Godless And Free (3 page)

5.
What Do I Believe?

March 28, 2007

I’ve just had an e-mail from a Christian who says: “You’re very quick to mock other people’s beliefs, but what do you believe?”

It’s a fair question. I believe that if God exists he’s either insane or dead.

I believe that if you’ve got nothing but scripture between your ears, then you’ve got nothing between your ears.

I believe that if the Bible is the word of God, and if the Koran is the word of God, then God must have two words, and I believe I can guess what they are as well.

But then I believe you won’t find the truth in any book; you have to look within.

(I don’t know where that came from; I must have read it somewhere.)

I believe that the Holy Land is the most inappropriate place name in human history, with the possible exception of Sunderland’s Stadium of Light.

And I believe that Jesus Christ, if he ever existed, is dead, and he’s going to stay dead just like everybody else.

But if by some miracle he did come back, I believe he’d be embarrassed to be worshipped, ashamed of Christianity, and disgusted by Christians. Because I believe that telling someone they’ll burn forever in hell is a form of psychological assault which should be outlawed like any other nasty little hate crime.

I believe the Christian Church itself in particular is an evil carbuncle on the soul of humanity which is actively engaged in carrying out the express work of Satan.

And if you’re offended by this then that’s too bad, because I also believe that nobody has the right not to be offended, and anyone who thinks they do (
holds up middle finger
) can sit on this and swivel.

I believe there’s more spirituality in a single flower than in all the sanctimonious sky pilots who have ever lived. And that’s why I believe there should be a link between Church and state – all clergy should go to prison for fraud.

I believe that the only heaven you’ll ever know is right here on earth. And if you can’t see that, you are not really looking.

I believe that faith-based education is a social cancer which serves only to produce new generation of ignorant bigots, and I believe that indoctrinating children with this repressive medieval bullshit should be vigorously prosecuted as child abuse.

I believe that religious belief itself is a form of mental illness which has outstayed its welcome on this planet and should now be relegated back to the realm of tarot cards and crystal balls where it belongs.

If you have to worship something try worshipping something real, like the planet that gave you life, because it’s the best friend you ever had. And I believe it’s the only friend you will ever have. Peace.

6.
Happy Easter

April 5, 2007

Happy Easter, everyone. Yes, it’s that time of year again when we celebrate one of the oldest Christian traditions, the blood sacrifice.

Just as two thousand years ago God sent his son to die for our sins because he didn’t have the balls to do it himself, so Bush and Blair now send other people’s sons to die for their sins for much the same reason.

But this is not really a time for politics, is it? This is a very special week, as we know, because this week it’s all about the Easter bunny being nailed to a hot cross bun so that he can come back and redeem mankind at some point in the future.

It’s often said that Jesus could have saved himself, but he chose not to. And if you read the Gospels it’s clear he could have talked himself out of that crucifixion quite easily, but he was just too stubborn. The Romans didn’t really want to kill him at all, but in the end they went along with it because he was being such a prick about it.

The truth is he couldn’t wait to get up on that cross. In fact I think Christianity only exists because Jesus Christ just happened to be a masochist. I think he took one look at the hammer and nails and he couldn’t believe his luck. He thought: “In three days I’ll be in heaven, but until then I’m going to enjoy myself.”

Now this, of course, is just a theory, I want to emphasise that, because nobody knows what really happened. The Gospels are not eye-witness accounts. The evangelists never made it to the crucifixion. Couldn’t get tickets, I guess. Once they knew Mel Gibson was coming I’m sure everybody wanted to be there.

And, to be fair to him, he has made what is now probably the definitive movie on the Easter story –
The Passion of the Christ
, which, when it first came out, was subjected to quite a lot of criticism and abuse, mainly because it’s a cynical piece of gratuitous trash aimed at simple-minded born again plankton.

For this reason, though, it made a lot of money, so now some Hollywood studios get a panel of Christians to vet their movies before release to ensure they won’t offend any ignorant born again shitkickers who might happen to be watching. The future looks bright for American culture, wouldn’t you say? I wonder if years from now we’ll look back and say: Poor America, it could have saved itself, but it chose not to?

