Stuart Rae - "Well hello! As you probably know, Iain Nisbet, Binnie and myself have decided to do a little video about people who don't believe in God. Now, you may think this is a bit unusual - to not believe in God, but it's actually surprisingly common.

"Now, who are they, you might think. When you look around each other in this little thing you're at, and you say to yourself: does she believe in God?; does he?; do I? Well I don't know what you think and personally I don't really care - it's up to yourselves.

"But what I would say is I would just take a look around and, if you think about it, maybe a lot of your friends believe in God, but I bet there's a fair number who don't and maybe slightly less who would say that out loud. I'm one of the people who'll say 'yeah, I don't believe in God' but I've thought it through for a long time and I've come to terms with the fact I'm never going to believe - I don't think I'll ever believe in God. I don't think it's possible for one to exist.

"This is directly at odds with all my - with most of my other friends in Helensburgh but it doesn't seem to be any problem for us and I hope it isn't any problem for you.

"But, this is the important bit - how do we find out about people who don't believe in God? This of course assumes that you do."

What do they look like?

Stuart Rae - "This is what I look like. Now, to you - to me - I seem fairly normal, but we're going to do an experiment.

"This is what I look like, sort of, from this side, from that side. Sort of fairly humanoid: no horns, no big hairy teeth - sorry - big shiny teeth, not too much hair - just fairly normal, and I don't believe in God."

[Mr. Iain Nisbet enters]

"Now, someone who does is Mr. Iain Nisbet here. Now, he too looks fairly normal. From the front we have the usual features. From the right hand side, we have fairly normal features and from the left hand side - very normal. Thank you, Iain."

[Mr. Nisbet leaves, as Mr. Ian Binnie enters, with a white paper cross on his forehead and clutching a bright blue Bible]

"And here we have Mr. Binnie. He, on the other hand is a Christian, unlike myself, but unlike myself too, he is rather abnormal. He's just a little bit out there, but that's fine."

[Mr. Binnie leaves]

Stuart Rae - "As far as physical differences go - there doesn't seem to be any difference at all. Now, the next question is - do we have a soul and what is it for?

"Now, as far as what a soul is for - supposedly just to be your everlasting, eternal self. But how do you find it? Now, medical science has been asking this question throughout history, but so far they haven't got anywhere."

[Mr. Ian Binnie enters]

"Today we're going to try the fairly unusual method of using this!"

[Mr. Rae brandishes a pair of electric scissors, Mr. Binnie leaves swiftly]

"Unfortunately, the test subject wasn't willing - maybe another time.

"Now, it seems we can't find out if someone has a soul, so we're just going to assume for the moment that they do have one."

Stuart Rae - "Now, when you die allegedly your soul, if you're good, goes to heaven - if you believe in God. That's a very important point - you have to believe in God to go to heaven. And in heaven, supposedly, you're going to find loads of angels singing away and doing all this great stuff and you get to hang around with God for all eternity. Now that may seem quite good until you think about it, but who is up there? There's God, there's you and hopefully half the rest of humanity.

"But when you think about the qualifications it takes to get into heaven, and if you're not forgiven for all the things you do that are bad in your life, the chances of you actually getting there don't seem to be particularly high to me.

"Now this may be wrong - I don't know - but, if you're not very likely to get in, where are you going to go? Now most people who believe in God would say that you go to hell - which involves torture, pain etc. for the rest of eternity, which doesn't sound that good on the whole does it?

"But, you're separated from God also. Now, for a lot of you who believe in God this might be a problem, if you've been bad through your life - you don't get to see God anymore - you just get the company of the devil. But what about all us non-believers who go (allegedly) to hell if we don't believe in God or rather because we don't believe in God? We get to go to hell and we get torture, pain etc. which, I admit, sounds pretty bad, and it's all for eternity. But we get separated from God. But if you're separated from something you don't believe in it doesn't seem to be that bad to me - and the devil seems to be quite an interesting guy - has more fun than anyone else anyway.

"There's a saying that's fairly popular - you should read Terry Pratchett books for a good version of this, but it says: heaven has all the good people - but hell has all the good tunes."

Stuart Rae - "Now I suppose that takes care of me - because I don't believe in any god - but what about the other religions, what about them? Why do Christians have to be right? I mean, what's so special about them? What about the Muslims, the Buddhists, the Hindus, and all these other religions who have different gods? Some of them have a single god, but it's not quite your God. Some of them have hundreds of gods, millions of them, left, right and centre. Gods for every little thing - what happens to them?

"If they've spent all their lives believing in what they think is right: their particular belief system, their particular gods, and then it turns out that just because they were born in the wrong country or born at the wrong time, then they end up going to hell as well. That doesn't seem very fair to me and I don't think I can believe in anyone as unfair as that.

