This one's for the religious people (grumpy rant)

[andygates]

You're all idiots.  Lock yourselves in a nice dark pit and fight it out, won't you?  I'm sick of being told I should give a damn about one set of invisible sky daddy rubbish or another.  I don't.  I never will.  The two-thousand-year-old one is no more nor less preposterous than the fourteen-hundred-year-old one, and don't whatever you do expect me to take sides just because I'm a white guy who grew up near some other white guys who think that the two-thousand-year-old-one is groovy.

I've rejected you all.  You all failed my basic tests.  Hell, you failed my tests when I was fourteen.  The only relevance you have is a dull background throb of tradition, but frankly, Dean Street and church bells are on an aesthetic and romantic par with a minaret and a call to prayer.  If you tell me "but they are horrid to X-group" well, tough titty, you're horrid too.  You've all got obsolete irrelevant morality based on fossil books written by people who were nothing like you. 

Frankly if Jesus came down to Earth dancing a can-can with Mohammed right now, I'd ask why they both came up with such bollocks. 

So please, take your jumped-up desert wights* and feck off because the rest of us, we can just get along.  The only thing stopping us is you fantasist nutters and your un-debateable a priori declarations of faith.  I can't debate those: debate takes place within a framework of a priori declarations.  There's no point.  Might as well discuss gun control with an American.  And that faith queers the pitch for everything you touch.  Holy Land?  It's a fucking desert full of burned-out vehicles and sheep skulls.  Big fucking deal.  You want to waste the attention and resources of the world on a scrap of dirt because an old book says it's nifty?  You go on right ahead and fuck each other up all you like.  Don't expect me to give a runny crap.  And don't expect me to tolerate you poisoning anyone else with that drivel you call belief either.

Yeah.  Right now I'm pretty much channelling Dawkins. 


* Best description evar, RB. 

Comments

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Spend as much time with Coyote as I do and some of it rubs off.

I'm going to feel a little queasy at the thought of Coyote rubbing off on me all day now.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I know.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

The really sad, pathetic, effing tragic part of this whole deal is that it's not even [insert Deity here]'s fault. It's entirely the fault of the people. We're back to that whole tribal thing, and how we are still fundamentally apes fighting over territory. The only difference between humans and chimps screaming at one another is that the humans are fighting over land with cultural significance.

Way to go culture. For every Sistine Chapel there's a suicide bomber. For every Miserere there's a 4 year old evangelist yelling that we're all going to burn in Hell.

Personally I'd be quite happy to round them all up, dump them in their desert with a load of ordinance, and let them fight it out. Once they've killed each other we can either put an impassable fence around the survivors and keep them as an exhibit (When Culture Goes Wrong) to show the grandkids, or bury the remains if there are no survivors.

I have no time for fundamentalists of any stripe. Simply because THEY'RE MISSING THE DAMN POINT.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

It's entirely the fault of the people.

JC: "God is love"

Fred Phelps: "God hates fags"

I can't really disagree with you, can I? :)

[teahisme.livejournal.com]

This above all things, Do unto others as you would have done unto you.

Pretty sure that means don't kill people unless you want them to open a can of whoopass* on you.

One of my all time favorite bumper stickers said: "Religion Ruled the Dark Ages."

anything in particular that precipitated this rant Andy?

Whats so great about virgins anyway?

*southern american phrase

[andygates.livejournal.com]

The Golden Rule is all well and good. I prefer the Bill and Ted angle: "Be excellent to one another, and party on, dudes!"

What tripped this rant? A combination of some awful telly covering a tourist trip to Megiddo full of happy-clappy fuckheads and some news reports of the Usual Shit. Oh, and reactionary, racist screed from otherwise-moderate frightened Little Englanders terrified of a Call to Prayer being piped out of Oxford's central mosque.

Frankly, they're pussies. Their memes are weak and they know it. Unfortunately, frightened and weak is exactly the conditions that spawn violent, idiotic white-pride drivel. I have a special hate and pity for white-pride idiots and the less of that crap the better. But I'm not hopeful.

[teahisme.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, frightened and weak is exactly the conditions that spawn violent, idiotic white-pride drivel. I have a special hate and pity for white-pride idiots and the less of that crap the better. But I'm not hopeful.

This is a true statement without the white pride drivel. It is true for all races and creeds. The fear of lack of control often lends itself to people buying into a "greater" notion such as, "all the world should be just like me or perish. I will be saving them from hell or sending them straight where they belong." I mean the RCC did it for ages, crusades, inquisition anyone? Everyone get their turn. It does bum me out if I think too much on it though.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Frightened and weak is also all in the mind. Fear is internal unless there's a velociraptor in the room. Weakness is one of these weird positions that people adopt even though they're in the incumbent majority (and it's here that the white-pride junk kicks in because here, the white guys are the incumbent majority - and they're the feeble ones. No reason for it at all.)

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

[teahisme.livejournal.com]

You are quoting FDR. Foucault has some funky ideas of weak/strong, dominant/submissive relationships in society. All this stemmed from religion. Faith is not the bad thing. The negative comes from all the junk people try to add to faith in something. Some people do not have faith in a greater power solely out of fear, but for other personal reasons. Also, you are blaming the WASPs of the world for all its ills. They aren't the only weak and frightened people though.

[shifty-176.livejournal.com]

Channelling Dawkins? Sounds more like the bastard offspring of him and Brigstocke to me.

Did I really just have that mind picture? Ew.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Oooh! There you are!

[shifty-176.livejournal.com]

Who, me? just a recent addition to the LJ userbase. Still finding out what all the buttons do, which is the simplest rendition of my life story.

Is it polite to talk over Mr Gates' fence like this, without addressing him directly? (modern manners dilemma No.27, special 'interwebness' edition)

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Munky won't mind, as long as we don't make a habit of it.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

You carry on, I'll get the tea. :)

[despaer.livejournal.com]

To be fair, religious belief also motivates people to behave in a better way to each other than might otherwise be the case. It is no coincidence that most of the mainstream church groups have a collection of society's dregs welcomed into them.

All religions are simply the sum of the people who make them up. Some people are nice and some are shits. Their shared belief is not much more than a coincidence of upbringing.