As for Jesus himself, well, every day for the last two thousand years he’s been on the verge of coming back to redeem us all, but he hasn’t actually shown up yet, and to be perfectly honest with you I’m not a bit surprised. Put yourself in his position. Would you come back if you were him? I wouldn’t, but then I wouldn’t have come in the first place, so I might be the wrong person to ask.

The only thing that bothers me about all this is that when Jesus does arrive to dispense his particular brand of justice he’s only going to save the people who believe in him, and the rest of us, the non-believers, will be consigned to the eternal flames of hellfire.

But where’s the justice there? Whatever happened to: “Do unto others as you would be done by” – or is that all being quietly forgotten now?

And how ironic, too, that I am now being victimised as a non-believer. I’m being persecuted for my beliefs, by Jesus Christ, the one person who you really would expect to know better. He could save me but he’s choosing not to. What a Judas.

Still, on the other hand nobody’s perfect, so I’ll forgive him. Why not? I’m in a good mood. It’s Easter. Peace.

7.
Absolute Certainty

April 13, 2007

Although I’m an atheist, I prefer to think of myself as an agnostic fundamentalist. In other words I don’t know, I don’t think anyone else knows either, and anyone who disagrees with me is a filthy infidel swine. I’m sorry about that last bit, but apparently those are the rules.

Of course it’s fun to speculate, and it’s been human nature ever since the first caveman watched an eagle soaring above the clouds and thought to himself: “I wonder what that tastes like. Might be nice with potatoes and gravy.”

We’ve always speculated about what might lie beyond the stars, an activity a bit like theology, only without all the cast iron certainties.

And it’s fun to speculate about the big questions like the meaning of life, because you never know, somebody might actually come up with the answer. So far nobody has, which would explain why there are so many expert opinions on the subject.

But there’s just something about human beings when it comes to the unknown, that we don’t seem able to just wonder about something and speculate creatively, maybe have a bit of fun with it. No, not us. Instead we like to decide beyond all possible doubt without a single shred of evidence. We prefer to nail our colours to the mast before we even know if there’s a ship attached to it, and often we’ll defend that position to the death. If that doesn’t qualify as serious mental illness I would love to be briefed on what exactly does qualify, and why.

It’s unfortunate that many people on this planet seem to believe the very first thing they’re told, and stick with it for the rest of their life.

Not only does it remain unexamined, but any attempt to challenge it is taken as a grievous insult.

Clearly those early few months and years of life are a very sensitive time, and whatever ideas are imprinted into the soft putty of the unformed mind at that stage stay there pretty much forever.

And yet for some reason here in the civilised world it’s still perfectly legal for us to indoctrinate our children with the most hateful and divisive absurdities it would be possible to imagine (and imagine them we have), creating in them not young vibrant healthy inquiring minds, but rather stunted little freakish bonsai minds that are no use to anyone but a bloodsucking preacher.

We not only allow this abuse, we actively encourage it. We throw public money at it when we’d be better off subsidising the tobacco industry, because that does less harm. At least cigarettes carry a health warning. How about a mental health warning on the holy scriptures?

Especially now that, for the first time since the middle ages, faith and politics go together like sex and violence, only this time space-age weapons are controlled by stone-age minds, and right now, especially in the Middle East, things are shaping up quite nicely to blow us all to kingdom come. Except that no kingdom is going to come, because this is the kingdom. It has already come, and we’re already living the dream.

Religion knows this, but it doesn’t want us to know it, because then it would no longer have any reason to exist. So instead it seeks to place itself, to position itself, between us and our experience. A self-appointed filter. A parasite.

Now maybe that’s OK with you. Maybe you’re fine with that because maybe you don’t want experience. Maybe you prefer dreams. Maybe you want your head to go to that special place where God wreaks vengeance on anyone whose lifestyle you don’t personally happen to approve of, and where Jesus strokes you like a puppy dog. Well, if that’s the case then you might as well take drugs, because you’re already on the most dangerous drug there is.

Absolute certainty is a drug that can make people do the strangest things. It’s the devil’s drug, and you don’t want to be around anyone who’s on that stuff, because they’re no longer in control. You can see it in their eyes, the drug is controlling them, so that suddenly no action is too callous or too spiteful or too cruel to be justified.

