Something about god to read during 'dry' January when you're at home feeling bitter and restless and beginning to realise why you love drinking so much. (You not me obvs)
November 20th, 2015.
The following is not intended to change anyone’s mind about anything; sometimes you just gotta speak your truth.
The horror of the Paris slaughter, not to mention the recent, equally despicable acts in Africa have rightly caused yet more outrage. It now appears the UK’s response to this is to drop more bombs, to “Take the fight to the enemy.”
Because, obviously, attack is ALWAYS the best form of defense?
As a Liverpool supporter I can assert that this is definitely not the case, highlighted by our 2013-14 season. While we were at out imperious best, going forward, scoring for fun, our defense was, for the most part a shitshow which if nothing else provided for one the greatest lines ever, as far as football commentary goes.
“Watching this Liverpool team, is like watching a Ferrari towing a caravan.”
If our defending had been as on-point as that journalist, we’d have won the league.
I digress.
Would I have any compunction about putting a bullet in the head of those that carried out that despicable slaughter at The Bataclan? Nope not if the opportunity arose at the time and it meant preventing the death of others. But here’s the thing, the question I struggle to find an answer to. Would I be prepared to execute them if they had been captured? Would I? Would you?
I’m not a politician, I’d like to think I’m higher up the evolutionary scale than that, for sure there’s a new/old kid on the block in Westminster, ‘Jezza’, I think I might like him, I’m still not sure but he doesn’t need me to speak for him. Nor am I a clever man, a Christopher Hitchens with a better haircut. I am not a theologian, and you may be surprised to find, I’m only an atheist when I’m in a really bad mood. I’m a parent, musician, occasional writer, part-time show-off, but mostly, I’m a parent. Which means I have by far, the greatest responsibility it is possible to have.
Why is it?
Because it is and also because, sadly I believe it is our children who will bear the brunt of ideological extremism as the harbingers of destruction reach further into the tolerant society our parents/grandparents fought and died to protect. Those at the helm may well have blood on their hands and deep pockets filled with the profits of division and greed. I don’t though, neither does my daughter and I suspect neither do most of you who may read this. I’m not part of the problem; I’m not an avaricious politician and I’m not ‘god.’
I don’t believe in ‘god’, by which I mean the ‘god(s)’ that have been created by, written about for centuries by, appropriated into the same gender as and forced upon everybody else by, man. You know the ones I’m talking about, the badly dressed bloke(s) with the beard, prone to doing the ‘impossible’. If he were really god, he’d have shaved more often, enjoyed a decent pint, and asked more women for their opinion before opening his mouth in his testosterone-fueled revelations. That’s assuming he would have been a bloke at all of course. If ‘he’ were a ‘she’, I’m guessing we’d be looking at a completely different world. No women I know would be prepared to dress as badly as the pope or blow themselves up on the dubious promise of spending eternity in the company of 72 sexually inept virginal men. There would also have been equality in wages and working conditions, probably about the same time as the first of our ancestors said,
“Fuck looking after this baby all day darling, it’s your turn, I’m off to hunt a mammoth with the girls, we might go out for a few celebratory pints after as well, don’t wait up.”
What do I know about that kind of ‘god’ anyway? Oh yeah, I was made to read the bible at school. Of course, that’s not even half the story though is it? Some estimates put the number of religions currently being ‘practiced’ in the world at over 400, all with their own holy books, or in some cases, a pamphlet or two. You gotta start somewhere right? My entire ‘education’ was conducted within a catholic school system, at no point was I afforded an insight into other belief systems. I’m guessing my religious teachers realized that the somewhat nonsensical curriculum they espoused, would, in-fact be made to look as utterly bonkers as the ‘other’ faith systems the minute any comparison was made. Even my tiny brain can join the theological dots and conclude that, they can’t all be right, so they are surely all wrong? When a classmate of mine suggested that if ‘we’ were to believe in Adam and Eve,
“Then that means we are all descended from an incestuous relationship then sir?”
He was theologically silenced by 6 strokes of a riding-crop, his flippant but astute comment punished by the headmaster later that day. The same headmaster, who years later, was arrested, tried, defrocked, and sentenced to a lengthy spell in jail for sexually abusing young boys, his evil practices going completely unchecked by the church for years. This is not the reason I don’t believe in god though, but it was the starting point of my own thinking on the subject, not that this was encouraged of course. ‘god’ knows what I’m thinking right? His intrusion into my ‘thought-crime’ does nothing to persuade me he’s someone worth getting to know. I hate nosey bastards like that, mind your own fucking business eh god?
