Certainly not because we prefer common property as such to private property (of means of production; Marx and Engels never had anything against any other kind of private property anyway as there is no reasonable point to it, despite all the malignant lies concerning this topic even at their time, see Marx/Engels Collected Works, Vol. VI p. 497sq.; just like Marx, Engels and Lenin we leave renunciation of worldly commodities and social masochism to Christians and the »Greens«). We simply think having common property is better than having no property at all. For not owning the foundation of one’s existence means to become a victim of extortion. This is what we don’t want to be or to remain. Whoever doesn’t want that either should stop avoiding us. It could be rewarding, even if it is just for the purpose of keeping one’s dignity: not to be the idiot permanently manipulated by teachers, newspapers or other media controlled by the ruling class.

We also wouldn’t have any objection against a craftsmen’ and farmers’ idyll as it existed during certain periods of the Middle Ages or the pioneering days of Northern America. At that time, it was not exceptional and still possible to be the owner of one’s means of production. But such structures have not been competitive any longer for quite some time already as they were based upon a very low technical standard. Today, however, with a reasonable and efficient distribution of labour, three working hours a day would be enough to enable all people to enjoy a much higher standard of living than the one Germans have today, i.e. approximately that of Western Germany during the Eighties, which really was quite good (»Schaufenster des Westens« [»Show-case of the West«]). However, in order to achieve this, several generations of one-child families world wide would be necessary to make the number of people match with the resources available on our planet. That would be quite easy, if the one-child family policy would only be propagated and supported half as much as today’s propaganda that makes smoking a target of ostracism or preaches endless shrinking of the standard of living and mobility for no reasonable purpose at all. For our parasites in power, who are controlling the media and have been streamlining and using them for their own purpose since long, hate nothing more than a decreasing competition among the unpropertied people, resulting in a decrease of the latter’s susceptibility to extortion. But this is what would actually happen quite soon in case the number of people would drop down, and this is therefore what this human filth in power fears the most. For then, along with a growing population of e.g. black grouses and rhinos, there would also be a rise in wages and the quality of life – and what major shareholder or government parasite could like that? For, with increasing instead of decreasing wages but decreasing instead of increasing working hours, many people, instead of being rushed and miserable, could get brighter and wonder whether production should not be organized collectively for the supply of the people and the wage system not be replaced by a share system quite similar to that of stockholders established for the last four hundred years.

»Communism» has a bad reputation though – not only due to the defamation mentioned above but also due to the poverty and pettiness prevailing in the destroyed »Eastern Block«, which has claimed to pursue the establishment of communism and even claimed to pursue the goals of Marx and Lenin. This inherited poverty, which it did not share with its serious military opponents, existed indeed, but has it really been the result of its economic system, as schools and media have been hammering into our heads? If this had been the case, its satellite states would have had to get richer after their submission to the USA and the establishment of the capitalist system in the remains of the USSR. In reality, however, most of their inhabitants are driven into poverty, degraded to beggar status or ruthlessly exploited by putting them under extreme pressure at work, and they are all by far more patronized, kept in leading strings and lied at than ever was the case during normal times in any country of the Eastern Block.

Has, in contrast to the result of the Swiss referendum against the building of minarets, caused remarkably little fuss and bother – strange, don't you think? Now, one was the result of an act of democracy, meaning that it was automatically hated by all those who support rule of the people and oppose rule by the people (the Greek ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑ), the other an arbitrary state act (the state in question being Belgium) and therefore more agreeable to the same group of people, who are therefore allowed to write in newspapers instead of having to write flyers, from the outset. But the Swiss referendum, in addition to several less good motives, did have one good one, namely making a stand against the state fawning to and guaranteeing special treatment of Islam: which other religion could have allowed itself death orders against satirists, real murders of translators and also disobedient family members (“honour killings”) with no or hardly any punishment at all (as well as, for instance, impudently flaunting important planning permission when (otherwise) legally building a mosque in Berlin?)?! And didn't our newspapers, before the Taliban wriggled out of the clutches of their American foster fathers and fell into disfavour with them, for whose most abhorrent crimes of the stoning of women and enforced wearing of the veil, and arranged marriages for women, the marking of those Hindus remaining in the country in Star of David style, and the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, churn out one whining article, dripping with understanding, in their favour after another (cf. GEO 11/1997, p158ff., for instance), until their US rulers ordered them to change course abruptly? This kind of filth can definitely turn people against Islam, and any “understanding” is more deserved by anyone who may perhaps do too much in terms of resisting it. After all, it is our European and American forces of darkness who are using the indeed sinister Islam as a mere cardboard character, in order to clear out the achievements of enlightenment, liberalism and the workers' movement, and in particular the thought of a constitutional state and the priority of reason over habit (which can also cover, and indeed frequently already has covered, the mutilation of children and pogroms – but this is culture, isn't it?!). Considering these circumstances, isn't the Belgian Burqa ban, and the secretly planned EU-wide one, to be welcomed?

