Grow the hell up

[innocent_lex]

I'm sick and tired of religious people - those who claim over and over and over to have ownership of morality and what's right, who claim that they're all about peace - threatening each other with violence over the smallest and most pointless bollocks. I'm coming down firmly on the side of utter disgust. I'm beginning to approve of Dara O'Briain's approach: stick 'em all in a sack and beat them with a stick.

And here I'm going to come out and say it, because it's my reality: nobody's invisible friend is any better than anyone else's invisible friend. The fact that people are claiming their invisible friends urge them to behave this way is no excuse at all. It's pathetic, it's horrifying, it's infantile and if this is what we've brought ourselves to as a species, then we're all fucking useless.

Grow up. Seriously. The amount of killing and maiming and torture and abuse that goes on in the name of 'truth' is fucking disgusting.

Also: the sack reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RstwLzikmvA

Comments

[amymccabe.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with this. 100%

[innocent-lex.livejournal.com]

It's reassuring to know I'm not the only one really fed up.

[captain-tiv.livejournal.com]

AMEN! :)

I gave up on religion a long time ago. Whether it's a multi-billion dollar recognized religion or a cult, there are too many con artists and fear mongers involved.

That parochial school I went to was a real eye opener. I bought what they told me for a long time then I had my epiphany one day when the preacher made an insult. That was like BOOM! All those lies they told me unraveled at that particular moment for me. Now, I look around at so much of the nonsense going on, and I want to scream. I hear it, and I can actually feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end. And people believe this stuff!

Too many churches are hate factories. They teach you to hate everybody else for doing what they do themselves. Mom goes to a fundamentalist baptist church and she doesn't see it even when I point out what the preacher said. She just ignores it, but she understands why I don't go and doesn't ask me to go anymore. Take her Sunday School teacher -- he says when he sees Jehovah's Witnesses going door to door to tell people about God, he goes insides, locks his door and doesn't answer when they ring because he says their beliefs are heretical and he doesn't want to run the risk of damning his soul (although in the next breath he says he couldn't be any more saved now than he was the day he got saved :: headdesk ::). Now, what do these baptists do? They go door to door trying to tell people about God, but they call it "soul winning," and since they're baptists, they're not heretical like the Jehovah's Witnesses. Mom never saw the irony in that until I mentioned it to her.

Besides being a hate factory, it's a load of hypocrisy. Boy, could I tell some stories about the nonsense I grew up with. It's all a con job and a shell game. Oh, and they don't want you to question. They don't want you to think. They want you to just accept and believe without doubt that they're absolutely 100% right and everybody else is wrong.

And the worst part about all this? It's in every religion on the planet, I'd say. I agree with you 100%. Let's stick 'em in a sack.

[amymccabe.livejournal.com]

Yeah. My mother's side is pretty fundamentalist Christian too. For a bunch of people that calm to follow a guy/God that hung out with lepers and prostitutes and extolled the virtues of not judging people and loving all people, they're pretty quick to damn and what nothing to do with homosexuals, bisexuals, people with conflicting political beliefs, people of other religions, etc...

[captain-tiv.livejournal.com]

Gandhi said it best -- I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

[innocent-lex.livejournal.com]

Your tales of school range from horrifying to how-is-it-possible-to-believe-this-stuff awful. And you're right, it does appear to be every religion.

[captain-tiv.livejournal.com]

They use the old guilt trip of "you'll go to hell if you don't believe 100%" or "it's sinful to question what we say." They use it on little kids who have no defenses because they're not old enough to realize that it's opinion and not fact. Then when these kids grow up, they feel absolutely guilty to even question what they were told. It's a scary bit of brainwashing.

[corbyinoz.livejournal.com]

From your mouth to God's ea - whoops.

Yes. Serenely, for ever an ever, yes. I find my blood pressure rising when Christians 'debate' (and never was that word used more loosely) with atheists and write things such as 'there can be no joy, no love, no right or wrong without God'. No joy? You dare to tell me, a card-carrying Perlist (Physical Evidence and Reasoned Logic) that I have no joy? What a presumptuous arse you are, sir. I do not feel love when I hold my child? I have no sense of the numinous when I watch a sunset, hold a baby, see the glory of Jensen Ackles' butt in low-slung jeans, pour the perfect Irish whisky, read the hottest porn - oh, wait. I get it. The only sense of love and awe is one defined by you and your narrow-minded ilk.

I whooped with non-Christian joy when I read that line from Bill Maher - "Since when did we decide faith was a virtue?" Why should we ever think that the ability to be supremely uncritical in your thinking was a good thing? If that were true, people could be manipulated to work as tiny cogs in vast corporate machines for ridiculously low wages and not only never question it, they'd actually vote for the people who kept them there.

