Taking the Uncertain Line.

I’ve probably said before that hard-line atheists irritate me just as much as hard-line religionists do. They’re so settled in their certainties and soon become dismissive and patronising if anybody mentions God or heaven.

I upset two of them on YouTube this week. I seem to recall saying something like ‘Please don’t be so arrogant as to preach what you cannot demonstrate.’ I said lots more as well, and one of their replies referred to my ‘faith.’ I’d already explained that I don’t do belief, but I doubt they understood.

I remember my old friend Inspector Morse once saying of some conservative, hard-line male clerics who were trying stop their female counterparts being elected to positions of authority in an Oxford college:

‘It isn’t their faith that troubles me, it’s their certainty.’