I don't know if the Kyoto Protocol will re-freeze the ice.
I don't know if George W. Bush is as stupid as he appears to be.
I don't know if Tom Cruise is a space god.
I don't know if Cutty Sark is better than Johnny Walker.
I don't know how much oil is left.
I don't know when the recession/depression will end.
I don't know if Iran is building nuclear weapons.
I don't know when Israel will demolish the Dome on the Rock.
I don't know who killed Glen Miller
I don't know if Rock 'n' Roll is dead.
I don't know why humans thrive on nonsense.
I don't know if Duracell batteries last longer than EverReady.
I don't know if Stilnox drives you mad.
I don't know if coffee is good or bad for you.
I don't know if there is extra-terrestrial life in the universe.
I don't know if Ford is better than Holden, or vice-versa.
I don't know who framed Roger Rabbit.
I don't know if Hitler only had one ball.

And so clearly I'm not a very bright person.

Yet there is one thing I do know, with absolute 100% certainty, and it's this –

1. The Christian religion is a crock of shit based on lies, whole lies, and nothing but lies. To take an oath on the Bible is absurd when you consider that not one sentence from that preposterous book would be admissible as evidence in a court of law. It is all hearsay bullshit garbage.

There is not one shred of validatory evidence for Christianity, not a hint of a whiff of a snippet of validatory evidence. The whole thing is based on FAITH – Feeble Answers for Idiots, Tyrants and Hypocrites.

Christianity is based on one man's vision concerning another man's dream! Without "Saint" Paul's VISION of the so-called Christ, Christianity would have died a natural and early death. And without Joseph's DREAM about his fuckbuddy Mary being pregnant to the "holy ghost", Jesus would have been born a standard illegitimate reject. Mary would have been stoned to death, according to Hebrew custom, and that would have been the end of that.

But based on a VISION which was based on a DREAM, four anonymous scribes cobbled together a mish-mash of ancient folklore and mythology and served it up as fact. This ludicrous codswallop became known as the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The deranged Paul scribbled a whole heap of fanciful twaddle, then two hundred or so years later the murdering tyrant Constantine stitched the whole lot together and proclaimed it to be the "Divine Truth"!

Over the centuries the "Divine Truth' was added to, parts were deleted and whole sections were rewritten several times. Entire passages were forged and interpolated. Wars were fought over whose version was right and whose version was wrong. Millions of heretics were tortured, burned, hanged or drowned for believing the wrong versions or for doubting all versions.

In the year 1672 someone decided that there wasn't quite enough madness in the Bible and so the Book of Revelation was stitched into the rear end. Written by a paranoid schizophrenic – John of Patmos – Revelation had been relegated to the rubbish bin for sixteen hundred years but suddenly it become "The Word of God".

Throughout this almost two thousand* year reign of terror and horror the Catholic Church and rival churches prospered. The popes, bishops, cardinals, priests, pastors and other "holy" parasites thrived and flourished on the suffering of the masses.

*As recently as 1942 Catholic Croats were slaughtering thousands of Christian Orthodox Serbs for their "erroneous" beliefs, and the Catholic and Protestant atrocities in Ireland have only recently abated.

2. There's one other thing I know – the human brain is flawed. In most people the critical factor fails to develop. Whether this is due to early childhood conditioning or whether it is an actual physical defect, I can't say, but there is definitely something missing. As a result, people will believe ANYTHING. It doesn't matter how ridiculous or how patently absurd, when the motivation to believe is strong, people will believe ANYTHING, and intelligence is no defense against it.

As Voltaire famously said – "A man might be a brilliant physician or an accomplished mathematician, yet still believe Mohamed keeps half the moon up his sleeve."

Human beings seem compelled to soak up garbage, either religious garbage or psychic garbage, plus a range of incredible half-baked conspiracy theories. We seem incapable of living life on this planet without vast reserves of stupid stuff and nonsense to feed off. And the moment we evacuate our brains of one load of shit we compulsively ingest an alternative load of shit.

3. None of this would matter if people's brainfill encouraged them to lead good lives, but it doesn't. We saw in Vietnam, god-fearing, god-loving christians happy to drop flaming napalm onto innocent civilians, burning women and children to death in the most horrible way imaginable, then returning to boast of their exploits. More recently in Iraq, christian button pushers proudly firing cruise missiles at Baghdad, then back to the canteen for coffee, bagels and jokes. Dumb bombs, smart bombs, phospherous bombs, cluster bombs, what the hell – just so long as they burn people to death or inflict massive injury and indescribable suffering. Hundreds of thousand of innocent Iraqi civilians killed, children horribly burned, limbs blown off, blinded – who cares? It's only duty. Anything to effect "regime change". This is how the godist mind works, no atrocity is too atrocious so long as they're doing their duty and attending to "god's" wishes.

Religion breeds heartless, monstrous, unfeeling zombies, that much I know.