Oh, wait. Gosh, could there possibly be a link between the advocation of faith and the sustaining of a dodgy powerbase??

Nah. I'm just a godless heathen. I'll be over here with my Jensen and porn and kid and friends and happy and moral life. Pay me no mind while you send each other to each other's hells.

[innocent-lex.livejournal.com]

Wait, you have cards for that? Was that by mail-order? You can get anything via the internet these days. Or so I hear. *ahem*

I've been avoiding the news today, because it's loaded with 'statements' from every stoopid leader with an opinion, interspersed with scenes of rioting and threats of violence. It's just more and more disappointing. Apparently a lot of people aren't happy unless they know they have power over other people's lives. Is that nature or nurture? Are we doomed as a species to be such arseholes?

BTW: The Dara O'Briain thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RstwLzikmvA (I just added it to the post).

Also? Nice arse. Really. It's good to have a show to watch where the two leads are such a joy to watch. And their acting's not bad, either. *ba boom!*

Numinous, eh? New word of the day, and very appropriate re discussion of shows and backsides. Still couldn't beat callipygian.

[corbyinoz.livejournal.com]

Numinous is a good word. And my Small actually has a callypgian arse, as does her father. And yes, they are very cute.

Oh! I'd only seen Dara on the 'Three men and a boat' thingies, but I followed your links and he's an absolute hoot. Thank you for that.

[superbadgirl]

I mean: word.

;)

[khek.livejournal.com]

Amen! Or, er...something like that.

I also want to shake the media who allow these crazy religious fanatics to have even more of a voice. Once they've proven they're insane, why do they keep giving them more air time? Ratings apparently outrank common sense.

[innocent-lex.livejournal.com]

I suspect it makes them feel better about not having any real news to report, or at least not bothering to make the effort over real news.

As an example, the big quake happened in Christchurch. NZ is pretty well connected to the UK, with lots of Brit ex-pats living there. So what did we hear all about? Some cricket betting scandal, for days and days on end. As if it actually mattered.

And now we have days on end of this craptastic nonsense, as if it actually mattered. Let the arsehole be a bigot - we don't have to hear about it.

[geminia905.livejournal.com]

Bravo!

It's that kind of petty, small-minded hypocrisy that helped drive me away from organized religion and led me to embrace Paganism.

I've gotten into several arguments with people over here who can't seem to get it through their heads that TERRORISTS attacked this country 9 years ago, not MUSLIMS. Somehow they can never seem to answer me when I ask them if every Muslim has to take responsibility for crimes committed by people CLAIMING to follow Muhammad, are all Christians going to take responsibility for the MILLIONS of innocents who have been tortured and murdered by those CLAIMING to follow Jesus?

[captain-tiv.livejournal.com]

I had a very similar conversation not too long ago on some message board. I don't even remember how we got on the subject, but it was basically them saying "We were attacked by Muslims on 9/11" so therefore all Muslims were terrorists.

I countered with "Using that philosophy, we were attacked by Christians in Oklahoma City. Does that mean all Christians are terrorists?"

They got into a bit of a huff and didn't say anything after that.

[geminia905.livejournal.com]

Good one! The Maternal Unit always says it's not nice to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent, but there are times it can be downright satisfying.

[captain-tiv.livejournal.com]

And fun. :)

[innocent-lex.livejournal.com]

Don't get me started on that road. This particular man is a bigoted arsehole; logic does not extend that Christians are therefore all bigoted arseholes. We all have our own mistakes and ways we've harmed others to live with and to deal with - let's not make people own things that have nothing to do with them.

[captain-tiv.livejournal.com]

I agree 100%!

I keep wondering where all this comes from. It seems to come in waves. There'll be a few years with nothing really "big" happening on the religious or bigoted radar, then KABOOM! Something takes off, everyone takes sides and it becomes a big battle of "my God is bigger than your God and he can beat your God up!"

[innocent-lex.livejournal.com]

But, but, but... they're the same thing!

You're right, and it's a worrying conflation that gets made in far too many heads these days. There are a lot of these conflations, and they all seem to be owned by the people on the side of bigotry (like homophobes and religious bigots and racists and sexists and on and on).

Around my side of the world, there's still a lot of people who talk about Germany as if it's a country run by Nazis. That was a long time ago, it was horrifying, it's still around in tiny cliques, but it's generally over. I don't see how getting people who weren't born at the time, let alone involved, to apologise helps anyone at all.