The same system works in all the faiths. Bottom-rung ordinary Muslims, praying to Mecca and trying to be good, carry on their shoulders teetotal, wife-hiding, bearded zealots. Above them are the livid US-flag-burning, madrassa-educated, evolution-denying nutters, who in turn bear the weight of Islamists, who find an educated woman an insult to Allah and praise the idea of violent jihad, usually too scared to actually blow themselves up but if they know anyone with special needs or educationally subnormal they might have a bash at talking them into it. Teetering on the top are the likes of the Al Qaida murderers and their brothers around the world. Not Bin Laden, though. I suspect he wasn’t a Muslim at all but a spoiled little rich kid with ‘issues’ he needed to look at. A lot like his warmongering nemesis George W. Bush.
If the bottom rung walked away and decided that with or without faith the religion they belong to was too corroded by power, then the whole ugly mess would begin to crumble. Where would Hezbollah recruit from if most Muslims decided that any connection to the violent political power of Islam was not for them? Where would Israeli Jews find the justification to treat Palestinians like so many of them do? Would Christians succeed in quietly persecuting women and gays? On the shoulders of the kindest, best-intentioned, gentle believers stand row upon row of increasingly nasty people with ‘unquestionable’ ethics, ancient books which they ‘know’ to be true and a very quiet God who likes to leave most of His ideas open to interpretation and metaphor.
These power structures are not unique to religion. Most democracies work in a similar way, but crucially in a functioning democracy change is always possible, freedom is generally cherished and old ideas sometimes pass away because the process is at least structurally able to consider new ideas. I sometimes imagine the most loony religious barbarians trying to foster support without the fear-filled power of the religious myths they exploit …
‘Who here wants to fly a plane into the Twin Towers in New York?’
‘Shut up, you wizened old bollock. No way. I’d die and I suspect loads of other people would too. You’d have to be insane to do that. Why would you suggest such a stupid and horrible idea? What’s that bloody book you’re reading? Eh? Here, have a look at this one, it’s got a fella named Boo Radley in it.’
It’s not that the atrocities of religious extremists are the fault of ordinary believers. But they do, to some extent, belong to the same group as the perpetrators of hate and fear. They do provide the platform upon which the nutters will stand until someone daft enough comes along and becomes willing to do something very unpleasant on the promise of a favourable audience with the big man after they’ve gone. It’s all connected, and it all puts me off.
None of us is above these connected webs of corrupted thought. Religious or otherwise, you can’t live a totally clean life. Not without opting out of the whole system of modern living and shuffling off to live as a carbon-neutral subsistence-farming hermit in a yurt. Even with that simple, turnip-heavy existence you’d be denying one of the core parts of the human experience – other humans and the negotiation of the social life. You can be moral and strive for the ethical existence but something you buy, eat, ride on or watch will be tainted by decisions you are not connected to. Morals vary and are usually dependent on budgets. A few rich people live ‘well’ and are generous or philanthropic. They are lucky; they have time and resources to be good. Some poor people are so lacking in the fundamental basics the rest of us take for granted that there simply isn’t time for them to fall short of their own or anyone else’s standards. They are lucky; they don’t have time or resources to be bad. Most people fall between these extremes and do the best they can with what they have. Apart from arms, drug and debt-bond dealers – they’re just arseholes.
I choose to bank with an ‘ethical’ bank, having discovered that my previous bank, Barclays, had made loans to senior figures in the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. I didn’t like that, so I took the moral high ground, I acted on principle, I decided not to care how much work it took to change every payment, account, standing order, card and the rest, and I did the decent thing: I got my wife to move all our accounts to the Co-op. It was exhausting and complicated … apparently. It’s very tiring being good. The important thing is I did the right thing. Now Barclays sponsor bikes and cycle lanes all over London. I like that. The yin and yang of corporate responsibility.
Most people’s money ends up being connected in one way or another to the arms, tobacco and oil industries. I wish it didn’t, but the way we trade with the rest of the world means that even a simple transaction – for instance, £2 for a sandwich – is the end point of a number of strands that when unravelled will see all manner of evils spill out over the floor like puke on a night bus. The bread for the sandwich comes from wheat that has been contaminated by genetically modified crops, made by a company that engineers prices in the developing world and keeps people poor in order to make more profit. The baker has shares in BAE Systems and likes running over bunny rabbits in his tractor. The mayonnaise comes from battery chicken eggs from a farm whose accounts are in the Channel Islands providing finance for a bank that gives indirect loans to gunrunners who arm Somali pirates who murder people with them. The ham is from Denmark when there are pig farms in the UK struggling to get by. These Danish pigs are intensively farmed by a man so incensed by the Prophet Mohammed cartoon incident he has now joined a far-right organization planning to fire-bomb a mosque. The packaging will last so long on a landfill site that my great-great-great-great-grandson could still use it as a perfectly serviceable sandwich wrapper, and the guy selling the sandwich likes Justin Bieber. One moment you were hungry, the next you have almost guaranteed the wholesale destruction of the world. There’s no avoiding it.
