Why its wrong to make exuses for religion.

frankiesoup made some comments on some of my posts.  She has, unlike many of the raving idiots that get wound up by my posts, spent some time to consider her standpoint. Or at least it seams like that.  Therefor i will give a more considered response.

Basically Frankie asks – what harm does it do to let people believe whatever they want?

I have touched on this subject before, usually in response to some insane babbling from some devout believer. Its quite refreshing to get a response from someone who look like they have at least thought about the subject matter.

I will use some extracts from Frankies  comments for reference. they are in Italic.

“Thank you for replying, Muzolf and EMP – though you don’t seem to have read my original post properly. When I said ‘What harm can there be…’ I specifically excluded extremists and evangelists in my statement. (”What harm can it possibly do if people – *evangelists and extremists aside* – believe in a higher power?” were my exact words.)”

The  “what is the harm” approach is a big part of allowing the extremist problem to come into existence in the first place. Its the hoards of people that defend the right “to believe whatever they want about god, life, death and the universe”  that makes extremism possible.

This excuse-ism is so ingrained in our “politically correct” culture that many people, like Frankiesoup fail to realize how ridiculous this concept is.  In no other aspects of life are we allowed to believe “whatever we want” imagine if doctors where allowed use the same principle?  If you are holy convinced that god told you that you could cure any ailment with plutonium, should that be respected? After all, its your faith! What if you get a flock of similarly convinced individuals and you build a church to worship your plutonium? should it be respected then?

The answer is of course: No it shouldn’t.  Neither should anyone who claim to have a personal relationship with the creator of the universe be taken seriously.  Religion is organized superstition and should be treated as such. It should be ridiculed and rigorously criticized as if the person in front of you professed to believe in pixies, fairies or trolls.

(For example many Nazis actually believed the arian raze where descendants from the legendary people of Atlantis, the head of the death camps where a devout believer and we all know how that turned out.)

You see, by not addressing the fundamental problem, (Iron age folklore and superstition shouldn’t be used as life guiding principles by anybody) we or the moderates defending religion, perpetuate the problem.

For some reason a lot of people defend this “believe whatever!” idea and as a result we have countless cults ranging from the established and strange (Vatican) to the down right absurd (Scientology).

“I’m a normal person – I get as pissed off as the next guy when folk come to my house and preach to me when I’m quite clearly not interested – but the majority of religious people would never dream of imposing their beliefs on others. When asked, they’ll comment, but otherwise they’re happy to leave well alone.

Preachers turning up at your house, is not what i think of when i talk about the danger and damage religion causes every day. Think about children being denied medical treatment because their parents are members of some sect that believes prayer is the only way to go? How about female circumcision? Or children that are disowned by their parents for being gay?

Such unforgivable acts are usually carried out by the people you mean should have the right to believe whatever they want, they are ordinary Jill and Joes and are not considered extremists.

I could give countless examples of average believers whose daily actions are irrational, mean and despicable, because of their religion, this alone should merit unlimited scorn of religious belief.  After all the believer might be a nice person and its his religion that fucks him up.

At some point we have to ask the question, is the idea of freedom of religion a good one?

Consider that most religious texts are a hogposh patchwork of superstitious garbage that can be interpreted in pretty much any way you want. Take Muslim suicide bombers for instance, it doesnt say in the Koran ” strap a bomb to your chest and blow yourself up in a crowd of women and children”  but it does incite hatred especially towards perceived enemies.

If we want to keep freedom of religion as a fundamental human right, we also have to accept that Pakistan militants try to burn the danish embassy for depicting the prophet mohammed. We have to say its ok for a parent to deny medical treatment to their children. We have to accept that devout catholics shoot doctors outside abortion clinics.

Because this is what accepting freedom of religion means, unless we want to be as hypocritical as the religious themselves.

In relation to religion i can pretty much make up whatever the fuck i want “ie: scientology” call it a religion, receive tax benefits and act out as i see fit. For example i can hate everyone that is gay. Accepting this is what freedom of religion means.

Lets for instance follow a potential scenario based around the idea “hate all gays” lets say you firmly believe this is against the will of god, you want to endear yourself with god of course.  After all he  holds the keys to the afterlife and what not.

