The Devil is alive and His name is God

It’s the Vatican that’s to blame. Nobody who lives in the UK can fail to have noticed that we are in the middle of the coldest and wettest summer since records began. Half way through July and we have already had three times more than the national average for the month. Indeed, since I came back from Cape Town at the end of May, I think it has rained every single day. If it hasn’t, it certainly feels that way. According to Sir David Attenborough, who knows a thing or two about such matters, it is caused by arctic ice caps melting into the jet stream, the culprit being climate change. Sir David has no doubt that we, the human race, are responsible for it, and he is of the opinion that the main cause is the huge rise in world population, which has more than doubled, from 2.5 billion in 1950 to nearly seven billion now. He believes the profound effects of this rapid growth on humans and the environment are unsustainable and that the matter needs to be addressed urgently before nature takes its own action.

 "We cannot continue to deny the problem. People have pushed aside the question of population sustainability and not considered it because it is too awkward, embarrassing and difficult. But we have to talk about it. The only ray of hope I can see – and it's not much – is that wherever women are put in control of their lives, both politically and socially; where medical facilities allow them to deal with birth control and where their husbands allow them to make those decisions, birth rate falls. Women don't want to have 12 kids of whom nine will die."

Sir David doesn’t spell it out, but most of the women who are having 12 kids are in third world countries, and are being told by their Catholic priest that the only form of birth control they are allowed to use is abstinence (try telling that to their husbands when they come home drunk on a Saturday night). So it is not too much of a stretch to come to the conclusion that actually it’s the Vatican who is to blame for this dramatic increase in population, and considering the Pope is His representative on earth, then it must be God himself, who is to blame for this Goddam awful weather! 

Then, taking this analogy a little further, I began to wonder why God would be going to such pains to destroy this world he took such pains to create. Now everyone knows the Devil is the master of disguise. He has variously been called Satan, Lucifer, Nick Shadow, Old Nick, Mephistopheles and no doubt many other names, whereas God is usually just called God or the Almighty. In the constant battle between Heaven and Hell, what if God had lost? What if God had been captured and locked up by Old Nick, who was now masquerading as God, and the Pope has been taking orders all this time from the wrong guy? Think about it. The Vatican decides to protect paedophile priests, whilst demonising the poor victims of their evil deeds. Pure Satan. The Pope excommunicates a doctor and a mother, who aborted the baby of an eleven year old girl, who had been repeatedly raped and abused by her father. Yep. Gotta be the work of Satan. Women are forced into servitude by men all over the world, not able to take control of their own bodies, forced to have child after child, often at a cost to both their health and that of their children. Surely that’s Satan again. And why does the Vatican hate us gays so much? Presumably because, largely, we don’t have children, and could be Nature’s way of restoring the balance. Now surely God would be happy with anything that helped save the planet, whereas Satan is probably rubbing his hands in glee.

No I’m convinced of it. The devil is alive and well and doing his utmost to destroy the world, whilst God is locked up in chains somewhere powerless to do anything about it.