What should our response be to all those false religions scurrying around out there? You can’t cluster-bomb mass deception, or shoot a patriot missile into a bogus belief. The only effective weapon of change the human race has over ignorance is very slow, and does not go “boom!”

We are what we teach. Ideally, we are taught truthful ideas that have proven their worth, handed down from the elders to their children, and so on down the line. A key element in this ancient cycle of education is filtering out that which is untrue or does not work, and refining the lessons to replace those items with that which is true.

People are not born Christian or Muslim, or any other religion. They are taught these ideas from early childhood, and surprisingly few have the individuality to question their training.

Religions that focus on an afterlife evoke very powerful emotions, because the thought of death is very frightening without the security of knowing what is ‘round the bend. There is no shame in this fear. We all share it, and to deny it is to deny a part of our humanity. Sadly, many have used this fear to advance their own causes, and afterlife theologies have bloomed fruitfully through the centuries despite the questionable and sometimes abominable practices of their leaders.

As the world grows ever smaller, the various faiths find themselves in conflict because people no longer have the luxury of simply staying with their own kind. We face the formidable task of dealing with these religious differences, and we’ve hit the snag-too many gods, and conflicting ideas about just whose god is real, and whose is fantasy. They can’t all be right, after all.

So we now find ourselves quickly spinning down the inevitable “I’m going to heaven-you’re not” whirlpool.

At this critical time, so unprecedented in history due to the terrible weapons we have created, it is high time all theologies are held up to the warm light of reason. These ancient beliefs carry with them the emotional power to invoke deeds of great passion from their proponents, such as the crashing of planes into buildings, suicide bombings, witch burnings, abortion clinic shootings, relegating women to servitude, and on and on. Therefore, every religion needs to be thoroughly analyzed for its underlying truth or falsehood.

Why can we not calmly talk of proving these belief systems? Of course, asking for proof raises the hackles (and often the voices) of the devout, who may tell you that if you need proof you are not worthy of heaven. I would say if you need proof, you are logical.

Why are people so desperately afraid of questions to their faith? The answer clearly is death. People are afraid to die, or more exactly, are afraid of what happens after they die. Believers don’t fancy questions that might expose any weaknesses in their thought process, and very few want to hear arguments that they may have chosen the wrong heaven. Unfortunately, the matter can no longer be avoided. The reality filter has been off these stories for far too long, and it has become painfully clear that our shrinking world can no longer afford that luxury.

Most of the religions involving afterlife, or a single almighty creator, were founded in simpler times when credulity was the order of the day. A man could claim he had spoken with god and been bestowed with divine wisdom, and people might be amazed and name that man a prophet. When men today claim to speak directly with god, we know them by different names.

Who among your friends or family has spoken directly with god? Who do you know who has held a direct two-way conversation with the creator of the universe? Nevertheless, it is not all that strange that people can believe in things we have not experienced ourselves. We are trained from childhood to believe everything our parents tell us, because this significantly streamlines the learning process. It would be a time-consuming nightmare if children believed nothing they were told without evidence, so the process of believing your elders is completely natural, and works very well-in most cases. However, when an untruth is delivered to the child’s unquestioning mind as a fact, it can be very hard to shake later on.

Those of us brought up with the story of Santa Claus will remember the powerful reality of this jolly old elf. He was real and no one was going to convince you differently-never mind about his living at the North Pole, and his otherwise questionable practices including defying several laws of physics, slavery, and animal welfare.... He was real and good because our parents said so.

This is an example of the great power that resides in a lie learned from childhood. Logic, science and reason should easily have left this Emperor of the North Pole shivering with no clothes, but rarely did. Those trained in the Santa tradition might remember well the very real emotions and anticipation leading up to the night of his visitation. Almost bursting with excitement awaiting this magical being whom we had been told of since we were tiny tots, we pressed our breathless little noses to the windowpanes to catch a glimpse of him.

Who will deny that these feelings were as real and powerful as any you have ever felt since? Very powerful, very real emotions centered on a very not-real elf. Are the deep emotions we once carried for this all-seeing watcher of deeds and bringer of gifts so very different from our various beliefs in almighty overseers who will reward us, if we do their will, with the greatest present of all...the present of an eternal afterlife?