So yeah, me and ‘religion’ nah, not having it at all. We didn’t get off to a very good start and I’m still waiting to be shown some proof to convince me to accept that people who propagate nonsense like this should be in any position to tell me how to live my life.
1 Samuel 18:25-27
David wanted to wed Michal, Saul’s daughter. He offered Saul anything in order to be able to marry Michal. For whatever reason, Saul wanted 100 foreskins. He told David he needed to deliver that number of foreskins by the next day. David went out and killed 200 men and collected that many foreskins. It was after the fact that he realized he had double the number he needed. Saul was impressed and he gave his daughter’s hand in marriage to David.
That’s about as ridiculous as the time the prophet Mohammed apparently decided to make a few structural changes to the moon by chopping it in half. (Maybe there was no footie on that day?) Said task undertaken on a winged horse obviously so he got home in time for tea and a cuddle with his 9-year-old wife too.
*Rolls eyes*
“The splitting of the moon is confirmed through eye-witness testimony transmitted through an unbroken chain of reliable scholars so many, that it is impossible that it could be false.”
Hadith Mutawatir.
OK, so that’s the slightly low brow kinda cheap justification for my lack of faith in ‘god’, however if he/she can manage to keep Danny Sturridge Liverpool’s best striker, but clearly made of crisps, fit for an entire season, I’ll have a rethink. If religion were put on trial, I’d like to think no judge and jury, in possession of the ‘facts’, would sentence the world to another second of it, yet alone a few thousand years. It’s a bit like smoking; before we knew how bad it was for us, everybody was at it.
Is it really that bad for us though?
I’d say yes for no other reason than it’s got nothing to do with truth and everything to do with the opposite. At what point are we required to separate metaphor from fact? Apparently not until scientific evidence leaves the custodians of religion, no choice but to admit they’ve got it wrong. Then and only after all other ‘escape routes have gone, are we told,
“Ah, ok, the story of Noah is not meant to be taken literally.”
Although there still millions who think it is true, If David Attenborough can’t convince them, what chance have I?
And it’s probably unlikely David collected all those foreskins and Leviticus was just in a really bad mood when he called for the murder of gay people etc.
I wonder if made up a few hundred t-shirts with
‘Leviticus can suck my dick’ on them, I’d make a few quid at the next gay pride?
As ‘real’ science advances, many, but not all, religious apologists back-peddle, although it often seems like trying to squeeze a confession out of a villain whose deeds have been caught on CCTV.
“But it helps me make sense of the world and we need redemption.”
Ah, I see, so we’re not capable of doing that anyway?
Redemption? From what exactly, being born?
Oh yeah, the ‘concept of original sin’
Surely, we innately know the difference between right and wrong, surely, we can figure that out for ourselves?
“No”
“Why not?”
” Because it says so in the bible/Torah/front page of the Daily Mail.
Ah, so we need to follow the instructions, without which, at the very least, an unenviable ‘end’ lies in store for those who don’t. So, live in fear or? You get my point, right? You can rebrand it anyway you like, but I don’t think a ‘religious experience’, is much good for us, except in tiny weeny moderation, like at a gig or football or something. That moment, when just like in those mental evangelical churches, we all start speaking in tongues as we join our voices and hearts together at a Coldplay gig.
*Point of interest. *
I’ve only seen Coldplay once, when they were supporting Shack, years ago. They went on to fill stadiums, Shack didn’t, therefore it’s beyond any doubt that god does not exist.
So yeah, it’s just like smoking, which is never ‘good’ for you; it’s just less harmful the less you do it.
These days, even though it can be a struggle, most people have chosen to confine the fags to the ashtray of history. It has to be said though, that generally speaking, where people are less able to make informed choices i.e., ‘developing’ nations, countries crippled by poverty etc. the big tobacco companies continue to expand their empires. It would appear that the masters of religion and tobacco both do well in such places.
For the record, I’m still sucking on an E-cig, very much a case of progress not perfection. (Amended in 2021, I finally became a nicotine-free zone)
I’m convinced that the weather was shit for pretty much the entire duration as religion made its be-sandaled way from the warmer, but almost entirely illiterate Middle East into Europe.
“Do you believe in god mate?”
“Umm, which one? We’ve got a few”
“This god, he’s much better than yours and if you don’t believe me, I’ll fucking kill you ok?”
It’s like playground bullying on an industrial scale, in sandals.
The inclement medieval weather continued as did the need for distraction.
Anyone who has kids will tell you you’ve gotta be ‘creative’ when it’s cold and wet outside. Obviously, you couldn’t amuse the population in the dark-ages with an Alvin and the chipmunk’s box set, so Pope Pious and the psycho-monks saw their opportunity and grabbed it.