How far is the step from believing that, to picking up a gun and blowing a gay persons head off? Just recently a jew blew up a gay bar in Israel. This is what religious faith does.

rationale people can see the idea, that anyone should be allowed to believe whatever they want about god life death and the universe is an extremely bad one.  Its ridiculous, it negatively touches so many aspects of our lives, from suicide bombers to creationism the list of moronic and horrible things attributed to religious belief is practically endless.

“Finally, in response to your comment about my not knowing what life in Iran is like – fair enough, I don’t. I know what it’s like in Saudia Arabia though – the only country in the world where women are not permitted to drive and must be escorted in towns at all time by a man or face arrest. Egyptians have also offered to trade me for a camel with my husband… It’s a completely different world – a different culture – and I wouldn’t want to live there but it isn’t up to me to condemn them.”

You are wrong. It is your place to condemn them! Harshly!  By not condemning this, you are actively supporting the degradation of half of Saudi Arabia’s population. Despite what Saudis believe. Women are individuals! Sentient human beings! They have the right to self determination and to live free fulfilling lives no matter what the culture is!

Instead they are property, and you,  as a woman dear to say its not your place to condemn them?!!!!!!

Denying millions of people their birth given right, to be free is just evil! And deserves as much scorn and criticism as we can possibly muster. I would go so far as to say that the very idea is repulsive to humanity and deserves a violent response!

The sad part is, this is only one horrid example of how much suffering religion causes, you experienced someone offering a camel for you, you where lucky, your Western with a modern husband, you could leave the country, you where just a spectator.

Consider this :

What if you where an Egyptian woman and your husband actually traded you for a camel?

Maybe you had children? You would never see them again and there is nothing you can do about it. The courts, the law, everything is designed to ensure that men can continue to treat you as property.  What if your new husband is violent? what if he grows tired of raping you and just leave you in the desert? No one will lift a finger for you, after all your just a woman….

Without religion classifying women as property, this culture would never existence and Muslim men’s treatment of women  would never be acceptable behavior in any society.

Yet you defend it? Why is that? Do you still think “believe whatever” is a good idea?

Israel the farce.

I have been following the political noise round the middle east and Obamas push to try to achieve real change.

Yesterday i was, to put it mildly,  disappointed when i saw Netanyahus farcical speech.

The first few sentences where promising.

“I call on you, our Palestinian neighbours, and to the leadership of the Palestinian Authority – let us begin peace negotiations immediately, without preconditions.”

The rest of the speech was just gibberish and totally contradictory the above statement

He said a Palestinian state must have no army, no control of its air space and no way of smuggling in weapons. Additionally Palestinians had to recognize that their land was the land of the Jews? and that refugees had no right to return, etc, etc, etc.

Excuse me? Is it just me or what? doesn’t these demands sort of fly in the face of talks “without preconditions”?

Arent these demands in fact in themselves preconditions? and doesn’t Netanyahu know that this stance is what has fuled the conflickt for the last 60 years?

Netanyahu concludes by announcing that the root of the problem is the Palestinians refusal to accept the jewish state?

Never mind the military occupation and daily humiliation of the Palestinian people, im sure that has nothing to do with fueling the flames of conflict and hate.

Israel is by far the most agressive state in the middle east, why american tax payers accept that their tax dollar is used for military occupation and bombing palestinian women and children i will never know.

I guess israel and palestina can look forward to 60 more bloodsoaked years curtesy of the american tax payer.

The best use of a bible ever!

The only good use of a bible! mushroom food..

Best ever! use of a bible!

Israel? what the F….

Since my trip to Iran i have been chilling in turkey, the wife and me have decided to take a break on our visit the “insane religious” nations tour.

Our next stop was supposed to be Israel followed by a trip to the Palestinian territories,  if we could get in.

We have talked a lot about this and have decided to drop the entire trip.

We actually met an Israeli tourist at our hotel and our discussions with him is what made us decide to never ever visit Israel. Not because its a dangerous lunatic asylum filled with religious morons, but because our trip there would contribute to Israels economy and we don’t want that.

Anyways the discussion with our new found Israeli acquaintance went something like this.

Us: If it where the Israelis that where in the Palestinians place, what would they do?

Israeli: Stop terrorism.

Us: If terrorism stops? The Palestinians will still be under military occupation wont they?

