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The book targets people who are already atheists. Deciding that one no longer believes in god can be a dramatic choice. The case of Ayaan Hirsi, the author of Infidel, comes to mind; she was born a Moslem in Somalia. In the book she wrote that she no longer believed in god. Renouncing one's religion is a serious crime in Islam and she is now rejected by her family and pursued by Jihadis, out to kill her.People, from less extreme cultures, face somewhat similar problems. Now that they no longer believe, what are they to tell their children, parents or partners? The cliché is that their Life is at a Crossroads, but there are no roads - no valid choices - they are in front of an empty plain. This book makes a path across that plain and gives non-believers a religion without god, based on a proper understanding of Evolution and Conscience.The book is written in the form of an everyday pub conversation between the author and Buckley, an imaginary Indian guru. It takes place in Nairobi, Kenya. It is lively, informative, enjoyable and easy to read.
Citation preview
1
B r y a n S c r i v e n
BUCKLEY’S TESTAMENT What to believe when you stop believing in God
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BRYAN SCRIVEN stopped believing in god while still at school; he is now 78. For all that time he has been deciding what to believe and what should guide his life; this book is the
result. His professional work took him to many different countries and many different cultures. He has taken a keen
interest in religion, history, anthropology and Charles Darwin. He has an imaginative approach to evolution that the scientists appear to lack. He now lives in Nairobi Kenya, where he runs
a furniture factory.
buckleystestament.wordpress.com
3
Copyright © B r y a n S c r i v e n
The right of Bryan Scriven to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the
publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims
for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British
Library.
ISBN 9781784557461
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2013)
E-Book Edition (2015)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LB
4
A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s
This book builds squarely on the work of Richard Dawkins and Elaine Morgan. These two are both Labourers in the
Same Vineyard, yet they studiously ignore each other. The name Richard Dawkins never appears in Elaine Morgan's books and Richard Dawkins never mentions Elaine Morgan;
not even in his bibliographies. Richard Dawkins is a rather plodding, academic, establishment figure; whereas Elaine Morgan, a journalist, has verve and imagination, they need
each other to make a coherent picture of human evolution. This book attempts to bring them together.
Note:
The late Elaine Morgan, author of The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis and The Scars of Evolution, and cited in several places in the book is described as a Welsh folk singer; although Welsh, she
was never a folk singer. However there is a Welsh folk singer of the same name, from Swansea, hence the confusion.
5
CONTENTS
ABOUT THIS BOOK
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE THE GURU
CHAPTER TWO GENESIS
THE LIVING PROOF OF THE SEA INTERLUDE
CHAPTER THREE EXODUS: THE WAR
CHAPTER FOUR EXODUS, THE PEACE:
PEACE BRINGS RELIGION
PEACE BRINGS WAR
CHAPTER FIVE WHAT'S WRONG WITH SCIENTISTS? DARWIN BETRAYED
THE ELAINE MORGAN SYNDROME
THE LIFE SCIENCE INDUSTRY
CHAPTER SIX CONSCIENCE TAKES THE PLACE OF GOD
WHAT IS CONSCIENCE?
HOW DID CONSCIENCE EVOLVE?
HOW IS CONSCIENCE TRANSMITTED?
CALLING CONSCIENCE GOD
CHAPTER SEVEN WHAT BUCKLEY THOUGHT ABOUT AFRICANS
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CHAPTER EIGHT PROJECTION OF THE BRAIN OUTSIDE THE BODY
CHAPTER NINE PAST GURUS
MOSES
JESUS CHRIST
MOHAMMED
ADOLF HITLER
CHARLES DARWIN
CHAPTER TEN THE CHURCH OF THE ATHEISTS
THE COMMANDMENTS
CAN BUCKLEYANITY CHALLENGE RELIGION?
