a blessing worth counting

We hear all the time from religious people about how we should "count our blessings". Gratitude and subservience to an all-powerful god is a key component of both Christianity and Islam.

My wife and I were recently incredibly lucky to have a second child - a lovely baby boy. The entire process gave me pause to think on several issues. Firstly, rather than having to stand in awe of an imaginary overlord for having blessed me with a child, I am simply dumbstruck by the fact that my little boy can trace an unbroken line of descent back to the classic "primordial slime". Ever since some chemical compounds first started self-replicating (the most interesting recent theory is that this took place in clay, which provided a useful substrate), every single one of my son's ancestors has overcome incredible odds to survive to reproductive age, meet a mate, convince them to share genetic material, and create a new life. That's 4+ billion years in which not one of his direct ancestors has failed to reproduce. My little boy is a miracle, in a deeply non-religious sense, and I have much to be grateful for. I am grateful that the life has found a way, and that evolution has equipped me with the conscience to appreciate the magnitude of the process and the moment, and others with the intellect to comprehend and explain it to me.

My first son was born via an emergency Cesarean section, the second via an elective one. I was fortunate to be present at both, and found another reason to be grateful. The operating theatre was equipped with the most remarkable technologies, and staffed by a team of the smartest, most competent and caring people you could wish to find. How all of these elements came to be there to keep my wife and children alive bears consideration. Those doctors are able to do what they do because they developed skills taught to them by other doctors, in universities where the pursuit of knowledge is valued above all else. Those teachers stood on the shoulders of others, who came before them, and, like them, pursued the advancement of our scientific understanding of the human body. The scientists, doctors and engineers who designed everything in that operating theatre from the overhead lights to the electronically elevating bed, to the forceps and scalpels to the life-support machines are all heroes. Their exceptional skill and independent pieces of work were crucial in keeping my wife and boys alive. And I will never know who any of them are.

We take for granted today the freedom our doctors and scientists have to pursue all avenues of enquiry to provide us with healthcare that is so advanced it boggles the mind. But it was not always so. Organised religion is dependent on an absence of curiosity, enquiry and freedom of thought, and  both Islam and Christianity have actively, and for most of their history ruthlessly and violently oppressed those guilty of hereticism. Watching my young son sleeping peacefully this morning I give thanks to the brave men and women of science who opposed the power of the church, swam upstream (often at significant risk to themselves) and who as a result have created a space where intelligent, free-thinking scientists can develop the knowledge and technologies that kept my family alive through two tough births.

But giving thanks to them is not enough. I recommit myself to actively opposing religion, and its evil, self-serving, pernicious attempts to stifle free thought. Never again can we allow people who believe in fairies to impinge on how our scientists go about advancing our knowledge. In our apparently modern and liberal society this might seem overly dramatic. However, the Christian right in the USA is a powerful force, very close to gaining control of the levers of power in the largest and most powerful society ever to exist on earth. The concept of having an end-times-believing bible-fundamentalist like Sarah Palin with her finger on the big red nuclear-holocaust button scares the living daylights out of me. On the other side of the coin, the growing influence of conservative Islam seeks to return us to the stone age, with its bizarre system of belief and hatred. As an infidel, (whom the Quran urges believers to kill) I have no option but to take seriously the aggressive, hateful, intolerant and expansionist ideas espoused by the world's two major religions. I will therefore take a stand wherever I can against religion.

How I reconcile that stance with my friendships with some lovely and obviously non-violent religious people is an issue for another day.

Today, I will spend my time considering the nameless, faceless heroes whose centuries of bravery, curiosity, and intellect saved my family.