apologize and repente for not doing so."

  "Chances of being saved? From what?"

  "From hell. From eternal fire. From eternal damnation. From eternal torture."

  "Eternal torture? That is a particularly vicious and vindictive invention, don't you think?"

  "Yes. Although I understand that in some versions you can get lucky and end up in some kind of a halfway house."

  "But to be tortured for eternity is a monstrous penalty to have to pay. That's not even just a life sentence, which would be bad enough, don't you think? How do you explain that? I thought you said he is a benevolent God."

  "Well, I don't know. I can't explain it. But there are plenty of others who could. Those who are in the know."

  "Yes…well, I can imagine that the explanation is a somewhat complicated one."

  I decided to stick my oar in for a bit of fun. "Why?" I asked. "You are just the same. In fact, you are very similar to God. You place the responsibility on us. We have to change ourselves. You say you are a benevolent species, but if we don't become like you, if I understood you correctly, you probably intend to go ahead and eliminate us. That is not very nice either, is it?"

  "Ah yes, but there are two major differences. First of all, we don't claim to have created you. And secondly, with us, at least some of you will have lived for a large number of years and as for your future generations, well…they would quite simply never be born. And there is no torture involved at all, and certainly no eternal torture. Perish the thought. Why would anyone want to do that?"

  "I don't know," I admitted. "Nevertheless, a direct threat does have the effect of creating fear. Perhaps the Christian religion and maybe other religions need to operate on that basis. What do you think?"

  "I have no idea," said Jeremy, "why do you ask?"

  "Well, you can believe something simply because you want to, or because you have been told to, or because you have been brainwashed into it, or because you have been forced into it, or because a fear was created about what will happen to you if you don't believe. Or at least, let us say, if you don't comply, or try to comply, with the doctrines. You see, Christianity is based on a totally different doctrine to the one in the Frankenstein tale."

  "The Frankenstein tale?"

  "Yes, in that story, Frankenstein discovered how to create a human being in a laboratory. But he made some mistakes and the human being became an out-of-control monster. But the blame belonged, fairly logically, to the creator Frankenstein, and not to his creation. Christianity, on the other hand, preaches that we are the ones to blame, not the God who created us.”

  “And how does that teaching justify itself? With what logic?”

  “Well, the justification states that God gave us Free Will, the ability to decide everything for ourselves. He also ensured that we were handed the responsibility for our decisions, and for our resulting actions and for the results of those actions. And we are therefore to blame.”

  “That begs the question, Peter, as to what reason he might have had for giving you Free Will in the first place.”

  That was not a question. I did not say anything.

  “So,” he continued after a pause, “since you are the guys responsible for what is a pretty ghastly and catastrophic mess, perhaps your Free Will needs to be guided onto a different track, pushed in fact, brought into line by fear. What is your view on that?"

  "Again, I don't know, Jeremy. Therefore I have no view."

  "Well, then could we continue with the history please?"

  "Yes, of course. Many centuries subsequent to Jesus' murder, his mother, Mary, was apparently put to work."

  "Put to work?"

  "Well, in the sense that she has apparently been trying to achieve some of the things that were not achieved before. She has appeared supernaturally several times on our planet. She has appeared in five different places in France, two in Belgium, one in Mexico, one in Japan, one in Italy, and a total of five times in a single place in Portugal, the town of Fatima. My divinity instruction did not make it clear to me as to why this particular town required so much attention, but apparently it did. At least, those are the apparitions I understand to have been approved by the Vatican."

  "Approved by the Vatican?"

  "Yes, the Vatican is the center of power for the Catholic version of Christianity. They have a classification system for Mary's apparitions; approved apparitions, non-approved apparitions and rejected apparitions. Of the sites of the non-approved apparitions, I recall England, Spain, Egypt, Ireland, Poland, Slovakia, Croatia, Nicaragua and a town called (believe it or not) Rome City in Indiana, USA. There are probably more."

  "And the approved apparitions were witnessed by lots of people?"

