Godless And Free

Title page

Copyright

Copyright © Pat Condell 2011

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author.

First published in 2010 by www.lulu.com

This Kindle edition published in 2011 by Pat Condell

ISBN: 978-0-9568116-0-8

www.patcondell.net

Introduction

A number of people have asked for this book, so here it is. It contains the transcripts of sixty video monologues I posted on the internet between February 2007 and October 2009 because that’s the only place they had a hope in hell of being seen.

I’ve been trying to say this stuff for years in the traditional media, but criticising religion is frowned on in ultra-sensitive multicultural Britain, especially at the BBC, so I had to be content with talking about it in comedy clubs and fringe theatres until I discovered internet video.

Early in 2007 I was looking for ways to publicise my show,
Faith Hope & Sanity – A few jokes about religion before it kills us all
, when I found something called
The Blasphemy Challenge,
an atheist campaign that invited people to make a short video of themselves denying the holy spirit (the only unforgivable sin) to show they weren’t afraid of hellfire.

It seemed like a fun idea, so I made a video in my garden shed and posted it on YouTube. I didn’t expect much to come of it, other than perhaps persuading a few people to come and see the show, and I was surprised and delighted to see it rack up thousands of hits in the first few days.

I realised this was a medium I should investigate further, so I made another video,
Hello America
, which had similar success, and it dawned on me that I could reach far more people like this than by poncing around in small theatres night after night, so I decided to ditch the show and focus on the internet.

Five and a half hours of video and thirty million hits later I’m still grateful for the chance to speak my mind to a wider audience without being censored. The novelty hasn’t yet worn off, and so far I’ve been able to say what I like without interference, although with some censure.

The Trouble with Islam
caused a minor ripple in Berkeley, California, in May 2007 when members of the local “Peace and Justice Commission” (I kid you not) condemned it as racist hate speech, which, in retrospect, and given that it was Berkeley, I’ve decided to take as a compliment.

Also, I fell foul of YouTube’s notorious flagging policy in October 2008 when they removed Welcome to Saudi Britain for hate speech, because in it I call the country of Saudi Arabia mentally ill, which it very definitely is (and that’s being kind).

However, hundreds of YouTube users responded by uploading the video to their own accounts, flooding the site with it. When the National Secular Society (of which I am a member) added its voice to the protest, the press picked up the story, whereupon YouTube promptly reinstated the video. Since then I’ve had no problems (though my videos are blocked in Dubai, I’m told).

I’ve tried to be as reasonable as I can in these videos, but when dealing with religion we’re faced with the unreasonable, the intolerant, the outlandish and the preposterous, so, if you detect a certain harshness of tone, put it down to the fact that you can’t cut through granite with an ordinary drill.

In other words, polite debate and respectful dialogue are wasted on religion, and if that’s what you’ve come here for you’re in the wrong place.

Godless and free is what I want to be. I don’t think it’s too much to ask, but, even if it is, I’m asking anyway, and I’m not taking no for an answer.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. I know some atheists dislike my videos because they find them too insulting, and we’ll have to agree to differ on that, as I don’t think it’s possible to be too insulting to a religious fundamentalist – though I’m always willing to try.

Others tell me I shouldn’t refer to religion as mental illness, as it demeans people with real mental problems. Well, I think religious people have real mental problems. If you go through life thinking there’s something wrong with you because of what Adam and Eve did six thousand years ago, then you’re right, there is something wrong with you – it’s called religion.

Most of the mail I get is very positive (though inevitably some isn’t, as you can see on my website) and I’m grateful for everyone’s support.

Christians generally agree with me about Islam, while wanting to put me right about God and Jesus. Some Muslims tell me I’m right to speak out against Islamism, while others call me a racist. To the white supremacists I’m a race traitor. You can’t win them all, I guess.

Also, I get a fair amount of abuse from left wing members of the multicultural appeasement lobby who are as blindly religious in their convictions as the Islamist nutcases they support.

These noble egalitarians don’t see any irony in making common cause with misogynistic homophobic anti-Semites because they happen to sharerulent hatred of America, yet they seem to expect their opinions to be taken seriously – it’s quite amazing.

In
Apologists for Evil
I explain how these clowns have poisoned my political outlook and helped to ensure that, though my leftish liberal views are still fairly intact, I’ll never vote for a left wing party again.

