The titular question showed up from an anonymous source in my private blog, shortly after I wrote a very in offensive post about how religion perforated our language; and I’ll preface this all by saying, wow, this is the broadest of questions to me, and since I hardly knew where to start, and wound up […]
As I was strolling briskly from work one morning, I was subject to a very interesting close encounter. The phrase ‘close encounter’ has an inherent connotation of extraterrestrialism, but I assure you, what met me was far stranger. On this fair-weathered morning, I was suddenly accosted by Mormons (no, not ‘morons’ although the parallels are certainly present).
So, here I was watching four straight season of classic 90’s sci-fi titan The X-Files on Netflix, because why not, when I came across an episode in which Scully proclaimed herself to be a faithful catholic, and even ended the episode attending church. Now, that annoyed me quite a lot, and this post is about to get super boring while I explain why.
Religion has been a primary catalyst of war, genocide, murder, rape, destruction, oppression, segregation, and a million other overlapping offences during its reign over the human race; however, all of these I can forgive of religion, for one simple reason: It’s human nature, we’d do it anyway. The four horsemen of the apocalypse aren’t fictitious, they’re simply the personification of four common atrocities that have ravaged humanity since its inception two hundred thousands years ago. No, I can forgive religion of all these monstrous offences, because it’s just the convenient excuse. If we didn’t have religion, we’d inevitably think of some other scapegoat in our efforts to maim and kill and conquer one another.
However, there is one thing that I can never and will never forgive religion for (and note that I’m talking about the entirety of fundamentalist religion as a whole here; I’m not criticising any particular pious individual), and that is the promotion of an under-appreciation of the world around us; because to try and deny, forbid and oppress an understanding of the process of natural selection and evolution is throwing a tarp over the greatest masterpiece ever conceived. Continue reading
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Herein lies a post where I once again dissect, analyse, and let’s face it, mock the shit out of The Bible. If this doesn’t sound like your kind of post, then perhaps you should pop off to church instead… and don’t forget the blindfold and the earplugs!
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Being the pedantic arse that I am, I’m going to ask a few (presumably unanswerable) questions about the Islamic heaven, historically referred to as ‘Jannah‘. We all know a few of the key elements of this paradise, 72 virgins, giant palaces for everyone, rivers of milk and honey, and so on, and as I read into the writings on the subject, there were a few things I found somewhat unusual. So, here we go…
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So here’s something that caught my eye. For my American followers, this is the story of a young football (soccer) player named Fabrice Muamba, who had a heart attack on the pitch a few days ago, but is now recovering well. A friend of mine, Charlie, pointed something out to me after seeing this story, and it struck me as decidedly odd. So, Muamba claims that god helped him to get better after his heart attack… But surely this was after god gave a healthy, young, fit athlete a heart attack in the first place.
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There’s a little rant that I’d like to get off my chest, but I certainly don’t want it to misunderstood, or misinterpreted.
I hate religion.
Now, this is a very bold statement of course, and any initial presumptions you might have for my meaning need to be set aside for a moment. I don’t hate religious people; I don’t hate people who believe in god, or worship him, or put their faith in Jesus, or believe in a higher power or a creation theory. I don’t hate any of these people much in the same way as I don’t hate an owl for eating a mouse, a cloud for blocking the sunshine, or my girlfriend for using a Mac instead of a Windows. Every life form on Earth operates in the way they believe to be in optimum equilibrium with what they want, what they need, and what they perceive of the world around them. If a person wants to find their strength and faith in something supernatural or religious, then I’ll gladly march for their right to do so. No, I don’t hate any religious person, even to the level of zealots and extremists taking lives and terrorising people. They too are simply trying to live in accordance with what they have been taught to, or chosen to, believe.
Religion itself however, as a singular entity, is something I can hate.
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In the spirit of the recently passed Easter festivities, I just wanted to ask a few quick questions, as there are a couple of Easter aspects that I don’t quite understand. Any comments explaining things to me would be most welcome!
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