religion

We’d all come back from a walk through England’s glorious countryside, over the green, rolling hills of the Southern Downs, trailing along a river bank swathed in a mass of wild flowers through which the butterflies danced, and bees busily droned from blossom to blossom. We’d wandered lazily through a hot morning with the sun scorching our faces under unremitting blue sky – four old friends together.

Nothing could be more delightful than the perfect English summer day when it happened. You could not count on it to happen too often in such an unpredictable climate. We’d found a picnic bench outside a pub overlooking the old weathered rock walls of a mediaeval castle and basked in the weather and company, swigging a cool beer, idly talking, laughing lots and picking at a pub meal.

Throughout the entire walk we’d been catching up on news, reminiscing and sharing views. That’s what old friends did. I’d outlined my thoughts on my book. Writing was one of my passions. It infuriated Liz. She saw it as one of my obsessions. Something else I wasted endless hours on. She despaired over the way I could not relax and live in the moment. Even on a beautiful day, walking through the most beautiful scenery, my mind was flitting through the interior of my head while the world slipped by. I only had to have an audience, and I could not help but let fly, and allow all that storm of pent-up ideas to gush out. Kathy and Tobes had made the mistake of appearing to listen. It seemed to me that they liked the idea but saw nothing original about it. In their view it had been done to death. Nobody would be interested. But it had caught their imagination to an extent, more than most of my fanciful literary concoctions.

Kathy and I were sitting in the front room, on the floor, our backs against the sofa, a glass of merlot in one hand. We were passing a spliff back and forth, contemplating infinity and arguing about religion. Standard practice for a Sunday afternoon.

‘So what would you say to some evangelical redneck who believed the world was formed by god only four thousand years ago?’ She peered at me with a cheeky, quizzical look, daring me to rise to it. ‘You know, Oph, some brainwashed American, brought up in the Deep South who was taught that every word of the bible was the absolute word of god, huh Oph?’

I chuckled. Kathy was wearing her most innocent expression, challenging me to put my mouth where my words were.  As a self-confessed atheist it was a justifiable question to put, a typical Kathy question. Would I dare to answer back, to argue with a big rowdy devout evangelist, or would I simply keep my head down? I didn’t know. I guess it depended on his size and belligerence.

Kathy enjoyed provoking. She spent time trawling YouTube for the little extracts by Chomsky, Hitchins and the like. She loved their sharp wit, expert put-downs and the brilliance of their intellect. Compared to such exalted company it was no wonder that Kathy was sceptical about the extent of my knowledge and ability to put together a coherent argument. But, after all, I’d asked for it. Over the course of the day I’d been discussing my idea of writing an antitheist’s bible, and yes, perhaps pontificating about my frustration with religion.

Through this phase of my life I’d become increasingly angered by the extent that organised religion intruded into the world and dictated what went on. I was dismayed by the malleability of ordinary people, even the more intelligent. They all seemed so gullible. The world was full of religious absurdities. There were people with strange hanks of hair, strange hats, strange gowns, strange accoutrements, bizarre hairstyles, weird practices, obscene veils, and the full range of idiosyncratic genuflections and intricate daily routines. All of which, as diverse from each other as they were, were considered to be dictated directly by the word of god. They couldn’t all be right could they? Even a fool could see that.

Yet all the adherents were vehemently adamant that they were the one and only true chosen people who god chose to speak to and that the others were intolerable blasphemers who deserved death and torture for not recognising this fact.

It did not take huge intellect to see these absurdities for what they were. The sight of these extreme religious behaviours would be hugely funny if it wasn’t for the fact that all these religious groups seemed intent on imposing these ridiculous dogmas on everyone else and were prepared to bomb, torture and destroy everything to achieve this end. The waves of terrorism, jihad and retaliatory wars were horrendous, utterly horrendous – all directly or indirectly due to religion.

Behind this practice of ordinary believers was the power struggle of the manipulators; the leaders that used the institutions to feather their own nests and achieve their own agendas. The history of religion, right up to the present day, was strewn with examples of power-mad tyrants using religion to achieve their ends. I railed against it. I thought of myself as a tolerant person but, there again.