Blog 12 - Religion - Respect my views...

They say you should never discuss religion for fear of offending someone or causing an argument. Fortunately when you have no fear of either outcome it doesn't preclude the discussion in the first place.

I'm an agnostic. I don't think any of the organized religions are remotely close to providing suitable life guidance or answers to lifes great conundrums. Equally I find atheism too cynical (yes, it is possible for me to find something TOO cynical) and the purely scientific theory of evolution doesn't ring totally true. I accept general evolution as a fact of life, but I find intelligent design a far more likely explanation for life in all its forms than a slowly mutating gene pool. Anyway that's an argument for another day. As far as where I put my religious cross, I'm Agnostic. I think there is a higher power we're not aware of but I freely accept I have no concept of what form that could take.

What I struggle with, is how so many people genuinely believe in one religion or another. All of the major religions are based around stories and texts from so long ago, and there have been no occurrences of miracles or additions to the religions history or central tenants in centuries. If Christianity is right, why hasn't there been a good old miracle we can all observe for so long? Why no Saints with healing powers? Nobody walking on water? And the same for all the other religions. No elephant gods have turned up. Most people would settle for a talking squirrel just as a sign that there was something still happening in these dusty old belief systems. But there's nothing. Instead we have books written thousands of years ago, and every few days followers of each religion get together, someone reads a bit from the books whilst everyone listens, and possibly has a sing song and a collection, and that's religion in the 21st century. To me it seems ridiculous. You may as well base your belief system on the works of Shakespeare. In fact, had he ever stated that God spoke to him and told him to knock out Romeo and Juliet and call it Testament 3 - The Revenge, the population of Belfast could now be arguing about the Capulets opposition to the Orange Day Marches by the Montagues. It's that tenuous. Yet people genuinely believe. And not just nutters, sensible people. Intelligent people. People who have actually thought about religion and come to the conclusion that they believe in life as set out by The Torah, The Koran or The Bible. It's a leap of faith that's utterly beyond me, and indeed, my comprehension. I don't see how they accept it. Why is slightly easier. It must be nice to have the structure and rules provided by religion. If you do this, you're doing right. If you do something else, you're doing wrong. Obviously the devil is in the interpretation of that but maybe that's the cynic in me. There's also the comfort of being part of a community that is rapidly becoming less and less prevalent in todays globalised society. I can see why elements are attractive, but it takes a leap to go from wanting to believe in something to actually believing in it. But I accept that many people genuinely do.

Now with the vast majority of religions, if you don't want to be part of them, they keep their distance from you. Whilst they make themselves accessible if you have a genuine interest, they let you come to them. Fine. I have no issue with that. I may think what you believe is total bilge, but at the same time I have no more idea of the mysteries of the universe than any of them do, so you believe what you like. As long as you don't want to blow me up for not believing too, it's all good. My problem however, comes with the religions that actively try to recruit. And recently with the most famous of those, the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Now it's easy to pick on Jehovah's Witnesses. Most of us did it at school so we've got previous in that area. And some of their beliefs are so at odds with modern thinking that most people not of the religion will struggle to accept the relevance and plausibility of them as a serious religion. The obvious example is their refusal to allow members to receive blood transfusions following accidents, and some followers have even died rather than break this central tenant of their religion. Similarly a while ago someone at work refused to sign a colleagues birthday card because she doesn't celebrate birthdays. I hadn't known until then she was a Jehovah's Witness. It seems an odd thing for someone to be not allowed to do, but there you go. I like the person concerned and that doesn't change because they're a Jehovah's Witness, but equally I can't understand how they get to the position where they accept a religion which tells them that saying Happy Birthday to someone is a bad thing which they mustn't do. As far as I'm concerned from a secular position, wishing someone a Happy Birthday is not a religious statement. It's a meaningless milestone whose only relevance is charting our individual time on the planet. We mark it for no other reason than that it's a pleasant thing to do. The person involved isn't what I would consider a deep-thinker, and I think their belief is based around being raised by parents of that faith rather than by independant choice, but it still seems bizarre to me. However, she's a nice person, she keeps her religious beliefs to herself, and therefore I don't have any issue with what she thinks, regardless of whether it contradicts my own thinking.

