Hello
My name is Kieran.
I’m new to the forum and introducing myself.
I’m Irish (from Waterford), and came to London for ‘a few weeks’ about 10 years ago. And here I remain.
My background is heavily – I mean HEAVILY! – Catholic. (I only just escaped the priesthood … by virtue of an older brother who decided it was the life for him! So my Ma and Da were happy. Good luck to my man!)
I have 2 sisters who are Nuns. ‘Brides of Christ’ as they think of themselves. Bonny girls who I can’t help wondering how life might have been better for them if they had taken the risk of marriage and children.
But then, I never could bring myself to take such a risk myself.
I have read so many posts and writings on this forum I just can’t tell you.
I have also read all of Laura’s books – one way or another. A couple I got free! But I have made a contribution when I heard the site was in trouble.
I don’t know what to think anymore.
I’m a little nervous about posting for my first time. But I got a book from a good friend who often teases me about being Catholic. It’s called ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins (who also wrote The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker).
Any way, I turns to a first page and it really made me laugh.
So, on this first day of 2007 I would like to share it with you (I scanned it), and maybe you will join me and laugh too.
Here it is.
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
Those of us schooled from infancy in his ways can become desensitized to their horror. A ‘naif’ blessed with the perspective of innocence has a clearer perception.
Winston Churchill's son Randolph somehow contrived to remain ignorant of scripture until Evelyn Waugh and a brother officer, in a vain attempt to keep Churchill quiet when they were posted together during the war, bet him he couldn't read the entire Bible in a fortnight.
[Evelyn Waugh comments] 'Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud: "I say I bet you didn't know this came in the Bible ..." or merely slapping his side & chortling, "God, isn't God a shit!''
Thomas Jefferson - better read - was of a similar opinion: “The Christian God is a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust."
Hope no-one is offended. I just felt the last but one paragraph to hit home … and at the same time to be very funny.
Happy New Year, and God Bless you all.
Kieran
