A facility called The phrase finder on the interweb suggests
that this saw comes from ancient Hebrew writings. Francis Bacon first alludes
to it in English when he writes: “Cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed
from a due reverence to God.” John Wesley inverts it 200 years later to: “Slovenliness
is no part of religion.”
On the other hand, nobody who doesn’t
get his hands dirty ever achieves anything. Thank heavens for us dirty godless bastards.
And godlessness is getting some good press right now. Notable atheists are
springing up everywhere and being given airtime.
Unfortunately Richard Dawkins’s
stridently fundamentalist The god
delusion does us a disservice, being as reprehensible and damaging as any devout
deist’s dogma. Christopher Hitchins succumbs to drink and fags before his time
and sells more copies of God is not great
in death than in life. What’s going on here?
Now Alain de Botton, softly-softly
silver-spoon philosopher, buys into the business with his Religion for atheists, arguing that we, the godless, are missing
out on some fine art and nice rituals in eschewing the trappings churchgoers get
to enjoy. Bollocks, Alain.
More to my taste is Alom Shaha’s
The young atheist’s handbook. Shaha
bumps into the silver-maned philosopher A C Grayling (Against all gods) when picking up his son from school, and AC
suggests he write a book about his conversion from Bangladeshi Muslim living in
London’s Elephant and Castle to brown-skinned atheist.
Where Dawkins argues, via some
arcane theory involving a teapot in space, that science disproves the existence
of God, Shaha simply points out the sheer absurdity of any bearded dude’s claim
to be omnipotent and omniscient. Would such a deity really condemn anyone to fiery
and everlasting pain and torment just
for having doubts about his divinity?
Meanwhile a group of Catholic
bishops argue that gay marriage is against the express will of God—as if they’d
know. Marriage is a social construct for the purpose of keeping possessions and
property in the family pinched by religion for its own repressive ends. What matter if six
or sixteen people of whatever gender want to enter into a marriage contract?
I’m off for another roll in the
dirt.
Rock on.
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