| [Tags**|blasphemy, god, ruminate] [Current Mood** |
mischievous]Walking Mischa the other day, I was accosted by a middle-aged woman and her daughter, who were handing out small leaflets to try and populate their nearby church with the intellectually vulnerable. "Danke," I said, very nicely, _"aber ich bin atheist."_Her mouth distorted and she physically twisted away from me. "Oh, Schaaaaade!" she exclaimed—ohhhh, what a shame! "Nicht für mich!" I responded cheerfully, and went on my happy heathen way with my happy heathen dog.So yes: for reasons that are outside the scope of this post, I don't believe in God. Yet this morning, I realised that I consciously avoid swearing by Its name. And I wondered: why? Since God doesn't exist, or at any rate is criminally negligent of Its creation, I can barely be afraid that It will punish me with a lightning strike or a Providential heart-attack. Nor am I afraid that the name will offend people, except where I'm generally on best behaviour anyway— situations where I also don't say "fuck," and restrict "bugger" to the formal context of choir-boys. No: clearly I'm afraid that if I invoke the name of God, people will think I believe in It.Poppycock. Language is full of archaisms and interjections that are rarely to be taken literally. Nobody says, "And also with you," when I bid them "goodbye," nor do they cower from Satan when I snarl, "Damn it!" We "touch wood" and "bless" sneezes with barely a thought of the old religious connotations. I reckon it's time God went the same way, into the neverland of idiom and shibboleth.And, for this alone, I say we still need God. What else is such a potent symbol for awe? Real awe is no use: you can't swear by the marvellous complexity of a dung-beetle, or our human insignificance compared to the energies of a nova, or the incomprehensible scale of a parsec. Interjections need culture, a certain atavistic layering of the connotations of human history.So, from now on, when something really impresses me, I'm cheerfully going to invoke the name of an archaic deity from an obsolescent religion. And if I can't say "God!" then I'll say "Fuck!" |
akeela was tapping his foot impatiently because we were already fifteen minutes overdue for supper with his family. I tried not to look as guilty as I felt. But the supper was wonderful, and we gave his father a Klein Bottle as a pseudo-Christmas present.I just took Mischa out for a late-night walk that's practically a caffeinated-early-morning walk, and noticed a new sign on the church up the road. These signs have been annoying me lately because they facilely propose God as the answer to questions for which I think I have much better answers. With God... understand one another. Or with the extraordinary evolved capacity of human social intuition. With God... make sense of the world. This one particularly annoys me. Try science, bitches. With God... help one another. Why does this need God, grrr? But sometime in the past few days they've put up one I can agree with:With God... celebrate Christmas._Finally._I think I can sleep now