The God Delusion

Pinkie: You're a Catholic?
Rose: Yes.
Pinkie: I'm one too.
Rose: You believe, don't you? You think it's true?
Pinkie: Course it's true. These atheists don't know nothing. Course there's a Hell, flames, damnation, torments.
Brighton Rock (1947) starring Richard Attenborough & Carol Marsh

There's a computer spod in my office. Well there are many computer spods in my office, we develop software apps. But this one takes it to the limit. Most computer spods are happy to be excited about MVC frameworks, gadgets, Family Guy, etc. Happy in their own comfort zone. But this guy has himself down as an intellectual. Despite the fact that he's only 24, been computer programming since the cradle and being a borderline sociopath. And what gives him the right to class himself as a top notch intellect? Well, you see, he's read The God Delusion by Sir Richard Dawkings. That's it. He's got the whole meaning of life sewn up.

He's taken to it because he can see the supreme logic in it. It's like a computer program. No evidence for God, plenty of evidence against (evolution, microwave background radiation, etc etc). Therefore there is no God. Any argument against his autocratic atheism (like 'who gives a shit?') does not compute. Checksum error - null-pointer exception - massive stack trace all over the porcelain.

Actually there is nothing wrong with the atheistic viewpoint per se. It's one that I hold myself. Problem is that our spod has decided to apply it to all kinds of contexts where it should just be left alone. Like Dickie Dawkins, he's become obsessed, evangelical and just plain wrong about it.

He seems personally affronted by the fact that certain people feel they should be allowed to have privately held beliefs in a supernatural designer and an afterlife. (In their heads yeah? In their own private heads!)

To be honest and fair, I've had periods like this in my life, but you get to a point when you realise, "So what, you'll never change anyone by ridiculing them". And why would you even want to, unless you were a fascist. The world would be a dull place if everyone held the same views.

Anyway, if you get stuck in this raving rut you become perceived as being just as 'loony' as the people who go door-to-door with leaflets telling you how to let God into your life at a ridiculously early hour of a weekend. And you become so anti-religion that it begins to cloud your capacity for logical thought.

For example, it is quite common among people stuck in this delusional mindset to confuse someone's personal belief in "a religion" with concepts like "religion controlling people", "religion being homophobic", "religion being misogynistic", "religion being racist". In reality these all all traits of human beings in general. They confuse a person's personal faith with issues like "Religion causes war". It also makes the false conclusion that all people who have religious beliefs are, necessarily, controlling, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, etc. etc. etc.

Of course, stories of young Muslim women being stoned to death in Afganistan for tarnishing a family's honour cause me great concern but to group the perpetrators together with old Mrs Jones from No. 23 who collects for Oxfam and goes to Mass three times a day is a trifle perverse.

Ron Currie illustrates the pointlessness of trying to destroy religion brilliantly in his novel God Is Dead (Picador:2008). The premise of the book is God coming back to Earth in human form and actually dying. The book examines what we find to replace God. Humans begin to worship death and the cult of the child; a world war breaks out between the Post Modern Anthropologists and the Evolutionary Psychologists. In essence it's not really religion that causes problems. We are programmed to follow the crowd and take sides and fight. If it's not religion causing conflict, it will be haircuts, music taste, football... what have you got, basically.

This also interesting when it comes to how we think of the many centuries of art, music, philosophy, architecture and so on that surround us and make us who we are. As autocratic atheists, do we burn the works of Aristotle and Descartes, the writings of Plutarch and Dante? Do we decide not to teach these texts in Schools and Universities so as not to taint the minds of our scholars? Do we demolish the churches and cathedrals of Sir Christopher Wren? Is this what the autocratic atheist would do? Would someone of this persuasion necessarily have to forgo listening to Jesu Joy Of Man's Desiring by Johan Sebastian Bach at his close friends' wedding ceremony? Even more contemporary music such as Country and Gospel rely heavily on the notion of God and His absoluteness. Would I be forced to press 'skip' when Satan Is Real or The Christian Life by the Louvin Brothers came on my iPod or even something less obvious like The Mercy Seat by Nick Cave or Way Down In The Hole by Tom Waits?

Religion and notions of right and wrong, good and evil, God and Satan, salvation and damnation are powerful artistic tools. Would the autocratic atheist only allow these devices to be used by an author in a cynical, mocking and sarcastic way? In Brighton Rock, Graham Greene tries to soften the character of psychopath Pinkie Brown by making him a teetotal, non-smoking Roman Catholic who believes that Hell is real. Whether his Hell is a real place, a metaphor for his predicament or just sweet words to win over the devoted Rose, we don't find out. But in terms of Biblical imagery, you couldn't really cram much more in there. Many Spielberg films are the same. E.T., for example, is virtually identical to the story of Christ (think about it).

