I'm an atheist.
A fully paid up member of the rational society. A firm believer in logic over optimism.
I have so very little patience for any religion, and even less for those who
choose to use it as an excuse for, say, casual bigotry, or as reason for some atrocity,
or as explanation for some otherwise explicable thing or other: 'doctors said
it was a 1 in a million chance that baby would survive, and she did - it's a
miracle!' No, no it's not. It may have been statistically unlikely, but it was nevertheless
possible, which does tend to reduce its eligibility in the miracle stakes.
See, I've always
been entirely rational. Fan of the scientific method. Observe the world around
you. Come up with a theory that explains what you see. Experiment with it. Check
that your theory can predict future events. If it doesn't work, observe some
more, come up with another theory. Repeat until you discover E=MC2, stick your
tongue out at a passing photographer and retire in the knowledge that your face
will adorn a million t-shirts.
Religion is the polar
opposite. Belief requires trust without seeking proof. Proof negates belief. The Guide had it right -
"The Final Proof of the non-Existence of God was proved by a Babel Fish.
Now, it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-boggingly useful could have evolved by chance, that some have chosen to see it as the final proof of the NON-existence of God. The argument goes something like this:
'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
'But,' says Man, 'the Babel Fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that You exist, and so therefore, by Your own arguments, You don't. QED.'
'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
'Oh that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.'
This is all to explain why, once upon a time, I was predisposed to
believe that to make people like each other again all you had to do was remove
religion. Ban it, I thought, and you remove 99% of the world's problems.
Consign it to a footnote in history, and you remove most of the reasons for
people to hate one another. But now I'm no longer quite so sure.
I think that, deep
down, we're just programmed to hate one another. Religion is neither here nor
there. It's the excuse, the catalyst. If it weren't for religion there would be
something else. Is what happened in Woolwich a product of religious intolerance?
No. Woolwich is an example of two ignorant, disaffected young men who sought
revenge for a perceived sleight. It was a postcode stabbing writ large. Were
they brainwashed? Were they encouraged to do what they did? Probably. But what
they were led to believe isn't the important thing, it's that they were in a
position to be brainwashed in the first place.
The reaction
to Woolwich worries me more. Not of the EDL and BNP nutjobs (idiots spoiling
for a fight, come what may) but the middle class man on the Clapham omnibus who
tutted in disgust at the burning down of the mosques and then viewed a couple
of videos of a more presentable member of the EDL and announced 'well, not at
all what I expected, spoke some sense actually.' The X Factor-watching Daily
Fail-reading commuter who nods along with the perfectly reasonable leader that
says perhaps greater freedom for the security services to pry into personal
communications is warranted because, well, you know, particularly in the
mosques bad things are being said and you need to be able to stop them, don't
you? The status-updating, cringworthy poem-liking Facebook brigade, immersing
themselves in grief porn over some poor boy they've never met and probably
wouldn't like if they did, announcing in their droves that it's time we put a
stop to all these foreign types coming over here and moaning about the place,
and if they don't like it they should just bloody leave then. Down with this
sort of thing.
Voltaire means
nothing to these people. Memories are short. Thinking so wooly you could knit a
scarf with it.
As a species we
like to think that we've evolved, that we're the pinnacle of civilisation, with
our jam, our toasters, our ipads and our smart TVs, but we're really not, are
we? Present us with a crisis and we turn into UKIP voting automatons. And
that's just annoying, when you realise that we're capable of the most
remarkable acts of kindness and generosity and wonder. Tell you what, let's leave
religion well alone and ban the Daily Mail. That'll do.
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