Almost Staying On Topic of 'Deborah 13'

Deborah 13, a new documentary on BBC3 just goes to prove how much religion should be destroyed and banned the world over.

In essence, Deborah 13 is a one hour documentary based around a girl called Deborah Drapper. She's 13 year old lass who lives at home with her huge arse family, all deep evangelical christians.

She barely leaves the house, is home taught by her extremist parents and spends every moment describing people as sick, twisted souls destined for eternal damnation. In one point in the documentary she is seen out and about her local town, handing out 'tracks' to the 'Yoof' on the street. Tracks are those little bastard fliers you see brainwashed non-thinkers on the street hand out to the uncaring public, thinking a couple of lines from the bible (the world's most famous novel) will turn you into a god fearing servant of the lord.


We see her in her house, listening to creationist videos as she falls asleep, saying grace at every meal, and reading stories from the bible to her younger brothers and sisters. Her love for god is un-shakeable and after being taught that the word of the bible is the gospel truth, pun very much intended, science is a load of bunkum. Her and her older brother discuss the surrounding hills and mountains, arguing that it must be intelligent design. Even at one point she has the grapes to claim that there is 'no scientific evidence' for the big bang.

Now, I'm shite when it comes to science, but I do know that scientists have measured the expansion of the universe (I read somewhere they estimate it at about 5.7 billion light years across) and that the vacuum is still slowly 'cooling' after that first, catatonic explosion. Although there are arguments about how the big bang kicked off, there is still proof within the cosmos that it did happen. Deborah's argument against the big bang is that all science can be proved through the principles of 'theory, experiment which can be repeated, results and their further explanation of the world around us'. It's known as the scientific method and it's worked pretty well so far. But of course you can't re-create the big bang, therefore it's just a 'belief', a term they use without irony.

This is what I don't get about Christians, although actually lets not just stop with them, any and all religions that don't agree with science or at least the founding of the world. They argue that scientists lie and make this shit up, that it's a massive conspiracy shared by all academics around the world. Although the question pertaining to this is, why would they lie? What possible reason would they have to 'duke' the results of when the dinosaurs existed, the links of human evolution, the formation of Sol and our solar system, any of it? There's no financial remuneration in it for them because the only people that actually buy scientific journals are the same people that write them.

I think one reason is that because science is such a complex academic route that not everyone can study or work within it's fields (take me for instance). Therefore the knowledge of our continuation lays with an elite few, with ideas and theories much more complicated than the average Joe can rap his head around. With this elitist idea in mind some complete cock ring thinks that they are making all this up. These 'science fellows' are laughing at the rest of us as they spend all their time and lives working in labs and hospitals, coming up with vaccines for illnesses, developing new strains of crops to feed the increasing population of the world, you know, pointless shit like that.

Anyway, back on track to Deborah 13. As Deborah tours the local town berating children, she asks them if they think they are good people. Now I'm certainly not the saintliest man on earth, no that's the ex-child nazi The Pope, but I consider myself to be a good man. I don't get into fights, I always pretend to be interested in what other people say. Occasionally I'll even give money to beggars (10p last time), but on the whole I'm alright, I'm a normal person with the same faults as everyone else.

In the show everyone on the street says the same as this (it'd be strange if you said 'no, I'm a psychopathic pervert with a fondness for collection women's noses and pickling them) to which she then wheels out her secret weapon, fear.

'Have you ever lied?
'Yes'
'Have you ever coveted something?'
'Yep, nice jacket by the way.'
'Have you ever taken gods name in vain.'
'Christ, I can't stop myself.'
'So you yourself admit you're a lying, coveting blasphemer.'
'Well, you're kinda putting wor...'
'Do you still think you're a good person.'
'Actually, when you put it like that, I'm a bit of a cu...'
'You're going to hell.'

Yes, if you've ever lied to a friend (no, you're face looks fine, in fact that fall has made it look better than before), then you're going to burn in Satan's hell pit. Oh and believe me, it won't be like the hell in 'Old Harry's Game', it'll be like being stuck in the Big Brother house, without alcohol, for eternity.

Now I do hate religion, oh so much. But I tolerate it. If you want to waste your life under the pretence that everything in this existence is a pile of wank and something better exists beyond, then go ahead, I'll waste my life on the xbox trying to get all 1000 achievement points on Halo 3. But don't come up to me and wave your bible in my face, preaching the word of Godol and claiming I'm a sinner. Don't force me to sit in an assembly when I'm at the impressionable age of 7 to sing 'All Things Bright and Beautiful', every day. Don't try and de-rail science by demanding a sticker should be on the front of books claiming that 'evolution is a only a theory and as such, should be approached with an open mind', while demanding complete devotion to yours without FUCKING questioning.

Don't knock on my door to tell me how much of a bad boy I am, while not even offering sex to make me feel good, yet so dirty. Don't buy up poster space telling us that god does exist and he'll make you mother-fuckers pay if you don't subscribe, yet complain to the fair trading committee when the atheist society retaliates with signs pronouncing 'god probably doesn't exist'.

What gets me with this documentary is how much paradoxical rubbish spews from her parents. They have home-taught all their kids because they don't want them taken over by the state. They do it to keep them away from bullying, getting involved with boys or things that may lead them astray. How the hell are you going to survive in the real world? The school I went to wasn't exactly a tough nut school, but it certainly had it's share of arseholes (first week in, two girls were expelled for waiting at a bus stop for a girl they disliked, with a baseball bat). I got bullied, I got picked on, my first three years were horrible, pure agony. But I got through them somehow, able to stand up for myself, or at least direct the bullies to someone weaker. I used to stand up for my school, explaining to my family and people in other schools that you need to interact with violent, aggressive, manipulative gits, after-all you will spend the rest of your life working alongside them. School isn't just book learning, it's learning to how to survive in reality. Taking your child out of the system is a terrible show of arrogance and elitism. The justification that you can learn everything from home is horribly flawed as you only get the parents perspective. I'm pretty sure they don't teach her science.

Most of all though I feel sorry for Deborah. Alright she's this nutjob girl who's got life and reality all wrong, but it's not her own fault. She believes she found god when she was 6 and there was no influence from the family. Hard to believe when every waking moment is spent in the eyes of god. Every morning, bible reading, grace at the table, the ten commandments printed out and stuck onto a board in the kitchen, taught by evangelicals. How can you not fear the 'almighty' in that situation? Most girls brought up in a nunnery don't come out as satanists or convert to Islam. They come out god fearing christians or catholics. 

When I see Deborah, judging and damning everyone to...well, damnation I can see two lives forking out in front of her. One of them will be what she's in now. She'll meet a man at church, an evangelical like her and they'll continue the system her family have created. It will stretch out in front of them, their lives infected and diseased by their own manipulated parents.

The other is going completely off the rails. Maybe the curiosity will get to her to watch this program about her, where upon she may realise something of herself. Suddenly she's off the rails, damning god where she damned so many others before, trying to become a typical girl of her age with gusto and the feeling of fleeting, lost time. Going out, meeting boys, alcohol, drugs, but all to excessive amounts. God knows what mental state she will end up in, but I wouldn't want to see a follow up to Deborah 13 when she reaches 26. Either fork she takes will lead her down a way which isn't her fault, but lays with the parents.

Ironical as it is, God Bless you Deborah.