Joe Simpson

My mother was Southern Irish, and I was brought up as a devout Catholic. In fact, at one point I thought I'd become a priest, but I'd have made an appalling priest anyway... At 16, I asked all these monks some serious questions and they didn't come up with the answers, and I just decided I didn't believe in God. And I always thought, you know, if everything hit the fan, then I might turn around and say, you know, a couple of Hail Marys, "Can you get me out of here?" And in all those days, I never did once, not even in the crevasse. I never thought of some God or some omniscient being that'd lean down and give me help, and I feel, actually, if I had believed that, I just would've stopped and waited for it, and I would've died. And so in a way, that's why that loneliness, I think, came in. I was 25, I was fit, strong, ambitious. I wanted to climb the world and I was dying. There was no afterlife, there's no paradise, there's no heaven. It's just dead. And I really didn't want to lose that. I've got immense respect for other people's religions, be it Christian or Buddhist, Hindu or Muslim. I just...I don't happen to have a belief, and I've tested that atheism, so, um, I respect my own lack of belief now. Before, I was never quite sure.