God Wants Me For An Atheist

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Here's a brief bit of autobiography for you. In 1997 Simon & Schuster released a book entitled the Bible Code by Michael Drosdin. This was a thorough analysis of the so-called ELS or Equidistant Letter Sequence as it applies to the Hebrew version of the Bible. Drosdin believed that looking for sequences of letters with uniform gaps in the Bible one could reveal hidden messages, and provided seemingly portentous examples such as references to the JFK assassinations. Quite why a Hebrew god several centuries ago would be quite so interested in the killing of a ruler of a country not yet formed is anyone's guess. Drosdin's belief is no more likely than a parent's belief that their child's record holds Satanic messages when played backwards.

When the book was released it was to fanfare and ridicule in equal measure, and I found myself stood in a bookshop staring at a display of hardbacks, wondering what kind of God would choose to communicate with his creation by way of wordsearch.

At that exact moment I felt as though I was in the embrace of something greater than myself; something warm, and welcoming, and confirmatory. I felt, at the time, as though I had been touched by God. Truly. I was moved to tears. For a long time, to think back to that moment would move me to tears.

And here I am some twelve years later in an odd place. The message, if message were to be had, in that embrace was that I, through inquisitiveness and rationality, had touched on something that told me I was headed in the right direction. And in that direction I have progressed until I stand before you Godless. I have certain esoteric views on the nature of the universe; they fall far outside the scope of this blog and it wouldn't do for me to go into too much detail about them. They're also wildly open to misinterpretation. However, in the main, I do not believe in God, despite that moment in the bookshop.

A religious friend of mine, when discussing the existence or otherwise of God, said to me "surely you want all of this to be for something; to have some kind of meaning?"

I replied that naturally I did, but wanting something, however deeply, doesn't bring that thing about. It's an odd bit of attempted logic that I've heard many believers employ, that their own needs take precedent over this accidental universe.

"But God has a plan for all of us," my religious friend continued.

"If that is so," I replied, "then the path he has chosen for me is that of an atheist."

Which is a puzzle, and possibly a cop-out, but as far as my own personal journey, it's the best I can do. It also span the logic round on my friend so quickly that he couldn't reply. God had a purpose for Judas, after all.

I Believe in Public Transport

The so-called "atheist bus campaign" rolled out recently and the predictable flood of complaints has begun. The ASA, who handle complaints about advertising in the UK, have received 150 or more messages from disgruntled members of the public. According to the Guardian 39 of them weren't even about the ads themselves, but about reportage covering the campaign.

The more valid complaints have been about offensiveness, and more of that in a moment, but the ever-hilarious Stephen Green of Christian Voice notoriety has decided to plump for a "truth and misleadingness" basis for his grumble. This is an interesting tact to take. Sadly, many of the commentators who have suggested that the arising adjudication will hinge on Green, or anyone for that matter, proving the existence of God, are mistaken. The advertiser has to prove its claims, and not the plaintiff. However, the claim in question is that there "probably is no god". Demonstrating the improbability of the existence of a deity will be much more straightforward than proving the inexistence of one, something Green seems not to have realised, blinded, no doubt, by his own faith.

What I find more interesting is the idea that the ads are offensive. The claim is not specific to any religion, something which is perhaps muddied a little by being in uppercase - the sentiment is clearly that there is likely no lowercase-g god. It may be that to a member of a particular religion that this makes no difference - no god logically means no Jehovah, no Allah, no Krsna, no Thor, no Mithra and so on. Where it does become significant is as part of the wider picture. Here's an ad for a church. Its suggestion is that Jesus is real, and alive today. It's advocating a God that is false in the eyes of other religions; and yet these ads do not receive complaints from members of other religions. You won't find many column inches decrying this blasphemous bit of advertising.

The tired old cliché came out for an airing, based again on the above misunderstanding. Would the campaign have been given the go ahead if the slogan had been "there probably is no Allah"? That is already what the campaign says; the Humanists do not want to single out any particular god - it'd be a wasted opportunity, and would misrepresent their beliefs. The rebuttal to the cliché would be "if this was a campaign for Allah, would you still find it distasteful and offensive?"

For whatever illogical reason, there is something more inciteful about an atheist campaign, and whatever that might be, the complaints arising from the ads, if upheld, will open the floodgates for atheists and others to complain about equally offensive and unsubstantiated pro-religious ads. I suspect that the ASA will be aware of this too, and rather than creating a de facto ban on any form of religous advertising outright, will choose instead to tell the complainants that they really need to be a bit more tolerant about other people's beliefs, and that, really and truly, it's not always about them.

EDIT - 21/01/09 The ASA decided not to pursue the complaints.