I should confess that as a young boy I had a good deal of skepticism for much of what adults told me to think, to believe. I have stated this a few times already, since 2002 when I launched my media business, so you will perhaps not be surprised to see me state it once again. To say that it was skepticism is not entirely true, I held most of what adults told me in contempt, total contempt.

I was unusual, of course. I do not remember anyone else sharing this skepticism/contempt. Not among my buddies, the other youngsters I was playing with. Most of them were decent boys, but they were kind of dumb, if I'm honest. Totally credulous. Seriously credulous. I looked at the world as a big mystery, as a puzzle to be solved. I started getting into studying mammals at a very young age, very young. Perhaps at 8 years old. One thing that struck me was the religious worship I saw all around me. Churches were everywhere, and they usually had a lot of land. Big parking lots. And the building structures were very sophisticated, very expensive construction.

If I'm totally honest – and I am usually totally honest – I will say that I soon realized and understood that it was a business, a lucrative business. I'm guessing that I was about 10 years old. But it was no ordinary business, it was very lucrative, as I've said, and it seemed a total scam. I was amazed. It was a huge business. I began to ask myself the natural question: what biological or physiological function did this serve?

I knew it had to serve some basic but powerful function. The beliefs you were expected to accept as true were mostly ridiculous, absurd nonsense. And I thought it was hilarious that the “priests” were depicted as close to God. That they wore gowns and funny hats. That they struck me as odd, as perhaps [or probably] homosexuals. I was usually laughing, sometimes so much that I was viewed as something of a subversive. It was seen as dangerous that I did not unquestioningly accept all the religious belief gibberish. And it was gibberish.

That is not to say that some of the message was intelligent. It was not stupid. The Church preached good behavior, good morals, and that you would go to Hell if you sinned or misbehaved. Hell was a big deal. They drummed up a lot of fear of Hell. I remember going to the Confessional Booth a few times. You did not see the Priest. It was a little booth. You would confess your sins, and ask for forgiveness. I kind of went along with this nonsense – for a short while. My mother would get upset at me if I did not go along, and I did not really want to displease her. But I do remember telling her at some point the truth of what I thought of the enterprise. She was pretty upset, but I could tell that she was more or less persuaded that I was right. She was a very intelligent woman. I was about 13 when this took place – the confrontation over the validity of this religious belief business. My father clearly agreed with me, my father and I have a lot in common.

I ended up going to a Jesuit University, Santa Clara University. The only reason I went to SCU is because my grade point average at Saratoga High School was something like a C-. I hated school and I hardly even attended classes. I was mostly absent. The school authorities threatened to suspend me but I ignored their threats and I turned out to be justified in ignoring them – they allowed me to graduate after the standard 4 years. I imagine they knew I was one of the smartest kids in my high school class of some 475 students. Stanford University, Harvard University, MIT, UC Berkeley etc would have never admitted me. Maybe San Jose State University would have admitted me, but I wanted to go to a private school.

So I was exposed to students who for the most part had some religious belief. Catholicism. I met a number of Jesuits, and had long conversations with them. We would discuss most everything. Overall they seemed pretty intelligent. I was required to take one year of “religious studies courses” in order for me to get my Bachelor of Science.

What I am now going to tell you is going to be shocking. The title of this article has alerted you to my thesis or theory. How much confidence do I have in this theory? I have to admit that I have a high degree of confidence that my theory is correct.

The physiological/biological function of religious belief [or call it spirituality] in the human brain is to drive juvenile mammal brain development.

Does this mean there is no God? Certainly it does. The Jewish religion, the Muslim faith, the Christian faith – they are all, at their core, simply businesses. I published in September 2012 an article on the four businesses which power the world. I also published a little later a part two, making some elaborations on my treatise. No question that I'm right. This is in World Affairs Monthly.