By no means. Because it is a base assault on individual freedom and therefore the starting point of all rights. We have that freedom and avail ourselves of it to say that we do not like Islam (or any religion in general). But accordingly, those who do must also have the freedom to voice – and demonstrate - their opposite opinion, in disagreement with ours. We do not like it, but have to put up with it (Latin: tolerare); otherwise we would not have the right to demand from them without restriction that they put up with ours (Latin: tolerare). Conversely, there can be no act of violence (or a call to violence) that could be covered by freedom of speech or demand even the slightest mitigating circumstance because of it. Furthermore, the ban on the Burqa can only affect Islamic individuals; so it should bring individuals who have had the misfortune to have been indoctrinated with this religion against those who have been indoctrinated with another or have had the rare fortune to have avoided being brainwashed in this respect as children. This, and the fact that the ban on the burqa is wrong for the reasons stated above and can trigger feelings of martyrdom among those actually or even potentially affected by it, can only cause jealousy and spite, and this is the main reason why the Belgian government has pressed ahead for France and the rest of the EU (and the idiotic “Initiative Pro-NRW”). The second reason for this violation of religious freedom (which is still very harmless in comparison to the persecution of Scientologists and Sannyasin) by EU organs without anyone referring to them as such this time is that people are in general intended to become accustomed to state organs destroying personal rights to self-determination.

For this reason we say:

No regulations on clothing, no ban on the burqa!

(The only valid regulations on clothing are either uniform code in service or technologically determined regulations such as a helmet on a building site or a ban on the burqa when driving a motor vehicle.)

There is one more hypocritical argument to be rebutted: are the very few women that wear burqas in this country not perhaps forced to wear them? Our counter question would be: who can force them to do so in public? Are there no police who would be duty bound to arrest any son or husband who might be violent? And as far as threats and coercion in private are concerned: there are other people in difficult situations who have to deal with this – think of the frequent - and serious - coercion to do overtime. If the state had to – and was also allowed to – sniff out any possible coercion that would be a worse evil than all these coercions put together. But it must not cover up those that are visible. That the argument presented above is hypocritical is demonstrated by the fact that the same state practically covers them up often enough: why must the most dishonourable of all thinkable murderers, the so-called “honour murderers” of their own weaker relatives, not have to serve at least twenty hard years in prison before being able to reckon with the mercy of deportation?! Why does our state (and every other one in the EU) behave in this way here while it has no inhibitions when it comes to sticking its nose in where it has no business to?! Of course the burqa, the enforced wearing of the veil etc. are symbols of the denial of the civil and sexual self-determination of women. This is why – in its extreme form, whose ban is currently being threatened in the EU – only a very small minority of women indoctrinated with Islam wear them, where they cannot be coerced into doing so by majority pressure. This minority are usually spiritually broken or seriously neurotic; if a law allows them to connect their inner compulsion with an external opponent, they will become incurable. We condemn the ban on the burqa for this reason alone. But the main reason remains the unshakeable precept of individual freedom and freedom of religion in general.

For this reason we say:

Freedom and equality for all religions, including the smallest and newest, and no preferential treatment for any of them! Unencumbered self-financing of religious communities instead of church tax, no money from the state for any of them!

(Because this is our hard-earned money – we do not belong to them and do not want to be disadvantaged because of them.)

Let everyone demonstrate by his clothing what he (and for idiots: “she” too, of course) wants: unreason and inhumanity must have a platform too! For then, if it encounters an environment of reason, it will disqualify itself and if it encounters one of unreason it will not be any worse than it.

Freedom of speech means to say to a man what he does not want to hear. – Meinungsfreiheit bedeutet, jemandem etwas sagen zu können, was er nicht hören will. George Orwell

Tolerance, once the essence and the backbone of the European Enlightenment movement, seems no longer to be »in«. On the contrary, it seems to vanish from Earth. It is not only the Islamic countries, since Khomeini’s rise to power, that, in our time, initiated openly denying the Tolerance principle and the corresponding state secularism that had been the key trait of any modern vs. medieval state; it is not only the USA that foster and protect Christian fundamentalist movements and ideologies, nor is it a speciality of the BJP struggling for a Hinduist revival. The truth is: intolerance, especially religious intolerance, is a global, worldwide tendency within the last decades. In spite of all praise of the »modern secular society«, tolerance is no longer modern. Life and death of religious leaders, e.g. the Roman Pope, meet more public attention than life and death (and even insights and achievements) of scientists and other serious people. But what is worst: the very idea of Tolerance seems to become extinct, only perversions of it survive, its meaning having been shifted to the contrary of its original sense. Even many atheists did not escape that decadence; some of them even straightforwardly are advocating intolerance against religions, provided those religions are small, weak and recent, whilst misinterpreting tolerance as something like shielding big and powerful religions from any pungent and effective criticism.