EDUCATION
CHAPTER ELEVEN GOVERNMENT, JUSTICE, WAR
GOVERNMENT
JUSTICE
WAR
CHAPTER TWELVE THE SCHOOL OF EVOLUTIONARY STUDIES
CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE DEPARTURE
THE TIMETABLE: HOW BUCKLEYANITY MIGHT TAKE
OVER
THE EPILOGUE
BOOKS CITED OR RECOMMENDED
FILMS CITED OR RECOMMENDED
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ABOUT THIS BOOK
The book targets people who are already atheists,
particularly recent atheists. Deciding that one no longer
believes in god can be a dramatic choice, the case of Ayaan
Hirsi, the author of Infidel, comes to mind; she was born a
Moslem in Somalia. In the book she wrote that she no
longer believed in god. Renouncing one's religion is a
serious crime in Islam and she is now rejected by her family
and pursued by Jihadis, out to kill her.
There are thousands of people, from less extreme cultures,
who face the same problem. Now that they no longer
believe, what are they to tell their children, their parents or
partners? The cliché is that their life is at a crossroads, but
this is not really the case, there are no roads – no valid
choices; rather they are in front of an empty plain. This
book makes a path across that plain and gives non-believers
a kind of religion without god, based on an understanding of
conscience.
The roots of conscience lie in evolution; conscience is
something real, a strong innate instinct, as strong as the sex
instinct, sometimes stronger even than the will to live.
Conscience often seems to overrule god; many believers
say: my conscience wouldn't allow me to do that, when
considering a wicked, or unhelpful act, perhaps surprisingly,
they don't often say: this would be against god's
commandments.
Evolutionary biology is controlled by a loosely-defined,
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high priesthood – an establishment of prominent professors
and scholars; mostly members of the Society for the Study
of Evolution, like so many other high priesthoods, the
Vatican included, the central and fundamental facts of their
argument are almost entirely wrong. In particular the refusal
to admit that there was a sea interval in the evolution of the
human species. The sea interval was the defining moment in
human evolution, it separated us from all other mammals –
it existed. Any educated, rational person, who takes the time
and trouble to marshal the facts and thinks things through
logically, will come to that conclusion. Human evolution
without the sea interlude is difficult to understand, in
particular the development of conscience.
Perhaps surprisingly none of the usual popular writers on
evolution have attempted to write such a book. This book is
the account of two people, with no particular expertise in
the field of evolution, striving to work out exactly what they
believe, now that they have put belief in god behind them.
They live in Nairobi Kenya, which gives an interesting
flavour to their deliberations.
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INTRODUCTION
God and religion started to agonise when Darwin's Origin of
Species by Means of Natural Selection was first published
on 24 November 1859.
The study of evolution shows that there is no guiding hand;
creation on earth came about by a series of fortuitous
accidents and adaptations by nature to those accidents. God
the creator and evolution are incompatible.
Without god the basis for morality collapses. Before Darwin
morality was god-given – morality was how god wanted
people to behave. When god goes, morality loses its basis and
its authority.
A world without morality faces disaster. If the species is to
survive, there must be widely accepted rules of conduct
founded on reason, not irrational behaviour based on the
supposed will of an imaginary god.
Buckley's Testament provides a firm foundation for morality
based on evolution. People know instinctively when they are
doing wrong – that knowledge is Conscience and conscience
is a creation of evolution. Conscience is like a second
immune system in addition to the physical immune system,
which defends us against disease; it regulates our dealings
with our fellow humans; without it the species would
probably not have survived. A study of conscience and how it
evolved, gives the rules of this new morality. Atheists no
longer have god, but they still need a religion; that religion is
spelt out in this Buckley's Testament.
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CHAPTER ONE
THE GURU
I am Bryan Scriven. I run a furniture factory in Nairobi,
Kenya. This book is about my relations with Buckley, a man
whose ideas changed the direction of my life. I met him for
the first time in a shop called Buckley's Stores on Baricho
Road in the Nairobi Industrial Area.
Buckley was not his real name; he refused to tell me his real
name; he told me I didn't need to know; thereafter, because I
had met him in Buckley’s Stores, I called him Buckley. He
eventually liked the name I had given him and after some
time, he even started to think of himself as Buckley. Later I
went further, I called his Testament Buckleyanity and I called
his followers and admirers Buckleyans; once again, after
some time, Buckley adopted these terms.
