Let me start off though by stating that, although I am not a religious person, I have absolutely no problem with someone else wanting to believe this stuff. That is, until they start preaching to me. The last thing I need to deal with is some pinhead telling me everything I believe is wrong because it doesn't jive with his or her personal beliefs. I don't go around telling everyone who thinks differently than I that they are wrong, and I expect the same courtesy in return. And I'm also not talking about every person in the world who believes in God either. Most religious folk are nice, respectful, normal people who happen to believe something I don't, and I have no problem with them.
What I DO have a problem with are these religious zealots who have taken it upon themselves to "SAVE ME," whether I am interested in their version of salvation or not. And these people usually fall into one of two groups; Born-Again Christians or Jehovah's Witnesses. And again, this is not to condemn ALL of the people in these two groups, just most of them. But I get really tired of some asshole who doesn't even know me telling me I'm going to burn in hell simply because I don't agree with him or her on a few things. But then again, why stop at people who don't know me? If someone who thinks they know me starts telling me I'm not living my life correctly because I am not going to some goofy-ass gathering every Sunday to compare fashions with the rest of the zombies, well this is a person who just added themselves to my shit list.
Now inevitably, when you start discussing religion you get the people who think this is the cure-all that our society needs. The people who look around at all the misery in the world today and try to tell us that all we have to do is pray and things will get better. They'll get even better still if I send my children to those indoctrination centers they call Sunday School or Religious Education, or to a Catholic High School, or whatever else they are calling their brainwashing techniques these days.
Maybe the rest of us should take up a collection or something so we can buy these morons a fucking clue.
One of the most sickening displays of this horseshit came immediately following the events of 9/11. Now, there's no way I'm gonna argue that what happened on September 11th wasn't a tragedy, because obviously it was. But what was almost entirely overlooked was the equally disturbing crap that happened afterwards. With 'people' like Jerry Falwell coming on TV and saying this happened because our country has turned away from God. I remember when I first heard that, and what my initial reaction to it was. "Holy shit! How has no one killed Jerry Falwell yet?" This guy is the televangelist equivalent of herpes. He just won't go away no matter how much ointment we put on the little pecker.
Immediately after that I couldn't help but become momentarily infuriated. Who the hell did this guy think he was? He comes out and pretty much declares, on live TV, to the whole country, that it's our own fault that some dickless pseudo-Muslims decided to ram some planes into our buildings. Never mind that they were also doing this in the name of their version of God. All this carnage happened because we didn't follow Jerry Falweel's version of God. I have to wonder if that includes the terrorists themselves. But what if some of the passengers on the planes, or people in the towers or in the Pentagon DID follow the undiluted horseshit that Jerry dispenses? Why was it okay for them to die? Did Jerry's version of God decide it was okay for them to die because they were sharing space with unbelievers? I guess you can't make an omlette without breaking some eggs, right Jerry? So a few thousand innocent people die so you can further your personal religious crusade. So what, right?
You're a worthless piece of shit, Jerry Falwell, and I can't WAIT until you're rotting in hell.
What the hell is it with these simpletons that they cannot let a day or a national tragedy go by without telling the rest of us heathens just how badly we are screwing up our lives, in their eyes. So I believe something different than you do. So fucking what? What makes you so undeniably right in what you believe? Because some book allegedly written in the word of this invisible Lord of yours says so? We believe in God and the Bible because the Bible and God tell us to? What kind of self-reinforcing delusional bullshit is that? Maybe what we need to ask here is WHY people believe in this hogwash. It certainly isn't because of the mound of indisputable evidence they have piled up in front of those of us who don't believe.
Let's go back a few thousand years to when people still believed in Zeus and Hermes and Apollo and the rest of the Mount Olympus Gang. WHY did they believe in these "gods?" A lot of these gods were created to explain occurances in nature that the science of the time could not yet explain. When thunder could finally be explained as an act of nature, the god of thunder was no longer needed, and he was gradually phased out. Also, some of the gods were created to give excuses for certain natural human behaviors, such as the god of war as an excuse for man's NATURAL violent tendencies. Eventually most of these gods were no longer needed as the human race began to collectively amass more kowledge of ourselves and our surroundings. The remaining gods were rolled up into one, and the new creation was labeled simply "God."
