Out And Proud, and I don't mean that in a Gay way.

I live in a place that is packed full of Christian Goodness. There are times when it feels like I am stuck in an episode of the Brady Bunch; the other choice is to head out beyond the Flannel Curtain to the outer suburbs, which resembles Shameless.

And the trouble is, in a community this small, you need everyone on side, because there aren't enough people here to have sectarian strife. Except for those tossers in Hobart, we don't need them for anything.

We all have to get along with each other, 'cos if you pissed too many people off your social circle would shrink down to your relatives, and that would make dating and infidelity far more awkward.

But even here, I am finding it hard to be polite about people's religious beliefs. I don't believe in:

1. The Undead Flying Hebrew Construction Worker Who Said to Be Nice, or

2. The Sacred and Unquestionable (in spite of all the nasty shit he did in the Hadith) Prophet Mohammet with the Flying Horse, or,

3. Moses of the Profound and Notable Absence from the Historical and Archaeological Record.

And as I write this, I am actually feeling really creeped out to be criticizing these Abrahamic faiths even so far. That is probably because, until recent times, the Terrifying Faithful could kill you in Very Nasty Ways for even thinking such things.

Well, here goes. I am outing myself.

I don't believe in the Supernatural, and that goes for any and all Gods, Demons, Ghouls, Angels, Pixies, Reiki, Crystal healing, Spirit Guides, the Entire Hindu Pantheon, all 40, 000 of them or so.

I Believe that things happen because space, time, energy and matter interact with each other in very complex, but ultimately knowable ways.

And I believe that I am a part of that, for as long as my matter is so arranged that the energy of the universe, made available in my body as it breaks down complex molecules and reacts them exothermically with oxygen, powers the matter that is my body to wander about thinking, eating and on rare occasions when the opportunity presents itself, shagging.

I believe that I am a piece of carbon based Darwinian life, and i am extraordinarily grateful to exist, in light of the odds against me being born and the ease with which my body can cease to function.

I am seriously fucking grateful to the universe for my consciousness, not because it is an eternal Soul, but because it is an ephemeral Effect, as the prism of the physical brain 'refracts' the energy of sunlight stored in my food, and shines my consciousness out into the slightly warm almost-nothingness that is the great expanse of space, for just a very little while.

My thanks for this are deeper than can be expressed by saying thank-you to a god that I have made in my own image. I exist, for now. So do you. For now.

And as Now is all we have, lets make it a damned good Now, with as much kindness and charity and good engineering and splendid music as possible.

If you love someone, I don't mind how, so long as everyone has a nice time and no-one catches anything nasty. If you are into weird games, like S+M or Rugby Leauge, you're welcome to it, just wear protective equipment, and try not to dislocate anything.

All my love, peoples. Have a Blast.

B.