“Do you want a smoothie and some crisps with your eternal damnation, fear-driven servitude and other assorted fairy-tales’ children?”
“Can’t we just go to the park and play on the swings daddy?”
“No, it’s raining.”
Then the LORD said to Moses,
“Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that hail will fall all over Egypt –on men and animals and on everything growing in the fields of Egypt.”
When Moses stretched out his staff toward the sky, the LORD sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground. So, the LORD rained hail on the land of Egypt. Hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. Throughout Egypt hail struck everything in the fields –both men and animals; it beat down everything growing in the fields and stripped every tree. The only place it did not hail was the land of Goshen, where the Israelites were.
“We live in Stamford Hill daddy, are we Israelites?”
“No Tabitha, that was Desmond Dekker.”
Back to being a parent, which is primarily why I’m trying to waste my time and hopefully yours, with this badly written god-bashing piece? Tabitha asks me lots of questions about religion because we live amongst an ultra-orthodox religious community here in Hackney. My Hasidic neighbors seem nice enough, until they get behind the wheel of a car that is. To be honest, other than their insistence on driving like demented Egyptian chariot drivers pursuing the Israelites into the Red Sea; I don’t know much about them. They generally don’t go in for casual conversation, they want to be left alone so as to not be corrupted by our western morality, or lack of. They do what they do, Tabitha and I do what we do, it’s cool, it’s safe round here and also very quiet on Saturdays. It’s a ‘bit’ weird though, but not weird in a strap a bomb to yourself and blow people up kinda way, certainly not on the Sabbath anyway.
The dark and bloody middle-ages were a time when we knew little and killed a lot, in the name of what we knew little about of course. Not much has changed really, back then, ‘We’ just trusted that, those people afforded an education in exchange for a life of piety and sacrifice (If you don’t include much of the Catholic Church) as they delivered us from eternal damnation, would not lie to us? Time moved on; the weapons got deadlier as the science got smarter. The better the science, the bigger the death-toll, as previously unassailable ‘truths’ were forced to back-peddle and become ‘metaphors’ rather than facts, at least where those of a progressive mind-set were concerned. Religious literature is not lies; it’s just people trying to make sense of things without recourse to facts. People believed, because to not do so was unthinkable, they just didn’t know any better, but we do now. Except of course, for those of ‘us’ who apparently don’t want to accept fact over fairy-tale.
Ah, yes, the thorny subject of facts. We have a timeline these days, a way of framing and making sense of ‘stuff’. Put it this way, if despite everything we know about the age of the earth, fossils, DNA, and the last time Liverpool won the league; if after all this you still want to say the world is only a few thousand years old, in my opinion, you’re a fucking lunatic. We have empirical proof; you have David and his 200 foreskins.
Does that offend you?
You can’t criticize any religion for fear of offence.
Ah yes, fear of offence! I’m fairly sure if you are of the easily offended persuasion, you’ve probably switched off now, or you’re praying for me.
I happen to think, it’s entirely possible for people to hold religious beliefs and retain a sense of humor. Get over yourselves a bit eh? Surely god would want you to do that? My friend Niall the Vicar is one such example, although as I’ve told him on numerous occasions, he’s better suited to caring for the spiritual wellbeing of his flock than tickling their (spare) ribs. His jokes are, just like shellfish, most insects, and gay people, (don’t forget the gay people, god certainly won’t on judgement day) according to the old testament, an abomination. Oh, let’s also not forget blasphemy, which basically means I’m fucked too.
As well as, according to the book of Revelations.
“The cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
You can probably also add Lady Gaga and Ryan Giggs to that list too.
I’m a libertarian, which is a posh word for minding my own fucking business and expecting others to do the same. I might not be overly happy about it, but people are and hopefully, will always be entitled to believe in whatever they wish, surely that’s a freedom we have make huge sacrifices for as a society over the years? The theological ‘fly’ in this secular ointment though is this, religion is inherently divisive. Yes, you may well find quotes in the texts of the world’s major faiths that urge ‘tolerance’ of other people’s fairy tales of choice, but here’s the thing; For the most part, when our most basic needs are met, we humans are decent and caring beings. When we stumble across something that makes us feel ‘better’ we like to shout about it. I’d go as far as to say, most of us would want others to experience it too. The theocratic ‘chemistry’ that elicits ‘well-being’ is potent, but it’s really only a placebo. Humans are pack-animals, faith makes us feel ‘part-of’, ‘connected’, and it allows us to belong, which is one of our species most rudimentary needs. We inherently ‘fear’ death because of course that is the ultimate separation. It’s easy to see how the promise of being re-united with those we have loved and lost is such an attractive proposition and a ‘promise’ made even more appealing when our mortal life is so short. Once people are scared, they are likely to believe almost anything. We all love a good horror story, don’t we?
