One of my classmates at school was a born-again believer (he's since gone on to be director of communication at a local cathedral and often gets trotted out on telly with the official opinion of one popular story or another. Last I saw of him, his hair had divorced him and he was well on the way to achieving critical mass).
Anyway, this was the mid-eighties and the Challenger space shuttle had hit the news for all the wrong reasons. This otherwise intelligent guy stated as fact that "God" had reached down and removed the famous O-ring deliberately to make the bird explode. I think it was something to do with humans getting too close to heaven, as I recall. For some reason he took offence at the gales of laughter from the whole class.
Then there was the torrentially rainy day I tried to make a sort of joke about modern drainage saving the world from another flood and he went on for an hour about how "God" said it would never do that again and the sign of its promise is the rainbow...
He also had this annoying habit of responding to the phrase 'fucking hell' with his own "why would you want to fuck in hell when you can make love in paradise?"
Anyway, this was the mid-eighties and the Challenger space shuttle had hit the news for all the wrong reasons. This otherwise intelligent guy stated as fact that "God" had reached down and removed the famous O-ring deliberately to make the bird explode. I think it was something to do with humans getting too close to heaven, as I recall. For some reason he took offence at the gales of laughter from the whole class.
Then there was the torrentially rainy day I tried to make a sort of joke about modern drainage saving the world from another flood and he went on for an hour about how "God" said it would never do that again and the sign of its promise is the rainbow...
He also had this annoying habit of responding to the phrase 'fucking hell' with his own "why would you want to fuck in hell when you can make love in paradise?"
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
