It’s not my Bull

I was brought up as a Presbyterian Christian in Australia, and I had amazing good fortune with my Minister during my impressionable years. He went out of his way to teach us about other Christian denominations, and other religions. Of course it wasn’t in great detail: you can’t impart the doctrines of centuries or millennia old belief systems in 50 or so minutes. But, I respected his honesty and his genuine attempt to explain, not judge. I remember those lessons with fondness, and actually now recognise how his approach demonstrated a humble self-assuredness, a confidence in his own beliefs.

I left the Christian church because I didn’t like the directions in which other Ministers I had were taking it, which led to me questioning my faith, questioning the reason for faith, and deciding that neither God nor any other gods actually exist.

I am, therefore, atheist.

I believe that faith, or non-faith, should be a personal thing. It shouldn’t be about who is right, and who is not, but about what’s right for you. It was how I was brought up. I never had the “our church is better than your church” competition when I was a teenager or younger, which was one of the reasons I ended up leaving another church when I was emerging from my teenage years. I remember encountering it numerous times in Sydney by people meaning well but operating on the assumption that because they didn’t know me (i.e. I wasn’t in their group) I needed saving (in some cases the intention was to get me to hand my savings over to them).

Evangelism of any kind leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. I realise now that it’s because I don’t like being confronted by someone who thinks they are right about anything, and that I must be wrong by virtue of my existence and experience. I don’t like being lectured at about what I must think and believe. I am an atheist because that is where my path has led me. I don’t believe I have the Truth, but it is my truth.

I do like talking with people who like to share their learning, their knowledge and their ideas, and this can be about things I don’t believe in. I like learning about the richness of human experience. Not to store up ammunition with which to score points, but because I’m genuinely fascinated by what makes us tick as human beings. And I’m fascinated by the different ways in which we view and interpret the world, and make sense of the things that happen.

I reject the idea of there being one universal truth about anything. More precisely, I don’t believe that human beings as we are can experience existence in one universal way.

I interpret the world as I interpret the world, as I exist in it, at this time. You interpret the world as you interpret the world, as you exist in it, at this time. They interpret the world as they interpret the world, as they exist in it, at this, or any other, time.

That’s the ultimate in post-modernism, if you want to apply a theoretical framework to it. To me it’s a reductionist truism, it’s self-evident, and yet when you start to really grapple with what that means, it stretches the mind so far it either snaps or, more often, it freezes and skips to something else easier to deal with.

I am a gay female, white-skinned, born in Australia in 1968 to a mother who spoke English as a first language and a father who spoke English as a second language. I speak English as a first language, understand a second language to a reasonable degree, and can get by very haphazardly with a few others. I have a Bachelor’s degree in politics, and a Master’s in cultural studies. I’m a writer and researcher, trained in comparative analysis, which is a fancy way of saying that I try to interpret the actions of others through as many different points as view as possible.

When I get stuck on the question of why someone else can’t see my point, I take a breath and remember how difficult it is for me to fathom how anyone can possibly enjoy sex involving a penis (sorry, guys). Actually, it’s impossible for me. Yet, intellectually, I know I’m in a minority. That mental exercise allows me to open up my mind again to re-tackle the problem of being understood.

I write all that because I want to make it clear that while I am an atheist, I can understand on an intellectual basis the fact that there are those with a true faith in God – whether that God be the Jewish God, the Christian Holy Trinity, or the God of Islam – or a pantheon of gods. But I cannot share that faith. I did, once, so I know what it feels like… for me. It’s something that’s utterly alien to me now, as though my teenaged self was not me at all. As Christopher Hitchens in his Hitch 22 (2010) points out, what’s the definition of self when you reach an age when every cell in your body is not what you had when born several times over?

Yeah, that’s one of those mind-freezing moments. I’ll skip ahead.

I don’t object to the Pope’s visit to the UK this month on religious grounds. What right do I have to deny those who follow Roman Catholicism their access to their church leader? I do, though, add my voice to those who have denounced the public funding of the visit and the classification of it as a state visit. Given the massive spending cuts to public services, how can Britain justify spending even a few million pounds on protecting a man who has some serious questions to answer about a global cover-up of some very serious crimes. That’s actual crimes, actually being investigated by police in several countries. Let alone the dreadful public stance against effective ways to at least slow the spread of HIV/AIDS; calling the UK’s landmark Equality Act into question because it dares to afford many of the same rights as heterosexuals to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trans people (yet, still, not all the same rights); and then there’s where women fall on the scale of inherent evil.

What was Gordon Brown thinking? What is David Cameron thinking?

I find myself agreeing with pretty much everything Polly Toynbee wrote in the Guardian, 15 September 2010, which is, for me, a first. There is danger in the strident tones of religion demanding power disproportionate to their true influence. There is danger in those who claim religion to shut down any and all dissenting voices. The one positive of all this, as Toynbee writes, is that these issues are being debated. Not just debated; there are some fascinating observations coming out. There is dialogue happening.

I just hope more of the media – broadcast TV and radio in particular – gets on board with more sophisticated engagement. I entertain the notion of being stopped and asked questions by TV reporters: “What do you think of the Pope’s visit?” “Well,” say I, “given that I’m a gay woman who’s an atheist and who thinks condoms do work to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, I don’t think I’m top of his most favoured list.”

And somehow I think that won’t get aired.