Are You an Atheist? Not Exactly.

I'm not really sure why but I've been asked several times recently if I am an atheist. People just assume I am because of my loathing of organised religion. The truth is, I don't think it's as easy as placing a label on someone and summing them up with a title. "There's Graham, he's an atheist." I'm not actually but I will allow that I hold more in common with atheism than any "person of faith". Still, a question has been asked so here goes.

Short answer: I'm a humanist. If you must label me, label me that. To quote Al Pacino (ironically enough playing Satan) in Devil's Advocate, "I'm a fan of man". Stick me in with the guys who like evidence to back up their beliefs. Put me in the category of people who think what's happening at NASA or what a pediatrician does every day is way more inspiring than any religious concept. The problem with this thinking (for some) is that proof puts us on firm ground in any existential debate and if you are continuously backing your beliefs up with facts while the other side revert to Book of Mormon type soundbites like, "I just believe", you start to look like a bit of a dick. "Stop insulting my faith" is an oft used line. "I'm not insulting it, I'm merely backing mine up with facts. What have you got to back yours up?" No matter what they come back with you will end up listening to unsubstantiated drivel. And again, you'll look like an asshole for pointing that out. It's worth it though and I've always been comfortable being right. If you want a more long winded answer, read on.

Long answer: Born in '76 a Catholic, I was never really sold on its teachings. Too much judgement and damnation for my liking. Couple of serious plot holes in there too... Fast forward to the 90's and the child molesting scandals were all over the news. At that point, priests who had always made me pretty uncomfortable with their "forgiveness powers" (how anyone ever let their kid go into a confession booth is beyond me) and generally crazy opinions were exposed. Some of them were molesting children. The rest of them were apologising for the crimes. Hardly any of them went to jail. Catholicism, which had been on life support anyway was, at that point, dead to me. You only need watch one History Channel documentary to see what a destructive force it has been through the centuries. Burning women for being witches, The Crusades, Magdalene Laundries, cover ups and continued child abuse etc. It is literally drowning in innocent blood.

I'm also uncomfortable with how relaxed we are with people who say things like "God spoke to me and told me to run for President"- Michele Bachmann. Now, I know this woman is crazy and maybe you do too but many people believe her. It doesn't occur to them to follow that statement to its conclusion. Here's Maggie in The Newsroom, she's a Christian but isn't afraid to ask questions:

While we're at it, doesn't the Pope have a direct line to Heaven? There are people who believe he hears the voice of God. And I remember as recently as the 1980's this was a commonly held belief. Now, since then people have changed their view on this but they still see the Pope as a beacon of hope. Before I get into why he isn't, shouldn't we give this whole Pope thing a serious rethink? Most of us agree that the Pope doesn't talk to God. That being the case, why should his opinion hold any weight at all? Because he's the head of a corrupt organisation? Granted, this latest Pope seems to have a firm grasp on the reality that we are destroying the planet and he's also trying to make Catholicism more accessible. The problem is, the rhetoric remains the same. Allow me to paraphrase Pope Francis: "Gays, single mothers, women who've had abortions you are all welcome in the house of God... as long as you seek forgiveness". How dare he! How dare he ask a gay person to beg forgiveness for being what they are. How dare he ask a woman to apologise for making a choice only she can fully understand! He also thinks smacking kids is fine... nice chap, eh.

