I guess I must have been about twelve when my school organised a weekend field trip to France. I remember my teacher saying that this should bring about the realisation that French was not some dead or academic language invented to test us, that there were real people out there who speak it every day. This wasn't much of a revelation for me as I'd visited France before with my parents who both speak the language.

I do sometimes get that feeling about religion, that it must be a purely theoretical exercise in logical fallacies because surely no-one could really, sincerely believe this tripe in this day and age.

The feeling is wrong of course, there are actual living people who think that the world is run by an invisible man in the sky, that he loves them and he's going to torture everyone else forever. I don't think those people actually live in this day and age though, philosophically if not physically they are somewhere apart from the here and now where the rest of humanity exists.

It is not as though I never see a religious person in the way that we might never have encountered a real Frenchman as kids in the North of England. Religious people are everywhere but I just can't fully believe that they fully Believe™ because they live such perfectly normal, twenty first century lives, driving cars, doing a bit of shopping, using the internet to look at videos of kittens and so on.

I know rationally, that they really do believe and they've simply adapted their version of the all powerful, bronze age bogeyman so that it won't object to them enjoying all the advantages and privileges of modernity. But there is still the nagging feeling that they must be kidding... non?

This video goes some way to explaining the title..