Anyway, if you're interested, I did start reading the God Delusion when it first came out but I felt so bored and beaten up by the end of Chapter Two that I couldn't continue. It falls short in so many ways and doesn't even begin to acknowledge that the only logical conclusion any atheist can come to is that "nothing really matters." Whether someone believes in God or does not believe in God has no bearing on anything really. We'll soon enough all be dead and forgotten. Best just to stop worrying and enjoy your life, eh?

Last Orders Half Past Ten

Between meeting Martin in 1980 and taking my 'O' levels in 1983 several lucky things happened to me. Lucky in the respect of acquiring more music and fleshing out my knowledge of music.

My elder sister had started Sixth Form College in 1980 and, before long had embarked upon a relationship with a boy from a nearby town who had more new music for me. His name was Chris. He wore old jackets and overcoats from charity shops. He was like no one I had ever met and his record collection nicely complemented my growing array of tape cassettes of Martin's punk and new wave records. Chris brought around albums and singles from bands from the North West who were gathering press interest. I gladly accepted copies of Dragnet, Grotesque, Totale's Turn and Slates by The Fall and Unknown Pleasures and Closer by Joy Division (their singer just committed suicide, you know).

I purchased Crocodiles by Echo & The Bunnymen and Kilimanjaro by The Teardrop Explodes. I was about 14 years old. Everyone at school thought I was a twat.

Top of the Pops and the weekly Sunday evening Top 40 radio show kept me in touch with what the kids at school liked: The Specials, The Beat, Adam & The Ants, Madness, Ultravox, Blondie, Visage, etc. But my extra-curricular activities set me aside from everyone else. I was able to make connections.

Me: "You do know that Visage is made up from members of Magazine and Ultravox?"
Kids at school: "Who are Magazine?"
Me: "And of course, Rusty Egan and Midge Ure were in The Rich Kids with Glen Matlock from The Sex Pistols."
Kids at school: "Yeah, but isn't Sting cool?"

Like I say, everyone at school thought I was a tedious twat. I didn't really care, I'd given up trying to be popular. Anyway, other things had started to happen. I had started to venture further afield on Saturday afternoons, on the Merseyrail train into Liverpool and specialist record shops like Probe and Penny Lane.

Silence is Golden

When I was growing up in the 1970s, getting hold of music was really hard. My Dad, who was a teenager in the 1950s, had a record collection that I plundered. Of course, I had Top of the Pops with Gary Glitter (yes him), The Sweet, David Bowie, T Rex, Mud, David Essex, Wizzard, Windsor Davies & Don Estelle and The Simon Park Orchestra to keep me going once a week. But the only on-demand music I had was Buddy Holly, Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley, Jackie Wilson, Emile Ford & The Checkmates, The Beatles, Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas. Whatever was in the dusty box of vinyl in the loft of our three-bedroom semi. In that respect I was lucky in that my musical education sort of started at the beginning.

By the time 1980 arrived, I had a paper round and pocket money to allow me to purchase singles and the occasional album. But I had to be very careful and selective. What to buy? Luckily I made friends with a boy called Martin around the corner whose uncle was in his late teens. Martin had a collection of punk and new wave singles and albums bought under the tutelage of said uncle, which included: Suspect Device by Stiff Little Fingers, Complete Control by The Clash, In To The Valley by The Skids, Public Image by Public Image Limited, the Where's Bill Grundy Now EP by The Television Personalities, Silly Thing by The Sex Pistols and Summer Fun by The Barracudas; along with the first album by The Clash and the Never Mind The Bollocks. Martin had diabetes and was an only child, so I guess he was indulged by his parents. I had no complaints: I took his records home and taped them.

Doing it for the kids

I recently, quite mischievously, dug into a work colleague because he didn't know who Flavor Flav was. This guy is about 25, in a band (album recorded, pop-rock, available on lastFM) and quite opinionated, cocky even.

When I explained, rather patronisingly, that Mr Flav was an American rapper with a scary clock in the seminal 80s Long Island outfit Public Enemy; the boy looked back at me nonplussed.

I said to him, "You don't really know much about popular culture, especially for someone in a band", he replied, "Well what I call culture is like, Shakespeare, Mozart. Really."

It was the knock-out punch. I called to my corner, flailing around, "The towel, throw in the towel."