Lastly, on Catholicism. Let's have a little chat about sex. The Catholic church is fucking obsessed with it. They don't want you to have pleasure sex. You're only meant to screw if you're married and trying to have a baby. This is a very worrying concept. Sex is healthy. It's good for you. It's not some dirty, wretched thing that will corrupt you. Marriage isn't for everyone either. There are some people who simply don't do well in long term relationships. Are they to go without sex? The joke here of course is that many priests in Ireland were and still are in very healthy relationships and are screwing all around them while enjoying the benefits of safe sex. Some of them even have children. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this. It's natural. What's unnatural is the idea that having sex with an adult* is somehow cheating on God. It's fucking mental!!! There's always been craziness when it came to sex though. For example: Women used to have to visit a priest after they'd had a baby to be "churched." I'm not making this up. The priest would bless the woman which would mean she was cleansed and at that point it was okay for her to go have sex with her husband again (as long as it was in the name of trying for a baby). The woman would have to do this even if the child had died while the mother gave birth. It all stems from this obsession they have with sex. For some reason, they see it as a bad thing. I honestly do not get it. Sexual repression is a tragedy and can cause real harm. There's a lot more I could say on this subject but I'll leave it there. You may view this as Catholic bashing but these are facts. So, yeah, I opted out of Catholicism and I can't understand how intelligent and otherwise sane people accept it as a legitimate "thing".

Am I going to go through all religions? No. Just the one that did its best to poison my mind. But having looked at them all I don't buy into any of them. There's just nothing there for me.

Let's move on to the "things happen for a reason" stuff. For me this is complete bollocks! Things that we have no control over just happen... constantly. Bad things, good things, insignificant things. To apply some master plan, logic or intelligent design to this is fucking insanity and downright insulting to anyone who has ever endured true suffering. How we react is what shapes who we are. That reaction is on you. It is not on some higher power or some ghost or angel looking after you. You choose how you respond to any given situation and this makes you the person that you are. At least, that's how I see it. And in my world seeing is believing. If anyone has any physical evidence (not some anecdotal ghost story) to the contrary, I'd love to take a look at it.

World events have had a huge bearing on me too. I think if we apply God to what's happening with Syria today we'd have to say "how fucking dare you let this happen." Of course, that doesn't apply to me as I don't believe he's up there anyway. I'm not sure when I came to the conclusion that there was nothing out there looking after us but I suspect the break up of

Yugoslavia and the ensuing war had a lot to do with it. Or maybe the half million slaughtered Rwandans pushed me over... I'm not sure. I'd like to think that intelligent, open minded people of faith would look at what is happening in the world today and ask themselves is the convenient "god gave us free will" argument really good enough? Or is it time to accept that we have free will because we just fucking have it.

There's a line in the underrated Mike Nichols movie Wolf where a guy says, "life is mystical, it's just that we are used to it". That's a throw away line in the movie but it stayed with me and has done for 20 years now. At the time, I was a believer in a "higher power". But I began to really dwell on this line. Do we really need to read the bible to get our miracles? It is pretty fucking amazing what we can achieve when the need or desire is there. I mean for fuck sake, we just sent a robot to Mars. We landed a probe on an asteroid, we have photos of Pluto. James Cameron has explored the Mariana Trench. We've cured countless diseases. We created languages, music and literature. We've climbed Everest and we're bouncing signals from satellites that put moving pictures into your living room 24 hours a day just to keep you abreast of what's happening. Amazing!


For all that though, scientists allow for things to happen and change their views accordingly. It's no use sticking rigidly to one view as you cannot grow, adapt or evolve (it's also why I don't like belief labels). I think this is the main problem with religious belief, there's just no flexibility there. The text remains the same. So you're left with three kinds of religious people. Those who use their faith as an excuse to be scumbags, those who just believe despite all reason and those who know on some level the teachings are bullshit but go along with it anyway for reasons known only to themselves.

So what happens when you die? I don't know. Many people say they've had outer body experiences. Others say they flew on the wings of a giant butterfly on the way to heaven and that it felt beautiful. Others say their whole life flashed before them... I think that your body is going through some serious trauma and your brain is frying. So, with all that activity you could see anything and think it was real. That's not to say that there isn't something out there after you die. There may very well be something more, I just feel like your brain frying while it shuts down is a more reasonable explanation and until someone can prove to me that there is life after death I'm going to stick with the more reasoned explanation.

Finally and quite simply, I'm going to continue to bask in what's happening here: "The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper."

Cheers,

G.

*the fact that I had to put the words "with an adult" into that sentence tells me all I need to know about the Catholic Church.