There was no such problem when the Enlightenment movement was blossoming and authentic. Voltaire, its undoubted leader, put it thus: »I do not at all share your opinion, and I will always oppose it; but I am ready to die for your right to freely express it.«

So tolerance did not mean something like politeness or abstinence from criticism; but it did and does mean abstinence from (and absence of) violence or similar unfairness in the discussion. It also does not mean excluding someone from the debate (»not giving a forum«, as modern newspeak calls that), but, on the contrary, it meant giving everybody a forum, but to nobody the freedom of evading the argumentation – under fair conditions, as always. »Forum« means literally »market«; and exactly that was meant by the Enlightenment movement and Voltaire himself: everybody may try to sell his goods on the market of opinions, nobody is excluded from it, and everybody has to pay the same fee for the same table, not the weak one a high to excessive fee, the strong one a low to symbolic fee; and nobody is urged to buy the goods. And furthermore, and of course: tolerance does not mean freedom to commit crimes, even if these crimes as lapidations, circumcisions, flagellations, etc. are inspired by religions; the very core of Enlightenment was and is the equality of all citizens before the law, and therefore their equal treatment by the state, especially when religion is concerned: no exemptions for big and old religions, no severity against small and new ones. For Voltaire and all his companions nothing was more self-evident. This was and is tolerance genuine.

Consequently, Voltaire and all his fellow fighters always – and very courageously – defended all religious minorities of their time and country, though, of course, they did not at all share their doctrines. These were the Quakers (whose community Voltaire visited in England), a very recent and heavily persecuted sect of that time, and especially the French Calvinists (= Huguenots) or, to say it more precisely, the tiny part of them that had survived Louis’ XIV holocaust-like persecutions that had made France lose more than 20 % of her population. But – what Voltaire could not know – the nefarious French Government of his time planned and secretly designed a second and final holocaust for the survivors by an extremely detestable method that sounds very modern: the surviving victims were to be falsely accused of invented crimes and then to be individually put to capital punishment. All this came to light after the French Revolution that did not only and firstly bring the authentic Human Rights to mankind, but also opened the secret archives of the state. So that infamous plan came to light resp. to the knowledge of mankind; it was Voltaire, the single man with no other weapon than his pen, who prevented it from being carried out, thus saving thousands of innocent people from cruel deaths.

For the sinister French Government had already finished its dress rehearsal for this detestable plan and killed a Calvinist citizen called JEAN CALAS by sentencing him to death by dismemberment on the ground of a false murder accusation. Jean Calas was cut into pieces, Voltaire could not help him personally; but he launched a long-term publicity campaign over most of Europe, finally forcing the French state apparatus to rehabilitate Jean Calas. By this – and only by this – the French mock trials were stopped immediately after beginning, and tens of thousands of French Calvinists were saved from bloody extinction; their descendants are still to be found, other than those of most European Jews, and make up about 3 % of today’s French population.

Where do we find today’s atheists defending today’s Quakers and other sects in trouble, that are discriminated by governments and denigrated by the media, where are today’s advocates of Tolerance in favour of Scientologists, Neo-sanyassins or Raëlists, to name but a few? Why do today’s freethinkers concede freedom of thought (and organisation) only to themselves and to their own powerful enemies, who do not need their help or that of anybody else, denying it to those who really need it? Why are Voltaire’s spiritual descendants, as modern atheists might call themselves or claim to be, meanwhile that unworthy that they do not too seldom help the big churches to hound their recent competitors instead of defending them as Voltaire did, why do they advocate intolerance against the weak and practise tolerance against the strong and really dangerous?

Of course, this decomposition of a once brilliant, if not venerable, string of thought and action is rooted ultimately in historical and social facts and changes. But directly those hidden causes are mirrored by decomposition and perversion of the tolerance concept itself. For understanding this we have to look back to the origins.

Why did Voltaire and all his fellow fighters from d’Alembert to d’Holbach defend all sects of their time without any restriction against slander and persecution, against Church and State? Did they secretly share their opinions and doctrines? Were they simply not radical enough, because really radical atheists will always help the Pope and his allies against independent competitors?

The true reason, of course, for Voltaire’s and his fellow fighters’ behaviour is very simple: they wanted to win, and they were sure they were right. They expected – and they were right with that – that in a discussion fenced off from violence, inequality and dirty tricks – and nothing else than such a discussion tolerance does mean, at least substantially – there will be the highest probability that the side that is right will win. The representatives (and carriers) of religion share this opinion, and that is why they do not appreciate tolerance. For they know either very well or deep in their heart that they are not right and therefore, when confronted with reason, but cut off from violence (a state that closely to inevitably will be the result of tolerance), they will lose. And even if a religion is not confronted with reason, but with another religion, under the condition of tolerance the result will be rather similar. Religions then will soon appear as their mutual parodies, and therefore, in the long run, one of them will destroy the other. That is why the representatives of Enlightenment were of the opinion that if religions do exist, there can not be enough of them (just as imperialists think that there cannot be enough »independent« states in the world outside their own state that, of course, should remain as big as possible).

