A THOUGHT FOR SUNDAY

Non Credo
From the pulpit of an Atheist Preacher

Brothers and Sisters. I have been asked to give you my views on the subject of Immortality and Belief in God.

Immortality, is promised by many religions and never, as far as I can tell, delivered. True immortality means 'to live forever' and this surely implies that anyone so blessed (or so cursed) would remain in their present physical state, perhaps adding a wrinkle or two, for ever. No-one, to my certain knowledge, has ever claimed that they have achieved this. Some people live to ripe old age but I have never read a newspaper report of anyone claiming to have, for example, been present at the execution of King Charles 1st or the coronation of King George 11 and Queen Caroline. If immortality existed then we should be surrounded by examples of it and we are not.

Religion fudges the issue. All religions have a vested interest in offering a reward for doing whatever the particular religion favours and immortality seems like a pretty good incentive. They can't offer real immortality but a rather vague state called 'life after death' is available on certain terms. It's not the same. They offer Heaven, a place where one … sort of exists with lots of other ex-people who have observed the rules and now … sort of exist. My, what a miscellaneous melting-pot of molecules there must be in Heaven!

How appealling is this notion! To live one's life, to die and leave behind one's loved ones and then to move on to … coincide … with those who have already died and 'passed over' while preparing to welcome those left behind when they die and pass over. And for there to be, perhaps, an angel or two floating around and even a chance to meet God once in a while. It is so appealling that it requires great strength of mind and character to resist it. All one has to do to enter this blissful state when the time comes is to do what one is told to do. So people buy this idea, have been buying it for a very long time and still do across a very wide spectrum of religious beliefs. How hard it is, in the face of such a powerful attraction, to resist, to deny its truth and simply to accept that one day we will die and that will be that. It takes courage to believe in our own mortality.

Although my belief is that there is no God it may surprise you to learn that I do not mind in the slightest if you or anyone else believes in God - just as it doesn't bother me if you believe in life after death and Heaven. I can co-exist with those who call themselves 'believers' (although I sometimes resent their appropriation of a word that applies as much to me as to them) provided that they keep it to themselves and don't play the Faith card when they want to talk people into doing things. The way it goes is this: to believe in God you must have Faith; we are God's representatives on Earth so you must have Faith in us as well and do what we say. Do you see how the jump is made? Whenever someone puts on a strange hat or clothes, holds a stick or a book, creates strange smells, has an unfamiliar hair-do, speaks in a funny voice - I won't continue, you know the score - and then tells you that they know what God wants and they know what you have to do to get into Heaven and starts bossing you around, you are about to be suckered. They don't know. None of them knows. But, by gosh, they have Faith and you, by gosh, had better have Faith too and believe them because if you don't you are offending your Maker! And we have another place for you, my friend! You have doubts? Have Faith, my child. Or else.

So, if in a small corner of your brain you have a feeling that this great and wonderful world of ours had a Grand Designer who made all things great and small, then that does no-one any harm at all. The minute you start to think you know what this God wants you to do and worse you feel that you should influence others to do the same then, my friend, you are entering what are dangerous waters.

Consider the terrible things people have done in the past because of what God is believed to want them to do. Public evisceration. Quartering. Burning Alive. Pressing to death. More recently; flying passenger planes into skyscrapers, blowing up trains and buses, walking through hotels and restaurants with machine guns blazing. It was man that devised the crazy logic that could so cruelly bring about the misery of his fellow human beings and then pin the responsibility on someone who has yet to speak up for himself - or, to be religiously correct, Himself.

What about Good? Doesn't belief in God, Heaven and Life After Death provide a reason for being Good? Does it not demand Good? No, not necessarily. Not in a world where the meanings of words can be changed quite easily. People who claim to know what God wants us to do are just as capable of coming up with Bad things as well as Good and then claim that they are Good. What they so often fail to realise is that by attributing the definition of what is Good to God and making it the prerogative of God they are profoundly insulting the rest of the human race. You do not need a religion to tell you how to behave properly. I have been attacked by Christians who challenge my right to take any kind of moral position because I do not believe in God. What piffle!

My Faith is in the human race. We have an innate desire to do the right thing and to see that the right thing is done. We believe in kindness, charity, love, self-sacrifice - go on, add to this list yourselves. We learn from the mistakes of the past and strive to make this world a better place to live in. We sort out our disagreements on how best to achieve our goals through discussion and politics - and sometimes War. And we do not need the carrot of promised immortality in Heaven to make us strive for Good any more than we can tolerate the stick of threatened Hell if we do not do as we are told.

But what of death? Are we atheists not frightened of it? Facing the void believing that there is nothing after death? No prospect of heavenly immortality to comfort us? I don't think we are as scared as you might imagine. I'd like to think that when we die we do so knowing that we have been part of humanity and have contributed to its development and that we have done as much Good as we are capable of doing. As it is with all human beings, our immortality extends no further than the memories the living have of us. That is surely enough.