As for religion, it goes without saying that I believe all gods are imaginary, all prophets are false, and all scriptures are lies.

I also believe that getting your morals from religion is like getting health advice from a tobacco company, and allowing religious sensibilities (especially Islamic ones) to censor free opinion is cultural suicide.

In a nutshell, freedom is my religion and the god of the desert is my Satan. Non-submission, heresy and blasphemy are my sacraments, and anyone who’s offended by that can drop dead.

I hope you enjoy this book. In making a video, I prepare what I’m going to say in the same way I would a comedy routine, so how it comes out depends on the moment (no, I don’t read from a teleprompter – thanks for asking); therefore some of this stuff isn’t perfect prose. I considered tidying it up, but once you start messing around with a thing there’s never any end to it, so I’ve left it pretty much as it is.

The transcripts are published in the order they were originally recorded, and are prefaced by the introduction to the
Anthology
DVD released by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science in April 2008 (the only video that hasn’t appeared on the internet) in which I try to explain what I’m about. I hope it will serve as a mini introduction to this book as well.

Introduction to ‘Anthology’ DVD

Released by the Richard Dawkins Foundation, April 2008

Hi everyone. I’m Pat Condell. Welcome to this video compilation.

If you’ve seen me on the internet then you probably know that I really don’t care whether God created man or man created God, but I think whichever one was responsible deserves a really good kicking.

People often ask me why I feel the need to be abrasive, even insulting about religion. Well, I don’t think I am insulting, quite honestly. I think I’m positively emollient, all things considered. But if on occasion I am insulting it’s because that’s the only way I can give religion the respect I think it deserves.

And, although I’ve got no special desire to offend anyone, let’s be honest, if you’re talking about religion and you’re not offending people, then you’re not really talking about religion, which I believe has shown itself to be completely unworthy as a conduit to higher understanding because it makes no attempt to understand anything. It already has all the answers, and not a single one supported by evidence.

Indeed, virtually every statement religion makes about reality is an open invitation to mockery and ridicule, so if I were to give it any respect at all Ic afraid I would instantly lose all respect for myself, because I believe that to be righteously certain about something you can’t possibly know is the mark of a fool, and calling it faith doesn’t give it any more dignity.

We also know that faith is often a get-out-of-jail card for crazy, so when faith is around crazy is never going to be too far away, which is not exactly a comforting thought in this looming age of nuclear theocracies.

Also, religion empowers mediocrity. It gives every inadequate control freak the authority to point God’s wrathful finger and to unload the poison inside their own miserable heart on to some other poor bastard who’s doing nothing wrong, but is doing something different.

It tells me that, as a human being, I must atone for the sin of existing. Well, I’ve tried, but I can’t find anything wrong with existing. Maybe I’ve got a warped sense of values, but I just can’t bring myself to see it as a crime. Sorry.

Of course I realise that there are people who get joy and fulfilment from their religious beliefs, and I’ve got no problem with any of that. Why should I have? What am I, a philistine? Of course not. Anyone who gets a good healthy buzz from their faith, good luck to them I say. It’s the unhealthy buzz I have a problem with – the one that comes from the glorification of ignorance, from the indoctrination of children, and from the celebration of death. The one that wants to impose itself like a blanket of fog over everyone whether they like it or not.

And, as we encourage this mentality (which we do now constantly) to be more and more demanding and intrusive, and as every concession we make to it is, I believe, a step into darkness, I think this bubble of insanity needs to be burst, and not massaged.

So I’m not really here to be polite or to seek consensus. I’m not saying: “How can we work together to find a common understanding?” What I’m saying is something more along the lines of: “Get your insane beliefs out of my life, you ignorant manipulative liberty-taking sons of bitches.” Something more like that. Just so you know what you’re getting into here.

I’d like to thank the Richard Dawkins Foundation for their help with this project. If the video quality is not all it could be I’m afraid that’s my fault, not theirs. When I started making these things I had no idea they would become in any way popular, so I didn’t keep the originals. I hope you’ll be able to forgive me for that, but, if not, fortunately I forgive myself.

Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoy the videos whether you agree with them or not.

I wish you peace, of course, but even more than that, may your children be atheists, for all our sakes.