"Now, He may - this God - or She - may sort of forgive us all in the end. It may just be a misinterpretation of the Word that was handed down from God - if He exists - and if it wasn't all made up.

"But, if He wanted us to believe in Him, He would make sure that there was no real difference in the religions around the world that all the people believe in. Otherwise he wouldn't be excluding from His heaven most of the people on the earth."

Stuart Rae - "Now the next question for all you Christians out there is what happened to people who died before Jesus was born. Now, allegedly He was born, and died to save us all, which apparently happened. Theoretically this should only happen to people who died after His birth - who lived after His birth.

"But no-one I know seems to be able to tell me what happened to the people before. Did they just go to hell, simply because they didn't have anything for them to believe in? Because they had no opportunity to believe in God? There was no choice at all. Just because they hadn't been born late enough for this special event? They were just cast into oblivion or sent to hell?

"What happened to them? I don't know. But I suspect that if there were a God He would be able to deal with that - but it's another thing that makes me inclined to believe that there isn't one."

Stuart Rae - "And the question is: what actually happens to you after death if you don't believe in God? Now, this one's a real puzzler. Some people who don't believe in God would say that your life and your soul - whatever makes you up - flutters like a candle for the time that you're alive on earth - from the time that the sperm and the egg that made you fuse, until the time that you take your last breath and the oxygen is used up in your brain. People say it's like a flickering candle which goes out [snaps fingers] and all there is after that is darkness. You don't feel anything, you don't hear anything, you don't know anything - you're just dead.

"And it seems to be not too bad a way to go - it seems better than hell anyway. So maybe that's what I would like to happen to me.

"After that gloomy thought there, a slightly more cheery one. What if, whoever runs the afterlife, whoever decides what happens to you when you die gives you exactly what you want? So, if you -say - are a Viking who lived in the 12th century who believes that when you die in battle you're going to be carried off by these big busty valkyries and get carried off in this huge chariot to the feasting halls of Valhalla to feast and drink for the rest of eternity. That would be really nice.

"And if you go through life hoping that you'll be put into some wonderful paradise for the rest of eternity because you've been a particularly nice person - you think - and you think you really do deserve this. And when you die you'll wake up and someone says: 'Nisbet - ah yes you're off to heaven'. And he says: 'Manish - you get the Muslim paradise - off you go'.

"That would be really nice. In an ideal world, then that's what I would like to happen, but I don't know. I'm quite prepared for the last possibility.

"Now, it seems to me that if all this wonderful stuff can happen because you think that you deserve it, what if you go through your life believing you've really done all these horrible things and you feel really guilty for them all - and you really deep down think you're going to hell. And when you die and you're met by this guy who says: 'Ah, Binnie, sorry - even though you have been really quite nice, you really don't want to go to heaven, deep down you want to go to hell so - cheerio!' And that's it. Where's the joy in that, eh? Never mind - it's all superstition."

Stuart Rae - "Tonight - if - some people would say - on a completely different subject now - some people would say that believing in God is a kind of mental crutch. Something you would have to keep you stable through your life and this is perhaps true for some people. Some people really need to believe in something. They need that confidence that everything after they die is gonna be taken care of, so that all they need to do is get on with their life and not worry about anything else. And if they live their life right they'll get whatever they want afterwards - whatever they most deserve afterwards.

"And this is fine if you need that then religion is a good thing. But, if you don't and you're brought up to believe in a religion that might possibly might not be true - and all your friends believe in this - and by association you've picked this up. And you die and you find out that things aren't quite the way you expected - this is going to be a real serious disappointment. You're going to feel very betrayed in that you've been led to believe all this great thing - all this God - all this Christian religion, everything else. It all turns out to be - all falsehood."

Ian Binnie - "One of my favourite political writers of all time once said that religion is the opium of the masses. That was Karl Marx about a hundred years ago."

Stuart Rae - "Deep thoughts. [feigns sleep] Sorry. So in conclusion: perhaps it doesn't matter what you believe - either way it's all the same in the end either you get what you want or you get what you deserve. I'm not going to say who's right or who's wrong. I want you to decide for yourself. I'm doing this video really because I want you to think about this really seriously - think about your whole attitude to life.

"The way I look at it is this: metaphorically speaking we are all playing the game of life in the dark with a dealer who keeps changing the rules and, worst of all, he keeps smiling.

"So think about this one. Lots of people who you wouldn't look at twice think they don't need stabilisers on their mental bicycle and have decided that although it might be a bit riskier, life will be more of an adventure without God. Thank you and good night."