Why were Voltaire and his companions so sure that they were right? Because they fought for civil instead of feudal rule, and feudalism was not only closely linked and interwoven with religion, but also all rational arguments spoke in favour of civil rule, whilst feudal rule could not be successfully defended rationally. But after civil rule and the original Human Rights once were established by the French Revolution, it soon became clear that the new social system that just as the toppled one made a tiny class of people rich, mainly by inheriting resp. heritage, and left the majority of the people poor and dependent, was not so easily and entirely to be defended by reason as expected, and, therefore, the abolished privileges of religion were restored, maybe partly, whilst the distance between the new – and normally rich – carriers of civil rule and their own anti-feudal and anti-religious allies, the peasants and the industrial workers whose numbers steadily increased, grew from year to year, especially after the workers’ movement gained ground and shape, and its members also learnt to argue rationally. The new rulers thus lost their Reason monopoly. And consequently their fervour for tolerance cooled down.

As an epistemological consequence, the meaning of the word »tolerance« became twisted. It no longer meant what the Enlightenment had based its programme upon, but was watered down to something like »indifference« – or, even worse, »Sarva Dharma Samabhaava« –, in fact, the opposite of its original meaning. For what purpose should somebody, e.g. Voltaire, die as a martyr for liberty of speech by fencing off violence from discussion, when people were encouraged to be indifferent to the result of that discussion?

As early as in Freud’s times this perversion had already broadly evolved, as his following complaint shows:

»What further claims do you make in the name of tolerance? That once someone has uttered an opinion, which we regard as completely false, we should say to him: ›Thank you very much for having given voice to this contradiction. You are guarding us against the danger of complacency and giving us the opportunity in showing the Americans that we are really as »broadminded« as they always wish. To be sure we do not believe a word what you are saying, but that makes no difference. Probably you are just as right as we are. After all, who can possibly know who is right? In spite of our antagonism, pray allow us to represent your point of view in our publication. We hope that you will be kind enough in exchange to find a place for our view which you deny.‹ In the future, when the misuse of Einstein’s relativity has been entirely achieved, this will obviously become the regular custom in scientific affairs. For the moment, it is true, we have not gone quite so far. We restrict ourselves, in the old fashion, to putting forward only our own convictions, we expose ourselves to the risk of error because it cannot be guarded against, and we reject what is in contradiction to us. We have made plentiful use in psychoanalysis of the right to change our opinions if we think we have found something better« (SE XXII 144).

Some time later the ideological function of empiriocriticism as a doctrinal consequence of that twisted »tolerance« became even clearer to him (though he somewhat misleadingly does call empiriocriticism »anarchism«):

»The first of these Weltanschauungen is as it were a counterpart to political anarchism, and is perhaps a derivative of it. There have certainly been intellectual nihilists of this kind in the past, but just now the relativity theory of modern physics seems to have gone to their head. They start out from science, indeed, but they contrive to force it into self-abrogation, into suicide; they set it the task of getting itself out of the way by refuting its own claims. One often has an impression in this connection that this nihilism is only a temporary attitude which is to be retained until this task has been performed. Once science has been disposed of, the space vacated maybe filled by some kind of mysticism or, indeed, by the old religious Weltanschauung. According to the anarchist theory there is no such thing as truth, no assured knowledge of the external world. What we give out as being scientific truth is only the product of our own needs as they are bound to find utterance under changing external conditions: once again, they are illusion. Fundamentally, we find only what we need and see only what we want to see. We have no other possibility. Since the criterion of truth – correspondence with the external world – is absent, it is entirely a matter of indifference what opinions we adopt. All of them are equally true and equally false. And no one has a right to accuse anyone else of errors.

A person of epistemological bent might find it tempting to follow the paths – the sophistries – by which the anarchists succeed in enticing such conclusions from science. No doubt we should come upon situations similar to those derived from the familiar paradox of the Cretan who says that all Cretans are liars. But I have neither the desire nor the capacity for going into this more deeply. All I can say is that the anarchist theory sounds wonderfully superior so long as it relates to opinions about abstract things: it breaks down with its first step into practical life. Now the actions of men are governed by their opinions, their knowledge; and it is the same scientific spirit that speculates about the structure of atoms or the origin of man and that plans the construction of a bridge capable of bearing a load. If what we believe were really a matter of indifference, if there were no such thing as knowledge distinguished among our opinions by corresponding to reality, we might build bridges just as well out of cardboard as out of stone, we might inject our patients with a decagram of morphine instead of a centigram, and might use tear-gas as a narcotic instead of ether. But even the intellectual anarchists would violently repudiate such practical applications of their theory« (SE XXII 175).

And in more recent times, when »Tolerance« was watered down to meaning »accepting anything irrational when there is power behind it«, Herbert Marcuse stated – in his famous essay »Repressive Tolerance« – that this tolerance ideology (vs. the original substance of the word, i.e. tolerance) had become a means of repression (after having started as a non-ideological means of liberation).

Modern atheists, in our time of Reason’s decay and Religion’s rise to new power, should be aware of this long journey of the once so noble notion of tolerance to its very counterpart in meaning and function. To avoid becoming the useful idiots of their natural enemies, atheists – or freethinkers or whatsoever they prefer to be called – should do everything to return to their Voltairean roots.

