The religious have to understand, likewise, that not to rule outright is not about prejudice; and not to believe is not madness
On religion we are as needful of guidance as any loving god could wish. Sky Father or Earth Mother or nothing? And, if it is nothing, is it nothing expressed with fury or nothing expressed with nothingness? How, to go to the basic question of existence, do we keep ourselves good, and safe?
Don't ask the polls. They know we do not know what we think. For example, according to a 2011 British Humanist Association poll, 61% said they had a religion, but only 29% said they were religious. According to a YouGov poll last week, 30% believe that Jesus "was or is the son of God" but 31% believe he was resurrected from the dead, which means, I think, that 1% of the population believe an ordinary person was resurrected for no reason, and, if that is true, he deserves a prize on Israel/Palestine's Got Talent.
And don't forget the Jedi! In the 2001 census, 2.6% of the population of Brighton, on the English south coast, claimed to be Jedi, though this percentage has fallen in the intervening years. An acquaintance of mine, meanwhile, tried – briefly and without success – to resurrect an interest in the unfashionable Phoenician deity Baal.
What to say? We are asunder, a predicament perhaps best expressed by the Daily Mail's Robert Hardman being photographed in a cathedral calling people "godless". No wonder an ape once raised his eyes to the sky in hope of enlightenment, sensing one day that Robert Hardman would come. Nothing makes sense.
And yet, back on Earth, it is usual for the religious to say they feel threatened. (A Freudian, if unkind, would say they were born that way – and chose religion.) Last week George Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, accused David Cameron of leading an "aggressive secularist" government, a description I hate, because it implies all secularists are mad.
Religion, he says, glues us together, which doesn't bespeak an enormous amount of faith in the ability of human beings to find common ground outside a certain belief, for example, in the righteousness of the tooth fairy, or the tendency of trolls to live under bridges, although this is understandable – if you take the long view, we have had magic for ever, and the Enlightenment for about 10 minutes. And, if I were in an unkind mood, I would say – ah, at last you know how the rest of us feel, Dr Carey: the gays, the women, the next religion along, which in Europe, memorably and bloodily, was previously Judaism and is now Islam, although both, given the chance, can and do put their own sticks about.
I know that religion can save. I know plenty of people who are better, and happier, for a belief in God; the idea of my late church-going mother-in-law beating homosexuals or instituting a pogrom is obviously ridiculous, although she did help with jumble sales and occasionally church flowers. The secular must accept that not all religion is malice and much despised "religious" practice – female genital mutilation comes to mind – is nothing of the kind, having more to do with men hating women than with Muslims hating women.
And the religious must accept, equally, that not to rule outright is not prejudice – belief in God is a choice, but living in a society with those who disagree with you is not. It is simply that the state, in its modern godlessness, will not tolerate every religious prejudice – really should prejudices be respected, if they are age-old? Of course not; the gay "question" is settled, for me, by the suicide rate for gay teenagers, which is up to three times the rate for heterosexuals. It begins and ends there, and if there is a God, and he is loving, he agrees with me.
There is religious freedom in Britain – some would say too much: 26 bishops sit in the House of Lords on a historic quirk. Religious groups open faith schools, where homophobia can flourish, and often discriminate against their own followers. I cannot visit an Orthodox synagogue, for instance, because I am obliged to sit upstairs with the women, too far from God and the front; and most Orthodox Jews will not shake my hand in case I am menstruating, which is a wretched state, it is true, but is not, as far as I know, contagious. Recently the organisers of an event put on by the Islamic Education and Research Academy at University College, London, tried to oblige women to sit separately from men (although there was a mixed area); men at the front, obviously.
So, to return to the original question: how to keep ourselves good and safe? Because government must legislate for this life, not the next; and anyway, I doubt that George Osborne would get in. The answer, which is obvious, will not please either side. I move for less censorship of "offensive" material, not more; more mocking of every religion and of atheism and its drippy twin, agnosticism, in front of which I plant my knee. Security lies in the non-religious spaces, if your goal is security for all. Anything else is fairies and trolls.