However, there was an incident which happened last week which was hugely inappropriate and which led to my current musings. Kerry was at home with the girls when she got a knock on the door, and it was a woman with a child in a buggy and an older girl of about 5 or 6. The woman was a Jehovah's Witness with a stack of Watchtowers or whatever they pass round now. Now in hindsight this seems odd because they usually turn up in pairs (presumably for safety as much as anything), but this one was a lone ranger. She went through the usual "How are you today? I'm here to see if I can leave this pamphlet" schtick, and Kerry did the polite English, "No thanks I'm not really interested" but this woman was not easily dissuaded and turned it up a notch with "Why not?" and "You should be interested...". In terms of middle-class sensibilities this is a breach of protocol and not how the dialogue should go, so on these terms a (gentle) closing of the door with a disappointed yet stern frown would be the order of the day. However, this avenue was closed when the woman gave her child a nudge in the back. Our children, as per usual when somebody is at the door, sloped up behind for a nosy. (Bailey delights in greeting the supermarket delivery person with "'ello Tesco" regardless of their particular store). As soon as the woman spotted this she did the nudge, and the child as if on autopilot said "I want to play with the children" and attempted to run into the house clutching her own sampling of Junior Watchtowers. It would have been understandable if it was genuine but according to Kerry it felt so rehearsed and disingenuous that she knew the mother was using it as a pre-planned tactic to gain entry. Fortunately Kerry's child-obstruction reflexes are finely tuned and she was able to block like an NFL linebacker with a quick shimmy of the hips before closing the door on the grumbling woman who was in the early throws of attempting to make Kerry feel guilty for stopping this "spontaneous" joyful union of playful tots. Now I'm not saying this behaviour is typical, and all the Jehovah's Witnesses I've ever had on the doorstep have always been polite enough to take their leave as soon as I say I'm not interested, but the incident underlines why I personally am so unimpressed by religion as a whole and organized religion in particular. This woman has not only indoctrinated her own child before she was able to make her own conscious decisions on belief, but she has also trained her to play a part in attempted conversions of others. What gets me is not the cynicism of someone using a child in such a way as I'm perfectly happy to believe that whilst this incident is an exception rather than the rule, people in all walks of life are happy and comfortable to use children, animals, loved ones, and anything else to get what they want. What gets me is "Why?". Why did this woman think this was neccesary? Is she so certain that her beliefs should be universally duplicated that she has to train her child in an elaborate set-up to try and get to conversational first base with a stranger? What makes her so certain? And this is the problem for me.

We live in a society which desperately proports liberal values and the current favourite is Respect. With a capital R. Anybody can say anything and if you disagree it's almost expected that you have to disagree under the codicil "You have the right to your opinions and I respect your opinion, but....". In this case, I don't respect that womans opinion. I accept people being whichever religion they want to be, Hindu, Jew or Jedi, it's all rubbish in my book, but everyone can do what they want. But this woman has obviously decided that not only should she follow the teachings of her religion in that she will actively make efforts to bring others into the religion, she has gone a step further by introducing cynical tactics to do so. And she obviously believes that her beliefs give her the right to do this. Any sane person would surely have realised that no system of beliefs for everyday life is worth pushing your child to that extent. And again, I acknowledge that this woman was obviously a nut-job and not a typical Jehovah's Witness. But the fact is that very few things can make people behave so self-righteously or with such disregard for common morality as religion. As long as you say you have a belief in what you're doing, it seems to be that it's justified these days. Virtual Carte Blanche.

But at what point can you say "No, this is just bollocks"? If someone turns up purporting to believe in the Tooth Fairy and asking for a donation to support research into Tooth Fairy Studies, can you report them for fraud? Or do you have to "respect" them and leave them to pop round your gullible elderly neighbours house?

So under the terms of Headism, my new religion (no followers required, we have a very strict admittance policy), it's a basic principle that anybody who turns up at my door and behaves in a manner I deem inappropriate by my own morality is subject to a smack in the face. It's what my God would want. It may be inappropriate for most people, but I can't go against it. Please respect my views...