Israeli: ehhh yes sort of, we have a right to that land though…

Us: Who gave you the right to the Palestinian land?

Israeli: I don’t know, its what i have always been told.

Us: How are the Palestinians treated? do they have any rights? are they seen as equal?

Israeli: No Palestinians are terrorists all of them, they cant own land its ours..

Us: So what would Israelis do if they where denied property rights, along with all other rights and discriminated against because their occupiers saw them as less than human?

Israeli: ehhh i dont know really i hadnt thought of it that way?

Us: Wasn’t that the Nazi approach during WWII?

Israeli: Well … . your… …. ….. the Nazis intentionally killed millions Israel takes care not to kill civilians.

Us: Didn’t the holocaust also start out as a moderate effort that gradually grew into genocide?

Israeli: dnn uhh… … well yes.

Us: it seams like the death toll seams to be gradually increasing for the Palestinians, when will the murder rate slide into genocide?

Israeli: dnn uhh… … well i dont know, i feel uncomfortable about this…..

Us: Maybe that is the right feeling to have for the atrocities carried out by your government with supposed support from you.?

Israeli: I just havent looked at it like that before,, you are right Israel has to change course….

Israel has become like the Nazi regime, its horrible…..

Iran the worlds luny bin…

The last couple of days have been a bit surreal, Iran is a deeply fucked up place, let me highlight just how strange a society founded on superstitious folklore from the iron ages can be.

Firstly i risk being arrested for this posting, not because i harm anyone or anything like that. I risk being arrested for referring to the Koran from a factual perspective.  Additionally this might be seen as criticism of the Iranian regime which carries the death penalty (i kid you not).

The Koran, like the bible and all the other so called “holy” fairytale books are nothing but fictional  stories from a time when people where literary ravaged by their own superstitions and endless ignorance.

Now Iran isnt unique in ruling by fairytale.  Europe did this during the dark ages, and other fucked up countries like Afghanistan, UAE, Israel, Pakistan and many other countries still do this today.

Basing your rules on imaginary fiction is of course bound to create some oddities. Like receiving bamboo lashes for chewing gum (Indonesia) or like here in Iran. Stoning a woman to death for being raped. She was after all unfaithful to her husband while a gang of thugs brutalized her at gunpoint, so clearly she deserves to die….

In the last few days the people most opposed to  reform and change in Irans society has been run over by Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of this lunatic asylums founder Ayatolla Khomeini.

Hassan used to be firmly entrenched in the conservative wing of Irans leadership but he has now migrated over to the liberal side.

Not that that has any real meaning for someone from the west, the conservative and liberal side can often be separated by as little as 5 in stead of 8 lashes as punishment for some imaginary thought crime.

The only reason why it carries any sort of relevance is because Iran is becoming more and more militarized, and as the military power grows the Imams power erodes. Basically what Hassan, himself an imam, wants to achieve is to keep political power firmly entrenched in religious hands.

The mullah regime is just ridiculous, they pretend to have some sort of democratic process with elections, but the sitting mullas basically vet or pre-qualify the candidates prior to allowing them to run for office.  (Run for office, just sounds ridiculous when considering this lunacy.)

One example, that one of the student we talked to told me just cracked me up.  Last “election” Ali Eshraghi, also a descendant of the ayatollah, was excluded after the mullas investigated if he kept to the proscribed praying schedule, whether he combed his beard, which is illegal (i kid you not).  And whether his wife kept within the parameters for proper clothing for Iranian women.

This country is totally insane, its ridiculous in the extreme, they are so focused on internal control and naval gazing that i dont know why the rest of the world considers them a threat.

These guys couldn’t arrange sex in a brothel, let alone organize any form of coordinated military activity. The only way they could pose a threat, is if they got their hands on nuclear weapons. And if they did, they are just as likely to blow themselves up because some a woman masturbated, and therefor they had to level the entire city to prevent such sinful activities from spreading.

The only light on the horizon is the ayatollahs third grandchild Hussein Khomeini, even though he is educated as a priest he has broken with Irans brutal and oppressive customs.  He still wears a black turban, that i think is supposed to symbolize he is a direct descendant from the founder of the religion Muhammed (imagine how fucking full of yourself you have to be to believe that)

Anyways he has openly gone out in support for the invasion of Iraq and he has even suggested that the current regime in Iran cannot be removed without American help.

