Let’s get down to brass tacks, people. I’m baptized Catholic, but I consider myself a sort of Agnostic. That’s the one who doesn’t know whether there’s a God or not, but retains an open mind and isn’t going to rule anything out without hard evidence. It’s sort of like the person who stands in a supermarket and observes the lines to see which one moves quickest and then joins that. You don’t just throw your lot in with the first one you see, or the shortest queue. That’s a road to ruin. You need to stand back and see which presents the best case and then make your decision, because the last thing you need is to end up in a queue with a noddy at the helm. Your Ben & Jerry’s will be dripping all over the floor before you’ve even had the chance to sit down and pop Dirty Dancing on.

I suppose, in many ways, that’s the beauty of considering oneself agnostic. You’re on the fence. You’re not shooting down the God Squad, but you’re also not joining them. You’re just hanging around in the middle waiting for a sign. You’re playing the odds. Biding your time. If in ten years some scientist comes out and says, “Yeah, totally proven. There is no God. We’ve sussed it” then it’s not going to worry me. All those religious nuts that have been spending every Sunday morning for the last twenty years on their knees (and not just the altar boys) are going to be devastated. They’ve been wasting their Sunday morning clasping their hands and praying to a wall. I’ll be sat watching 24 with a brew and a smoke. No God? No big shakes. I could handle that news. But I’ve also got a backup plan in case He does exist.

The great thing about Catholicism is that it’s got this thing about confession. “Confess your sins! Be saved!”  etc. If you confess your sins to a priest, and then do your penance (a few prayers usually, depending on the severity of your sins) then you’re absolved of all wrong doing. Forgiven. Written off. That’s all it takes. It’s essentially a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card for the Monopoly of life.

You could be Fred West, sat in your cell, looking at the old photos of you and your wife and ki… err kitchen. You think, “Okay, I’ve been a bad ‘un. Time to wrap this belt around me neck and get out of this lengthy prison term”. And then all it takes is for you to shout a guard and get a priest sent in, confess your sins, say a couple of Hail Mary’s and you’ve got a seat at the table of our Lord. Well, not in this case, actually, because suicide is a pretty bad sin, so he’d have gone to Hell. So if you did do that, Fred, sorry pal, but you fucked up. Big style.

Anyway, the point is, as long as you repent on your deathbed you’re in the clear. You could steal a school bus full of children and drive it off a cliff, and as long as you got a priest on the phone and said your sorries before you hit the bottom you’d be alright. Or you could just take a priest with you, I suppose. But it seems a little unfair that the last memory little Timmy will have before being incinerated in an exploding school bus will be Father Flatley slipping him the finger on the back seat. A joke’s a joke, but you’ve got to know when to stop.

So we’ve established that the catholic/agnostic hybrid is a pretty sweet route to covering a few bases. If it turns out that Islam is right, then I’m fucked, but I’m willing to take that risk. Besides, I can’t grow a beard. But playing the odds isn’t the only reason I’m agnostic. No, sir. It’s also because there’s a great many things in this world that are so wonderful that I like to believe that an all powerful being was their architect, but by the same token, there are things so nefarious that I can only assume that a) there is no God, or b) there is and He’s a massive cunt.

It’s this pulling back and forth that keeps me here in this equilibrium between believing and scoffing. Every time I read a news story about a puppy being saved from a river? I get a little more faith. Every time I read a story about some youths kicking a cat to death and filming it on their phones to upload to YouTube? I wonder how God could allow this to happen. There’s just so many pros and cons to each argument that I have no choice but to sit here in the middle and contemplate them.

I Want To Believe: Life, Nature and Katy Perry’s Tits

The world is a wonderful place, sometimes. It’s like that song said. Something about a wonderful world. Yeah. I mean, look at that rainbow right there. I’ve reached 28 years old and I’m still impressed by rainbows. We’ve got the animals, the mountains, the valleys, the rivers, and the oceans. There’s so many amazing sights and sounds. I know, I’ve got Planet Earth on Blu-ray. There is some serious shit on those discs, and David Attenboroughs heavenly voice just makes them better while I’m having a smoke and a beer.

And when I see sights like that I can’t help but believe that there’s a grand architect up there in the heavens, designing all these beautiful things like a master craftsmen, meticulously deciding what should go where. It would almost be disappointing to know that all these things were just coincidence, chance and blind luck. Nature winging it. It’s more comforting to believe that something created these wonders as part of a plan, isn’t it?

Now speaking of beauty, I’m a man who enjoys the company of the fairer sex. I’d like to think I handle myself with a little more decorum than the common rabble (when I’m sober anyway) and I can communicate with ladies on a level that goes beyond wolf whistling at them in the street or saying, “While you’re down there, love” when they bend over to pick up their handbag. I enjoy spending time with the girls just as much as the boys.

But sometimes, every now and then, even an absolute gentleman has his limits. Sometimes, you just have to look down at your penis and say, “Well, old boy, I think you’re right” and give in to his demands. You have to lose your class, cast aside your chivalry, and just say it; Katy Perry has an absolute killer set on her. That bitch is packing. They are Grade A tits. They’re like the world heavyweight tag team champions of sweater puppies. Good Lord. I’ve got a bead on…

Perfectly constructed, beautifully designed, wonderful sights like this give me faith in a greater power. And it’s not just Katy Perry’s tits. There’s a veritable banquet of ladies out there that command one to thank the heavens. Sheer, blind luck couldn’t be responsible for all this, surely?

