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definition, atheism is in the same category as drivers not boring or former smoker, an insufficient guide for cars

a few weeks ago, a nurse was standing beside my hospital bed with a pen and a notepad. After questions about allergies and the family came from religion. Nothing, I said, when asked which one. His English was hesitant. "You are ... what's his name ... an atheist, then? Should I write that? "" Please, just write "none" or "no religion", "I said.

I do not know why the word atheist Jibber. It may have been Jonathan Miller's argument that belief in God is a narrow and negative self-description completely ignores all the other things I can not believe it or not, homeopathy by necromancy the Gaia theory . As a definition that belongs to the same class as boring as "no driver" or "former smoker", do not drive or who do not smoke, do not believe in God is an insufficient guide for the car. There are more rich and more positive for many people, so hopefully, a summary of their behavior and beliefs and what could add up when the counting is done.

But after the nurse left with your questionnaire, I asked other reasons to deny a truth about myself. I had to do with social cowardice, or a ridiculous idea courtesy of me? Three other men shared my line in the room, and who knows what beliefs they held? "Atheism" is a ring of contempt for her. I would not think they (although, of course, would not have cared less), when he was with them, I was cackling quietly in his misplaced faith in the hereafter to come. As it turned out, two of them reported at least the name of a faith to the nurse, because the next day a visitor entered the room and went straight to bed, and spoke briefly with each part of population in a low voice.

Men were Mayo and Dublin (Joseph wrote last week), and I can only say that his visitor seemed to be a missionary wife, or my idea of ??a. He had cut gray hair, a blue jacket and flat shoes, and looked like someone who ate sparingly and care of God a lot.

The visit also had a suite. A priest came later. It might have been an Anglican or Roman Catholic. As there was no religious content in what he said, and since I have little knowledge of office uniforms, it was difficult to know why. "How do you feel? Do not want to disturb you when you are in need of rest. It is good that you feel stronger, more or less the nurses tell me. I am now and leave you to your tea. "

"Just cooperate and leave, otherwise you will be in hospital until they die," he heard that the consultant told her that is so dark and a prediction that you can hear . However, London - let's call him Ted - seemed not to hear. He said that everything they say not to smoke, it was to smoke more, "It is the tension that you see, Doctor."
"Anyway," as he said later: "I will not give up if they can take money from me." "They" were in the hospital and, according to Ted, who may have been right, the hospital was awarded for each patient who became an ex-smoker. But why do not want the hospital to make some money? After all, looked after us very well. "Because it was built in the offers loan and lease one," said Ted, this is one of most PFI schemes in England, "and the government was stupid and was duped." Thus the Ted's position, as I understand is that we continue to limit his life, because to do otherwise would somehow subsidize minutes public-private partnership of which he disapproved.