I wish it were simpler but it’s not, so you accept these facts and do the best you can with what you have. There are restaurant chains I choose not to eat in because of the impact of the way they farm and transport food, but I’ve eaten lamb from New Zealand whilst in Wales. I buy free-range chicken, but even the lightest push in the direction of Nando’s sees me indulge that guilty pleasure with lashings of piri-piri sauce to hide the taste of shame in my mouth. I enjoy foie gras but I don’t eat veal. I try to reuse the things I have but whenever Apple or Paul Smith make something new, I get excited and often buy it regardless of duplication, necessity or self-awareness. The point being, I like Christ and I’m no better than many Christians but I can’t join their church because there’s too much about their politics that makes me shudder. I can’t be a Muslim because I like to see my wife’s face when she tells me the amazing things she knows and the Jews don’t want new members anyway. I won’t be part of the pyramid. If I was in there I’d choose to hide somewhere near the middle row, then I’d wobble about like a circus clown with a bee in my oversized pants.
A person’s individual faith is just that. It’s personal and shouldn’t be attacked. To identify with God as He is presented and to belong to a group that shares a similar reverence must feel good. Very few people, if any, choose to be Shi’ite or orthodox Jew or Lutheran in order to further the political aims of their church; but that is what it does. Many join a faith as a child, inheriting the beliefs of their parents, and without questioning it become a small piece of statistical evidence that ‘most people’ don’t want evolution taught in schools, or that gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed, or that women should be kept in their place, or that something violent should be done to youngsters who put empty Tango cans in hedges …
I think that for the vast majority of ordinary believers the act of faithfulness is largely apolitical. I am a UK taxpayer and as such I subsidize all manner of political acts I do not approve of. Perhaps if I had the courage of my convictions I would opt out and refuse to pay tax because I don’t want to see my money spent making houses explode in the Middle East or secreting nuclear warheads on to Scottish submarines or paying for floating duck islands. I don’t do that because I suspect that, just like the believer, I see the g
reater good served by what I choose to involve myself in. The charity and generosity of spirit embodied by most ordinary believers of any faith is what most are choosing to identify with. The hospitals and schools I pay for with my tax contributions are things I’m proud to support. To be religious in any of the Abrahamic faiths is not to be a homophobe, sexist, racist, intolerant bully or idiotic barrier to education, but on the shoulders of the faithful masses stand the ugly and corrupt. Jesus might have been a lovely chap but I don’t see myself walking alongside many of his biggest fans because I don’t think they like Jesus for the same reasons I do. I like the peaceful, loving, long-haired, bearded, socialist dude I see in Christ. I’m not totally sure but I think he may have pitched a tent next to mine at Glastonbury a few years ago. If it was him, then Jesus seriously likes Radiohead. The dude abides.
12
My God-shaped hole
THIS DESIRE TO BELIEVE IN SOMETHING AND TO HAVE A permanent, ever-present force at work in my life is hard to explain. If it wasn’t, it would most likely be an easy thing to sort out and make for a pretty short book and a contented life. If it was as simple as my observing that everyone with faith in their life is better off than everyone without, then I suspect I could just find a way to believe, somehow. If the opposite were true, then I’d be more sure of my atheism and that would be that. But it’s not simple and thus far it’s not been easy for me to reconcile what I want and how I feel with what I believe and what I think I know. I suppose you could say I have a God-shaped hole. I am not suggesting that my anus is in the shape of God. We are told that God comes in many forms, so technically it is possible that my bottom looks exactly like God, but I doubt it. Of all the infinite forms God is able to choose, I suspect that my backside would be very low on His list. Possibly one or two places below a gullible person’s toast or David Icke.
There are many atheists who react strongly against the notion of a God-shaped hole. They say the hole is not God-shaped, if indeed there is a hole at all. It is rather the case that having identified in humanity a propensity to believe there is a hole, and a desire to fill the hole with something comforting, religious salesmen have tinkered with the image of God and made him exactly the right shape to fit into the empty space. Well done them. Marketing men who identified a gap in the human soul market and sold hard with a bespoke product that made them rich and powerful. They found a way to create a need and followed that creation immediately with a product that satisfies. It’s a man with the only train of camels in the desert convincing passers-by that in the middle of the desert lies the answer to all their dreams. This talent for ruthless salesmanship has developed and grown with each new generation and now has my daughter convinced that without a pair of Lelli Kelly beaded sparkle shoes, she will be judged from the feet up. Without a flowery pink overpriced pair of kiddy bling pumps over her five-year-old toes, she is somehow less than the other little girls who, until they saw the Lelli Kelly ad, used their feet mainly for running about, skipping and stomping in puddles. Marketing is done with great skill and precision and religion has led the way in brand awareness, brand loyalty and straightforward ‘you can’t live without this stuff’ hard-selling.
If people have a hole that needs filling, then I would say that making God fit the hole isn’t exactly difficult. You simply describe the hole as roughly round in shape and then create a roundish God that sort of fits if you give it a decent shove. Feeling alone? God is always with you … even though you can’t see Him or feel Him and He’s silent and He gives no direct indication that He’s there at all. Feeling sad? God loves you … Even though the same number of shit things will happen to you as anyone else regardless of what you believe. Worried about a loved one? God will fix it … In as much as: if the loved one is OK, God done it; if the loved one dies, or shit things happen to them, you either didn’t believe hard enough or God moves in mysterious ways. The more you look at it, the more it feels like a con.
