Religion and Me

I know that some of my posts come across as angry, so I wanted to take this opportunity to explain my position on religion.  It is true that sometimes I am angry at some religious people.  Though I don’t always specifically state it I do not group all religious people together as all being the same.  For the most part, I don’t hate the various religions, themselves.  I very much disrespect them.  Far too many Christians are under the mistaken impression that I have some obligation to respect their believes, beliefs which I find to be childish and silly.  I will never respect religious beliefs, though I can and do respect individual religious people.  My mother, for instance, is Pentecostal.  Having an intimate knowledge of that religion I also have a deep hatred for it.  I often say that Pentecostals are a compound away from being a cult.  They do work very, very hard to separate their members from the outside world and it has the effect, probably intended, of decimating anyone who leaves.  They leave behind all of their friends and the only people they know how to interact with socially, who now see them as all but a physical manifestation of the devil.  I will never respect what they do to people to keep members.  I will never respect the church, the religion or the people in charge.  I can and do respect some of its members.

But that’s a specific religion for specific reasons.  Let’s talk more generally.  Imagine, if you will, that I believed that a spirit dog named Dufus created the universe and made me his emissary on Earth.  You may still respect me, the person, but that belief is ludicrous.  Why the hell would you respect that?  I wouldn’t.  Neither do I respect a beliefs that science is out to get God or that, and this one is dumb as hell, an all powerful, loving God who loves me more than I could ever possibly imagine and wants nothing but for me to spend eternity with him would sit by silently and simply watch my life unfold and, in the end, light me on fire for all of eternity for no reason other than I didn’t believe he existed.  I love my children.  That’s why I’m there for them.  Not once have I ever been able to imagine a single thing they could do which would make me think, “Yeah, I really need to light my kid on fire for that one.”  Christians always try to defend that by saying other stupid things, like there needs to be punishment for doing wrong or that God doesn’t send people to Hell, they send themselves there.  Let’s look at those two excuses.

First, there needs to be punishment for doing wrong.  I certainly agree with that.  But if everyone thought the same way God apparently does, what would punishment look like?  Well, everyone does good and bad throughout their lives (saving the subject of morality for another day).  We wouldn’t punish individual bad things.  We would pick a point in a person’s life and then…then what?  It really doesn’t matter how bad the bad they did was.  All that would matter is if they were sorry enough for it to have gone through some cleansing ritual and really, really meant it…BEFORE we chose to judge them.  If they had, they’re in the clear and will never be judged again.  If they had not then I suppose we would ship them off to a prison for the rest of their lives to be tortured for as long as it was in our power to do so.  Once we’ve chosen a random time in their lives to judge them it’s too late at that point to make amends.  Theoretically we could have a serial killer who killed hundreds over decades and, each time he did, felt bad enough about it to go through the ritual and cleans himself, seriously meaning to never do it again.  At judgment time he would be good to go.  Yet an 15 year old boy we caught looking at a woman’s ass, having done no real “evil” in his life, but obviously “thinking impure thoughts”, would be sent off to prison to be tortured for the rest of his life.  Or what about a 16 year old girl who has never hurt anyone, but doesn’t agree with the punishment system?  Off you go, bitch, to life of torment for not believing in the system.  We certainly don’t want that type hanging around with our decent citizens like the serial killer.

Next, God doesn’t send people to Hell, they choose to go to Hell.  This one is stupid even by Christian apologist standards.  Who made everything, including Hell?  God.  For what purpose was Hell created?  Punishment.  Who punishes the wicked?  God.  Who sends people to Hell?  They send themselves…  That’s just stupid.  God made Hell to punish “the wicked” and God punishes “the wicked” in Hell.  This is like me putting a gun to someone’s head and telling them they had two choices.  They could either do whatever command I give them OR I could shoot them in the head.  Somehow I doubt the “She CHOSE to be shot in the head” defense will be of much use to me in court.  What she “chose” was not to comply with my demands in this scenario.  Then I “chose” to kill her.  And it’s even DUMBER THAN THAT when it comes to God.  There are, as I have mentioned, 38,000 Christian religions alone.  Many Christians believe that only a single one of those paths is right and all others lead to Hell.  I’m sure that no Christian, when asked bluntly, seriously believes that no Baptist, no Catholic, no Mormon, no Jehovah’s Witness, no Pentecostal, no Lutheran or no Methodist sincerely wants to follow the one right path.  The reason they are Christian is because they want to follow Christ.  The idea that there are 38,000 wrong paths and 1 right one make the whole “chose to go to Hell” argument completely moronic.  If you’ve ever been in one religion and switched to another than you know quite well that EVERYONE believes they are following the right path.  So to “choose” to go to Hell could be nothing more than to be tricked into following the wrong religion.  An accident is not a choice and the Bible says very clearly that Satan will try to trick you into following the wrong path.  Apparently there’s a sort of intelligence test administered by Satan to get into Heaven.

Of course, many religions give me specific things to hate about them, but the general premise of a belief in magic coupled with the ferocity with which Christians demand it be called by some name other than magic is utterly ludicrous to me.  I do not respect religious beliefs because they are dumb.  That is my opinion and I am entitled to it.  I realize those who are demanding that I respect their religion believe they have some divine right to respect for their beliefs.  What they don’t understand is that I’ve heard it all before.  I have had the “one true religion” bullshit spouted at me from people of so many religions that it is literally laughable.  When someone tries to use the Bible to show me how theirs is the “one true religion” I laugh in their faces, then explain how I’ve heard this from Catholics and Pentecostals and Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslims and countless people of indiscernible religion on the Internet.  They don’t realize their arguments are all exactly the same.  The only difference is which verses from which holy book they choose to back their claims.  I’m sure that to them theirs sounds far more credible, but it’s not.  It’s exactly the same as every other “one true religion” claim I’ve ever heard.  “Ours is right because this part of our holy book says so and our holy book is right because our religion is right”.  It’s called “circular logic” and there is nothing about that to respect.

So, no, I do not, nor will I ever respect at least any religion I am familiar with and I am under no obligation to do so.  Respect must be earned and no god has yet earned my belief, much less my respect.  I can and do respect specific religious individuals.  But for the most part the one I have in mind while writing this blog are the ones who piss me off.  They are the ones who believe that it is their right to deny others rights.  They are the ones who will never be happy with simply “live and let live”, only “live the way we tell you and let live or we’ll kill you”.  They are the dumbasses who believe that Christians are being persecuted, that some mysterious “they” is out to get them, that secularists and atheists are working hard to take them down.  They are the smug, self important twits who believe that God speaks directly to them and his commands are undeniable.  They are the Pat Robertsons and the Harold Campings of the world who spout out stupid shit and demand that we accept it as reality until it is proven that it’s not.  I’m sorry, but that’s not how reality works.  Mystical claims of divine knowledge are bullshit until it is proven that they’re not because that has NEVER happened.  All claims that the world was going to end have failed to come true.  And I’d sure like to see a copy of that pact Haiti signed with the devil.  I’d be willing to place a very large wager that this supposed document isn’t exactly on file at their local court house, nor can any person the world around produce it.  So how does Pat know?  God told him, the same way he told Harold Camping the world was going to end last year.  Respect that?  When I see a dead guy get up and fly away, I’ll respect your belief that it happened 2,000 years ago.  Until then it’s just an idiotic story about some magic dead guy to me.