Given that I have little regard for most of the devils that pack the pews in the great Palace of Sin we call Westminster, I was taken aback when their High Priest, David Cameron, announced Britain was a Christian country.
He also described his own Christian faith in glowing terms and claimed Christian values across the UK were being devalued.
This proclamation had quite an effect. More than 50 celebrity atheists,
including authors Sir Terry Pratchett and Philip Pullman, performer Tim Minchin and presenter Dan Snow, signed an open letter to the press claiming Cameron was fostering “alienation and division” as well objecting to his characterisation of the UK.
The Muslim Council was a bit more forgiving and conciliatory in their tone. They sat on the fence in other words, pointing out the very obvious that the UK would be stronger if it recognised and celebrated people of all faiths and of no faith.
The backlash to the atheists’ open letter, like so many of the fables laid out in the good book, was entirely predictable and came from expected, powerful and very wealthy sources.
The collective, over-riding response from the God squad was one of disbelief that they should be pilloried and their values attacked in such a way. Honestly, you couldn’t make it up!
Me? Well, first of all I checked the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April 1, and then I wondered why so many intelligent people from both sides of the argument were getting so wound up about his beliefs and questionable assertions, especially when it was blatantly obvious that his oily words were nothing more than positioning for votes from those many thousands of Christians who feel religiously disenfranchised by politicians of all parties.
Instead of getting in such a lather they should have remembered the words of Edgar Allan Poe who said: “All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.”
More appropriate, though, are the words of the great Roman philosopher Seneca who said religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false and by rulers as useful.
With a general election just around the corner Cameron sadly knows just how useful religion can be in an effort to keep in power. I say sadly because I personally wish religion any religion did not have such a sway on our daily lives.
It has, at times, been the most destructive force ever unleashed. Forget natural disasters like earthquakes, floods and the like Mother Nature doesn’t have a look-in.
She doesn’t even come close when it comes to the billions of deaths and suffering caused through the ages in the name of religion.
I am not remotely against people who are religious, who gain comfort from their faith and associated beliefs. Certainly not. My late and greatly missed father was a very religious man and so are many of my family.
But if I was ever to find God there are a quite a few questions I would like him to answer the first being why he has allowed such carnage and slaughter to take place?
Woody Allen pointed out that Jesus would probably never stop throwing up if he were to come back and saw what was being done in his name
Thank God I’m an atheist!
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