He was even imprisoned for publicly speaking out against the death penalty for criticizing the regime.

After the Iraq invasion he moved there and is on record saying “it was a pleasure to breathe the free air” he returned recently and is suspected to be alive only because his grandmother (the ayatollahs wife) is protecting him.

Anyways thats todays report from this freak show tomorrow we plan to go visit the poor and what passes for Irans red light district. (that schould be interesting)

I am going around the world

I have been challenged to take another trip, this time we will go to all the luny places like IRAN Afganistan and other wonderful religious places.

Ever wounder why some people still proclaim good is good (like praying in american schools) and still the worlds most religious places are horrible cessspools of violence hatred and ignorance.

Well anyways i will be back in 3 months if all goes according to plan.

Being spiritual, and shitt…. a tale from Tibet

I have been gone for almost a year.  A friend of mine challenged me about my skepticism against all things supernatural and religion in particular, He said that if i went to India and Tibet and saw how peaceful and good Hindus and Buddhists where i would change my mind and see that religion was good for humanity and so on,  yadidada ad infinitum, the usual bullshit.

Luckily i have the means, so i took him up on it.  In return if i didn’t change my mind, he would have to switch to my side. Ie: militant anti-religion’ism.

Firstly let me point out that my trip was excellent, we smoked a lot of weed, had a lot of great sex, partied like it was 1999 and in general had a jolly good old time.

For over 3 months i staid with monks  in a monastery in Tibet, i ate like them, worked the fields, slept like them, trained like them, and did a lot of meditation. (their beds really suck by the way)

As far as religions are concerned Buddhism is more like a benign tumor compared to the aggressive virulent cancer that is for instance Islam or Christianity.

Its founded on  what the Buddhists call “Four Noble Truths”. They are the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering. More simply put, suffering exists; it has a cause; it has an end; and it has a cause to bring about its end.
The notion of suffering as i understand it is not intended to convey a negative world view, but rather, a pragmatic perspective that deals with the world as it is, and attempts to rectify it. The concept of pleasure is not denied, but acknowledged as fleeting. Pursuit of pleasure can only continue what is ultimately an unquenchable thirst. The same logic belies an understanding of happiness. In the end, only aging, sickness, and death are certain and unavoidable. They also believe in reincarnation, and that is just so indescribably stupid that i wont bother getting into it.

Just like all other religions, Buddhism tries to take the our wonderfully complex relationships and the interwoven messy world we live in and reduce it to a few grossly inadequate simplifications.

I guess i experienced spirituality during the monastery stay, but to connect the feeling of well being you can achieve through meditation with some kind of super being in the sky is betraying the entire experience.

now for the first week i couldn’t get into the zone when meditating, i think this is because i was still full of proteins vitamins and minerals from a good western diet, and it took about a week of eating nothing but vegetables and rice before my body was weakened enough for my mind to enter a sort of transient state.  At least i think it is the food because after a visit to the nearest town where i gobbled down a burger, fries and copious amounts of coke i was unable to reach this transient state again for a few days.

The combination of  little sleap,  hard work  (and i mean these monks work their butt off for ten hours a day) inadequate food without proper nutriments and the body can slip into a sort of peaceful restive state. Almost like what you feel when you smoke pot, except you don’t suffer the short term memory loss. The combination sleep deprivation, exhaustion and starvation probably alters the brain chemistry and gives a sense of content and pease.

It really pissed me off when, in my eyes this profound experience was utterly betrayed by linking it to pointless superstitious mumbo jumbo.

Why not let the experience be good for the sake of the experience? why the fuck  do you have to go and soil the experience by dragging it through the filthy cesspool of superstitious religious bullshit?

Anyways, i had many long discussions with the monks, and i would say Buddhisms only redeeming feature is its willingness to be criticized without automatically rejecting any criticism with reference to some historical “supposed” absolute truth.

So even though i became very good friends with many of them,  during my entire stay i vehemently opposed all the ridiculous dogma,  the strange thing is that the monks respected me mainly because of this, and i was impressed with the way they would approach me for my opinion on issues they themselves struggled with.

I guess they where not used to question the written word in their beliefs, they instead had a tradition of excusing or adopting, some times shoehorning the written word into something that could be reflected in reality.  Sort of the same way Islamic scholars try to interpret that the Koran is describing modern scientific discoveries.