There’s no fear like the fear of god is there? Some of the stories contained within religious literature are quite good, although not many of them would get commissioned for a TV series ahead of Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones methinks. I obviously cannot tell someone that their ‘personal’ experience of Jesus is not real to them anymore than I could convince a Manchester Utd fan that watching Stevie Gerrard score against Everton is more fulfilling than seeing Wayne Rooney bicycle-kick the winner against City.
Is there a solution to all this? Will we ever ‘learn’ to stop bothering a god that doesn’t exist and spend more time getting to know each other? I sometimes wonder if, perhaps, with some gentle persuasion, those of a more moderate devotion to religion, akin to the ‘social-smoker’ on weekends, might begin to consider stubbing out their habit altogether one day. Of course, those who hold moderate religious beliefs are not the problem are they? Such believers are unlikely to be offended, or to cause outrage over their faith. I’m in no doubt I could attend a concert with my daughter without risking assassination by the alcohol drinking, chain-smoking Muslim shopkeeper at the end of my road. Yeah, he believes in ‘god’, but he’s clearly discovered that being human and getting pissed every now and then is equally as satisfying as Friday prayers. Wherever religion has been handed down as part of a cultural package, delivered by family and community for generations, when it comes under scrutiny, of any kind, it is seen as an attack. Its difficult engaging in meaningful conversation with creationists whose response to unequivocal evidence as to the age of the earth and the rational explanations we have now have for our evolution is a collective “I can’t hear you”.
Why can’t you hear us though? Because to do so would be seen as an attack on your culture? Then maybe the way forward is to begin to try and separate the two? If I had even the slightest idea how that may come about, I’d tell you, sadly I can only hope that people with far bigger brains than mine, try to do so and soon. At seven years old, Tabitha is as full of questions, as any parent would wish of their own kids. She told me there had been some ‘talk’ in the playground about the awful events in Paris last week, but she didn’t get involved because some of her friends are Muslims and she didn’t want to upset them. She told me that B***** one of her closest friends was really upset because a boy had said it was ‘her people’ who had done bad things in France.
“I told her, that what that boy had said, was also part of the problem, not her or her family.”
I want her to grow up in a world, where she can think, say, dress, have sex with (not yet obvs) and ultimately believe what she likes without fear. Oh wait! She already does! Most people, aside from those demented lunatics who are killing in the name of god, don’t care what she does. Or do they?
Most people?
You might argue that anyone who is a fan of Jesus, is therefore complicit with his fanboy reverence to the Old Testament, with its desiccated foreskins and eternal damnation for George Michael. Is the collective virtue-signaling of moderate ‘believers’ also a contributory factor to the bigger problem of the religious nutjobs who think blowing kids up at a concert is what god wants?
I remain convinced that she does not ‘need’ religious dogma to be able to experience this in the life she has ahead of her. Her ‘god’ will never be better than anyone else’s because she doesn’t believe in god. That, her ‘Jam’, will never be better than someone else’s Clash.
She may well change her mind at some point and that’ll be entirely up to her. As a parent, I’d like to think that if I refrain from the implementation of religion ‘belief’ and it’s myopic, primitive thinking, by the time she is old enough to ask the question pertaining to ‘why’ we are here, her mind will be open enough to see her own answer. Religion is heavily dependent on answering that question, it dismisses the most horrific human tragedies as a ‘test of faith’, it holds up nonsense as ‘fact’. History is stained with the blood of the innocent while people kill in the name of god, in the absurd hope of ensuring a place in the ’afterlife’. I hope she concludes that it doesn’t matter why we are here; all that matters is what we do while we are.
And before anyone points it out, I know that there’s some really nice stuff that happened in the bible and other such religious instruction manuals, but there’s also some quite good bits in Game of Thrones too and that doesn’t make me want to dress up as a character in a game of dungeons and dragons and go around bumming dragons or whatever it is they do.
They’re all on the eternal damnation list as well obvs.
I think it was Gandhi, who said,
“If you think you understand ‘god’ you’re probably wrong.”
Which is quite possibly the wisest thing anyone in sandals ever said.
Actually, I don’t know if he did because I wasn’t there, either way, it’s a good quote.
Can I get an Amen
?
Brilliant words my friend ✊🏴☠️
If you made a jacket out of 200 foreskins would you look a right bellend??