The Story Of Auntie Dolly

I have a Great-Aunt called Auntie Dolly. (It's her real name, but she got off lightly compared to Auntie Bapsy. Or, indeed, Uncle Jamshed.)

Auntie Dolly is a Jehovah's Witness. She doesn't know about the Atheist Bus Campaign, and I am not going to tell her, not least because she's in her 80s and I don't want to be held responsible for heart attacks and the like.

Like all Jehovah's Witnesses, Auntie Dolly believes that only 144,000 people will go to heaven when Armageddon comes, and these people will all be JWs. Unfortunately for everyone, there are 7.6 million Jehovah's Witnesses in existence, of which 7.46 million are apparently going someplace hotter.

Every weekday, Auntie Dolly calls my Nan (her sister) for an hour and tells her that, if she doesn't join the Jehovah's Witnesses, she is doomed to face eternal hellfire. My Nan is also in her 80s and is kind, gentle and unfortunately rather susceptible to this kind of dramatic prophecy.

She never tells Auntie Dolly, "I'm sorry, I'm a little too busy to talk today". Nor does she say, as I would, "Stop talking nonsense, woman! Even if I were to become a Jehovah's Witness, I'd only have a 1.89% chance of getting into paradise. Those aren't great odds, you've got to admit. Now go and do something fun with your life - you're 83, it's not like you've got forever!"

No: my Nan simply sits there, listening to Auntie Dolly's horror stories of wailing and gnashing of teeth, and gets more and more scared. She starts to tremble, wondering if her only remaining sister is in fact privy to the truth and the rest of us aren't. By the time my mother comes home from work,, my Nan is a gibbering wreck, pleading with my Mum, "But what if Dolly's right?!"

My mother then has to deprogram my Nan with an exasperated atheist lecture. "Of course she's not right! Do you really think that, if there is a God, he's going to create billions of people, only to punish all but a few of them forever at the end of their lives? What tosh!"

Then my Nan points out: "But nobody knows what happens after you die."

And that, I think, is the reason for all religion: the fact that we, as human beings, are uncomfortable with uncertainty. After all, the argument goes, if no one knows why we're here or what we're meant to do, we could conceivably be doing completely the wrong thing and be punished for it gravely. The unknown is terrifying if you've been indoctrinated to think about it in that way, and I don't blame elderly people (who are closer to the end of their lives) for worrying about it and wanting to fill that gap with certainty. Religion provides a comforting way out: "If you live your life like this, you'll be rewarded with eternal bliss."

But it's an utterly false certainty with hundreds of variations, none of which make sense or can be substantiated in any way, and all of which are thoroughly confusing (what if you choose the wrong religion or denomination?). And this "certainty" conundrum must be worse for people like my Nan who can't quite believe in any religion but have their doubts about atheism, than for people like Auntie Dolly who are doggedly following their own particular brand of nonsense. I wish I could convince both of them that these notions of Doomsday and retribution are ridiculous, with no evidence whatsoever pointing towards them - but they won't listen to me.

Maybe I need to campaign for some atheist stairlifts as well.