Anyways they seamed to enjoy their new way of interpreting their world view via me, and i respect that.

This of course also created friction between the older and younger monks since the older the monks where the less they wanted to change or adjust their world view, they where less  interested in going outside their familiar little cocoon of absolute knowledge.

I guess you could say that my trip was a spiritual one and it really illustrated how much religion cheapens our experience of self and our voyage through this fantastic and wonderful world on the journey that is our life.

Religion undoubtedly prevents us from really experiencing the true wonders of our world, it replaces all the amazing stuff with simple cheap lies, pointless superstition and prevents us from reaching our full potential….

The end result is that i oppose religion much, much, much, more than i ever did. After my stay with the supposedly holy people.

Beating up the priest.

Last night the most surreal thing happened to me, a while back i was invited to take part in a round table discussion about religions place in todays society.

The agenda was as follows.

1 Do we need religion?

2 Young and lost, teenagers face problems without jesus.

3 Caring for our immortal soul.

I initially said no to take part in this, since its obviously tilted towards trying to justify religion, not have a real and open dialog around the topic.

A friend of mine that freed himself from religious superstition a few years ago used weeks to nag me into it, he said it was important that someone confronted this priest. (apparently ha was a lunatic even by biblical standards). Eventually i caved and accepted the invite.

(i guess the priest was planning to use me to underscore his his point of view or something)

The problem for him was, i am not that easy to subjugate, the priest i reckon was used to people quivering at his feet while he puked fire and brimstone.

Such speeches simply has no influence on me, i find them childish, ridiculous and preposterous. Often i laugh out loud when confronted with such stupidity, its simply just to stupid to take seriously.

The priest was totally perplexed when i didn’t i fold under his thunderous comedy act! I also had the audacity to argue against him. I totally ridiculed that man, simply by putting his outlandish claims into perspective.

Then suddenly after about 15 minutes of ridiculing this hateful sad individual, during a session when i exchanged the name of jesus in a quote ha had just made, suddenly things got interesting.

He said: “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God”

I repeated this sentence while exchanging god with Zeus “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the son of Zeus, Zeus dwelleth in him, and he in Zeus.

People in the audience broke out in spontaneous laughter, the priest was starting to act really strange at this point.

First he got up, pointed at me, and screamed a lot of biblical garbage (SATAN! SON OF SATAN! ladidadidda etc). It was totally absurd i laughed out loud and turned to the audience and pretended to pull an imaginary rope through my ears while making a stupid face.

The audience exploded in laughter, and then it happened the priest punched me! Smack! fist right in the face! Luckily I have been in fights countless times before and i automatically pulled out and avoided the full force of the blow.

With a big smile i said to the priest, is that your only argument? he swung again and again making big holes in the air.

During this ridiculous charade of air punches i talked to him: Hey calm down! or i will defend myself! What happened to turning the other cheek? The meek shall inherit and all that? Why don’t you do as you preach?

As i was dodging around on the podium many people in the audience where bursting with laughter, the priest finally managed to land a blow that hurt, and i reacted instinctively.

I struck him with a hard right, full force blow. It broke his nose and left him out cold.

The silence was absolute in the room, i blurted out towards the audience “is this a guy you want to take advice from? just because he claims ha can interpret a book supposedly authored by god? isnt this absurd to you? why do you believe in this utter crap?”

The majority of the people across the room bobbed their heads up and down in almost perfect unison.

I said lets go home and not waste any more time on this stupid antiquated superstition!

They all left, apart from a click of die hard religious loonies that started shouting abuse at me, strangely enough they where more interested in yelling at me than to help the priest? none of them helped him?

I sat down and made sure he was breathing and put him into a steady side position before calling an ambulance. (the loonies screaming in the background).

I was thinking about calling the police but i figured he had already suffered enough, loosing his flock and all credibility in a single afternoon. He was still unconscious when the ambulance picked him up, i felt really sorry for the guy.

What a sad confused little man he was.

Even as the ambulance pulled away the loonies where still haggling in the background, i hadn’t talked to them yet. i turned towards them and made a sudden move and stomped my foot so it made a loud bang. they all flinched pulled back and shut up, i burst out laughing i turned and walked away laughing.