Buckley's Stores is owned by an Indian called Shah; his
father bought it from an Englishman called Buckley, in
colonial times, when Baricho Road was called Battersea
Road. It caters for the small-time needs of small-time
industry in that area, things like measuring tapes, electrical
plugs, screwdrivers, and such; they also sell groceries. The
store is totally pre-supermarket; it is packed with goods from
floor to ceiling; a ladder is required to access items on the top
shelves. Customers must wait to be served by Mr Shah, his
sons, his father or his Mkamba assistants. There are no cash
registers and no calculators. Additions are made using mental
arithmetic counted out in the Gujerati language.
Buckley is a Kenyan of Indian origin. They are known in
Nairobi as Kenyan Asians. They have a different mentality
11
from Indian Indians, as a result of the British Empire
background of their forefathers and their Kenyan education;
they keep themselves apart from Africans; they do not inter-
marry (unlike the Indians of Mauritius). They speak their
own languages and have their own religions. They own
businesses and are generally more wealthy than Africans; as
a consequence, they are often the target of robberies. Kenyan
Asians have been called the Jews of Africa, they are not
comfortable in Kenya; I am told they expect an imminent
African Holocaust.
I was subjected to the usual Anglican, religious education at a
boy's boarding school in the UK. We boys attended chapel
every weekday and twice on Sundays. Grace was said at the
start of every meal. The Christian indoctrination was intense,
but I soon started to doubt. Christianity appeared to be just a
set of primitive myths, such things as the story of the creation
of the world in only six days as well as most of the Old
Testament, the virgin birth, the resurrection. I stopped
believing in Santa Claus at age seven and I stopped believing
in god at age fourteen.
Before I met Buckley, in the words of Saint Paul: I saw as
through a glass darkly, after spending time talking and
drinking beer with Buckley I found enlightenment. At school
I had spent a lot of time, thought and effort trying to
understand a complicated religion and the rules of conduct
that go with it. After I had rejected it all, it left a gap. Buckley
became my guru, he changed all that; he filled that gap. He
put me on the right path. He showed me where our species
had come from and pointed a clear direction to follow in the
future.
Buckley was perhaps 45, he was of medium height, had
thinning hair and a pepper and salt beard, that is a black
12
beard, where the first traces of grey are visible. He looked
much like Salman Rushdie. His manner was affable, which is
defined in my dictionary as good-natured and sociable.
We talked; we had something in common because, like me,
he ran a factory in the area. We met again outside Buckley's
Stores, where I saw him opening the door of an old Toyota
Corolla. On the back window of the car was a sticker, which
read: Read Quran Gods Last Testament. I asked Buckley if
he was a Moslem. He said: "No, I am not a member of any
established religious group; it's a second hand car, that sticker
was on the car when I bought it. I kept it to demonstrate how
hopeless the Moslems are; they can't even get their syntax
right".
I saw Buckley again at lunchtime, later in the week, in
Choices. This is a passable imitation of a British pub, further
down on the same Baricho Road. Choices has no windows
and the lights are kept low. It has a kind of Elizabethan half-
timbered decor. There are high stools at the bar and tables for
four, with Windsor chairs, in a dining area, where lunch is
served. Buckley was drinking a beer and eating peanuts. I
joined him and we started to talk about the sad state of
industry in Kenya.
Some time back there was a Government of Kenya slogan:
Industrialization by the year two thousand. That year is long
past and, far from industrializing; the country is de-
industrializing. In days long gone, Kenya's infant industry
was protected, there were high import tariffs and various
restrictions; for example, no furniture of any sort, could be
imported into Kenya. Then came globalisation. It never
seemed a profitable idea for Kenya. I think the government of
the day was forced to go along with it by the IMF or the
13
World Bank. In theory, globalisation is a system where each
country makes what it does best and produces cheapest.
Kenya was not particularly good at producing industrial
goods and the goods were not cheap. Kenya's best now is
tourism and growing tea. So Kenya has become a nation of
waiters and tea pickers; it's back to the plantation and, of
course, industry suffers. The country is flooded with imports.
