religion

i have been thinking a lot about religion. well, i always think a lot about religion. i guess it is inescapable. most people believe in religion, and for those of us who don’t, the constant bombardment with religious propaganda is quite annoying. so many problems in this world seem like they are caused by religion. wars in the middle east, terrorism, hatred between groups of people... but then... if these problems really are caused by religion, are us atheists any better? anyway, it seems every major religion is full of a majority who believe in the religion but are not that religious, and a small minority who actually are very religious. that small minority are the fundamentalists. fundamentalists almost always seem to be doing the work of evil forces, causing conflict, creating trouble, taking the wrong stands on issues, even doing acts of senseless violence, and justifying things that should not be justifiable. if you judge them by their fruits, by their actions, the fundamentalists of all the religions certainly are an evil lot, despite all their claims to righteousness. so what is the cause of this problem? why have they gone astray? it is because they get their so-called wisdom from ancient books that are out-of-date, from societies where people owned slaves and made sacrifices, where men were in charge of all the women, where people were executed for minor offenses, where democracy and freedom of speech and modern values like that were unheard of. there may have been times when the holy books of today’s largest religions had values that were progressive compared to the societies that existed at that time, but those times are long gone, and nowadays, the most religious people cling to archaic values systems that have been replaced with better ones. it is true, most conservatives today do not argue in favor of white supremacy or women being property or other things that were the conservative traditions 100 years ago. but, conservatives are always the people who are the most behind-the-times, who have taken the longest to catch up with social progress. and the most conservative of all social institutions is the religion. so then why are there liberal and progressive religious people? alas, in order to survive, religions have to constantly redefine themselves and update their ideologies to be slightly more modern but not too modern. while christians once argued that the sun and stars all orbited the earth, now they accept the fact that the earth orbits the sun, the copernican theory. many of them still dispute evolution, of course. they claim we were just put here a few thousand years ago. well who is to say we weren’t just put here a few seconds ago? you can’t prove that the universe is older than a nanosecond. we could have all been created less than a nanosecond ago, right where we are. so why several thousand years? because some old books say that, and some people think those books have all the answers? please. anyway, the way religious people respond to atheism is very troubling. they do not listen to reason. they stick to their beliefs no matter what. they are almost impossible to convince, no matter how much evidence you have. and what they love to do is gang up on and insult and be mean to atheists. they think that if more of them are denouncing someone, it makes everything all of them are saying that much more true. sadly, they have all been severely brainwashed. people have been brainwashed all their lives, and they react in a predictable, pre-programmed manner to anyone who questions their idiotic belief systems. and if, for instance, some atheist girl has a video posted online where she advocates her point of view, religious people all act like cult members while denouncing her, even though most of them are not that religious. most of them are the type of people who listen to popular music and do the things regular people do, rather than living some uptight fundamentalist deprived livestyle. and they talk just like other people their age, some of them talking like they are thugs, a lot of people using bad grammar and misspelling things and sounding idiotic. and a lot of them say the girl is a stupid bitch and should shut up and suck on their dick, or suggest all sorts of ways to sexually violate the girl, whose only crime is not believing in religion. they keep insisting that she has no right to have her own opinions or express them, and needs to be silenced, and also sexually violated. these repressive tendencies towards fascism exist in the majority of youth today who post on comment threads on youtube. these people are poorly educated, or at least, the educational system has failed to educate them properly. they have no decent morals. and they want to sexually violate anyone who threatens their beloved institution of christianity that they hold so dear, even though none of them seem to have gotten anything decent out of that religion. yes, a good percentage, less than half, of young people who post in these comment threads, less than half have common decency and behave themselves. but i swear... if you combine a potty mouth and bad morals and a desire for male domination of women and poor education with a belief in christianity... well, let’s just say christianity does not end up looking very good. here are the awful comments posted by these neanderthals. aren’t they just atrocious? these guys have no respect for women. and i think religion encourages that sexism, since all the major religions were founded back in times when sexism was deeply rooted and their so-called sacred texts, which are really just human creations, deeply reflect the times and cultures they were written in. just face it, anyone who bases their life on a book written 2 thousand years ago is going to have some pretty old-fashioned ways