"Klaatu barada nikto!"

The following is the unedited version of an exposé currently featured in the 25^th revised edition of Malleus Maleficus'  [title withheld]. If you wish to report intrusiveness or inaccuracies, please email MalleusMaleficus@aol.com  To make a formal complaint under IPSO rules please contact IPSO directly at ipso.co.uk .  

   The chairman of the current session was the agnostic A.C. Grayling, a fully grown but philosophically adolescent man who was not so much godless as clueless. A leonine countenance, the demeanour of a mouse, it appeared he was wearing rouge. Which was perhaps as close as he has ever come to the actual ratification of an ideology he had long approved in public: that "we should educate ourselves in order to make noble use of our leisure time". I only wish my admiration for Grayling's attitude also extended to his books. 

But having created God largely from his own imaginings, the author of a ‘secular Bible’ immediately went on to deny Him. It’s Monty Python’s idea of God, but there was no mistaking the measure of the man’s ambition: “to be a source of insight and inspiration, consolation and guidance, for the task of living.” 

           “Klaatu barada nikto!”[1] said the alien sitting next to me.

          The  most sympathetic aspect of  Grayling’s godlessness was the barely concealed reluctance with which he delivered it: “My whole nature utterly revolts at the idea that there is any Being in the Universe superior to myself,” he said  - according to a lip-reading expert – “heed no one but me!” So, hands up. What's wrong with having a go at playing God? It doesn't alarm me in the least. Especially since God doesn't seem to be making a very good job of it. 

"God is an atheist!"

          Dawkins’s own crusade,  meanwhile, continued to maintain that the concept of God as a governing principle was the work of the Devil. And the first time he spoke in tongues,[2] I shut my eyes and thought “Yep, Richard, you betcha, the chief cause of our troubles today is that folks have lost faith in the Devil.” But in a new twist on atheist ideology, Dawkins also declared himself to be “a cultural Christian and an Atheist for Jesus.” So there you have it,  the Crucifixion was a set-up, but it’s what Jesus would have wanted.

          Grayling, who is firmly a fan of "normalising the use of [trans-]gender pronouns," then  declared that no one could repudiate “the three of us” – Jesus, presumably,  Dawkins and himself. Extreme in all things, he also gave God three minutes to prove His existence -  part of new standard for atheist authentication - before handing the chair to a skinny alien who was no doubt having second thoughts about the issues of the day. Aliens, as you may know, are people with very particular skills, but no great capacity for long linear arguments, and the question remains whether superior galactic communities would have either the

time or the tolerance for a pair of professional narcissists who have done more for the revival of outdated religious superstitions than any other two individuals since Ron Hubbard and an extra-terrestrial called Xenu.            
       Or perhaps aliens have a rationale to which terrestrials are blind.  They were different, at any rate, I’ll say that. Unlike the sons of secular Jesus, they were not, of course, descended from the apes. Some of their ancestors, apparently, originated from the vicinity of  Beta CVn, a sun-like star that lies twenty-six light years away in the constellation Canes Venatici, but transferred into the Solar System about  75 million years ago due to an over-population problem in the Galactic Federation - not to mention ‘disillusionment’, a terrible new anxiety afflicting Thetans.[3]
  Let me also note that  anyone with an IQ below 170 –including, incidentally, Albert Einstein - is considered mentally retarded on Beta CVn. And I’m not the first person to have noticed that Richard Dawkins’ intellectual gratification is an absurd, clownish pursuit of Twitter, in addition to loopy philippics against  Xtians, virgins, winged horses, elitism, democracy, lemon juice, and how to get a cheer etc.,

when not actually quoting himself. Frankly, it's a mess! There have been outbreaks of self-laceration by teenagers and suicide epidemics by academics, all inspired by Dawkins’ characteristic (and frankly mawkish)  assertion that if there comes a time when there’s no objective truth, “I shall not want to go on living!” Without God and without objectivity, one thing's for sure, his book is not a good advertisement for longevity. For believe me, Richard, the basic assumption of science is not determinism. It’s fair to say in fact, that science holds the key to the greatest age of faith in the history of the world, even if you cannot define it. Or, as Niels Bohr might have told you, “A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a great truth.” 

And there you have it,  the progressive thinker becomes a bigoted and reactionary lecturer for 12-year-olds. Trust me – I know the type. At the end of the day, the great seducer is nothing more than a dirty old man. Nor is he the only one.[4] Truth be told, some of the aliens appeared distinctly uncomfortable amid those most contemptible if not uncommon individuals in human society: the shameless dopamine addict. To say nothing of children as young as 12 roaming the streets armed with knives and a flask of prussic acid. They were “baffled,” an official said later, by a  planet where “a million plus high school students could legally buy AR-15 assault rifles,”  and where watching humans kill humans  on a high definition 3D flatscreen is one of the most fun things you can do on a rainy afternoon.
 

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[1] Roughly translated: “Been trying to recommend the book, reading it didn’t help.”

[2] Camilla Long: “…a nibbly little voice.”

[3] With expensive Botox-therapy, they may turn into ‘operating Thetans’, like Tom Cruise,  a higher form of being.

[4] As Lord Rees, president of the Royal Society, suggested, “the inherent intellectual limitations of humanity mean we may never resolve questions such as the existence of parallel universes” in which Dawkins, by some trick with time,  may merely be a small-time con man, with no record of his terrestrial renown.

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