For any areas where He clearly doesn’t quite fit, and there are so many, the faithful comfort one another with phrases such as, ‘Ah well, that’s the great mystery of the Almighty’ or, ‘If God had meant us to know everything, he would have made us Gods too’; see also, ‘Ours is not to reason why’, ‘Go and ask your mother’ and ‘That’ll be fifty Hail Marys, you impudent shit’. It’s not exactly rocket science (note to self – find out how hard rocket science is …) to dodge any of the really hard questions by saying slightly mystical things about eternity and everlasting love and the divine plan. It’ll stop people asking too many questions if you make the answers cryptic and suggest that even the act of questioning is a betrayal. Add to that the notion that you don’t even have to give voice to your questions, merely ask them in your own head and God can hear you and will be most displeased – and before you can say Stripy Joseph you have a perfect marketing campaign. It’s fear-based but attractive too and the product lasts for ever. With that much going for it, the emperor is able to march about with no clothes on for as long as he likes and not a soul dares say, ‘Hey, can anyone else see the emperor’s cock? I think he might be a Jew …’
Much of the most effective marketing of Christianity avoided anyone asking questions about whether the God on offer was hole-shaped by explaining everything in a language the congregation didn’t understand. Anyone who tried to speak Latin at school knows how important and clever it sounds and how only the brainiest and hardest-working kids pick up more than a few amo-amas-amats. The use of a secret code that keeps prying minds in awe is genius. It works a treat. I know I am susceptible to the romantic allure of a mysterious foreign tongue. I eavesdrop on people’s apparent gobbledegook waiting, hoping for hints and titbits that might chime with English or the smattering of French I understand. Ooh ooh, that bit definitely sounded like ‘table walk talcum masala dong’ – I wonder what they are talking about. It’s probably poetry. I walk into foreign supermarkets and delight in products I recognize that have a label printed all in foreign. ‘Les Nouilles Super’ – delicious, gourmet treats and all you need is a kettle! Wow. ‘Tasse-Zuppe’ – ooh, exotic. I’ve even bought things I know for certain I don’t like, because they looked better with the slight linguistic variation on the packaging. If it says ‘Crème de Salade’ on the bottle rather than ‘Salad Cream’, suddenly I want it. Imagine that same effect used to promise eternal life or threaten eternal damnation, all presented in the dead language of the ‘educated’. If El Supermerkado Foreignio offered me Salad Cream in Latin and said I could live for ever if I bought enough of it, well, I doubt there are enough salad leaves in the world … Sold! To the man eating ‘Flocon de Maïs’ with a big dumb smile on his gullible face.
It doesn’t much matter if the hole is God-shaped, hexagonal or roughly the same shape as the Channel Tunnel. If I tell you I have a hole, it’s because I’ve identified something that feels like one. Some space within me that seems empty and yearns for direction and nourishment. It’s not my tummy. Trust me. I’ve tried overeating to quite epic proportions and this hole can’t be filled with crisps and cake. If I see some (albeit very few) people who seem not to be troubled by the notion of a hole because they’ve apparently filled it with God, then I’m curious. If they feel better and I don’t, then I feel compelled to ask questions that my clever atheist friends disapprove of. Those who claim to feel better might be deluded. They probably are. My clever friends and I might be right. We usually are, unless it’s a question about sport, then we’re buggered. If they are serene and happier than I am, well then I have whatever the spiritual equivalent of food envy is. ‘Please let me have a taste of your soul, it looks delicious.’ It’s not that I wish to stop trying to learn stuff or asking questions. I’m not envious of people in a coma just because they don’t seem that bothered by who lied to whom in order to start a war in Iraq or the cynical marketing of junk to children or the massive national debt. I like sleeping but I don’t want to do it all the time. I enjoy thinking and asking questions and listening to the responses, b
ut I might settle for some delusion if I felt better some of the time.
I wish I could explain succinctly what ‘the hole’ is. All I can say for sure is that I feel it and though some friends think it risible, I’m willing to ask if it’s God-shaped. Richard Dawkins has a go at explaining the phenomenon of wishing to believe in something beyond ourselves in his God Delusion. There’s a whole chapter in his book called ‘The Gap’ in which he attempts to describe the spiritual yearning that mankind seems to have felt since the very origins of our existence. I had hoped he might embrace the humour to be found in ‘The Gap’ also being a high-street clothing store but, alas, embracing humour doesn’t seem to be the good professor’s ‘thing’. Imagine though for a moment if Professor Dawkins had applied his brilliant mind to proving, with the backing of his extensive scientific resources, that all of mankind’s spiritual curiosity and ethereal musing through the ages was best defined as nothing more than the desire to spend eternity amongst a few shelves of navy blue hoodies and a baseball cap with ‘since 1969’ written on it. He didn’t. It isn’t. The Gap has been accused of using child labour; Richard Dawkins implies that describing one’s child as Christian, Muslim, Jewish or whatever is a form of child abuse. There the similarities end.
God Collar Page 20