4. Here's the last thing I know – unless we unite against Christian fundamentalism, evangelicals will bring about World War Three – a nuclear holocaust – or "Armageddon" as they're pleased to call it. "Born Again" Christians – 42% the population of the USA – believe that a nuclear war is inevitable and desirable because it is prophesied in the Bible. Seconds before we sinners are burned to death, they will be "raptured" up to heaven, and as they zoom up, Jesus will plummet down, and they'll rendezvous with him "in the air".

Of all the stupid beliefs in the world today, including the Muslims' belief that if they murder innocent people and die in the process, they'll be "martyred" and rewarded with 72 virgins, nothing is as crazy and as dangerous as Armageddon theology. Muslim terrorists can, at worst, kill a few thousand people, Christians can kill billions, in fact they can destroy all life on planet Earth, several times over.

Did you hear about the terrorist who accidentally blew his balls off? Apparently he was Martha-d.

As things stand we've got Christian fundamentalists controlling the White House, programming Pentagon computers, and serving in the military. We've got pairs of fresh faced Baptist boys down missile silos awaiting the command that transfers control of the "anointed" missiles over to them. We've got crews of nuclear submarines and B52s and stealth bombers, all looking forward to their appointment with Jesus.

All that's required is the trigger, the catalyst, the spark that lights the fuse, and it's all over for life on planet Earth. Everyone remembers the Cuban Crisis but few people realise that we have come close to nuclear war on several occasions, including Suez, the Berlin standoff, Korea, Yom Kippur, Vietnam and 9/11. There have been several nuclear submarine near collisions – initially Russia blamed America for the sinking of the Kursk – and twice in the 1990s Russia came within minutes of launching a retaliatory nuclear strike against the USA, once because of a flock of seagulls, and on another occasion due to a Norwegian weather balloon.

In 1980 – twice in a matter of three days – America's early warning systems misdiagnosed a Soviet launch against the USA, and in 1984 a Minuteman missile was almost launched due to an electrical fault. In March 1981 when Ronald Reagan was shot, fearing a Soviet follow-up, and in Deputy President George H. Bush's absence, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger had America's Strategic Air Command placed on full nuclear alert.

These are the incidents that we know about, how many more are there that are hushed up?

And here's something that may not have occurred to you, or to anyone, for that matter – during the second half of Boris Yeltsin's term in office he was rarely sober for more than an hour or two a day. Lunch, predominantly vodka, would begin around 10am and continue till after midnight. He was never without the nuclear briefcase, or "football", by his side. Even when he was desperately ill in hospital the launch device was chained to his bed. Fortunately for the world, President Bill Clinton's father was an alcoholic, and so Clinton knew how to handle drunks in a safe and friendly way. Imagine, if you dare, the outcome had (a recently dried out) George W. Bush confronted a drunken Boris Yeltsin! One drunk on righteousness and God, the other drunk on vodka. Personally I'm convinced that we're alive today thanks to Clinton's sensitive and skillful handling of Yeltsin. We were FUCKING LUCKY!

How things have changed! Right now the Bush administration plans to install missile sites in the Czech Republic and Poland – within pissing distance of Russia! – and so Russia has resumed nuclear flights over Nato countries. The USA is providing Taiwan with missiles that can reach China, and China is testing bigger and better nuclear warheads for its land based rockets and brand-spanking new submarine fleet. Then there's North Korea's on again / off again nuclear bomb program, Pakistan on the verge of anarchy, and Islamists around the world just itching to destroy Israel and the USA. 2008 will be an interesting year, what with a lame and useless US president itching to go out in a blaze of flaming glory, with Jesus whispering encouragement in his ear... Better to retire as the man who triggered World War Three than the dumbist, most inept president in American history.

We are living on borrowed time. If you think I exaggerate, try this little experiment – run twenty sets of red lights and and see how you go. Sooner of later, Murphy's Law will kick in. I have been accused of watching too much (television series) '24' but no, what I'm describing – and what people like Dr Helen Caldicott have been describing – is infinitely worse than anything Jack Bauer deals with. Moderate christians are starting to wake up – and that's who this essay is aimed at – it's a tragedy that most atheists are too engrossed in their intellectual egos to grasp the concept of nuclear annihilation, and tackle it.

"Cool it dude, OK... you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders..."

"And anyway, dude, how would we tackle it?" ("How shall we fuck off, O' Lord?"). It's very simple, though we may be too late. Twenty-five years ago I proposed the idea of exposing the Bible as a fraud. The idea in those pre-internet days was to publish an international comic – irresistible to teenagers – that mocked religion. Had people taken my proposal seriously back then and contributed to the undermining of christian fundamentalism, Al Gore would have become president of the USA back in 2000, not bomber Bush. Atheists are obsessed with influencing each other, they desperately need to be seen as Bright – cleverer than the average bear. There's no point, dude, in case you haven't noticed, we're already converted. We're not the problem. Atheists tend to believe the most incredibly silly things but I've yet to meet one who wants to extinguish life on planet Earth for Jesus. It's young christians who need to be influenced, not fellow atheists. Concentrate on that idea for a while and you might get it.

I guess there is just one more thing I know, it's that Kyoto won't make a blind bit of difference to the atmosphere once 28,000 nuclear warheads explode.

Have a nice day.

Snakes in the Brain