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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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'. .

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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