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| Who were that Angel? |
Nowt spoils Christmas, the New Year, Chanukah like the return of a 'professed' atheist to the fold of faith. The end of the year allus gives time to someone's return to spiritual belief but often it reads more as a comforter of a return to childhood where it is acceptable to hold a suspension of belief. (Santa anyone? Oh look, a Tooth Fairy!) A yearning for what was remembered; as was in churchy stuff like men in funny clothing intoning ritual while suffocating in incense of some poor sod (me) in a dress and white lace gown thingy swinging bloody incense burner like a circus acrobat out of sheer boredom. I lost me faith in religion aged seven and it has since rarely made any appearance in me life. They (the reconverts) want faith to act as a cure for the bad things they see going on around them. There must be a reason why cruelty is such a strong part of the human condition that despite our education, our 'liberal' views, women and bairns are still being hammered, bombed, beheaded and treated like shite to be scraped off some thugs boot. Makes no sense, so I'll embrace nonsense to make the pieces of the puzzle fit. But they don't necessarily fit. And religions like science, professing to have all answers behind the veil of the shrine, is no answer at all. And the answers rarely match the questions. Sooch as why should it be acceptable free will that a bairn is sexual meat for an adult. Why some of the biggest scum in life appear in public as deeply religious. Thatcher quoting Francis of Assisi. Franco, Pinochet, Papa Doc...
Time to reread Christopher Hitchens "Mortality" and other articles on his views on the likelihood of his making a death bed conversion. And the endless tat of the religious thinking it was their duty to save his soul from not making it through the pearly gates but ending in an eternity of being a pink marshmallow on the end of a toasting fork held by someone looking like Margaret Thatcher. Including those who wanted him to hear from their faith that the cancer killing him he brought on himself through his lack of belief and his lifelong tilting the sails of the windmill of religions. Faith and in particular blind faith are huge leaps of credibility and I have never been persuaded that they hold more muscle than the tooth fairy, Roger Rabbit or the stock market. Godliness I have held for the likes of Jimmy Greaves and occasionally (sorry Big Al-not always) Alan Shearer. It is the moment when the world stands still and action transcends what is possible, but naw at end it is only blurry football Shanks! Or stood at water's edge as the sun sinks inta watta with a larger palette than yer average impressionist. But I have never experienced this as the finger of God or anything other than nature and my small part in a larger whole that stretched far away from my imagination into a sky birthing stars as the light faded. That I cannot grasp it does not imply I should blindly believe it to be some old whitey fella, with a long beard, sandals and although capable of benevolence has a nasty streak of temper in His witches britches.
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| Eee they'l have me head on a plate for this |
And so it was just afore Christmas when a friend told me they felt sorry for us that I did not have God in my life. That I did not believe. They were astonished that I were comfortable with this omission. My life must be oh so empty! No more than for average north east folk waiting for next Newcastle game and willing' em to get back up to premiership. I did say that the history lesson of my life provided no evidence of God presence or not in the shape held by most religions and particularly not those that treated women and bairns like mens playthings, additions, things they owned joost from having a bit of dangling tackle like. And where accountability might occur in the afterlife? Yer know some un sitting in joodgement because once in mass yer partook in a satisfying pick of a particularly clogged oop nose- but then you'll never know. Dead, from what I've seen, an I have seen enough, is dead. They (me friend) gave me their view about human 'free' will and choice which is why folk do bad stuff. And what a mystery beyond our understanding is God who is not to be able to be held to account for not preventing endless cruelty occurring daily on their watch. Not to mention his own old testament cruelty. Bit like the same reasoning as to why we should not hold robber barons to account for their fleecing of the multitudes. They too live outside the mortal domain and without them we could not truly experience great suffering for no purpose other than to keep them rich beyond all riches. Not only was I not persuaded but threatened in a kindly way not to challenge their belief in a one God. It is their right to be religious but it is my deficiency of nature to be, well me.
So as I chew the fat over this break and the Sydney heat is melting me marrow, I look forward to the free will and more balanced view for a different headline at this time of the year "Pope says I was a Catholic up unto Christmas Eve when the lights flicked off and I realised, blurry hell-me, I'm an atheist."
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| And in Newtown |
Still waitin', ah well, that's me done for 2016....
Time to reread Christopher Hitchens "Mortality" and other articles on his views on the likelihood of his making a death bed conversion. And the endless tat of the religious thinking it was their duty to save his soul from not making it through the pearly gates but ending in an eternity of being a pink marshmallow on the end of a toasting fork held by someone looking like Margaret Thatcher. Including those who wanted him to hear from their faith that the cancer killing him he brought on himself through his lack of belief and his lifelong tilting the sails of the windmill of religions. Faith and in particular blind faith are huge leaps of credibility and I have never been persuaded that they hold more muscle than the tooth fairy, Roger Rabbit or the stock market. Godliness I have held for the likes of Jimmy Greaves and occasionally (sorry Big Al-not always) Alan Shearer. It is the moment when the world stands still and action transcends what is possible, but naw at end it is only blurry football Shanks! Or stood at water's edge as the sun sinks inta watta with a larger palette than yer average impressionist. But I have never experienced this as the finger of God or anything other than nature and my small part in a larger whole that stretched far away from my imagination into a sky birthing stars as the light faded. That I cannot grasp it does not imply I should blindly believe it to be some old whitey fella, with a long beard, sandals and although capable of benevolence has a nasty streak of temper in His witches britches.
l
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