I should begin with the simple and somewhat obvious fact that there are absolutely no religious children in the world, anywhere. Most of them will certainly become religious, even devoutly so, but there are no congregations of little Peters and Mary’s who recite anything but what their parents have told them. That is why there are no spontaneous Christians popping up among the young of Muslims and vice versa. If I was a complete bastard, I might do an interesting sociological experiment which would go as follows: I would move to the country, acquire myself a comfortable litter of offspring, and indoctrinate them from the earliest age to whatever half-assed religion I would care to come up with.
Examples of what come to mind are; a giant fish that, in the early days of the universe, swam around breathing the atoms of empty space and spewing forth a veritable rainbow cascade of stars from its gills, thus creating all that now exists (I’ve heard tell that the fish still lurks in the deepest reaches of interstellar space, just waiting for the moment when what it created is ripe for the plucking). Another prime example, and a nice slap in the face to all Christians, would be to tell my obedient extinguisher sized followers that the universe was created by omnipotent Lucifer, the morning star himself. He created all that we know, and a grudging tiny fellow by the name of Jahwe, or Jehova, or whatever, started to oppose him, and finally dethroned him to a nether world, where this Lucifer now collects mortal souls to make into an army, with which he means to take back what is rightfully his (so everyone ending up in hell for having sex out of wedlock is actually on the side of a righteous cause and should be proud of it, only the other believing fools in the world end up in heaven). It would be no time at all before my honey pumpkins would all be chanting Lucifer, the great Satan, before a bonfire, perhaps slicing the throats of bunnies because they would of course be the symbol of all the evil this Jahwe character brought upon the face of the earth.
One could, of course, argue, if one is fond of squabbling, that children are not the only ones who find the organized religions, grown-ups do it too. But there again lies the same problem. They wouldn’t if there wasn’t anyone to pressure them into it.
The validity of any religion has always baffled the mind. Why do people believe in the neighbor who says he talks with Jesus, but not the neighbor who says he talks to aliens? Why is one more valid than the other? This gets me started on the modernization of religions. How can people justify this picking and choosing that is going on? If you say you believe the bible to be true, why not follow its instructions to the point? Who has the authority to say that we think this part is good, but this is not. The Inquisition had it right all along. They were the true Christians. They only did what the bible told them to, which is some pretty harsh shit. Same with the sharia law in many Muslim countries. I’m sure it’s all simply what their good book tells them to do. And gods bless them for it.
Modern Christians have chosen to hate gays, but ignored a myriad of other just as bat-shit insane propositions the, oh so boring, book makes. There are probably a hundred denominations of Christianity, and by all rights they should be slaughtering each other at this very moment, because they really actually think of each other as heretics. But no, they pick and choose. They say god is good and his ways are mysterious, but they ignore the straightforward fact that all this proves that religion, any religion, is an entirely human construct.
The annoying appeasers out there say I should respect people’s right to freedom of religion. To that I say a few things; they certainly do not respect our possible rights to freedom without religion, and secondly, I would not grant my respect to a paranoid schizophrenic in a mental asylum, telling me, in the midst of copious amounts of spittle flying from his mouth, the end is near and that a spirit will come forth soon, who will bring salvation to us all. So I will not grant it to religious people not in asylums, who basically say the same thing. I will not respect the views of an alien abductee, because what he says is crazy, and we all agree its utter nonsense and that if the person actually believes these things, there is probably something wrong with him. So, again, I will not respect any religion or religious person’s views on religion, for they are just as insane and need some sort of help to come back to the real world.
Can’t we all agree someday that all these millions of religions are just as crazy as saying there are unicorns in the woods. That actually claiming to believe in a being that created everything is the same as saying, with a straight face, that Harry Potter just flew by.
In the immortal words of Homer Simpson; “Jebus save me!” Jebus save me from the insufferable idiocy of man. Jebus indeed.
- G
