A small slice of my island life
So, in my first entry, we established that I am an Atheist. I figured I might as well add some icing to that particular cake and say a bit more about myself and where I come from.
Well, I live in the Western Isles, a chain of islands of the west coast of Scotland that is sometimes referred to as the Outer Hebrides. The main islands in this chain are Lewis and Harris (actually two parts - North and South - of the same island), North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist and Barra. If you look on a map, you'll see that there are quite a few other islands there too thougn most of them are pretty small.
Despite the fact that these islands are one of the few places on Earth where you really can experience 4 seasons in one day, they are a great place to live and raise kids. When the sun shines, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. The scenery is breathtaking and there are some beaches that are miles long and totally unspoiled. Even when it is wild, and it can be very wild, the islands have a strange attraction.
However, one of the islands failings, as I see it, is its dogmatic religious heritage. For the last 150 years or so, these Protestant islands have adhered to this extremely Calvanistic religious attitude which would but many middle-eastern extremists to shame.Whilst they have never blown anything up, they stance they adopt on some issues is scary. When I was growing up, some of my friends were not allowed to watch tv on a Sunday. No big deal? Well, some of these kids weren't even allowed out to play in case someone among the religious mafia took offence. Those kids who did get out to play, myself included, were always told to keep a low profile when people were on their way to and from church. If a church-goer saw you, they wouldn't be beyond condemning you to an eternity of hell-fire and torture - even if you were only 8!
Many forms of enjoyment seemed to be frowned upon - the demon drink being the main offender. Though I can recall seeing many a church member in a bar on the mainland (places like Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness, and Aberdeen) and on Sundays too! Double-standards? Seems if you go to church up here, you automatically earn a Get-Into-Heaven-Free card. You can burn through a 40-mile zone doing 60 as long as you're on your way to church. You can ignore any parking laws. And you can get the swings in the local swing-park chained together to make damn sure the kids can't have any fun!!!
When I left the islands for a while to study and then to work, I was relieved to get away from all that but found I had developed a pretty cynical attitude to religion despite making many friends who were themselves religious (mainly Christian). They're attitude was a lot more enlightened though. Over the years, my cynicism has hardened because of some of the antics of various ministers, bishops, fundamentalists and members of the Free Church. I guess that cynicism is now fully-fledged Atheism.
And do you know what, I feel quite comfortable with that.