Tales from St Anthony Part XIII -- Agnostic God? I'll believe in that

My alter-ego, Dirk Daring from Dragon's Lair

I’m an apathetic agnostic so when talk turns to religion, I tune out and let my mind jump behind the wheel of a 1971 Austrian-built Steyr Pinzgauer and head on a Hunter S. Thompson inspired road from Spain to the Romanian capital of Bucharest via Croatia.

In this phantasmal scenario, my brain takes the physical form of Dirk Daring (from the computer game Dragon’s Lair) and along with David Bowie’s Goblin King from The Labyrinth; Neil deGrasse Tyson, American astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan; and Terry Gilliam (circa 1975 Monty Python and the Holy Grail) we carve a path of self illumination and hilarity across mainland Europe. 

For the love of god, put it away Bowie.

(NOTE: David Bowie is wearing fishing waders to cover up his tackle box shame that the producers of The Labyrinth failed to notice in the movie or conversely wanted to highlight so as to scare little children even more.)

The Steyr Pinzgauer makes road trips rad.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is the other day I had one the shortest yet funniest conversation about religion that went something like this:

“What religion are you?”

“Well I’m not, I’m an atheist.”

“Aren’t you in for a surprise then?”

At that point the conversation about religion gently rolled to a stop, the hand brake was applied and all participants got out safely. No proselytizing, no conversion attempts, just a few hardy laughs and a few beers.

But that question lingered in my mind.

Now look, you are going to need some pretty impressive empirical evidence and hard scientific fact to even begin to convince me that a God or gods exist but the rub is that even if you did prove it, you would have to also prove that God or gods cared about the fate of us earthbound hominids.

Now don’t get all up tight and don’t take it to heart; it’s not your fault. I was once blackmailed into going to church or face losing my job so as you can see I have very little trust in religion but please, you can be as religious as you like, in fact I applaud you for having the Faith and the dedication.

The reason I bring this up is that when a recent discussion with some friends turned to religion I had to laugh.

For most of my life no-one has ever asked my religion but in the space of two short years, I have been asked many times whether I wanted to go to church, implored that I should go to church, asked repeatedly what religion I followed, as if it was kind of a football team, and more importantly what my beliefs are.

It seems the older I get the more people want to know my religion. I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come? As we get older and closer to death do people start packing their parachute just in case?

When I arrived in St Anthony, one of the first questions I was asked was, “are you Jewish? You look Jewish.”

My reply: “Nope, not Jewish. But they do have awesome food, except that whole bacon thing.”

I’ve since come to realise that the communities up in these parts are fairly religious, the Church of England was the first recognized church in Newfoundland (source: DW Prowse, QC) and in St Anthony alone; there’s the Bethel Pentecostal, Salvation Army and Anglican churches and even a Jehovah’s Witness hall on the way into town.

I think it’s a good thing, I truly do and reading all the different histories of the region, I can see why religion has played such a huge role in people’s lives up this way.

When you live at the mercy of the sea as the Atlantic fishermen did battling squalls and icebergs, I too would probably hold onto my Faith in a higher being rather than my hope that your faithful boat builder didn’t skimp on timber or had too many afternoon sherbets at the shed.

Same goes for all the winter souls who felt their appendix rumbling or the women in childbirth who were forced to rely on the Godspeed of dedicated nurses and doctors and their flying machines or dog sleds.

But there is just one thing that I can’t fathom and it’s why there are different cemeteries for the different churches – I mean, aren’t you all going to the same God?

“Religion and politics,” my dad once told me, “are two things you never speak about on a Friday afternoon in the pub.”

I tend to agree.