Fucking morons, it really takes a special kind of idiot to be religious.

Christianitys current crimes!

This post is quite large, but bear with me, its important to put this in a proper context to illustrate my point, I think you will find the read worth wile.

In this post i will highlight how religious moderates maintains religion.

Moderates effectively maintain the greatest sources of human suffering, conflict and death,mankind has ever devised. This crime is perhaps bigger then all current religious terrorist and extremist acts put together.

I will try to highlight what the true and horrible cost of religious moderation is since this might not be immediately clear to everyone.

I don’t think most people are aware of the terrible price we pay for the moronic idea that people should be able to believe whatever they want about god, creation and what happens after we die.

I think religious moderates are responsible for more death and suffering than all terrorist acts put together.

Lets firstly clarify a few things before i continue.

The absurdity of it all.

Anyone can agree that ideas that divide us into different factions only to unite us again in slaughter, are ideas that we should try to get rid of.

Throughout history we have had many such ideas Pol pots regime, Nazi Germany as well as all mainstream monotheistic religions are examples of such. Although stoning people to death for blasphemy or adultery has gone out of fashion in the west, this isn’t true for the rest of the world and we in the west must come to terms with this fact.

In Iran or Mali for example people are killed every single week for such perceived crimes. The advocates of these beliefs for some reason believe that the creator of the universe has authored a book, we have many versions to choose from. And these different versions only have 2 things in common, 1 their claims are all uncontaminated by evidence, and 2 they actively pursue and glorify aggression against anyone that do not prescribe to whatever book they claim is the final and only word of god.

Christianity and Islam for instance, in their scriptural forms describe nothing more than an intolerant and violent orgy rooted in ignorance. Our so called holy books are nothing more than lists of crimes against god that all carry the death sentence.

Blasphemy = death

Sex before marriage = death

Adultery = death

Heresy = death

Etc etc etc…. ad infinity = death!

I think we can all agree that blowing yourself up in a group of civilians, women and children takes a certain kind of person that is not really suited to live among the rest of us.

But how come when people commit such terrible acts! no one even mentions the role faith has in this slaughter.

Its obvious to any sane person. That since our so called holy books come in so many different flavors, that if you allow people to tribalis’e into different sects based upon which one of these different versions you subscribe to. Death and suffering is the inevitable result.

Yet the so called holy books are only considered holy, because they where considered holy yesterday.

Lets take the bible for instance, it is claimed to be a holy book, and why is it a holy book? because the book itself says so? Yet it is so badly written and so full of incredible ridiculous claims that outside of religion, it would embarrass a pre-schooler.

Think about alchemy, this was a practice humans engaged in for almost a thousand years, yet today it is totally gone. It has been replaced by chemistry. This wasn’t an alternative to alchemy it was a complete replacement of ignorance with knowledge.

Many ask this question in relation to religion, what will replace religion. But that isnt the right question to ask, since religion just like alchemy is only a giant balloon of ignorance.

To actually believe that any of our current religions or holy books contain any relevance to modern society, requires and encyclopedic ignorance of science and history that boggles the imagination.

Keep in mind that our so called holy books that form the basis of all current religions where authored by tent dwelling idiots that where continually ravaged by their total ave inspiring ignorance of the universe.

I would like to use a thought experiment to further illustrate my point:

Imagine that humanity lost all its knowledge over night, our computers and books where still here but our minds where completely blank.

In our effort to re-learn all the things we need to survive, where do you think we would need to learn such truths as jesus was born of a virgin, or that mohammed ascended to heaven on a winged horse?

I would assume our first priorities would be learning to talk and read, or how about growing food or build shelter? Wouldn’t these be our first priorities?

When would religion become a priority at all? and how would you know what book to pick? how would you know the difference between the bible? the koran? or harry potter for that matter? Lets face it as a literary works our so called holy books leaves much to be desired.

Isnt it just as likely that the books we call holy today, wouldn’t pass the grade? I mean they dont make much sense at all do they? in fact we wouldn’t know what god or gods to chose? we might as well end up without any gods at all or why not worship zews?

As you can see our religions are nothing but mind numbing exercises and wain attempts in making sense of boundless stupidity, hatred and bronze age ignorance. It wont be replaced by something similar, it will be expunged by knowledge

The fact that we kill each other over rivaling interpretations of text authored by imbeciles is nothing but tragic. Imagine if, like in this thought exercise we where splitting into groups and killing each other over rival interpretations of star wars?

