Sally grimaced, which only delayed the application of eyeliner even further. ‘Stop hassling me!’ she barked.

There was silence from the other room, pregnant with the promise of further hassle any second.

‘We’ll be late.’

There it was. He just could not help himself. Sally took a deep breath and let it out with a collection of words that she hoped would convey the inverse ratio of urgency to hassle that was quickly developing. There was more silence from the other room, slightly less pregnant. But it was only less pregnant in the sense that a woman without a test kit is less pregnant than a women with a test kit and a pee soaked hand. It was the inevitability of the silence that caused Sally to pause. Waiting.

After a good thirty seconds of pausing, Sally resumed her make-up ritual, cautiously satisfied that she would be left alone until she deigned herself ready to emerge, a butterfly from the pupa of the daily grind. Or at least a facsimile of beauty with an undercoat of resentment.

—

Gary’s eyes were reproachful, a stare of seething annoyance over the back of the couch, as she strolled casually into the living room ten minutes later. His eyes said many things but his brain was wise enough to prevent his mouth from articulating any of them. Sally smiled sweetly. ‘Shall we then?’ She made it sound as if she was the one waiting for him.

Taking a long inhale, the kind that acts as a temporary fire blanket to heated words that would only be regretted the moment they were free, Gary stood and turned off the TV, the end credits of a lame sitcom snapping sharply to black standby.

‘Why were you watching that rubbish?’ Sally asked. Inside she gently massaged the juvenile glee of her question with self-congratulation.

‘It was something to stare at while I waited for you to get ready. I never expected to see the whole show.’

Sally decided against rising to that particular bait. She had far better things to get her hooks into later. Let him settle into a gentle simmer. If she let him boil over now, all the fun she had planned would be spoiled. ‘Well, I’m sure it had no permanent effect on your IQ.’

Gary grunted. ‘Here’s hoping.’ He stood up and pulled on his jacket, heading for the front door.

‘I just need to pee,’ Sally said sweetly, turning with a theatrical sweep back towards the bathroom.

—

Gary drove in silence as Sally watched the streetlights tick by through the side window of the car. The road slid steadily along underneath them as Gary tried to ignore the icy tension floating off his wife. Or was it floating from him towards her? The net result was much the same.

He had searched the bathroom on several occasions, convinced that she must have a book or something stashed away in there. There was no possible way that a woman could spend that much time getting ready and emerge so similar to the way she had entered. Sure, she went in looking normal and emerged looking beautiful, but how could it take that long?

Perhaps she didn’t even need the distraction of a book. He was perfectly prepared to believe that she sat there doing nothing more than enjoy the irritation that she knew she was causing him. He could imagine her sitting there, periodically checking her watch to see if she had wasted enough time yet, smiling in childish joy.

How had it come to this? They had been so passionate only a few years before. Never mind. There was a convenience to things and they still had fun in their own way from time to time. Passion came in many forms and from many sources. With any luck she’d have a few drinks at tonight’s party and be rather less frosty on the way home.

There was the insistent electronic cry of a text message arriving from the pocket of Gary’s jacket on the back seat. Sally looked around, ‘Shall I get that for you?’

‘No, no,’ Gary answered, rather too quickly. He cursed himself in the dark recesses of his conscience. ‘It can wait,’ he added, as casually as possible.

Sally turned back and smiled softly at the streetlights marching by.

—

‘Darling, you look incredible!’ Sally smiled broadly at the verbal equivalent of a cream éclair with extra sugar, while Gary winced, looking around the room. Sally began returning the effervescent greeting while she flapped one hand at him, vaguely indicating a table with wine on top and beer in iceboxes below.

Gary sighed and strolled casually over towards the promise of alcoholic pain relief. Maybe he could convince Sally to drive home. Of course, that would mean that he would be drunk and she would be icier than ever. And he was bound to do something wrong that would only increase the cold front for several days, with the promise of random flurries and further cold snaps. He started on his first beer while he thought it through a couple of times. He would take Sally a glass of wine in a minute. She could wait.