  "No, actually not. Usually just by one individual or by a small group. And mainly children, by the way, and mainly only during the past two or three centuries. The apparition in Lourdes, France, for example, was seen by a 14 year old girl in the year 1858. Actually, this girl had a total of eighteen visions overall. Three shepherd children witnessed the apparitions in Fatima, Portugal, during our World War I. The two apparitions in Belgium occurred shortly prior to the outbreak of World War II and were witnessed respectively by a young girl, who had a total of eight visions overall, and also by five more children aged between nine and fifteen years old. But a few adults have also had these visions, Jeremy. The apparition near Akita in Japan, for example, was witnessed by a nun in the year 1973, and a statue of the Virgin Mary on that site also wept tears on 101 occasions until 1980, at which point in time it apparently stopped."

  "Why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why did the statue stop weeping?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, why did it start weeping in the first place?"

  "I don't know."

  "O.K., but then why were these particular locations chosen for the apparitions?"

  "I don't know that either. I have many knowledge gaps."

  "But you personally believe in these occurrences, the approved ones at least?"

  "No, but I don't disbelieve them either, Jeremy. These are apparently factual events. I simply don't know."

  "So…if I understand you correctly, Christianity deems the life of Jesus and the apparitions of his mother to have been reasonably successful as regards improving you and your species?"

  "Yes. That is the belief of the Christians. However, a lot of non-Christians hold the view that nothing was achieved. They hold the view that the human race has in fact deteriorated further in the twenty centuries following the birth of Jesus, and, what's more, in accelerated form. They cite the increase in mass slaughter—war, civil war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and they cite the increase in individual crimes—murder, rape, theft, drugs, torture and so on. And as further proof they state that the horrific activities of the most recent century far exceeded the horrific activities of all the previous ones: the two world wars, the death factories, the manufacture of thermo-nuclear weapons and all of the rest I mentioned to you in our meeting on that particular subject."

  "And which view is the correct one, do you think?"

  "I don't think, Jeremy. I just recount the facts. You can adopt whichever view you prefer."

  "Very well," he said. "I must say that by sticking to the facts in these interviews, and avoiding opinions, you are making it much easier for me. There is no clouding of the issues. Could we possibly move on to the next one?"

  "Certainly we can. The next one is Islam."


  "A bit of a recapitulation before you start, if I may," interrupted Jeremy, "you are an agnostic and you therefore accept the fact that the Christian religion may be the explanation for all things, that it may be the true religion?"

  "Correct."

  "And do I assume correctly, Peter, that this is also your view regarding the Islamic religion?"

  "Yes, your assumption is correct."

  "O.K., I just wanted to make sure I had got it right. Please fire away."

  "Islam is a religion," I said, "which emerged some fourteen centuries ago in the area inhabited at the time by the so-called lizard-eaters of the Arabian peninsula. It is based on a series of prophets, the last and greatest of which, according to the Islamic bible, the Koran, was Abu al-Qasim Muhammad ibn Abd Allāh ibn Abd al-Muttalib Ibn Hāshim ibn Abd Manāf akl Quraschī."

  "Long name," said Jeremy.

  "Quite. He is referred to simply as Mohammed in our part of the world and in fact his name, with spelling variations, is now the most popular name given to new-born babies here in the U.K.—ahead of Jack, Harry and Oliver. Mohammed was born in Mecca, in the Saudi Arabian desert, around 570 years after Jesus Christ. In his early years he was an analphabetic shepherd boy, but he was given some education later on by certain members of his family and eventually declared himself at the age of forty or thereabouts to be a prophet of Allah, as the Islamic God is called. This did not meet with everybody's approval and after several discordant and antagonistic years he was more or less obliged to flee with a small group of followers to the city of Medina—as it is now called—at the age of fifty two. Thus the Christian calendar year of 622 became the 'year zero' in the Islamic calendar."

  "Ah hah, so you have different calendars on your planet also."

  "Yes, we do. Now Mohammed continued preaching his religious philosophies and at the same time gradually formed a coalition of local tribes in the Medina area. He then began an eight-year conflict—involving plenty of slaughter—to fight his way back over the 450 kilometers to Mecca and conquer it. Quite a feat, if you think about it, an army of poorly trained, unprofessional soldiers winning battles against some of the major powers of the time, the Bezantines and the Sassanids among others."