The very next day I received an e-mail from an old work colleague, in which she asked:
"You said you are interested in astronomy, how can you look at the universe and not recognise that it was the hand of God as the creator of such an awe inspiring sky?"
I don't know which god she worships but it's probably one of the Christian variations. How can I respond to such absurd propositions as "Beauty = God"?
I could have written page upon page - but she would not be very interested and I didn't wish to offend her, so I wrote:
No I didn't. I actually wrote:
"It was actually astronomy which helped me to realise that religion is a misconception which has hoodwinked billions of people. When astronomers look through their telescopes, there is no sign of any god or heaven, wherever they look. The other two things that convinced me to turn my back on religion were (i) actually reading the bible instead of just listening to the cherry-picked “nice” bits they read to people in church; and (ii) the realisation that of all the different gods and religions that man has invented, they cannot all be right. If 99% of them are wrong, then it is not a huge leap to understand that the other 1% is also wrong!"
I haven't heard back from her......