There Is No God: Wasps, Misguided Designs and the rest of Katy Perry

Let’s imagine for a second a conversation taking place in Heaven between God, and his helper called, I don’t know, Alan. They’re making animals. It’s a busy day. They are absolutely snowed under, and they’ve just finished making lions. 

God: Sooooo. That’s the lion over and done with.
Alan: I think that might be your masterpiece, sir.
God: Yep.
Alan: Majestic flowing manes. Triumphant posture. Magnificent coat. Truly, this beast is king of the jungle.
God: Yeah, yeah.
Alan: So what’s up next?
God: Errr…. Wasps.
Alan: Okay. What’s a wasp? Perhaps a huge, hulking giant of a beast that will graze on the plains of Africa.
God: Meh.
Alan: Okay, how about an awe inspiring sea beast patrolling the depths?
God: Do I nooooo have time for tentacles.
Alan: Okay then, what is a wasp going to be?
God: I was thinking, we’ve made all these great animals like lions, and elephants, and giraffes-
Alan: Inspired work on the giraffe by the way, sir.
God: Thank you, Alan. Yeah we’ve made all these glorious creatures, so now we need to think smaller.
Alan: Okay. What have you got in mind?
God: Right, it’s this little creature that can fly about and it can sting you. It can just fly about all day, and sting to it’s hearts content. It’s essentially a flying, stinging machine. But we’ll sort it so that it only comes out in summer when it’s hot-
Alan: You mean at the time people are mostly likely to be outside?
God: Yeah, yeah. And also it’s going to be really attracted to sweet things, and deodorant. It’s going to have like this super sense for that shit.
Alan: You mean sweet things like iced cream and deodorant like you’d wear to stop yourself sweating on a hot day?
God: Yeah.
Alan: Right. So what you’ve essentially created, and please, correct me if I’m wrong, is a small animal, that can fly about, only comes out in summer time when people are most likely to be outside, is attracted to iced cream, like what people buy on hot days, and also to deodorant, which people wear to stop sweating on hot days. And it can also sting you. Relentlessly.
God: Bingo.
Alan: I think I’ve spotted some problems here, sir, if only you’d-
God: Don’t bring me problems, Alan. Bring me solutions.
Alan: All I’m saying is, you’re creating a creature which will almost certainly be reviled by the world. It’s going to ruin picnics. It’s going to trash a day on the beach. Little kids with iced creams will be terrified. You might aswell just go the whole hog and make them so stupid that they’ll fly into peoples homes through their windows and then never be able to work out how to get back out again.
God: ALAN! That’s a stroke of genius! It’s in!
Alan: Sigh. Okay well what does it look like?
God: THIS!

This is the point where if I’m Alan, I’m shivving God in the back when he goes to the vending machine for a Double Decker. What sort of motherfucker comes up with wasps and thinks it’s a good idea? They’re a colossal error in judgement. And not just wasps either. Spiders. Ants. The entire insect kingdom. They look horrible. They’re annoying. They’re dicks. Fuck insects, and fuck any God that thought them up. 

It’s like all the good work He did with all that stuff on Plant Earth has been erased by all this awful shit. And we haven’t even gotten onto Katy Perry yet. What sort of evil genius comes up with something as glorious as Katy Perry’s rack, and then attaches it onto the rest of Katy Perry? I refuse to believe in a God that would do that. It’s like some insane Jigsaw killer-type was given the task of taking over from God while he went to do a big shop, and this is the test he gave to mankind. He makes this incredible set of udders and then shoehorns them onto a person whose greatest claim to fame is being dumped by Russell Brand for partying too hard (no mean feat, granted) and releasing atrocious, aural abominations like Hot N Cold. Why must I endure Katy Perry to get her bibs? No pain no gain? Fuck that. Give her tits to Keira Knightley. Two birds, one stone.

It’s a grim fate for mankind, to be sure. This dilemma. On the one hand I’m watching the video to I Kissed A Girl and I’m appalled by how anyone could be taken in by the pseudo-lesbian, “Hey boys I’m a girl who likes girls BUY MY SINGLE” cynicism, but on the other hand I want to carry on watching. It makes me feel dirty. I can’t remember ever having the feeling before. The one where you simultaneously want to strangle someone and slip them your length. I mean, what is that? Oh yeah, Ian Huntley.

And so you see this is the quandary I find myself in. How do I accept that the same being that is responsible for Emma Watson is responsible for Katie Price? How do I come to terms with knowing that our good Lord thought both puppies and cockroaches were good ideas? How can I not believe in a God after listening to The Pixies. But then how can I possibly believe in a God that would create a person like Jack Bauer and then make him fictional?

I’m on the fence. I refuse to pick a side. I’ll be here in the middle, drinking tea and google image searching “Emma Watson’s fanny” until Judgement Day rolls around and I have to knock out a last minute confessional. You guys are on your own.