Faith or Gullibility?

About the Book

"Faith or Gullibility?" was originally written in answer to the author's many friends who asked why he was no longer attending church but, as time passed and his studies revealed more and more anomalies in religious beliefs around the world, it became very obvious that religious deception was rampant in all doctrines. This was nowhere more obvious that in the political environments in which those doctrines were originally conceived where necessity demanded some sort of unified stance by different groups of people. Much more than today, where technology can provide answers, in past centuries, naturally gifted leaders needed convincing stories to persuade the masses to act in harmony to achieve the best outcomes and so those people were, in that environment, lauded as "prophets" and even credited with what became known as "divine inspiration" although, in actual fact, their leading was nothing more than intelligent use of their own intellects. Nowhere was this more evident than in cases where their prophesies directly contradicted the laws of physics under the name of "miracles." A principal problem with this was that, when those so-called prophets expounded their ideas, scientific knowledge was almost non-existent so that rank-and-file people readily accepted them and passed them down from generation to generation - often by word-of-mouth because illiteracy was far more prevalent that it is in modern developed countries. However, with increased knowledge, human wisdom (the sagacious application of knowledge) has increased exponentially beyond all reckoning amongst open-minded people of all religions to the point where it is no longer possible to justify those outdated beliefs when they are rationalised against the immutable laws of physics. This is particularly so when one considers that the entire universe (and, in fact, many universes) were all "made" without a single physical law being broken. As studies become more and more logical, it become more and more apparent that the main reason for religious beliefs (whatever they may be) is insecurity where human nature cannot accept that life is a finite thing. People cling tenaciously to any doctrine that promises any sort of immortality whether it makes any sense or not and so the purpose of this book increasingly became changed from a mere answer to personal questions to an in-depth study of religious mythology and deception.

About the Author

David Rex Holt was born into a nominally Christian home in England in 1942 and attended grammar school where he attained O level school certificate. In the standard Mensa test he was rated at IQ 161. In 1968 he was transferred by his employer, Shand Kydd Wallpapers, to New Zealand where he eventually opened a photographic studio specialising in wedding and portrait photography and attained an associateship of the Photographic Society Of NZ and a fellowship of the Hawkes Bay Professional Photographers Institute. With the advent of digital photography in the 1990s, David realised that re-equipping his studio at his age was inadvisable and so he moved to Queensland where he attended Griffith University as a mature-age student, attaining bachelors degrees in Screen Production and Spanish. David's spiritual research at this time led him to the Seventh day Adventist Church because that was the truest to biblical teaching. However, his ongoing studies of world belief systems brought him to a realisation that the only bases for the numerous doctrines were ancient legends, traditions and folk-stories (of which the Bible was just one) through which each religion claimed that it presented truth and all others were, therefore, lying. This led to a very in-depth study of leading world religions and denominations a result of which was the further realisation that, in actual fact none of them were right especially when related to the immutable laws of physics. However, rather than adopt an atheist stance, David rationalised in his own mind that the universe as we know it had to have some sort of conception as opposed to simple random occurrance. Technically, this makes David a Deist in principle - although he doesn't wear that definition as a badge and readily admits that, whilst he believes in a superior creative entity, he has no idea who or what that entity might be or have been.