Many factories have closed down and the workers have been
sent home.
Look at the roads in the Industrial Area; they are the worst in
Nairobi. The railway sidings, that serve the majority of
factories, are not maintained and the Masai graze their cattle
between the rails in the dry weather. The whole area is in a
pitiful state. You can see that the government does not take
industry seriously, yet industry could solve some of Kenya's
most pressing problems: Landlessness, in the rural areas, and
Unemployment in urban areas. Work on the land is no fun, if
a labourer can find work in a factory, however dark and
satanic, he will prefer it to work on the land. If there are
enough jobs in factories, the problem of land will disappear
and, of course, plenty of factory jobs will absorb the
unemployed.
As a fellow factory owner Buckley's ideas were not far from
mine. We moaned together about the present situation,
formed a bond and had a great time talking and drinking.
Thereafter, I met Buckley fairly regularly in Choices.
Since Buckley had told me that he was not a member of any
religious group, I asked him if he was an atheist. He said:
"Yes, I am an atheist, but I am a Creative Atheist, unlike
Richard Dawkins, who is an uncreative atheist. He is
destructive. His book the God Delusion is irresponsible. It
does a thoroughly good job of trashing belief in god and
14
religion, but puts absolutely nothing in its place. It leaves a
void, a gaping hole. I am sure that the book will produce
atheists, which most Kenyans distrust. Then there is
Christopher Hitchens who wrote that book God Is Not Great,
which is another piece of destructive atheism. Kenyans, and
many other peoples, feel that atheists can too easily become
criminals or drug addicts. I aim to tell people what to believe,
so that the void is filled and so that atheism can even earn the
respect of the believers; this is creative atheism."
"Buckley, did you know that Richard Dawkins was actually
born here in Nairobi, in Nairobi Hospital and that his brother
still lives here?"
"Is that important?"
Who was Buckley? He wanted to remain anonymous; he
would not tell me any personal details. He said that people
would consider his ideas subversive and disruptive of the
existing social order. "At least 90 percent of Kenyans are
believers. I have to keep a low profile, if I am to continue to
do business in Nairobi." I respected his wishes and did not
pry. Buckley was obviously the product of one of these elite,
English-speaking schools in Nairobi. In his day, a large
number of the teachers would have been British. It would
have been forbidden to speak anything other than English
during the school day. Buckley had an engineering
background, not a scientific background. As regards
evolution, he must have read all the popular books by Gould,
Dawkins, Eldredge and company. But, he once confessed to
me that he had never read Charles Darwin's Origins of
Species. His knowledge of science came from school and
from books and scientific articles in magazines such as
'Newsweek' and 'The Economist'. .
15
He might have spent some time in America, he certainly used
a lot of American expressions, He spoke Gujerati, but I am
sure that his origins were not in Gujerat. He might have been
from South India and he might even have been a Christian.
At some point, he had started to learn Arabic, maybe to read
the Koran in the original. He was still able to read bits of the
Arabic on Choices's tomato sauce bottles, imported from
Dubai.
Buckley was never dull, or pompous; conversations with
Buckley were in the form of back-and-forth dialogue. He
reacted kindly to interruptions and disagreement and often
broke off to talk about his girl friends, to tell stories or jokes.
Buckley liked pubs he called them the Churches of the Non-
Believers. He drank beer; he said the hot weather made him
thirsty; he was fond of quoting that verse from Kipling: Take
me somewhere East of Suez, where the best is like the worst
and there ain't no ten commandments and a man can raise
a thirst. He enjoyed Kenya Breweries Tusker Malt,
fermented with only barley malt (if you believe what it says
on the label). He liked the shape of the bottle and the label
that looks like a South American bank note.
After the first few meetings I realized that Buckley was a
unique and original thinker. His thoughts and sayings were
important to me and I believed they would be important to
many others, so at the end of each meeting I made notes of
what was said.
Buckley left Kenya two years ago to set up a factory in
Russia, I have not heard from him since. I now feel I have a