I won’t knock on your door to tell you I’m an atheist, but I should. Posted by Damp Cardigan on March 18, 2013 · 4 Comments

I sat down to write this yesterday. Something as ludicrous as regenerating the leader of our oldest organised crime syndicate, like a pious Doctor Who, would never pass without the need for comment. However, it soon became apparent that no words were finding their way onto the page, at least nothing original anyway. It could have been easy to break out some tried and tested religion bashing metaphors and create another instantly forgettable, immediately ignored and slightly childish rant. I left the writing alone but not just for these reasons. If I hadn’t been distracted by a perfectly timed visit from our local Jehovah’s Witnesses then all of the above could, and probably would, have happened. Their timing and new angle of attack left me with much to ponder.

I’m not getting softer in my old age nor am I becoming more tolerant of those hateful cretins who choose a life of fiction spreading under the guise of imagined, moral superiority. The atheist community is quite rightly growing as the burgeoning irrelevance of organised religion becomes increasingly apparent to an evolving world. There are always dangerous side effects to any sort of movement becoming mobilised. Within any growth lies the threat of reflecting the kind of methods that are normally so vehemently opposed.

Both sides of this battle have embraced modern mediums to help reach the widest audience possible. It was within this that a friend of mine drew my attention to the problems arising in modern atheism. He posted on a popular social networking site that he felt a need to unlike some of these atheist pages due to the high levels of ‘preachy’ behaviour. He hadn’t found God, just more problems as opposed to a solution. The atheist cannot become an easy target for ridicule if it is to survive as an intellectually superior lifestyle. By adopting the preachy methods and aggressive intolerance of the indoctrinated the atheist could now be open to the same level of ideological scrutiny as the religious. For us to hold a position of moral superiority we MUST embrace the fact that they will believe in a God regardless of intervention and not seek them out to question there lives.

Well this is all very tolerant isn’t it? I understand that I’m in danger of sounding like something really sinister, like a 21st Century hippy or something. But even I have my limits and the only time when an equal reaction is entirely justified comes when the God fearing cold-call my house with dogma for sale.

So, back to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I have in the past taken great pleasure in instigating a doorstep argument, as these people, along with The Church of Latter Day Saints, are the easiest to debate. Informing anyone with a religious temperament that, statistically, organised religion is historically the biggest cause of war invokes the blankest of expressions and stuttered responses. If on that day you are in a particularly mischievous mood and really feel like fucking with them then you could always let them in to your home. This allows for more time to get into things like the Omnipotent Paradox (Google it) or Jesus being a Jew (that last one is even in the Bible).

But yesterday, as they made their quarterly rounds, they employed a new technique that successfully quelled the possibility for a theological dressing down. When I opened the door I was faced with a well-dressed, middle-aged lady, her face already smug in the knowledge that she had defeated me, and the eight-year-old boy she had brought with her as a logic shield. I was torn between my in built need to tolerate the weirdness of children and the strongest gag reflex when being fed watchtowers. He handed me a leaflet and in his best voice invited me to join them at a gathering to discuss why Jesus is better than Batman and why we all need cleansing. I was caught on the back foot. I accepted the leaflet, threw my best shit-eating grin at the lady and closed the door knowing I had been beaten. I watched them from the window. They were repeating this routine up and down my street and she looked at him more adoringly as this new approach yielded a diminishing pile of leaflets. I bet she wouldn’t be looking at him so adoringly if he needed a blood transfusion. Damn it! Why didn’t I say that when they were here? Can’t really open the door and shout it that them now.

This is the very leaflet the youngster gave me.

It has long been a weapon of the atheist to point out that if Jesus Christ did exist, and he probably was a bloke at some point, then he would have definitely been black due to the Asian nature of the Holy Land. Accusations of racism directed at the religious have been based on this very argument and on the basis of this leaflet, we kind of have a point don’t we?

Now the Catholics don’t really need such an aggressive recruitment process. When they choose a new leader, as faith is not real without a hierarchical system of control, the world tunes in.

Interestingly you will hear non-Catholics declare that ‘we’ have a new Pope like his appointment collectively affects us all. His instant celebrity status will grant him at least a fortnight of intense examination and speculation until we get bored and concentrate our indignations on finding food where it shouldn’t be. The pomp and circumstance surrounding the papal ceremony seems almost scripted for television so the new Pope can enjoy this global attention even if it is fleeting in nature. Catholics will weep in the streets and it will all be peace and forgiveness until the subject of homosexuality comes up and then we’ll be back to fear mongering and hate preaching. Now ‘we’ don’t care anymore. We’re bored and need something else to devote all our resentment to.

Our attention span is as fleeting as the public’s admiration for the Pope outside of Catholicism. Remember the Sandy Hook massacre or Joseph Kony? See, you’d forgotten about that which you were so aggressively vocal about for about two weeks because you, and the news media, got bored. The outcome of both these stories was devoid of the sensationalism that the initial coverage promised. Just like the Pope really. They presented him to the world like a geriatric second coming and the outcome here is that ‘we’ have another homophobic face of an institution that enjoys 1.2 billion deluded followers. But you’ll forget about it just as soon as we have a new villain, like Oscar Pistorious. I just wish it was the same with God.

Phil Watson