Dr. Fritz Erik Hoevels (Psych.), Germany

Classical psychoanalysis as well as modern academic psychology perfectly solved the mystery of religion – how it came into being, why it is believed, and how it works. Most recent brain research results that can demonstrate the effects of religious tools on the mind (as bells, candles, incense, Pavlovian linking of priests’ gestures with believers’ movements and so on) remain rather trivial in spite of their elaborate and expensive technology; of far greater interest is the older research of Leon Festinger, the experimentally proven theory of Cognitive Dissonance Reduction (= CDR). The CDR is probably most impressively demonstrated by the famous »two workers’ groups’ experiment« which was designed and performed the first time by Dr. Leon Festinger and amazes by its surprising results:

Two groups of workers without any knowledge of their each other’s existence had to do the same kind of work: the most boring and nasty work you can imagine. But there was one decisive difference: group A was paid very well, whereas group B received a miserable salary. In the end, these groups had to answer questionnaires about their satisfaction with their work. According to Festinger’s theory, which group will be more content with this awful and tiresome work? – Of course the miserably paid one; and exactly that did and always will happen. Why?

The CDR theory gives us the key to the solution. If you have two perceptions that contradict each other, you will experience a dissonance. This dissonance will make you feel uncomfortable. Therefore, you would like to reduce this feeling of uneasiness. As an attempt to reduce the unpleasant dissonance, that perception will be wiped out which you can more easily wipe out.

Now consider our experiment again. In group A you have two perceptions that fit together well: you do an unpleasant job, but it is paid well, which means a compensation. So no cognitive dissonance needs to be reduced, consequently your perception that you are doing an unpleasant job remains untouched and unchanged. Compare this with the other group B conditions: they cannot evade from general uneasiness, because there is no compensation to perceive. Out of their two perceptions – doing an unpleasant job and being miserably paid – they will in consequence change the first one of them, because it is easier to alter a subjective feeling (here: the feeling of discomfort whilst working) than the perception of a number (the salary in figures is well-known to everybody and fixed in every mind). That is why the miserably paid group is more »content« with their work than the well-paid one, and in this mechanism you will also notice the central secret of religion.

The CDR theory itself is substantially not much more than a reduced theory of repression sensu Freud. This is of special interest if you consider the effects of a strong vs. a weak sender which is also described within the theory of Cognitive Dissonance Reduction: it has repeatedly been proven by experiment that you are far more inclined to believe facts, but also lies, if spread by a strong sender than if spread by a weak sender. But this is not all: lies that are spread by a strong sender are more easily believed the bigger and the more impudent they are. For you feel a strong dissonance (and thus uneasiness) whilst perceiving a sender as a strong one (e.g. your father as an honest to wonderful man, the big newspaper as serious to omniscient, the priest as venerable to unfailing) and perceiving the same as being a despicable villain (because of its resp. his silly to cynical lies). Compared to this, there is more consonance in the perception that someone habitually might be great, but is telling just now a little or even medium-sized lie – but never a big one! Thus, if he really needs to be believed, he sternly must spread bland and big lies. This is because of the CDR process described above, thus also revealing the secret of power.

Transferred to our question why religion needs and keeps believers, the insights of the CDR theory also reveal the solution of the question: why do people believe (or at least seem to believe) religious stuff? The famous Early Father Tertullianus (~ 200 A.C.E.) already knew the answer: »Credo quia absurdum« – I believe because it is absurd (remember: no compensation! – not: although it is absurd). But considering the idea and origin of gods, their substance and emergence, their shape and their appearance, we still grope in the dark; and Festinger cannot help us. – But psychoanalysis can, because it is aware of the necessity to explain substance, even psychic substance, not only psychic mechanisms.

»Wundt informs us, then, that taboo is an expression and derivative of the belief of primitive peoples in ›demonic‹ power. Later, he tells us, it freed itself from this root and remained a power simply because it was a power – from a kind of mental conservatism. And thereafter it itself became the root of our moral precepts and of our laws. Though the first of these assertions may provoke little contradiction, I believe I shall be expressing the thoughts of many readers when I say that Wundt’s explanation comes as something of a disappointment. This is surely not tracing back the concept of taboo to its sources or revealing its earliest roots. Neither fear nor demons can be regarded by psychology as ›earliest‹ things, impervious to any attempt at discovering their antecedents. It would be another matter if demons really existed. But we know that, like gods, they are creations of the human mind: they were made by something and out of something« (SE XIII 24).

The most important insight into religion’s origin and mechanism is disclosed by the Freudian theory, not so much by Freud’s famous but widely invalidated pre-historical speculations than by his findings about infantile experience and its removal from consciousness by fear, mainly by the fear of retaliation (by something like a preventive stroke of the stronger one, i.e. mainly the parent of the same sex).

Gods are found to be nothing but the infantile images of the parents, unconsciously stored in the individual’s mind and shaped and streamlined by history and society. This can be demonstrated for example by the notorious seats of all gods: every god begins his career on a mountain (e.g. Sinai, Kailash, Olympus, etc.), later moving to the sky: this is exactly the child’s perspective when confronted with its parents (and, of course, other adults, but those are normally of minor emotional importance).

