The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science Read Online Free Page A

‘Kindness’.
    ‘Hell.’
    The woman in front of me highlights the relevant Bible chapter in pink ink.
    ‘Do you know what’s going to happen to our moral basis?’ he continues. ‘There will be a shift. If homosexuality used to be wrong and now it’s right, why not paedophilia? You watch. That’s what you’ll see.’
    I look around at the congregation of young families, elderly couples and children. I am expecting expressions of outrage; at the very least surprise. But everyone appears benignly accepting, as if they are watching clouds drifting over sunny meadows. Their Bibles have special weatherproof jackets with pockets and zips and pen holders.
    ‘You ask what gives God the right to determine what’s moral or immoral? He made the world. No argument applicable after that point. God is an absolute ruler and he’s not interested in your opinions. There might be a non-Christian here …’
    Mackay looks out over the congregation. His eyes seem to lock on to mine. My heart gives a single, powerful thud.
    ‘Do you realise the Bible is emphatic that you’re going to hell?’
    Today, he even looks different. The sun has reddened his skin and the two clumps of hair on the side of his balding head give a regrettable horn-like impression. As he finishes, his voice deepens and rings with fiery portent. ‘When a homosexual bishop meets up with a lesbian preacher in hell and they’re asking why they’re there, the demons will laugh and say, “We didn’t obey …
and neither did you
.”’
    The congregation murmurs their approval and John is replaced at the lectern by the pastor.
    ‘Just a reminder that Charlie and Beryl and celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary this week, they’d love you to join them for tea and cakes in the meeting hall.’
    *
    After the service I canvas the Gympie faithful for their opinion of John’s sermon, hoping that perhaps, after all, John Mackay will turn out to be on the fringes of an otherwise pleasant and accepting country community.
    ‘It was good,’ says a kindly-looking father. ‘I believe what he was saying, as controversial as that is in the world today.’
    ‘But I’m thinking most people around here wouldn’t agree with it?’
    He looks confused.
    ‘Oh, yes,’ he says. ‘Yes they would.’
    ‘I expect
you
didn’t agree with what he was saying,’ I say, smilingly, to a nearby eighteen-year-old named Levi.
    ‘I agree very much with what he said,’ he replies. ‘It comes straight from the Bible.’
    ‘But you probably have lots of friends who wouldn’t agree?’
    His companion Charlotte interrupts primly, and with raised eyebrows.
    ‘Most of our friends would be just as against gay people.’
    I give up.
    Later, I find Mackay enjoying a cup of tea and some cake down at Charlie and Beryl’s do in the canteen. I decide to take the opportunity to get the entry conditions of hell straight, because he seemed to be saying that it is only unbelievers who end up in the abyss. So wouldn’t this mean that lesbian nuns go to heaven?
    ‘No,’ he says. ‘Because lesbian nuns are living in public disobedience to their creator.’
    ‘So it’s the fact that the lesbian nuns are refusing to repent by being straight that’s sending them to hell?’
    ‘That’s what’s sending them to hell,’ he nods.
    ‘So a lesbian nun who repents a week before she died would be okay?’
    ‘As a nun, she cannot plead ignorance of the Bible.’
    ‘So lesbian nuns are doomed?’
    ‘Basically, yes.’ He takes a nibble of his fruit cake. ‘It’s like treason.’
    The conversation moves further into morality. John tells me 9/11was a ‘classic case’ of God punishing a sinful nation, a comment which brings to mind a personal calamity that John and his wife suffered a few years ago.
    ‘What about your miscarriage?’ I ask him. ‘By the same logic, could that be a punishment for your sins?’
    ‘No,’ he says. ‘Because you and I reap the results of the things that