Over the last few years I have decided not to believe in a god and it is quite refreshing not to have to appease or appeal to an all-encompassing higher order.
Reading Dawkins' books, "The God Delusion" reinforced some of those hard-to-put-into-words thoughts and feelings about the idea of giving up on a deity that has been a part of most of your life.
This notion of an all-knowing god that both forgave sins but also punished sinners was quite a powerful image to carry around as I grew up. Going to Sunday School and evensong were boring rituals that my parents insisted on but I never really felt that I was connecting with anything other than my own thoughts. Perhaps that's all any god ever is: our inner voice questioning and doubting our every move.
As a teenager we stopped going to Sunday School and, following a move from the town where I was born, we stopped going to church as a family. By not going to church, however, our lives didn't descend into heathen chaos. No, the way our parents had brought us up, broadly along Christian principles, didn't disappear the moment our backs were turned, metaphorically, on the Church.
It was a relief not to have to go to a building to pray or sing or worship; at around the age of 18 I felt that I could thank God for every day if I was out in the coutryside rather than being in the confines of a building.
Over the next few years I can't really say how my faith changed, but there came one point when I simply couldn't accept the foundations of Christian belief: the virgin birth and the ressurrection. Without those two elements fixed in your psyche and you cannot be a Christian. From that point most other beliefs quickly fall away because you question everything else associated with Christianity. The Bible isn't the word of God it is the result of an editorial committee 300 years after the death of Jesus. I actually believe such a man existed, but that he was just that: a mortal man. Of course it was the Council of Nicaea that created the fiction of Jesus being the son of god, rather than a man who (many argue) married Mary Magdalene (who was anything but a prostitute). It is easy get all Dan Brown and see conspiracy everywhere in the Church, but the Church has been well served by Jesus.
But what has all this to do with our Royal Family?
There is a link between my lack of faith in deities and how we percieve a very fortunate family, and it is this: just as you don't have to believe in any god you don't need to believe in the Royals. Of course, unlike mystical beings, the Royals do exist and most do a good job in the confines of their limited roles.
I wouldn't necessarily follow our European counterparts and abolish the monarchy but perhaps it's just that we should have a cut-down Royal family that stands on its own financial feet.
The more you think about the privilege that they enjoy and just how disconnected they are from their subjects (not citizens, I'm afraid) then you can't help but question their existence.
Many supporters argue that they're great for tourism and that they work hard for the country, which is why we should keep them. Others argue that having a family as head of state is better than an elected head, such as Sarkozy or Berlusconi, but is that really enough of a reason not to change?
Of cours, we dabbled with Republicanism in the 1640s for about an hour or so, but we quickly restored the monarchy after getting rid of the upstart, Cromwell. Since then there have been various calls for their abolition but having witnessed the out-pourings of support for the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge it seems that we're nowhere near ready to collectively give up on that belief system just yet.