The unconscious contents which you will never know by intentionally remembering events of your childhood (but that still do work very effectively on your mind) are mainly acquired during childhood by fear, especially by fear of your by far overestimated parents. But why does this fear work so persistently, so stubbornly, and emotionally involving with long-lasting intimidating effects on man’s mind?

There are so many unpleasant things little children can happen to experience. Most of these unpleasant experiences will stem from sexual desire, as the family is not a very suitable place to develop these desires: the young boy develops sexual desires towards his mother, and therefore he feels rivalry towards his father (of course, the same but reversed desires are experienced by the young girl, too, but these developments are of less importance due to the historical circumstances and further development). As the father is regarded as an obstacle, the boy wishes the father to be dead and away. Because children think that the adults can read their minds and know their most secret feelings, the young boy fears the retaliation or the preventive stroke of the father. These fearful desires are therefore suppressed and stored unconsciously but still work very effectively on one’s mind (Oedipus Complex). That is why religious stories are:

1. always mirroring something like an idealized family represented by divine figures. These divine figures usually have very humane traits: there is hustle and bustle, tiff, quarrel, love and hatred in the sky – the situations everybody is literally familiar with in his childhood

2. full of sexual fantasies. Evidence you can easily find e.g. in the Ganesh myth, in which little Ganesh is his mother’s Parvati’s doorkeeper whilst she is bathing in the bathroom and beheaded by his father Shiva whom he firmly refused entry. Even more explicitly this can be observed in the story of Jesus within the Christian mythology: the mysterious, doubtful and otherwise not understandable guilt of Jesus for which he had to be killed, and thus by his crucifixion the rest of mankind is relieved from their guilt, is nothing but the unconscious feeling of guilt for the desires mentioned above. The proof is given by his mother Mary who is a virgin – therefore there is no rival to be feared, the father – represented by old, withered, and impotent Joseph – being virtually castrated. Because of this unconscious, symbolically distorted and disguised fulfilment of the infantile desires Jesus has to die, and that is where this strange feeling of guilt finally stems from. This feeling of guilt is substantially infantile, but it is exploited by and makes up the substance of every religion.

Of course, these truths are not very amusing to us, as we do not appreciate these unconscious contents. But that does not prevent them from existing. If you face reality, you can sharpen the weapons against religion. Just as fighting diseases, you can only fight what you have understood.

Finally, it must be stressed that religion could never become powerful, if not organized. For this reason, one should also understand its social and historical origins and backgrounds. Or, to say it in Sigmund Freud’s words:

»Since I am used to being misunderstood, I think it is worth while to insist explicitly that the derivations, which I have proposed in these pages, do not in the least overlook of the phenomena under review. All that they claim is to have added a new factor to the sources, known or still unknown, of religion, morality and society – a factor based on a consideration of the implications of psychoanalysis. I must leave to others the task of synthesizing the explanation into a unity. It does, however, follow from the nature of the new contribution that it could not play any other than a central part in such a synthesis, even though powerful emotional resistances might have to be overcome before its great importance was recognized« (SE XIII 157, note 2).

In the study ›Are atheists more depressed than religious people?‹ by Prof. Buggle and Nohe (Univ. Freiburg i. Br.), the connection between religiousness and inclination to neurosis is demonstrated: two extreme groups are compared with each other: strictly religious people on the one hand vs. determined atheists on the other. These two extreme groups were compared with »slightly« and »moderately« religious people. The experimental persons were measured in their degree of depression: what Prof. Buggle found out contradicts the widely spread idea of atheists being more inclined to depression than religious people. But all those studies that try to achieve this result in favour of religion, are, without any exception, vitiated by one fundamental methodological mistake: they only compare staunch believers to moderately or vaguely religious people, not, as required, to their counterparts. In fact, Buggle & Nohe, by a more scientific and valid approach, found out something that is noteworthy: slightly religious people were the most depressed ones, followed by moderately religious people. But far less depressed were strictly religious people, being topped only by the determined atheists, who seem to be the happiest group among all the experimental groups. These positive results for strictly religious people on the one hand and determined atheists on the other hand can be explained if you consider that they took side for or against religion and do not fall uncomfortably between two stools like slightly/moderately religious people do. It would be more than interesting to find out if similar results will be achieved in a culturally different society like the Indian one as well.

Simone Reißner, B. A. (Psych.), Germany

There are not many amongst the more than about one and half a million species of animals and plants properly identified to this very day the evolution of which is as well-known to science as that of our own one, Homo sapiens. The reasons for this are firstly that by its bones and rather big size it is able to leave rather well-preserved fossils, secondly, that it evolved quite recently, and therefore left comparatively little time to erosion and similar processes to destroy these fossils or bury them in too deep layers, and thirdly, that we and thus our scientific apparatus are more interested in discovering its evolutionary history, simply because we belong to this species ourselves.

Why, then, should a rationalist organisation or periodical be especially keen on learning much about this matter that is known since long to science by many and increasingly many details that may interest mainly specialists? The reason for this is simple: because the understanding of this merely natural and long-term historical process is and continues to be obscured by religious mythology and a heap of ideologies stemming from it.