of dealing with things and that is not always good. so what bothers me, i am not sure if it is less than or more than the fundamentalists that are so evil and so wrong, are the more moderate or progressive religious types. it bothers me because they are keeping these old traditions and beliefs alive, breathing new life into it, attaching more modern, more progressive values systems to it, to make it more authentic, more realistic, less like some pathetic attempt to re-create modern society in the image of the society of 2 thousand years ago. what is the danger in this? well, firstly, the more religious people there are, the less atheists, and the less people to protect atheists from the fundamentalist religious types who would like to exterminate us. secondly, if you get to re-define all the ancient traditions to be something completely different, who is in charge of that redefinition? how do we know they will have a sensible system of moral values and not one that is oppressive and fascistic and overly harsh in punishing the innocent? and how do we know people will not try to pretend like supernatural phenomena are happening in today’s world, or that they are great prophets or messengers of god, or other things that could stir up trouble? you see, the difference between cults and religions is, religions used to be cults but now they have more members. it is mainly just a question of popularity. it has nothing to do with the actual quality of the beliefs, whether they are true or not, that sort of thing. according to each religion, all of the other religions are wrong. at least that holds true for all the “one true religions” out there. there are some religions that do not believe all the other ones are false, but they just do that mainly to get more people to think they are open-minded. but religious people, by and large, are not terribly open-minded. christians, for instance, tend to think that only christians get into heaven and everyone else goes to hell. yes, that is primarily a fundamentalist teaching, but a large percentage of the less religious christians who don’t go to church every sunday still have some fundamentalist beliefs like that one. that is why rebellious youth who talk like thugs and are poorly educated and misspell things send death threats and sexually harrass innocent young girls just because the girls happen to express atheist points of view online. now, granted, these lowlifes would probably harass and try to intimidate any member of a minority that is looked down upon. but for some reason, people think it is okay to be mean to atheists but do not feel the same way towards the jews. even young lowlife jerks are probably civilized towards the jews. all because of the holocaust. it is strange, the stupidity of humans. people learned that it is wrong to be mean to people just because they are jewish, but for some reason they did not generalize this to all other religious or non-religious persuasions, or all other oppressed minorities. so, in its stupidity, the american public still gives special treatment to the jews out of sympathy for the holocaust, not realizing that the next genocide could be against an entirely different group of people, and that if they were supposed to learn anything from the holocaust, it is that genocide and discrimination against any group of people is bad. but, dear reader, you have probably found that i am condemning myself a bit here, since, after all, earlier in this blog post i was generalizing about groups of people. but, be that as it may. my point is, the level of discourse on the internet has gotten to be quite nasty and uncivilized, and even i get drawn into those sorts of conflicts on the internet, including in the comments thread for that video, because i was so upset over the comments i read there. i cannot believe i live in the same country as all these lowlifes who would do all those awful things to that girl and deprive us atheists of our rights just because we have different beliefs. but then again, what would i like to do with religion? am i not opposed to it quite strongly? i wonder whether i would favor depriving people of their rights in order to eradicate religion. i don’t think i would, but i am not entirely sure. it is hard to say. religion has caused a great deal of harm, it seems. and it does pose a threat to the continued survival of the human race, as well as the majority of the species on planet earth. but, then again, we must not oppress individuals for the good of the collective. we ought to cherish human rights like freedom of speech and the right to make up your own mind and not be discriminated against. still, i cannot shake a feeling that something is wrong, that maybe we have to give up some of our freedoms in order to defeat terrorism or prevent nuclear war or something like that. maybe i have just been brainwashed. but i arrived at atheism on my own. nobody taught me to be atheist or anything like that. i have been atheist ever since i was a kid, and never really believed in religion in the first place. no adult ever really taught me religion in such a way that i would actually believe what they were teaching me. it all seemed just like stories, like fiction. maybe because that really is what it was. but then why isn’t that just as obvious to everyone else as it is to me? why does religion work on other people? what is wrong with them that makes them so gullible that they are dumb enough to fall for anything people tell them is true, if it is told to them at a young enough age and repeated over and over again? i think if religions want to be honest they should stop indoctrinating people younger than 18 into their belief systems, and wait for people to become adults before they get taught anything at all about religions from anything other than a