‘So you don’t believe that morality and ethics originate in religion?’ She poured herself another glassful and sipped trying to look quizzical and earnest. I laughed out loud. From my standpoint she’d only succeeded in looking comical. I knew she didn’t believe what she was suggesting.
I chuckled some more. ‘No, No Kathy, no I don’t. I think fairness, morality and ethics are basic human attributes.’ I frowned and took a big gulp of what was a cheapish red shiraz that had proved surprisingly smooth, then topped up my glass before replying. ‘I think that religion’s got fuck all to do with it. Religion is just about power. That and the State. All about power. It’s all primitive stuff. All the boys vying to be the great chief or shaman; white-backed gorillas. They are just seeking dominance and the right to fuck all the women. It’s all about DNA playing its games to get its genes into the next gene pool.’
‘But Oph,’ Kathy objected keenly, stubbing the dead roach in the ashtray. ‘Every culture has its creation myths and code of morality. They all regulate society and bring some order to it. Perhaps people need that? Perhaps religion helps produce that?’ Kathy continued her ploy. She was enjoying it just as much as I was.
‘Yeah, and they all create a pile of complicated dogma and use it to bash each other with, to shackle themselves,’ I began rolling another jay.
‘But there is order and there are restraints,’ she argued forcefully, ‘religion has restricted the power of the state, hasn’t it? It has helped produce order and structure.’
‘Has it?’ I responded, looking up from the album cover I was using to construct the next spliff, not able to stop myself from being sucked into the fabricated debate. She was playing me like a fat trout in a turbid stream, but I couldn’t help myself. ‘Try telling that to the millions of witches burnt to death, to the crusaders spearing Muslim babies in the name of god, pillaging and raping on their way to reclaim the Holy Lands.’ I shook my head in disgust. ‘Trying arguing that with the terrorist bombers designing their bombs with nails and glass shrapnel to cause the most hideous wounds. Try telling the evangelists looking to rip Alaska apart because god has bequeathed it to man to do with as he will, and besides, the rapture is at hand so we won’t need the planet. Try telling that to Bruno, Darwin and Galileo and all the other scientists threatened with hideous torture and death for daring to suggest that the Earth went round the sun, or man evolved from primates – very progressive these religious people! Try telling them all that the beauty of their religious buildings and the order and restraint that went into society makes it all worthwhile!’
Kathy was enjoying winding me up. She gestured to the works on the album cover, silently urging me to get a move on. ‘But surely religion started as a need to understand life, the universe and everything?’ Kathy suggested, changing tack. She was enjoying the cut and thrust. She wanted to hear my response.
‘Yeah. And the answer is 49.’ I replied, looking to lighten the mood a little. It was getting a trifle too intense.
The laughter continued from the other room. Tobe’s deep chuckles interlaced with Liz’s higher tinkles.
‘Are you sure it was 49? I thought it was 46.’ Kathy wondered, frowning pensively. There was no need to query as to whether the reference to Douglas Adams was picked up on. You knew what old friends thought.
‘Kathy, there are no answers.’ I replied in my most serious intonation.
She grinned at me. ‘Yeah, but that is so hard for people to take. They find that hard to handle.’
‘I can’t help that,’ I replied irritably. ‘We all love to come up with answers don’t we? We love to find the solutions. We’d love life to have an ultimate purpose. Shame it doesn’t. People can’t cope with that. Everything has to have its esoteric mystery. We cannot cope with life and death without knowing what it’s all about, that it has meaning. Life is just one big jigsaw puzzle. People aren’t satisfied until it’s all neatly explained.’
‘I think we just don’t like it all to be pointless,’ Kathy stated rather sadly. ‘It is human to believe that everything has a purpose. That’s what we’re good at.’
‘Yes I’m sure that it is very much more reassuring to think there is a purpose, a pattern and a reason for everything. It makes people happier,’ I agreed readily. I could see that. It was psychologically much healthier to believe in god, an order and purpose. People who were religious were happier and healthier. I looked up from sprinkling the powdered hash on the tobacco. ‘But that’s not the point is it? I’d rather be unhappy,’ I grinned affably. ‘To make up a reason when there is no reason is just stupid. One only has to take a cursory look at the fables of religion to see that it’s all bullshit – total human fabrication – more and more elaboration, obfuscation, embellishment, grandeur to obscure the smoke and mirrors of the powerful shaman. And we want to believe it. We need to believe it. It keeps us sane in the cold and cynical harshness of this universe. We don’t want to believe we’re nothing more than a bag of chemicals thrown together by chance in a universe too vast and savage for us to comprehend.’
‘So what else is there to keep us sane?’ Kathy asked with a pout.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I replied, rolling the paper up and studiously tweaking the joint into shape. ‘Science maybe. Discovery is a powerful purpose. An infinite universe should have enough mysteries and discoveries to keep us busy for a lifetime or two.’ I pondered some more. ‘Art. Creativity ….. that’s pretty exhilarating.’ I held the joint out to her for inspection.
‘Is that enough?’ she enquired, accepting the joint and examining its poor construction critically.
‘In the absence of god I guess we have to do the job ourselves,’ I suggested. ‘We don’t have a lot of choice, do we? There are so many things we can do to improve the world. We could throw ourselves into that. After all we are the custodians of a beautiful planet. We have to sort out the rules and problems and get it right. Besides, god seems to be making a right shit-heap out of it. We can’t do much worse, can we?’
‘He’s given us free will!’ Kathy objected with smirking false indignation, placing the jay in her mouth.
‘Very convenient,’ I commented sarcastically, waiting for her to apply the fire. ‘Well he doesn’t seem to give a shit about minor things like gorillas, whales and all the millions of species we’re in the process of eradicating, that’s for sure.’
‘He gave us the world to do with as we wished, and all the creature on it.’ She stated, inhaling the smoke, intently peering at me, parodying the stupidities of the evangelists, inhaling deeply once more before passing the joint across to me.
I nodded, smiling back at her, accepting the jay and taking a toke. ‘Well if you ask me, as a fictional construct, he’s more of thing of nightmares rather than pleasant dreams. It’s time we put him back in the past with all the other myths and fables. It’s time we grew up as a race and started to stand on our own two feet. Religion is nothing more than a security blanket; a relic from our primitive ignorance. We know too much now. We can see through it. It does not make sense. It’s too silly. Let’s put the fairy-tales back into the kindergarten where they belong. As a race we’re off to the big school now. There’s a lot more to learn.’
Tobes popped his head round the door. ‘It’s on the table,’ he announced, then coming across to snaffle the jay and take a bit puff before handing it back. ‘Come on guys, it’s on the table.’
‘Hey – Life’s a banquet,’ Kathy said smiling, taking the jay off me and rising to her feet, ‘Smells delicious Tobes.’
‘So let’s get stuck in,’ I said grinning up at Kathy, raising my glass and rising from the floor. ‘Let’s just hope that big school doesn’t have too much homework.’
‘Oph, you are truly the spawn of the Devil!’ Kathy declared impishly.
The Antitheist’s Bible: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9798391555216: Books