And of course, one of the rules of this new god were that we were not supposed to worship, or even believe in any other gods. In fact, in (supposedly) His little list of ten things we aren't supposed to do, the first four are entirely self-serving to Him, and serve absolutely no practical or useful purpose to humanity. This seems awfully suspicious to me. I mean, with this type of insecurity complex, is this really the Ultimate Being we want to devote our lives to?
So throughout history it seems that people have believed in one god or another out of a lack of understanding of nature and humanity. But also because human beings need to feel there is some reason for things. A lot of people cannot accept the idea that this may be all there is. There's no grand explaination, no master plans. Just a random cosmic accident and poof! Here is life. It frightens people to think that in the cosmic scheme of things, humans are almost completely and totally meaningless. People believe in God because they need to believe there is some noble reason for us to exist, some greater purpose. The whole idea of organized religion is worded that way, even though there really is no evidence to suggest any grand purpose for the human race. God was invented out of fear and longing, so it's no wonder that religion is filled with these things.
Another thing that inevitably pops up when dealing with religious folk is the idea of prayer in schools. If it's a religious school I have no problem with this. However in public schoolos I have a BIG problem with it. First of all, which religions' prayers do you force the kids to observe? Christians will say because this country is predominantly Christian, it should be theirs. But how is that in any way in keeping with the whole freedom of religion thing we are supposed to enjoy in this country? Roughly thirty percent of this country claims a religious affiliation other than Christianity, so why should they have to put up with this particular brand of bullshit? What about the Jewish kids, or the Muslim kids, or any other recognized religion? And what about the Atheists? Freedom of religion also means freedom FROM religion, so why should these kids be forced to participate in something they don't believe in? Doesn't seem American to me. Religion has absolutely NO PLACE in public schools.
One of the arguments these genetic defectives like to use is that if we have been teaching 'proper Christian values' to kids in schools, a lot of violence in society could be avoided. The response to this is both simple and brief.
Bullshit.
The scary part of this isn't that people have said it though. The scary part is that there are otherwise reasonable, intlligent people out there who are looking at this and saying, "Hmm." This is just insane. You can shove all the religious bullshit down kids throats that you want to, brainwashing them until they can barely remember their own names, and things will not change. People are inherently violent. As adults, most of us can control these natural impulses, at least most of the time. Because we can channel these impulses into other avenues and activities. The problem stems from all these different bonehead activist groups systematically taking all these outlets away from kids. Don't watch TV. Don't play video games. Don't listen to the music you like. You need to go to church and read your Bible more. Add to that the increased homework that is piled on our children, and the pressure to know what you will be doing for a career by the time you graduate first grade, and it's no wonder kids are fucked up. We need to just leave our kids the fuck alone and LET THEM BE KIDS.
One of the most important reasons why religion will NEVER be a cure for violence is that religion is one of the leading causes of violence. Look at what happened on September 11th. Some religious headcases hijacked some planes and flew them into the World Trade Center. The important part to keep in mind there is RELIGIOUS fanatics. Then that worthless sack of crap bin Laden appeals to all Muslims for a Jihad, a 'Holy War'. Even the name is indicitive of why religion will never stop violence. Holy war. What an absurd idea, but then it DOES come straight from the absurd idea people. Remember, the hijackers were told to be praying as they flew the planes into the buildings. They were on their way to be with God. I'm sorry, but if God really does exist, and these are the type of "people" He is welcoming into the Holy Land, then I don't think I want anything to do with the whole idea. If these are the kind of people in Heaven, I think I'd rather be in Hell. At least all I have to deal with down there are lawyers and politicians.
Some other problems with organized religion are its inability to actually answer questions, and the inconsistencies involved in what they do say. For instance, what about the dinosaurs? I know this is the first thing a lot of us heathens mention, but they are simply not mentioned in the book that allegedly starts at the beginning. Some of the say it does mention them, along with "all the beasts of the fields," but this is a rather lame attempt. The dinosaurs were here a LOT longer than man has been around, and they don't even get a mention? If they are making rather large ommisions such as this, then I gotta wonder what else they are trying to cover up.