Its totally ridiculous.

The problem with religious moderation.

Religious moderation is not a result of religion evolving, its more a result of the religious cherry picking their religion in a vein attempt to make it fit life in the modern world. Killing children for heresy is no longer an option, so religious moderates try to ignore that this is explicitly written in the bible. They bend over backwards in vain attempts to reject or justify scripture to somehow be edible in modern society so that they can cling to their meaningless superstition.

Religion is still as violent, hateful and stupid as it has ever been, it continues to be a long list of faulty claims untouched by reason and evidence.

The problem is that religious moderates defend and try to justify this dangerous attachment to ignorance, its like trying to argue the case for alchemy its stupid and its a complete waste of time.

Just imagine how many hours and how much resources are drowned in these meaningless religious activities, imagine if all the Moderate muslims took to the streets to protest the murderous extremists in their midst instead of spending 3 hours a day in prayer? Imagine if they focused their time on growing food or caring for the elderly instead of banging their heads into a rug for hours every day.

Or what if the Christians spent their Sundays advocating environmentalism? and donated their money to development in environmentally friendly technology in stead of pouring it into the abyss of religious ignorance.

Religious moderates defend the incredibly stupid notion that everyone should be allowed to believe in any old myth they want, without being subjected to any kind of questions in regards to the validity of its claims.

Note: Some superstitions like if you where to proclaim to actually believe in zews would probably land you in an insane asylum or if you where in a different part of the world, death by stoning.

The thing is there is no more validity in believing in the koran then to believe in Zews? or santa or the easter bunny for that matter. Its all pointless and in most cases dangerous.

Religious moderates for some reason believe that as long as we respect and leave different religious superstitions alone, all will be well! and we will live in peace.

This is of course nonsense because half the worlds population actually believe in the literal truth of their holy books, and these books demand that anyone that are not of the same faith are to be killed, often in the most horrible way imaginable.

Thus the moderates through their desire to defend peoples right to believe whatever they want are guilty of shielding the extremists. The results is claims that the world is 6000 years old. And people that blow them selves up without hesitation in a group of children killing anyone within the blast zone.

The cost we all pay

There are countless atrocities carried out in the name of religion every day, sexual mutilation, honor killings, execution by stoning, murder, oppression, suicide bombings, denying medical treatment to children,,,, i could go on almost forever describing the horrors and atrocities carried out every day in the name of god.

The sad part about these horrible crimes that can be directly attributed to religion and that they are totally unnecessary since religion is just ancient meaningless superstition.

Consider this, the chatolic Church stops people in sub saharan africa from using condoms because its a sin in their twisted world view, millions of people will die as a direct result of such claims.

Or how about the chrisitan influence on policy in regards to stem cell research? the most promising medical field of the age has been effectively closed due to the belief that human embryos get a soul at the time of conception.

Imagine all the disease and suffering we could have prevented had it not been for the stupidity of this christian belief.

At the time stemm cells are harvested the egg contains only 150 cells. If you get a papercut your blood contains millions of blood cells and considering our recent progress in cloning. Does a paper cut make you a murdering bastard?

Of course not its just like the rest of the religion totally ridiculous, its ignorance on steroids.

Its stupid beyond reproach to oppose stem cell research!

As a direct result of such religious policy i would estimate that at least a billion people will die needlessly just in this decade.

Or how about all the suffering abstinence campaining causes, teenagers still have sex left right and center, all statisitcs show that the only thing abstinence campaigning will achieve is a higher rate of unprotected sex among teens.

I could go on for hours listing the absurd, meaningless and damaging results religious influence has on society.

Its the religious moderates that shield themselves and the rest of the religious community from serious reproach and as such the Religious moderates are guilty of causing the continued survival of religious superstition and stupidity and by proxy more suffering than all the exstremist freks put together.

The problem with fait! Why we must ban it.

I often wonder how future generations, those that survive the folly of our generation, will see us? Will they be disgusted in the same way we are disgusted by the excesses of the spanish inquisition? Or look upon us with mild bemusement as we look upon ancient myths such as the greek gods of old, like Zews and his ilk.