Then he remembered the text message arriving in the car. He slipped his phone from his pocket and casually opened the text. The naughty little boy in him revelled when he saw that it was from her. Then his blood turned cold. He read the message again:

can’t believe u invited me 2 ur party!! ur finally introducing me to ur friends!!! so excited!!!!! c u soon!!!!!!! xx

Every exclamation mark was like an icicle of guilt dropping through his soul. Gary felt as if there was a spinning vortex where his stomach used to be. He looked over to Sally. She looked back, one eyebrow raised, one side of her mouth hitched up in a curious half-smile.

The doorbell rang.

There has been much debate recently, from online forums and television debates right up to books and rebuttal books, discussing the natures of religion and atheism, trying to convince everyone that the two are antithetical.

On the one hand you have the religious, convinced without a shred of evidence that their religion and theirs alone is the right, true and undeniable faith. They work from a standpoint of feeling and belief. On the other hand you have the atheists, equally convinced that there is nothing in the way of god, nothing after death and the physical world is all we have. They work from a standpoint of logic and reason. Let’s refer to these two groups as the Wilfully Ignorant and the Stubbornly Reasoned.

Each camp has its problems. The problems and inconsistencies among the Wilfully Ignorant are legion and plain to see (for the un-indoctrinated that is). For example, the complete lack of evidence; the fact that most holy books are plainly written by people seeking power and regularly updated; the strangely large number of men that claim to be god’s voice on Earth that are actually career kiddy fiddlers and so on and so forth. The problems for the Stubbornly Reasoned are a little less evident, but no less striking. Naturally, the burden of proof for something, especially something as important as a god, is on those who believe such an entity does exist. There is no burden of proof on the Stubbornly Reasoned, as their proof is already evident. Where’s god? Nowhere to be seen. Case closed.

However, the Stubbornly Reasoned are usually against every kind of unnatural or supernatural phenomena and thereby cut themselves off from some of the beauty and wonder in the universe, refusing to accept that anything is unexplainable. Sure, everything might be explained by science one day, but why spoil the party by refusing to speculate in the meantime. The truth is, we can’t be sure yet, so a blind faith in science is almost as bad as a blind faith in a god. Well, it’s not nearly that bad actually, but it’s still not good.

In that vein, it is possible to be completely against organised religion, completely unconvinced in the existence of a creator god and yet still not a member of the Stubbornly Reasoned.

Look at the Taoists, for example. At the essence of Taoism lies the concept of The Way. There is no anthropological creator with an ego bigger than his own universe that requires belief from things he made. There’s no weird situation where the god made himself manifest on earth and then sacrificed himself to himself to forgive us all for his own mistake. Or something. So technically, without a belief in a god, the Taoists are Stubbornly Reasoned. But let’s look at the definition of atheist:

- a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods (from a secular dictionary)

or

- denial that there is a God (from a Christian dictionary. The difference is not as subtle as it seems).

I’m not that keen on either of those definitions. Here’s another:

- a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.

I’m a little more comfortable with that concept. You see, the Taoists believe in a power beyond themselves and beyond the Earth. That power is the Tao. But the Tao is not a long bearded Caucasian man, with a finely honed physique and a Charlton Hestonesque appeal. Talk about god made in man’s own imagination.

So the Taoists would deny the existence of gods or supreme beings, but they wouldn’t really fit comfortably into the description of an atheist, and therefore fall somewhere between the camps of the Wilfully Ignorant and the Stubbornly Reasoned. (Of course, a lot of Taoists these days do have something of a polytheistic world view and pay homage to a number of gods or “saints” and mix their beliefs with Buddhism and Confucianism. But let’s not look too deeply at that and spoil my analogy.)

So, to get back to the point in hand, it’s very hard to point to organised religion and atheism as being antithetical as many people try to do. Organised religion comes in many flavours, from the vaguely philosophical to the rabidly militant. Atheism could be said to come in the same flavours. So, like the Taoists, you can be religious and still not believe in “god”. Or, like many atheists, you can deny the existence of a creator or supreme being, yet still believe in forces beyond the ken of humanity.

So it’s impossible to say that organised religion and atheism are antithetical; the terms themselves are too broad to be pinned down like that. So what is the antithesis of organised religion? Well, it’s possible that many might consider the antithesis of organised religion to be common sense, but that’s at least inflammatory and at worst fatwa inducing. It’s not necessarily their fault anyway.

In truth, by definition, the only thing antithetical to organised religion is disorganised religion. And that might just be the scariest prospect of all.