96. Doppelgänger

Yesterday morning and for the first time in my life, I experienced aggressive prejudice and abuse because of who I am.  I became the subject of a form of atheophobia.  If you have never come across that word before, you will find out what it means later.  

I was at Sainsbury’s, where I go only whenever I have to buy the coffee we like. Coffee is kept about 120 yards from the lift that brings shoppers up from the underground car park. 

By the time I got back to the lift, after 20 minutes of walking around the huge arena that most supermarkets seem to be these days, every arthritic joint in my left leg was aching agonisingly.

I pressed the -1 button and slumped over the trolley, trying to take the weight from my leg and then waited for the door to close.  After 20 seconds it started to shut but I could see a man, who looked to be of Pakistani origin, pushing his trolley towards the lift.  I put my walking stick in the way of the sliding door and that caused it to open again so that the man could enter.  He reached behind me and pressed -2.  I went back to leaning on my trolley.  The pain was becoming intolerable.

At last the door began to close again and I felt better in the knowledge that in two minutes I would be sitting in my car.  But no, because a mother with a toddler sitting in the trolley approached us and I stopped the door once more.  I was getting desperate.

When the door began to close for the third time I could see another man, also of Pakistani origin, some 20 yards away and walking towards us.  I did nothing and allowed the door to close.  At last!

I can see now, that to the man and the woman in the lift with me and perhaps to you too, my action appeared selfish but they had no idea of the pain I was in.  All I could think of was getting to my car and sitting down.  All the same, I was surprised by what followed.

“That wasn’t Christian,” the Pakistani standing next to me said.

“I’m not a Christian,” I said.

“What are you?”

“Nothing.”

“Then you’ll go to hell,” he said with some venom and conviction.

I just shrugged and wished that I had a good response.  Five seconds later, I left the lift at -1 but he stayed on to go further down to -2.  As I hobbled away he shouted after me.

“I hope there’s a bomb under your car!”

Now you know what atheophobia is.  It’s a hatred of atheists.

Think of all the misery and horror there is around the world that has religion at its heart and cause.  A few years ago, on American television, I watched a studio debate in which one Christian of a particular denomination told another Christian of a different denomination, that she was no better than an atheist for not believing in the same way she did.

The Centre for the Study of Global Christianity has estimated there are 43,000 different Christian denominations around the world.  I suppose that must mean that Christians of any particular denomination believe that 99.998% of other Christians are no different from atheists. 

If you add together all the different Islamic sects as well as the different types of Hindus, Jews, Taoists, Sikhs, Rastafarians, Mormons and Druids, and add to those all the thousands of folk religions around the world, it means that statistically and to all intents and purposes, most people who believe in heaven and hell think that virtually everyone else is doomed.  They can't all be right can they? 

I don’t much enjoy science fiction films.  They require too much suspension of belief for me.  If I have to believe that a man can fly or travel through time in order to get pleasure from a film, then I won’t.  A science fiction film that I did quite enjoy, however, was Doppelgänger, a movie released in 1969.

The plot is fairly simple. Travelling through the Solar System in 2069, an unmanned probe locates a planet that lies on the same orbital path as Earth but is positioned on the opposite side of the Sun.  Because of its position, we here on Earth 1 had been completely ignorant of the existence of Earth 2 until then.  A manned joint European-NASA mission to investigate the planet discovers that Earth 2 is a mirror image of our Earth.

Everything on Earth 2 is a mirror image of Earth 1.  For example, instead of 11% of people being left-handed as they are here, 89% are left handed on Earth 2 and consequently on Earth 2 they write in what appears, to us, to be mirror writing.

In 1969, before Voyager began its journey, I could almost believe that such a planet could exist even though I realised that its presence would have been detectable from the effect it would have had had upon the orbits of other planets.  That was how Pluto was discovered.  The American astronomer, Percival Lowell, thought there might be another planet somewhere near Neptune and Uranus because he noticed that the gravitational pull of something large was affecting the orbits of those two planets.  That large something was Pluto.

Suppose though that there were such a planet; a planet of the same age, size and physical characteristics as Earth.  Life forms on that planet could have evolved exactly as they have here on Earth.  There would be human life forms identical to us and at the same stage of development as us.

Their science would be exactly the same as ours.  Water would freeze and boil on Earth 2 at the same temperatures as on Earth 1.  The pull and the effects of gravity would be the same on the two planets.

People on Earth 2 would commute to work in cars driven by the same engines as ours have and their aeroplanes would look pretty much like ours. The laws of physics, chemistry and maths would be uniform on the two planets as they are throughout the universe.

Some people on Earth 2 would be religious because there is a basic, primordial need for religion.  But just as we have probably more than a hundred thousand different religious sects or denominations, so would they and they would certainly be different from ours. 

Would everyone on Earth 2 be going to hell as well?  I can’t put it better than Penn Jillette, the magician and the larger part of Penn and Teller:

“If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again.  There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense.  If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and people would find a way to figure it all out again.” 

The next posting I put up will be the one hundredth since I started this blog.