It’s Saturday, the sun is shining and, of course, a large group of God-botherers are knocking on doors all round our village. Today’s uninvited cold-calling religious fanatics are Jehovah’s witnesses who, I have discovered through my friend Mr Google, “believe that Jesus is God’s only direct creation, that everything else was created through Christ by means of God’s power, and that the initial unassisted act of creation uniquely identifies Jesus as God’s “only-begotten Son.” I’m afraid that’s way too complicated for my simpleton brain.
Where I live, there are a fair few elderly people for whom these people are about as welcome as a group of travellers promising to dig them a new drive. I suppose I count as elderly these days – you should have seen me trying to do up my laces the morning after playing golf this week – but I am afraid I always give them polite but short shrift when they call on me.
Today I was wearing my ‘Imagine No Religion’ T shirt, which shows a picture of the twin towers, both of which would still be standing if it were not for religion. I suspect the two ladies were slightly taken aback when I answered the door and they knew immediately I might not be a victim of their sting.
Still, they gave me the usual salesperson’s spiel about who they were and why they had knocked on my door. I promise I wasn’t rude but I did say something along the lines of, “Look, I am going to save you a lot of time here. I know this may come as a great shock to you but the reality is that there is probably no God. In fact, it’s almost certain there is no God and you’d best prepare yourself for a surprise when you pop your clogs and nothing happens. Thank you and good morning!”
I suppose the witnesses believe it is necessary to convince people to sign up to their God, to proselytise them. They must do so for two reasons. The first is the need to convince people that their God is better than all other Gods and secondly because the number of people who believe in any supernatural creator is falling like a stone.
It’s a bit late for me because not only do I not believe in God, I don’t want to believe in one. As Christopher Hitchens put it, obviously much better than I ever could, the idea that we are all under constant surveillance by an invisible sky God fills me with horror. I’ve long accepted that I am what I am and when it’s over, well, it’s over.
Now good luck if you are a believer. I have no wish to stop you believing and I am not going to tell you to stop. It’s none of my business. But neither is my lack of belief the business of cold callers. If I want to sign up as a card-carrying believer, I’ll call you.