Hello everyone. I've been away for a while, but I'm glad to be back. Among other things recently I've been spending quite a lot of time out in the open air growing vegetable, enjoying the spring weather, and not believing in God, but not necessarily in that order. Some people will look at the variety and abundance of nature and see proof of God's existence. Well, I've had a good look recently, and I've seen plenty of proof of nature's variety and abundance, but I haven't seen God anywhere, and that doesn't really surprise me, because I don't think the violent maniac of the Old Testament would be capable of creating a single radish, let alone an entire world. For one thing, a god who's afraid of new ideas is certainly no creator. But also, his eagerness to be worshipped tells us that this is an extemely shallow individual, which is a little worrying, as we're supposed to be created in his image, and his quickness to violence shows that he's also profoundly stupid. Again, uncomfortably close to home. Indeed, this god is so limited in scope, and so aggressively unsubtle both in word and deed, that you could be forgiven for mistaking him for some kind of primitive desert-dwelling tribal human being, and concluding, as I have, that we are not his children at all, but in fact he's our child, and he's a very very bad boy. Even if I'm wrong about this, and I might be - I'm not infallible, unlike certain other people we could mention - and if God really did create the world, then all I can say is well done God, round of applause for God. But if he expects to be worshipped on the back of it, then I'm afraid he can go straight to hell, which is where I suspect he originated, if such a place exists, because the god of the Old Testament reads as if he's a auditioning for the role of Satan. It would be hard to imagine a more malevolent entity without the aid of a pair of comedy horns and a pitchfork. Just look at his track record. He comes out of the desert a few thousand years ago killing and smiting with righteous abandon, spawns three religions that absolutely loathe each other, supplies us with scriptures that set us at each other's throats like dogs over trifles, dividing us into us and them, into believers and infidels, ensuring that every one of us will be born with millions of instant enemies. Thanks to this monster, we live in a world divided against itself, where every one of us is an infidel to somebody, including you, no matter what you believe, even if it's nothing, you can be guaranteed that somebody somewhere hates your guts because of it. Welcome to planet earth, the centre of the universe. Enjoy your stay. Although apparently not enjoying it will get you into heaven that little bit quicker. Given this humiliating and, let's be frank, embarrassing situation we find ourselves in, where, thanks to this ludicrous god, the whole world seems to be in an ever decreasing orbit around the black hole of the Middle East, from which not even light can escape - oh, you've noticed that as well? - maybe civilisation is a little too much to hope for at this early stage of our development, but wouldn't it be nice if we could at least find some way to resolve the artificial differences that this god has imposed on us without resorting to violence? I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I take it back. I don't know what came over me. I was just being silly. I do apologise. Of course violence is the only answer. After all, it's the language of God. That'll be our god, the stupid one, the god of death. "Believe in me or burn in hell" "Worship me or I'll send a plague." "Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in, or I'll burn your cities to the ground." And if it's God's language, and if we're created in his image - which presumably means he's also a gullible superstitious fool, but that's another subject - then it's bound to be our language as well, and it truth it's just about the only language we know how to speak to each other when push comes to shove, because everybody knows that the threat of violence is behind all diplomacy no matter how warm the handshake or how charming the smile. In fact without it we'd barely be able to relate to each other for the perfectly understandable reason that we're too primitive and stupid. Obviously, I don't claim to speak for everyone, just the people on this particular planet. How stupid are we? Well, look at us. We're a naturally curious race of beings. If we weren't, we wouldn't be here. The quest for knowledge is what has driven us forward from day one. Yet we subscribe in our millions to these anaerobic belief systems that purposely limit knowledge, discourage curiosity, and sanctify ignorance. Why do we do this to ourselves? What are we afraid of? Is it being alone in a cold and empty universe, is that it? So we'd rather be subject to a cruel and stupid fascist god than to no god at all, and to cringe under the phoney threat of eternal damnation like a bunch of cowardly muppets. We'd rather drag ourselves through history, inch by tortuous bloody inch because we've got this dead weight attached to us, this useless lump of fossilised thought we call religion, this psychological ball and chain that we just can't seem to cut loose because this god of ours, he may be stupid, he may be as dumb as a sack of walnut shells, but he can only reflect the intelligence that created him, the poor sod. It's two thousand years since Jesus lived - if he lived. Let's assume he did, just to annoy a few atheists. But don't tell anybody I said that, or I'll be in all kinds of trouble. And Jesus may have been a good guy in many ways, but he was no saint. He had his dark side. It wasn't all loaves and fishes and lilies of the field, was it? He's the one who came up with the idea of eternal damnation in the first place, not God, surprisingly. There's nothing in the Old Testament about anybody simmering in the lake of fire. That was Jesus' idea. Maybe God was so busy killing and maiming people there and then that it completely slipped his mind, and you could certainly understand that because he was very busy after all, but you have to wonder why Jesus would take up the slack when he seemed to be doing so nicely with his miracles and parables and his message of sweetness and light. Why would he feel the need to introduce coercion and threats? Well, because clearly Jesus was no fool, and he quickly realised that he was talking to stupid ignorant barbarians who, despite his enlightening life-giving message, still needed to be threatened with crude violence to make them behave in a civilised way, and two thousand years later nothing has changed. Who wouldn't be embarrassed? I'm more than embarrassed, if you want the truth. I'm ashamed. I feel like apologising to the universe for wasting its time. Must be the Catholic in me coming out now. We think we're so advanced, don't we, especially now that science is cutting a dash through eleven dimensions, doing religion's job for it, in fact, attempting to illuminate the mystery of life rather than suppress it, but down here on the ground it might as well not be happening. Things are just the same as ever. People still worshipping dumb idols, still fearing evil spirits, still cowering under the angry heavens like a bunch of frightened cavemen. The only mystery to me is how we can look at ourselves in the mirror without laughing. Peace, and happy days.