CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - LATE NIGHT CONVERSATION

Touching on religious faith and the absurdities inherent in it.

Night had fallen with its accompaniment of a firmament of stars and the three holiday makers had returned from the bar and made ready for bed. For a while there was silence as they settled own, then:

“Did you and mum get married in Church, dad?” called Paula from her single bed at the rear of the caravan. David had a bed at the front end (suggested by Paula's father who had put the lad as far from Paula as possible on account of personal memories of his own teenage years, fuelled as they had been by a surplus of testosterone), and Mr Potts was in a small enclave midway between the two.

“I'd have got wed anywhere, but your mum was dead against church-anything,” sighed her dad. “I've never known anyone so determined not to enter a church in my life! That's why her funeral was so lacking in all ecclesiastic accoutrements, hymns and so forth, … just that Queen song she loved and a simple farewell from those who mattered to her.”

“I agree with her,” sighed Paula. “At school, especially when I was younger, at Juniors, they tried to teach that all that weird stuff in the Old Testament is true, but it seemed to me that most of it was reports of visions by long-dead desert nomads sitting in their lonely tents with nothing better to do than fall to sleep after dark, and we all have visions, don't we, but we call them dreams?”

“I dream all the time,” called David.

“It wasn't right, the teachers trying to make us believe that all those stories really happened,” protested Paula. “I mean, a flood that covered the whole world from forty days of rain? When we get forty days of rain we call it summer and go to the seaside!”

“Or the pub,” laughed her father.

“Then there was that Adam and Eve stuff. Right at the beginning of story-telling the daft old men who made that story up put women in a subordinate place, and we've been there ever since!” snorted Paula. “All sin in the world was down to a woman, was it? And women have had to suffer ever since �" and still do in some parts of the world.”

“It's because women like you are so … perfect,” sighed David. “Us blokes are scared of perfection!”

“I'm not quite a woman, but you can call me perfect if you like,” giggled Paula.

“I think you are.”

“I changed her nappy when she was a baby and I can assure you she's produced things that are far from perfect!” said her father solemnly. “And smelly,” he added.

“Dad!”

“When I see you on the rec., playing tennis with Simone, I think you're close to perfect,” sighed David.

“It's that skirt she wears,” put in Mr Potts. “It's too short. I'm always telling her.”

“It's not short enough,” sighed David.

“That's your hormones speaking,” growled the older man. “I had talkative hormones once, you know. Now don't you think it's time we all tried to get some sleep? We'll be waking up early I bet, and tomorrow's another day...”

“Of course it is, dad,” giggled Paula. “Anyway, we were having a deep debate on churchy things. I mean, we came a hundred miles or so to get to this caravan, and every village, every town �" even every hamlet �" that we passed through had at least one church steeple or tower dominating the skyline. It's like the world belongs to Popes and people like that!”

“It's the same the world over,” sighed her father. “It's how the early church established itself. Big and bold and brash �" that was the idea. Build a church and build it big so that all the other buildings �" the humble peasant cottages, the inns, the stables, even the mill and the manor house, are dwarfed by it, and then feed the people with loads of superstition, and they believe it. That was hundreds of years ago, and the belief continues, down the years, to the present. There are even some people who think that creationism should be taught in schools rather than evolution, and yet there's not a blind bit of evidence anywhere for biblical creation and everywhere you look there's tons of evidence for evolution...”

“We had a teacher, when I was in Juniors, who was like that,” sighed Paula. “She taught the Bible as if every word in it was true, even the creation of the world and everyone on it. And for a while I think I believed it. After all, I was only little.”

“That's the trouble,” murmured her father, “they say that if they can have a child until it is five then they've got it for life. Implant belief in an immature mind and there will always be a corner of the adult mind that is susceptible to that belief, will let the plant grow. And I know that it's true! It's what really made your mum angry, and if she'd have known about that teacher of yours she'd have been up to the school like a raging dragon!”

“I think my folks are a bit more believing...” began David. “They still sometimes go to church. Dad says he doesn't really believe, but he wants to keep an open mind... just in case, I suppose.”

“Just in case of what?” demanded Paula.

“I dunno. Just in case the church has got it right all along...?”

“And what do you think, David?” she asked, coolly.

“I agree with you...” he mumbled in reply.

“I know, dad,” sighed Paula.

“It's hard to see how this religious thing got to be so entrenched in the first place until you understand how people, even as recently as the middle ages, being mostly unable to read and write, were fed lurid images of Heaven and Hell and the demons and angels that inhabit those places,” said Mr Potts. “And witches: they believed that the devil had servants on Earth whose job it was to undermine good with evil, and we must remember that back then good was just believing in the one religion and God. Without belief you couldn't possibly be good. So conversations like we've been having were evil and, I dared say, we would have been burned at the stake for having them had anyone been listening! That put a full stop on doubt, don't you think? Even if they did doubt, they daren't suggest it to anyone. Fire can be very cleansing!”

“I'd have hated to have lived then,” shuddered Paula.

“Anyway, children, I need my beauty sleep even if you don't,” said Mr Potts. “So shurrup until tomorrow, please.”

“Yes, daddy.”

“Cheeky! Now shurrup!”

“Goodnight, sir.”

“Goodnight David. Goodnight Paula.”

“Goodnight!”