As the translator (and updater) of the probably most comprehensive and perhaps simply best scientific book on that subject, Robert Foley’s ›Humans before Humanity‹ (German: ›Menschen vor Homo sapiens‹, Sigmaringen 2000), I first had the opportunity of realising the effects of tight religious organisation on the spreading and the mere existence of scientific knowledge of that kind: because of that Cambridge standard work existed already not only the English original version, but also an Italian, a Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and even a Swedish version – Sweden having just eight millions of inhabitants, and crushed and defeated former Soviet Russia being very poor – but why were there no French and especially German translations, whilst these two nations had some scientific reputation to conserve and could even boast of an exceptionally glorious, though fading, scientific past? The answer was: because their governments and publishing houses after WW II got into the grip of the Catholic Church (and, in my country, also their Lutheran junior partners) more than those of any other major country in the world. That was why, after all, only a comparatively tiny publishing house was willing to publish Foley’s international standard work at all; otherwise the German speaking countries – Germany, Austria, and most of Switzerland – had been cut off from the international level of paleoanthropological knowledge (and such is France still to this very day), at least as far as the educated, but not professional public is concerned.

So, after all, Foley’s book did appear in German language, too, though rather late, and sold very well – but only for two or three months, because then the publishing house by other reasons went bankrupt and was immediately bought by some cover organisation of the Catholic Church, as already nearly all major book publishing houses have been in Germany. And, of course, it never reached the market again.

What is it, besides offending crude and archaic myth belief, that might make the big, i.e. Hitler Concordat churches hostile to the spreading of paleoanthropological knowledge? It is the insight into the entire lack of mysteries and metaphysical aspects in the fundamentally natural process that led from ape to human. That there is but a gradual difference between the mind of ape and human might be known to all educated people since Jane Goodall’s path-breaking research; but how this difference really did evolve still let room to much flimsy speculation and metaphysical distortion that is either intended or fated to keep superstition alive.

Of course, I cannot present here the whole of recent paleoanthropological research; he who wants to know the details inevitably must turn to Foley’s book itself (that happily is available in its original edition). But I want to stress at least some insights that might deserve more attention than they normally get:

1. The depart of human ancestry from the next-related ape-species whose other offspring became today’s chimps and bonobos began not much more than five millions of years ago in the African »rift valley«, i.e. parts of today’s south Ethiopia-Kenya-Tanzania. Persistent drought that made trees rare and forests decline played an important part in that process, favouring apes that could move more easily on the ground than others. The swinging from branch to branch had prepared them for bipedism that began by a way of locomotion we still can observe in some gibbons (who are closely related to proper apes).

2. It was thought for a long time that once the hands were freed for elaborate work by upright walking, the path to intelligence and even culture was free from all obstacles, the well-known result something like inevitable. Great thinkers from Anaxagoras to Engels shared this opinion. But it is not true; much of the evolutionary momentum still remained left to chance. This may be demonstrated by at least two facts:

a.) About 8 millions of years ago, there lived a biped monkey (not ape!) species on an island that later was to become Tuscany, i.e. some part of today’s central Italy. This gibbon-like species, Oreopithecus bambolii, lived long before the first true ape had definitely left the trees and walked on the ground on its two feet. In spite of this seeming »advance«, it became extinct quite quickly after its island became connected with the mainland by geological change and consequently was invaded by big predators that ate all bipedists that »incautiously« had left their trees. As Oreopithecus existed a reasonable time, this obscure outcome should be considered as more than a premature »accident« on the road of evolution.

b.) As soon as the human branch had split off from its simian or, more precisely, pre-chimp origin, its members forming the genus Australopithecus split again into one secondary branch that developed a stronger and stronger chewing gear: jaws, teeth, and especially muscles, the fixation of which was most efficiently positioned at the crista of the skull, just like in recent gorillas (who, keep that in mind, did not yet exist in their present form), thus stopping any evolution of a bigger brain, but giving more and more perfection to chewing and crushing hard-shelled nuts and tough roots, an evolution that meant eternal condemnation to vegetarianism and, by that, the final obstacle to brain increase. This secondary branch, which itself by geographical isolation and other reasons evolved into several species, makes up the subgenus of »megadonts«, meaning »big teeth apes«.

The other secondary branch of Australopithecus remained and became increasingly able to consume a wider range of food and, what is most interesting to us, developed some unprecedented level of intelligence. Being enabled to better social coordination, they competed with their other Australopithecus relatives for food and habitat and finally either ate them or made them starve.

This other secondary branch the only survivors of which we are ourselves is called the genus or, more precisely, subgenus Homo. This subgenus also was split into several species, seven to eight of which are paleontologically known; all of them became extinct except one, the latest or second latest one we all belong to, Homo sapiens (hope we deserve that name). It is more than probable that no other Homo species survives among us by ancestry; our own ancestors very probably ate them all or made them starve, but only exceptionally had sexual intercourse with them, though never successfully, at least not in the long run, just as lions and tigers the skeletons of which also do not show more difference than those of the most closely related Homo (sub)genus species. But how did this Homo genus develop unprecedented intelligence, doing so within a constant evolutionary trend (so-called ESS, meaning »evolutionary stable strategy«)?