Twitter: @TanyaGold1 Reported by guardian.co.uk 7 hours ago.
On religion we are as needful of guidance as any loving god could wish. Sky Father or Earth Mother or nothing? And, if it is nothing, is it nothing expressed with fury or nothing expressed with nothingness? How, to go to the basic question of existence, do we keep ourselves good, and safe?
Don't ask the polls. They know we do not know what we think. For example, according to a 2011 British Humanist Association poll, 61% said they had a religion, but only 29% said they were religious. According to a YouGov poll last week, 30% believe that Jesus "was or is the son of God" but 31% believe he was resurrected from the dead, which means, I think, that 1% of the population believe an ordinary person was resurrected for no reason, and, if that is true, he deserves a prize on Israel/Palestine's Got Talent.
And don't forget the Jedi! In the 2001 census, 2.6% of the population of Brighton, on the English south coast, claimed to be Jedi, though this percentage has fallen in the intervening years. An acquaintance of mine, meanwhile, tried – briefly and without success – to resurrect an interest in the unfashionable Phoenician deity Baal.
What to say? We are asunder, a predicament perhaps best expressed by the Daily Mail's Robert Hardman being photographed in a cathedral calling people "godless". No wonder an ape once raised his eyes to the sky in hope of enlightenment, sensing one day that Robert Hardman would come. Nothing makes sense.
And yet, back on Earth, it is usual for the religious to say they feel threatened. (A Freudian, if unkind, would say they were born that way – and chose religion.) Last week George Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, accused David Cameron of leading an "aggressive secularist" government, a description I hate, because it implies all secularists are mad.
Religion, he says, glues us together, which doesn't bespeak an enormous amount of faith in the ability of human beings to find common ground outside a certain belief, for example, in the righteousness of the tooth fairy, or the tendency of trolls to live under bridges, although this is understandable – if you take the long view, we have had magic for ever, and the Enlightenment for about 10 minutes. And, if I were in an unkind mood, I would say – ah, at last you know how the rest of us feel, Dr Carey: the gays, the women, the next religion along, which in Europe, memorably and bloodily, was previously Judaism and is now Islam, although both, given the chance, can and do put their own sticks about.
I know that religion can save. I know plenty of people who are better, and happier, for a belief in God; the idea of my late church-going mother-in-law beating homosexuals or instituting a pogrom is obviously ridiculous, although she did help with jumble sales and occasionally church flowers. The secular must accept that not all religion is malice and much despised "religious" practice – female genital mutilation comes to mind – is nothing of the kind, having more to do with men hating women than with Muslims hating women.
And the religious must accept, equally, that not to rule outright is not prejudice – belief in God is a choice, but living in a society with those who disagree with you is not. It is simply that the state, in its modern godlessness, will not tolerate every religious prejudice – really should prejudices be respected, if they are age-old? Of course not; the gay "question" is settled, for me, by the suicide rate for gay teenagers, which is up to three times the rate for heterosexuals. It begins and ends there, and if there is a God, and he is loving, he agrees with me.
There is religious freedom in Britain – some would say too much: 26 bishops sit in the House of Lords on a historic quirk. Religious groups open faith schools, where homophobia can flourish, and often discriminate against their own followers. I cannot visit an Orthodox synagogue, for instance, because I am obliged to sit upstairs with the women, too far from God and the front; and most Orthodox Jews will not shake my hand in case I am menstruating, which is a wretched state, it is true, but is not, as far as I know, contagious. Recently the organisers of an event put on by the Islamic Education and Research Academy at University College, London, tried to oblige women to sit separately from men (although there was a mixed area); men at the front, obviously.
So, to return to the original question: how to keep ourselves good and safe? Because government must legislate for this life, not the next; and anyway, I doubt that George Osborne would get in. The answer, which is obvious, will not please either side. I move for less censorship of "offensive" material, not more; more mocking of every religion and of atheism and its drippy twin, agnosticism, in front of which I plant my knee. Security lies in the non-religious spaces, if your goal is security for all. Anything else is fairies and trolls.
Twitter: @TanyaGold1 Reported by guardian.co.uk 7 hours ago.