Humans seem so fearful of the end of life that they cannot face it without the soft, fuzzy cushion of an afterlife to break the fall. One might ask oneself if belief in these stories is worth tearing our present world apart for. To see proponents of Islam and Christianity with their constituent flocks of sheep looking teary-eyed to the skies using words like “glorious” to describe their visions of the end of our one and only planet, is perverse in the extreme.

How should those of us who don’t subscribe to fanatical visions of Armageddon deal with those who continue glorifying these horrors, and seem all too willing to allow them to become self-fulfilling prophecy? With some abrupt changes in what we teach our young, and some time, we could rise above our past negative training, and go far into the distant future as an enlightened race, but we need to have parents and leaders with the courage to teach that vision and bring it into reality, instead of furthering the same “my god is better than your god” childishness that once brought us a dark age that lasted a thousand years-and now could bring one that lasts forever.

What is it that makes someone dismiss as insignificant the countless miracles that can be seen with their own eyes for want of unseen, unproven afterlife goodies? Goodies promised by ancient books that give nothing which could be called true prophesy... books that bestow not a single word unknowable to the writers at the time of their writing? A god with the technical knowledge to create a universe would surely include some of the details of his masterwork in those long-worded texts. Where is the part about molecules and atoms... the very building blocks of our bodies, planet, and universe? A few sentences in those thousands of pages are all that would have been required. Something simple like “I created you out of tiny particles which orbit around each other, rather like your Earth orbits the sun (not the other way around), and by the way, there are eight other planets that also revolve around the sun I gave you - which is a star, exactly like those you see at night...”

A scientist of God’s stature would surely not have left out the details of our essence. A billion miracles of a genius scientist’s handiwork, all omitted so “he” can make sure we all know to trade the right amount of cattle for our next wife? Or commit acts of murder to meet virgins in the sky? For these, and similarly primitive ideas so obviously penned by men and not an all-knowing super-intellect, we would destroy our world and call it glorious?

A true creator would be appalled at the scorn we heap on the miracles all around us - the incredible animals, the life-giving forests and oceans, ravaged and exploited like worthless playthings “sent” here for our amusement. Does some of this disdain stem from the belief that Earth is just a steppingstone on the path to heaven, so it doesn’t matter what we destroy here?

Perhaps if our teachings were amended to reflect the idea that we do not come into this world, but from it, then we may survive long enough to be able to run this labyrinth of learning to a wonderful place of peace and enlightenment, and we may even find the truth of creation, and the origins of the universe. This is not unrealistic. We have only to join together and adopt the wisdom, compassion, and restraint to reject the ancient ideas of separatism that now bring us racing towards disaster with the reckless abandon of a child with their first bicycle.

This does not mean rejecting the essential ideals of love and goodness, or the appreciation of miracles - quite the contrary; it means embracing these ideas in their purest form, without need of a mandate imposed from above, or the threats of purgatory below. A mature people has no need of threats to do what is right.

The promise of an afterlife in heaven may well be an imaginary story created long ago by men to ease the fear of death for the aged or dying, for what was about to come. However, the possibility of a self-imposed hell, stemming from the cancerous outgrowths of these stories, is very real, as we now vie with each other, for heaven’s sake, with weapons that can tear the word asunder.

Will we have the strength we had as children, when we reluctantly gave up the fantasy of Santa Claus? Can we be proud of our new place in the universe, no longer needing to be the center of it? Can we be good for goodness’ sake-without the intimidation of a fear of hell? Do we have the courage to admit that no one knows what happens after we die? Or is our fear of death so great, the belief in ancient doctrine so overwhelming, that we will destroy ourselves and this incredible jewel of a planet in the name of the gods of our imagination?

If religion cannot be held to the principles of decency, equality, and scientific proofs which otherwise guide our daily lives, then it is shameful for us to perpetuate them in our children, and continue to tolerate the evil that men do in the name of heaven.