The direct anatomical means of that trend was something like a slight neotenia; for the proportions of a chimp or bonobo infant, especially its head-body ratio, are far more similar to those of a human adult than to a chimp adult. This will roughly mean that its head is bigger and thus might contain more brain. But brain (or any other neuronal tissue) is more »expensive« than any other body tissue; its carrier needs more high-caloric food than another of the same weight. So, parallel to this slight neotenia, Homo and especially Homo sapiens left gorilla-like vegetarianism. You might say – cum grano salis – that the decisive part of the Homo sapiens evolution started as an anti-Jainist movement. Even in very recent times it could be observed that the brains of Pueblo Red Indians – meaning North American Red Indians living on a higher cultural, i.e. agricultural level than their other North American relatives – constantly had a lower brain weight than those on the lowest cultural level, but feeding mainly on salmon and deer, whilst the Pueblo agriculturalists mainly fed on corn and other vegetable stuff. Also European Cro-Magnon humans at least had a slightly bigger skull than their modern descendants, though, of course, we cannot get their exact brain weight. But apart from their unknown intelligence level that surely was at least not lower than ours, their skeletons reveal their normally admirable health status. They lived on nearly the same diet as the said Northwest American Red Indians of (nearly) our times.

Anyway, the question remains: why did the Homo genus and especially the Homo sapiens species evolve their intelligence? For this costly evolution does not, as is often thought, straightforwardly lead to interspecific competition superiority. In that case it were less rare. In fact, quite often a decrease of lifespan, a shrinking of neuronal and other equipment as in many insects or mice will increase the biological success, i.e. the percentage a species will obtain of the whole of bio-mass on Earth or the lineage of an individual of the whole of the individuals of its species. To say it in Sigmund Freud’s words: »(…) the intention that man should be ›happy‹ is not included in the plan of ›Creation‹«[1] (SE XXI 76). Or, to say it in the language of the wisest but least successful religions as Mandaism and Manichaeism: the world is rather Satan’s than God’s creation. Free-thinkers will appreciate that realistic metaphor which challenges human science and technology to fight »Satan’s« heritage, but churches and any major religions – except perhaps Buddhism – will not. Also this insight will explain some part of religious hostility to science, especially biological science.

Now let us apply biological science to our question again. Animals living on islands or being big are less menaced by predators than others; consequently, they need to spend less of their potential to escape them, but being freed of that necessity they inevitably will invest that potential left to their disposal in competing with each other of their species, i.e. in infraspecific competition. A great amount of this competitive energy will end up in sexual activity that diminishes the chances of competitors; that is why island bird species have the most elaborate mating rituals of any birds, island reptiles the highest copulation activity of all reptiles, and big mammals, especially carnivores, just both of that. When their social coherence gives them an even greater protection against predators, these tendencies will increase – their lifespan being extended (because of infraspecific competition – we observe the same tendency in insular organisms of any kind), their progeny less, but better protected (for the same reason), their infraspecific competition increased on any level.

Exactly that happened in humans of any species. Increase of intelligence (and therefore complexity) was one means of that process; costly as it was, only a big and social species could »afford« it. But why is intelligence (of which tool using and tool making is just a side effect gaining its power only on a very late and cultural level) a means of mere infraspecific competition, including even sexual competition?

To cut a long story short: intelligence gives great advantages in individually cooperating with other individuals of the same sex in struggles for a higher rank; these cooperations are regularly observed in ape societies. They are the key to language’s coming into existence, because language will largely contribute to their efficiency. But high rank will dramatically increase the sexual attractivity of its bearers, especially males’ attractivity to females; we might observe this phenomenon even today in human societies. Any mechanism that by some trait arouses sexual attractivity and therefore increases the chance of spreading it directly, such as long feather tails in peacocks or lyre-birds, provided this trait has a hereditary base (i.e. genes), will rapidly evolve in a dramatic fashion. Exactly that happened to the human brain and its capacity, because by the social means just described intelligence leads by far more than mere strength to high rank in the group and consequently to the widest access of males to females. The results of that dramatic process are we ourselves.

But this was not the aim of evolution, simply because evolution has no aim. If the Homo branch had not been split off from the basic Australopithecus branch that in some respect – the chewing apparatus – had been more evolved than the Homo branch, intelligence evolution in spite of all socio-sexual mechanisms had been stopped by simple but compulsive ecological reasons connected with tool-less nut cracking. And the whole other Australopithecus genus might well have gone a similar way as Oreopithecus already did, becoming extinct before ever reaching self-consciousness that gained us the proud title of sapiens.

So we got our marvellous brain without any intrinsic aim or god by bare good luck. This brain can think free or in bondage, rationally as well as foolishly, boldly as well as cowardly. Let us use it to become safer and happier than we are by nature.