Random Teeth-Brushing Thoughts

It will come as no surprise, given the title of this post, that I had random thoughts last night while brushing my teeth. Actually, the thoughts started on the loo, as all good thoughts tend to, but I thought a post entitled "random thoughts while weeing" may put people off. Some of you may be put off now, and I apologise. I just thought we should all be honest with each other.

So the thoughts themselves were regarding religion. This is generally something I've had an uneasy relationship with over the years. I went to Sunday School, church every Sunday, a Christian youth group, a Catholic secondary school, sang and acted for the Lord and yet am now an atheist. Which, let's face it, is a bit of an about-face. I was thinking about a few points from my Christian education that should have signposted the turn. Basically, although my parents were Christians as well, they were always a bit relaxed about various things. I had friends whose parents were dead against Halloween because it was felt to be a worship of things opposed to Christianity. My Dad, on the other hand, used to be really interested in the crossover of religions and beliefs and I remember particularly him mentioning Norse mythology, in which a god dies a Christlike death and is reborn, and reincarnation. In an RE class at secondary level, my attempts to raise the question of whether the heaven of Christianity could in fact be Earth and our afterlife could be reincarnation in the same place was shot down in flames. Not by debate, just my teacher saying repeatedly that she couldn't discuss it. Unsurprising in a school where we had to pretend that the pages on contraception in our biology textbooks didn't exist. The thing is, I didn't and don't necessarily believe that reincarnation is true and wasn't trying to be rebellious or anything, I just wanted to talk about the possibility of it. Because it's interesting.

I should have also realised when I couldn't get my head around the idea of martyrdom. In my youth group I remember having a discussion about it where an example was used of a long line of people who were being asked by a guy at the top of the line whether they were Christians and if they said yes they would be killed. Now, my response to this was that if you said yes, you were an idiot. I understand about sacrificing your life for your cause and Christians believe in heaven and life after death but that doesn't mean I necessarily think it's a good idea for me. At the time, I remember thinking that it would be okay to lie because then you can just carry on being a Christian without the unfortunate side effect that is being dead. If they got all the Christians in the world in that line and they all said yes, then everyone else may go "ooh, they believed in their religion so much that they all died for it" but they're not necessarily going to jump on the death bandwagon. Who would teach them Christian beliefs anyway? I think I surprised the youth group leader a bit but it isn't as if there weren't precedents; all the secret Christians in Ancient Rome with their fishes etc. To conclude, in the words of someone a lot funnier than me, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying" (Woody Allen).

My lack of belief is something that I mourn occasionally but actually can't convince myself to believe in an external, omnipotent being. I respect people who believe in something so much that they are willing to die for it (despite the earlier "idiot"comment) but feel that I could never do the same.

Strangely these thoughts were processed in about five minutes and they instantly stopped as I raised my head to the mirror and realised my frizz had transformed into about four or five perfect little corkscrew curls, whereupon I ran through to MuleBoy to exhibit fantastic hair phenomenon and show him how cool it was when they pinged. He puts up with a lot.