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I wrote this post yesterday, finding myself getting ever more annoyed as the words appeared in Performancing, and I realised that I really do get wound up be religion, or at least religion used as a tool for someone's convenience, probably a lot more than I should.

To put this into some sort of context, I used to be religious. I spent several years attending a church of the hand-clapping and twee music variety, and honestly believed everything that I was told (within reason at least; I can recall trying to make evolution fit with biblical teachings and being disappointed when my co-worshippers couldn't - or wouldn't - make the same connections).

Eventually I snapped out of it and came to my senses. I can't remember exactly why at the time, but I reading The Salmon of Doubt some years later I found myself thinking "crikey, I wish I'd read this at the time." Having just finished Dawkins' The God Delusion, I find myself wishing that such books had existed ten years ago with even more fervour.

So let me state, once and for all, my position on religion, lest people misunderstand me or class me as an agnostic, which I would probably find more offensive than being miscategorised as an evangelical preacher.

I am an atheist, or, to use the term that seems to be becoming more and more popular these days (and which is not necessarily synonymous with atheist), a Bright. I do not believe in a god. Any god. To be perhaps a little more specific, I am utterly convinced of the lack of a god of any sort. I am of the firm conviction that the universe and by extension the world around us can be explained through science; through physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics. I am similarly convinced that life on Earth (and, statistically probably, elsewhere) has reached its present allegedly enlightened state through the process of natural selection.

I do not believe that any part of this universe was designed or engineered in any way, except for those things that we ourselves have designed and engineered.

I firmly believe that as a result of this the complexity that has arisen, over aeons, from such simplicity (I mean seriously, how much simpler can you get than a hydrogen atom?), is far more beautiful, mysterious and full of mind-bending, awe-inspiring wonder than any universe that could have arisen from design and, by extension, a designer.

That does not mean that I think religious people are stupid. Wrong, misguided, perhaps. I do not share their beliefs. I envy that they can have them, for such belief, true belief, must take some conviction in the face of all the evidence. I will support to my dying breath your right to believe whatever you wish to believe. I am more than happy to talk religion with anyone who so wants to, for I find religion a fascinating subject and one that I would love to understand more fully. But don't tell me that you are a better person than I, or than the next man, woman or child on the street because you believe something different than the rest of us. Don't ever. And don't use your religion as a reason to get things for free, either.

More after the jump (sorry to LiveJournallers; if I could embed LJ cuts in this I would).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6131464.stm

Here's what I wrote on Wednesday afternoon:

This story from the BBC beggars belief (Link):

A free parking concession for churchgoers that was described as "discriminatory to other faiths" has been removed by a Devon city council.

What gets me is not that the concession has been removed - it should never have been there in the first place - but the reaction of the churchgoers and, disappointingly predictably, their rector, whose words I have tried to see in a good light but, try as I might, can't:

The Rev Nick McKinnel, rector of one of Plymouth's largest churches, St Andrew's, said: "It does seem extraordinary to invoke other faiths as a reason to charge those who go to church."

He said the council introduced the free parking concession in 1998 in recognition of the contribution churches make to the life of the city.

"For the scrutiny committee now to use other faiths as a way of withdrawing this concession seems pretty shabby.

"The sort of spurious reasoning given on behalf of the city council betrays a total lack of understanding of the multi-faith agenda and serves only to divide communities."

Perhaps the good Reverend is missing the point. It isn't simply that the churchgoers are now having to pay to park. If that were the case, and if no-one else had to pay, I'd have to agree with him, No, it's that the churchgoers are no longer able to get away with not paying based on - to use the Reverend's own words - their spurious reasoning about the existence of a higher being.

Before the revisions to the parking charges people were essentially being told that they had to pay because they didn't share the belief system of the churchgoers. Moreover, only two churches were singled out for this privilege, though I'm almost certain that there are more than two churches in Plymouth.

What is it about religion that makes people who have it automatically think that they are being opressed in some way?