And if you get hooked on it, and if you keep taking it, you too could wake up one day so full of righteousness that suddenly the only thing that makes sense to you any more is somebody else’s death.

And you’ll realise that your mind is no longer your best friend.

So if somebody offers you absolute certainty, they’re going to make it sound attractive, and you will be tempted, but just say no. Your mind, and your children’s minds, will thank you for it, and that really is an absolute certainty. Peace.

8.
Religion in the UK

April 17, 2007

Hi everyone. I’ve been asked by ptolemi* to say a few words about religion here in Britain.

ont color="#000">Well, as you probably know, we’re a Christian country like you are in America. We’re not quite as Christian as you are because, after all, you’ve still got the death penalty, but traditionally we practise a form of Christianity almost as psychopathically disengaged from the message of Christ as you do, although nowadays we’re more of a multifaith society. And what that means in practice is that everybody wants respect but nobody wants to give any, so we all get offended at the drop of a hat, or a turban – it doesn’t make much difference. Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews. Everybody, it seems, has some sort of beef (except the Hindus, obviously).

Everybody complains in Britain that religion doesn’t get enough respect, and yet there are sixteen churches within a ten minute walk of my house, not to mention mosques and temples and synagogues and all the other assorted wendy houses of the soul that cover this land from top to bottom like a plague of boils. And yet religion doesn’t get enough respect?

It pays no tax on corporate profits, it’s allowed to indoctrinate children from birth, yet it doesn’t get enough respect?

Well, excuse me, but even the royal family doesn’t get quite that much respect, and they’re treated like royalty.

A third of all the schools in Britain are single faith schools, financially supported by the government.

Teachers are against this. In fact, just this week teachers demanded a ban on all faith schools because they encourage segregation and prejudice, so naturally the government is creating even more of them, because our prime minister is a well-known Christian hypocrite who has publicly endorsed the teaching of creationism in schools.

Meanwhile, schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons, in case Muslim children who have been taught to hate Jews feel compelled to say something anti-Semitic. We don’t want to embarrass the Muslim kids by showing up their parents as hate-mongering bigots, because that would be disrespectful to their faith.

I’m just wondering how long before we start referring to it as the Holocaust theory, for the sake of community relations.

Christians, meanwhile, are becoming a lot more vocal here in Britain because they’re worried about the growth of Islam. They don’t want to see the country swamped by a new foreign religion. They’d rather keep the old foreign religion, the one that stole the pagans’ festivals and burned them all as witches in the name of Jesus the merciful.

The Church of England is doing its best to keep the flame alive, so to speak. The Church is very much part of the establishment here in Britain. We even let some of its bishops sit in Parliament and help decide our laws, which explains why we’re still not allowed to go shopping on Easter Sunday.

The Church of England was originally established about five hundred years ago primarily to allow King Henry VIII to abandon and murder his wives with God’s blessing, but now that purpose has been served it’s become something of a joke organisation which is often referred to as the Conservative Party in drag.

Right now the leaders of the Church are preoccupied, not with homelessness or poverty or injustice, but whether it’s right for one man to insert his penisinto another man’s anus in private. This is what they’re focussed on, and we all know that you get what you focus on, which is probably why half of them joined the Church in the first place.

One person I do feel a little sorry for, though, is the Archbishop of Canterbury – the most important clergyman in Britain, and he’s only got two lousy palaces to live in. What sort of life is that for a man of God? I bet if Jesus came back even he’d be embarrassed for him. I bet he wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye.

But anyway that’s pretty much how things stand here in Britain. Religion is alive and well, in the sense that a crocodile that’s swimming towards you is alive and well, and its influence is growing as steadily as a clergyman’s penis in a roomful of choirboys.

But here now, as in America, people are starting to speak out against this creeping insanity, and who knows, if enough of us do it maybe one day humanity will come to its senses and we can finally put this fake God into a rocket ship and send the silly old fool back into thin air where he came from. I’m looking forward to it. Peace.

* YouTube user.