I for one am an avid opponent of all religious myth, no matter what its called, be it Islam, budism or Christianity.

The problem with faith, and in fact all belief is that they totally control how we act.

As an example, lets imagine that you believed, truly believed! That an expert sniper had you in his crosshairs right now! How would this affect you? how would you act?? Pretty panicky i would imagine

We, the human animal, are pretty simple like that, our beliefs control how we feel and act.

Now if you transfer this thought to religious faith, its easy to see that todays world is in deep shitt indeed!

The secound a person believes they are following the will of the creator of the universe himself. Flying a plane into a building or teaching creationism as a scientific fact, all of a sudden is no biggie at all.

People who think they are in the posession of a book written by the very creator of the universe or if they believe they are capable of interpreting the creators will get dangerous faster than you can say “superstitious bullshitt”

Christians and muslims alike often quote me scripture as if this was some form of killer argument that i should just accept outright without any further thought on the subject. But why schould i? Would they believe there where walking giant trees, called ents, if i quotes tolkiens lord of the rings? Of course not, but for some reason when it comes to their religion they neighter see or hear no evil, in most cases its like talking to a brick wall . People that would normally demand proof, starts taking the most outlandish claims without ever even considering asking a single question.

If i claimed Ents where real they would immediately enquire more and ask for proof before they would aksept any such claim. Yet they willingly believe Jesus can be eaten as a cracker during mass without even raising an eyebrow.

Lets for example say someone claims that the followers of the new testament are inherently peasful and benign.

Lets for arguement sake ignore tha fact that any fift grader could probaly find countless pargraphs in the new testament to contradict this fact. And lets ignore the fact that for a book made by the supposed creator of the universe its quality as a litterary work is utter crapp, by almost any standard. An average low budget tv script could easily pass as a shakesparian masterpice next to any holy book come to think of it.

Why wouldnt god, being all powerfull, just get shakespare to write the bilble for him? (god supposedly created Shakespeare anyway, didnt he?) To make sure it was consitent, meningfull and understandable for anyone who picked up a copy? Or for that matter why bother with a book at all? surely the master and creator of the universe schould be able to communicate more effectively then what is represented in so called holy books?

I am starting to think its wrong to bring the discussion to this level, surely the argument schouldnt be if you can make sence and reference some paragph in a book called holy by some.

The discussion schould be around why the religious idiot in question actually believes that he is in the posesion of a book written by god? And on top of that, that he is able to interpret the will of god from it?

Keeping this and my opening paragraph in mind its easy to see how this really screws the world up, for instance the 15 girls that burned to death in mecca beacause the religious polise where conserned they schould be seen on the street without their head scarfs! Another glaring example is how Iran can sentence rape wictims to death by stoning. Or how the people of the inquisition really believed they where doing gods work by torturing and burning people alive.

Recently we also had the poligamist sect of the latter day saints, that fully believed that it was gods will to rape, beat and impregnate underage girls. Or how about the Jewish mother that tortured her 3 year old son to death with burning cigarettes to drive the devil from him?.

The list of obscene and dangerous behavior as a result of blind faith in meaningless mythology as the absolute will and truth of god is dangerous in the extreme!

My point is: the belief! that someone is in posession of the true will of god is a dangerous, dangerous thing, what will for exampel happen between the nuclear neighbours india and pakistan over the next 10 years? they have pretty diverging ideological views? Dont they?

Nuclear holocaust anyone?

Its enough to make anyone shiver when you consider the conseqvenses of allowing people to freely cling to their mythology, immagine if we allowed the same freedom of belief in the rest of our society! Imagine if the doctor decided to pray instead of treating you simply beacause he believed this to be the best course of action? Or what if a juge believed all red haired people where posessed by the devil? Or the pilot asked god to land the plane for him.

Freedom of belief is dangerous and schould be outlawed.

Freeedom of religion is destructive, stupid, dangerous and counterproductive to humanity as a species.

Anyone schould be able to see that noone schould be allowed to religiously believe anything as they see fit.

Clinging to mytology imagined up by a superstitious, ignorant, brutal, and violent people who would see a wheel barrel as a fantastic breaktrough in teknology is doubtlessly a recepie for disaster.

if we dont remove Religion it could very well bring about the end of civilisation as we know it.