the nameless horror

via @stevemosby, a fascinating post on (possibly) the oldest theological question of all.

I distinctly remember the day I became an atheist. I don’t remember how old I was because I was so young - four, I think; just before or just starting school. Religion wasn’t a big thing when I was little - Dad’s a (somewhat vague) Catholic, Mum an atheist, and both had apparently agreed to basically not make a thing of it, figuring we’d sort things out ourselves. Which in hindsight was very sensible - while my sister and I each went through sort of vague hippyish New Agey phases in our difficult teenage years, as you do, before deciding that was all so much toss (for all I know, my brother did too, but he’d have done it after I moved out and wasn’t there to see it), none of us ever got caught up on the notion that we’d somehow disappoint our family, friends or community if we’d been brought up one thing only to decide to be another. I’ve seen that more than once, and it’s always nasty, usually running very deep because this thing has been a part of that person for as long as they can remember.

Thanks, parents.

Anyway, back to my infant self. I’d been aware of the “big beardy angel-wrangler” notion of (what Grown Up Me appreciates was only ever the kids’ dumbed-down blobby version of the Christian) God that you can’t really avoid if your playschool uses a church hall, even if it’s not a church playgroup, and vaguely aware that my dad at least, and many other people, seemed to think he was real. Crucially, that he watched everything, that you could talk to him and ask him for things, and that he was capable of helping out in ways that were basically magic.

Basic interventionist deity, which is more or less how he gets portrayed in his best-known works. Raising the dead, drowning the whole world, stuffing someone into a fish for days for daring not to go to some place to tell some people they were wicked because God was, one assumes, too busy stuffing his prophets into fishes to get someone more local to do the job. All that jazz.

My infant self was never, that I recall, especially convinced by this idea. (I also never, as far as I remember, believed in Santa Claus. Even though I didn’t conclusively prove his non-existence until the age of about seven when I finally managed to stay up until midnight to catch my mum in the act of putting a satsuma in my stocking.) The problem was that in the stories you heard, God was all about wading in, laying about with fire and storms and driving your enemies before you, but despite all the people who claimed he was still the same chap, these events didn’t seem to happen in real life. Not, especially, to a four year-old in Langney.

Then there were the other people, the ones who claimed that he wasn’t the same chap, that all that stuff with the wise men and what have you ended up with Jesus magicking all the bad things anyone had ever done away - not that it stopped them happening - and in return, in what seemed like a very bad deal, God basically took a back seat and left everyone to their own devices. No more floods, storms, turning people into salt, raising the dead etc. In which case, I wondered, why did people still spend all this time acting like he was still looking over their shoulder? What was the point in asking for anything if basically the answer was already “no, sorry, I don’t do that any more”? Wasn’t that just stupid?

If only Guy Hands had not just invested in Crust as a tax dodge - but made sure it got released. Then he might really have given something back to society, albeit a boxing prawn.

While they waited for the program to begin, Nas lit a blunt and passed it around. KRS-One started talking a lot of shit about 2012 and the precession of the equinoxes. Kool Keith was writing his own name all over the cover of a notebook in a variety of fonts. Phyllis was using Nas’s phone to talk to her sister, which he guessed he was okay with because maybe hers wasn’t working, or something, although he wished she had asked first.

When the blunt was done, Nas went into the kitchen to get the cupcakes. They were from the best cupcake bakery in town. No, not that one; an even better one that just opened like two weeks ago. Nas knows this kind of shit.

Aidan: “What’s the best thing there is?”

Me: “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”

Aidan: “… What does that mean?”

• On the school run this morning.