Just before nine o'clock [last] Saturday morning, I was stopped by a man as I came out of the station after alighting from my train.
I thought straightaway that something was amiss. It was too early in the day for my would-be interrogator to be asking about toothpaste or coffee preferences, and his choice of dress meant that he was unlikely to be one of the train company staff.
All suddenly became clear when he addressed me thus: "I think most of us would agree that the world is in a pretty bad way...." and handed me a pamphlet which warned of GLOBAL WARMING in huge, threatening letters on one page, and petitioned GOD on the next.
I asked him if his answer to the world being pretty bad was to appeal to God, and he mumbled an affimative under his breath. It was at that point when I walked away from him, stating that I didn't believe and would never believe.
Actually, I did more than state. I moved backwards down the street, my voice becoming progressively louder as the distance between the man and I increased. I don't believe! It is impossible! I'll think more of your God when He tears the clouds apart like a pair of flimsy curtains and metes out the justice you've been promising for millennia!
Two questions spring to mind, retrospectively, about the above event: If I'd returned to the man, genuflecting, and asked to be appraised of how God would in fact halt global warming, would this cleansing of the apostate have in any way validated my interlocuter's belief in either a deity, or the deity's probability of stemming global warming?
Secondly, what is the outright rejection of religious belief (mine) but a symptom of (anti) religious belief? The certainty that there is no God (without evidence to support the assertion) is as militant a stance to take as the certainty that such exists (without evidence to support the assertion.)
I'll try to answer such questions later - if I ever get around to consistently updating this thing again!
