Made up stories, homophobia and other reasons to choose a life of atheism Posted by Damp Cardigan on April 7, 2013 · 3 Comments

A modern day parable.

You can consider this the concluding chapter of an accidental theological trilogy that has found it’s way to the page almost all by itself. I never really set out with a specific agenda, sometimes themes kind of stay with you for a bit.

Even though atheism is growing amongst the people of planet earth we are still very much in the minority. In fact some of us, who should really place themselves in the atheist column, would sooner tick the Jedi box of the census as this seems more like an act of antiestablishment than claiming not to believe in anything. But us atheists do like to surround are selves with like-minded people just like religious people do. We do it to hopefully miss the need to argue with the bigoted and the religious will go to equally great lengths to avoid being proven wrong.

I have a Twitter account thing. For those of you who know about this sort of thing we can all agree that it’s fantastically fucking stupid. On Twitter you can follow your friends daily activities, share almost anything and aggressively stalk celebrities. I have found myself following not just my friends but atheists too and not just any old atheists, famous ones. It’s strange and feels almost like reputable people I can reference in an argument now sponsor my theological indignations. Whilst looking down the feed today I spotted a post from Derren Brown concerning what was initially a very believable headline – Parents put 16 year old daughter up for adoption after learning she is gay.

Now it turns out that this story is no truer than 99% of the Bible (I’ll concede that Jesus probably was a bloke). This has not stopped it from being picked up by both sides of the argument. Bandwagon jumping is a favourite pastime of the religious and when coupled with the anonymity afforded by the Internet it usually results in some pretty abhorrent behaviour.

The behaviour in question surrounded the subject of prayer. A religious type posted that the parents involved in this work of pure fiction had landed on the wrong solution and they should have started praying sooner. This started a dialogue of confused rhetoric where both believers and non-believers argued over the effectiveness of prayer in any situation with some rather shocking results.

My least favourite of these comments – I think they made a choice that was right. I firmly DO NOT believe people are born gay. I believe they choose it. She made her choice and they made there’s.

My favourite – Disowning your 16-year-old lesbian daughter is a pretty gay thing to do.

I find it interesting that prayer and its effectiveness was concentrated on so fiercely but really, it’s not that surprising. The religious would never realistically debate the finer details of such an act of mindless faith but they have no problem concentrating on the more ambiguous acts of lunacy that surround every aspect of their practice.

Lets pretend for a minute that this story is real. It’s really not hard to imagine that horrible acts of parental terrorism happen are a daily occurrence in the world of the fiercely religious. Much of the talk suggested that this would be an ultimately good move for the girl as at least she was escaping the oppression of sexually and spiritually repressed parents. The contradictory danger here is that she may have been as religious as her parents and this final act of homophobia might have been the one thing that pushed her towards atheism. I would like this to be true if only as a fantastic way of proving a fucking point. However, it’s not true. It’s just another made up story taken on by the Christians and used to further their own justifications for living a flawed life of hate and homophobia, just like they did with the Bible.

Phil Watson