Letter: The 'Spitting Image' Jesus: blasphemy or a lack of understanding?

Sir: It is astonishing to think that the Church can accuse Spitting Image of misrepresenting the man we call Jesus, when it has been doing precisely that for nearly 2,000 years (' 'Spitting Image' Jesus brings down Church's wrath', 12 October). If the Church's view of Jesus and Creation is so credible, why is the Church always so aghast and outraged when anyone challenges or parodies its views? Surely it should be relaxed and confident that most people will accept its case on the grounds of its obvious credibility.

But, of course, the Church knows deep down that its explanations of life and Creation are anything but credible, and that is why it constantly overreacts. This is a manifestation of its own insecurity and fear.

Over the centuries, the Church has used the law of blasphemy and religious 'crusades' (wars) to remove violently or by legal force those sources of challenge to its power that could not be overcome intellectually and spiritually. History is littered with the victims of the Church and its constant efforts to suppress those who can see that the emperor is starkers.

They have built up the exceptional human being we call Jesus into some expression of divine perfection, and only by believing in him, they say, can we avoid eternal damnation. This is baloney, but the myth of divine perfection has been crucial to the suppression over the centuries, through law, war and censorship, of those who try to expose the Church as little more than a vehicle for mind and behaviour control, imposed through the manipulation of guilt and fear.

One latex puppet lampooning the Church's view of Jesus brings outrage, but it is fine, it seems, for many of the churches to condemn other people's beliefs as 'evil' when they have far more going for them in terms of credibility than the dogmatic biblical view has.

Church people complain about Spitting Image, yet look at the guaranteed airtime the Church has on BBC Radio and Television, and to a lesser extent ITV, to put its view unhindered by awkward questions. The BBC, which claims to be independent, has a whole Religious Affairs Unit turning out programmes day after day from primarily the Western church view of life and Creation. This same view is also imposed upon our children in the schools, and the beliefs and dogmas of the Western church are woven into the very core of this country, with the Queen at its head.

Far from complaining about one irrelevant latex puppet, the Church should think itself lucky it has got away with all this for so long. The greatest irony is that Jesus, the man they have turned into a parody of the truth, would have been the first to challenge the religious empires. He did not come to start a church but to try to free people from the mind and behaviour control of the religious dogma that already existed 2,000 years ago.

Fortunately, the end of the Church is in sight. We are seeing it crumble before our eyes, and as it falls, more and more people will realise what a part it has played, along with 'science', in leading humanity down a dark and dangerous cul-de-sac of myth and misunderstanding. The power of the Church to control the minds of so many people is about to disappear. I think the word is hallelujah.

Yours faithfully,

DAVID ICKE

Ryde, Isle of Wight