Now whether this settles the debate as to the origin of the universe and life – it obviously does not! The God peddlers do assert a lot of “truths” about the nature of life etc. This is charitably called “mysticism” and “spirituality.” Joseph John Campbell (1904-1987) became something of a celebrity for advocating this kind of argument. New Age Spirituality. His book The Hero with a Thousand Faces became a sensation. “Follow your bliss.” That was his mantra. It resonated widely. Religious beliefs are always appearing, in myriad forms and variations.

It is all a sophisticated con. I'm sure Donald Trump agrees with me.

You are either a scientist as I am, or you are a peddler of mysticism and religious belief. I had the feeling that Pope Francis called it quits physically and died recently because he knew I would be successful at finishing off the big business of religion. Hey, it's just an intuition. He was a Jesuit, and he was aware of my influence and “power” etc. The Catholic Church is in serious decline. Most of the Catholic churchgoers are really old ladies in Europe, and low IQ mestizos in Mexico, Central America, and South America. There are apparently some 300 million Bantu in Africa who have been suckered into believing the Catholic dogma. That's a lot. The Bantu IQ is not very high, I'm talking the average. It might be 70 or so.

So with this article I have finished off the big business of religions. At least, this is what I sense. In fact, it might not take very long for this to happen. Religions all over the world are in sharp decline. What's going to replace them? Nothing. The scientific enterprise. Knowledge. Information. The truth. The quest for knowledge, the investigation of reality, how the world works.

I'm not saying that most hominids around the world will readily abandon their religious faiths. All that we will see happen is skepticism will kick in, and then dominate. Low IQ is a principal factor in religious belief. Peasants have historically been the main victims of the scam. I would argue that the most interesting and certainly most egregious illustration of the religion scam is the creation and sponsorship of the state of Israel. Ashkenazi Jews are so far the most skilled at the religious belief scam. They manage to convince most everyone that they have the right to kill anyone they want to kill – all because of their religious dogma. It's amazing!

This has been the case in most of history, but the Ashkenazi Jews have clearly excelled at the religion con job. The Wailing Wall in Jerusalem is an old Roman wall, in a military outpost. Nothing to do with religious worship. “The Wandering Jew” they were called in Europe for centuries, presumably because after their “religious scams” got tiresome they were compelled to "move on" and relocate to neighboring realms and nations.

In summary, to get guidance in making your way through the early years of hominid life, you need some foundation of belief. You have to have some guideposts. If you cannot come up with these guideposts yourself, then you will adopt whatever is out there. And there are a multitude of options, that's for sure. Hilarious.

By the way, how did I come to write this article now? It's a good question. Actually, my friend Glen Elliott MD PhD put me in touch with Robert Hendren DO, a retired professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. Hendren told me about a book that he was writing. He sent me the book proposal. I have published down below the Overview of this proposal. I've also published some text messages that I sent to him. When I read the book proposal I immediately realized what function religious belief served in the mammal brain. In the juvenile mammal brain. In the developing mammal brain.

So what about the origin of life? The meaning of life? The origin of the universe? We have yet to gain an understanding of these issues, obviously. Before I die I would like to see if I can come up with some plausible answers to these questions. It's going to be difficult, obviously. What's clear is the current beliefs are utter nonsense, and I'm including the answers offered by science. Perhaps they are a little better, maybe quite a lot better. But they still fall far short. We have a lot of work to do.

[June 10, 2025: This evening I was utterly astonished to see some Chat GPT analysis and commentary on this article I recently published. 2 days after! Artificial Intelligence is certainly impressive. I will be publishing soon an article at informationtechcenter.com on AI or artificial intelligence. I have been delaying this article's publication, and that's because I have yet to write it but also because I had cancer. I am still recovering. This assessment of my religious belief article, written and published days ago, is very impressive. Basically it says I am right. Of course, I am right. Never am I comfortable bragging, but I know this article has made history. It is very significant. I have published down below as an image the CHAT GPT analysis. Take a look and study it. You will be flabbergasted.]