neutral point of view. if you can convert adults and get them to join, fine. that is your right. but stop messing with the minds of our children! they are behaving like brainwashed zombies, and it is all the fault of the adults who carried out the brainwashing so successfully. you know, if a religion is the largest one in a nation and has the apparatus of the state and of the media to back it up, brainwashing can be much more successful than the brainwashing done by some obscure ufo mind control cult. so really, the most dangerous cults are the largest ones, the ones that have already become major world religions. just look at al qaeda, an entirely islamic fundamentalist religious organization that happens to be a major terrorist threat against all humanity. al qaeda would not exist if it were not for the religion of islam, a religion that is promoted by both the media and all the nation-states of the arab world, as well as by the mosques, the schools, and the families. in every major religion there are moderates and extremists, and the most extreme element among the extremists usually pose a threat to society at large. this is one of the the dangers posed by religion. i will tell you this much, at least: religion is 100% to blame for the attacks of september 11, 2001. if it were not for religion, those attacks never would have happened. this does not mean religion is all bad, or even that it is more bad than good. but you know what? atheists have value systems such as secular humanism that are just as good if not better than the value systems taught to people by religion. people can be taught good strong moral values, without all that superstitious supernatural nonsense. the only problem is, not enough people are taught this way. you know, before the internet, atheists like me were isolated, afraid to speak up or stand up for ourselves, or let anyone know what our real opinions were. we had to pretend to believe in religion to avoid being harassed and looked down upon. nowadays, we still are discriminated against, but we can find other atheists online, and this has given us the courage to write several best-selling books advocating atheism. none of that would have ever happened before the internet. but it is a shame that society at large still looks down upon us and condemns us, despite having learned not to treat jews that way. even christian fundamentalists have forgiving attitudes towards the jews. you do not see them as forgiving towards homosexuals, for instance. anyway, social progress sometimes makes a u-turn, and sometimes society actually devolves, and gets less advanced rather than more. and in many ways, the insulting low-class people who fight in flame wars on the internet are a part of this vanguard of the social counterrevolution, making progress go backwards. and i am saddened to know that i am one of the participants in these flame wars sometimes, and the things i post sometimes get a bit too mean and nasty towards those i disagree with. but that is how you have to talk to this kind of lowlife scum who posts such awful comments on the internet. it makes my blood boil interacting with these people. i guess the internet is where the dirtiest, sickest, creepiest parts of society all are displayed in full view to the public. these lowlifes are not lowlifes because they are christian, they are just lowlifes who happen to be christian because they were born and raised in a predominantly christian country. still, people like that really rub me the wrong way. they ought to act more civilized. people ought to be nicer to each other. i still find it remarkable the bullshit people are able to believe in. as for me, i just pretend to believe in bullshit, because everyone else actually does believe in bullshit. pretending is actually quite fun. but at least i know i am pretending. when i was a child, i played make-believe all the time, but i always had a very clear understanding of the difference between fantasy and reality. and now i am an adult and i see most of the other people have quite a bit of difficulty telling fantasy and reality apart. oh yes, other people do draw a distinction between the two, but the place where they draw the line between fantasy and reality is not the right place. too much fantasy, not enough reality. fantasy is all well and good for fun and games, but don’t go around actually believing in it! that is nothing but foolishness. now probably half the people who read this will disagree with pretty much everything i said in this post. but that is always true. let us at least be civil. i, for one, will reform my ways and act civil, if anyone posts any comments here that are insulting. anyway, the level of intellectual discourse on the internet on sites popular with people younger than me is pretty low. people need to learn to behave themselves. and as for religion, i am glad it is not government-subsidized in the united states like in europe. i would rather have my taxpayer dollars embezzled by corrupt politicians than have them spent on religion. the only church tax that should exist is a tax on churches. i find it remarkable that europeans are willing to put up with having their governments openly subsidize religious groups. after all, religion is much less popular in europe than in the united states. i guess wherever you are, atheists and atheism are still very unpopular. then again, what is popular is not always right and what is right is not always popular, as the saying goes. the popularity of religion does not prove it is true. rather, quite the reverse. because religion is what the uneducated, underpaid masses of poor people around the world believe, it is probably not true. wealthy, well-educated people are probably much closer to finding the truth. and the wealthiest man in the world is an atheist.