Also, if the Bible really does start at the beginning, they seem to have skiiped over a few years of Earth's history. On the FIRST PAGE of the book, the sixth day of creation, God created man. This is contrary to scientific evidence, which tells us the Earth is approximately four and a half BILLION years old, while man has been here for, at the most, 200,000 years or so. That leaves 4,499,800,00 that the Bible just ignores, and that is where the damned dinosaurs fit in.
Of course, there are some people who say the whole dinosaur thing is nothing but a hoax, but those people are demented crackpots. They're no different than the lunatics who say the holocaust never happened or the moon landing in 1969 was faked. If these people told me water is wet I would have to take it with a grain of salt, simply because they are so obviously clueless about everything else. The next question they have no answer for is WHY would anyone want to fake the whole dinosaur thing? What possible reason could there be for this? I mean other than some lunatic idea that the people who invented the dinosaurs simply want to discredit the Bible. That's nothing but pure paranoid hogwash. Besides, the Bible does of a fine job of discrediting itself.
Some of these nimrods try to back up the dinosaur hoax theory by saying they couldn't have existed because the Earth is only about 10,000 years old. This is because the Bible only supports six to ten thousand years if you read it literally. I know some people have tried to say the six days of creation don't mean six days literally, but what kind of bullshit is this? Days were longer then? Bullshit. Days are defined by the rotation of the Earth, and do these idiots really expect me to believe that up until 10,000 years ago the Earth rotated at an exponentially slower rate? Days mean something different to God? Bullshit again. If even a little of the crap in that book is to be believed, then He created the days. And it does say a day passes with the rising of the sun. And every other time the word day is used in the Bible, it is in its normal, accepted 24-hour meaning. Why would it mean something different just the one time? Plus the Bible was written to be understood by man, so it wouldn't matter if a day meant something different to God since it was written for man's perspective. They have no answer for that. But they say dating methods don't work on the Earth itself, only on artifacts so we have no way of knowing if the Earth is really 4 1/2 billion years old. Okay, then what about the artifacts from South America that have been dated at around 40,000 years old? Those are the exact type of artifacts these meatheads say these dating mathods were designed to work on, so they destroy their own 10,000 year theory with their own argument against it. At least science is offering something more than,"Hey! You gotta believe this cuz it's written down here in this book!" What a ridiculous idea this is.
Something else I find funny is how different sects of Christianity can't even agree on things between themselves. When I tell people I am no longer religious, they invariably ask me which faith I used to subscribe to. So I say that I was born and raised Catholic, and so far without exception the response has been something along the lines of, "Well, that's the problem." What the fuck is THAT supposed to mean? I don't wanna burst anyone's carefully constructed bubble, but Catholics ARE Christians. What, are some Christians better than others? Wouldn't that be like comparing God to Hitler? Not only are they intolerant of other faiths, but they can't even tolerate all of their own! They believe the same bullshit, read from the same book and celebrate the same crap, but somehow they are different? The only real difference between Catholics and other Christians as that on the whole, Catholics are more tolerant of differences. And they believe people can be forgiven for their sins and not have to suffer through their entire lives to get to Heaven. Yeah, a bunch of evil bastards there.
And speaking of comparing God to Hitler, I have been amazed to listen to what some of these ranting, chanting lunatics have been saying you have to do to get into Heaven. Actually, some of these requirements make Hitler look like a fuckin' saint. The basic idea seems to be if it's fun, it's against God's rules. Don't have sex, don't drink, don't listen to rock and roll music, don't watch movies with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the list goes on and on. And the whole fuckin' thing is pointless! If God exists, and if He made us, why would He want His children to spend their lives being miserable and denying themselves the things that make life actually worht living? There's no real good answer to that either. Sure, the common answer is that none of those things were God's creation, but instead were Satan's doing. Didn't see that cop-out answer coming. Anything and everything these people don't think the rest of us should be enjoying, they have to blame on Satan. There's no evidence, but since when does that matter to fanatics?
So to all the people who are still for organized religion, the mindless drones who chant about how that is the only thing that will save our society, I say take a look at almost any country in the middle east. There's your answer. That's what happens in a society ruled by religion instead of by common sense. Do you people want America to end up like Iraq, or like Afghanistan when the Taliban was there? That's what a religious state is like, so do us all a favor and keep your fuckin' religion to yourself and let the rest of us get on with enjoying our lives, okay?