Belief

4 Mar 2010

I tread carefully around belief. I’m a cynical agnostic, if only because it allows me to disengage entirely from the debate until people start being too damn certain about stuff, and then I sneer at them.

But mostly I’m careful because my Mum’s a church Deacon and I don't want to either offend her or set her off on a small crusade. Now, she’s good people, to the extent that I get very uncomfortable with Alan Davies’ mocking on QI (if you’re a smug, unfunny former Keynes college student, don’t target the mysteries of time and space as your main target), but the flip side of this is that even “good people” get fucking scary on the subject of belief.

I was trying to debate the Israel-Palestinian problems with my Mum a few years ago. She’s a liberal, who scorns the occasional Daily Mail reading tendencies of her Congregation. She votes Labour – though not with the same tribal fervour as my Dad did until finally got sick of Tony – and if she may not campaign in favour of Gay marriage, I’ve certainly never heard her say anything against it either (or maybe she just doesn’t say it in front of me).

Given this general left-leaning tolerance, when I started the conversation I was unprepared for her position. The Israelis were in the right! Not for any issues of international law. But because God gave them Israel.

Now, I’ve not seen the lease that God signed with the Israelis, and I’m not a theologian, but it strikes me as dangerous territory to start saying that you can do what you like because God told you to. That way lies 9/11 and the entire Mormon faith. But the only way I could dissuade her from the frankly preposterous view was to get a copy of the bible and an atlas and track the biblical position of Israel.

The trouble is, it’s in the wrong place. Israel is too far to the south. This conversation was a while ago, so I can’t remember exactly where it should be, but basically the biblical boundaries stretch well into Lebanon and – I think- parts of Syria.

So the Palestinians aren’t getting their arses kicked because God gave an exact map reference, they’re being spanked because Israel doesn’t fancy its chances of hanging onto the territory to the north. Israel was in such the wrong place that I actually convinced my mother to stop using biblical justifications for her support for Israel.

That was a success. Less so was my next attempt at preaching religious tolerance. “Mum”, I said rather tritely. “The thing is, that people who believe in other Gods are as totally convinced in their faith as you are in yours.”

“Yes,” she agreed, nodding sagely. “But they’re wrong and I’m right”.