The Farce Series – Religion

Alex Davies continues his farce series with a look at religion.

Now, religion… a dangerous game, but to hell with it.

 

At the end of the day, I write this with all organised religion in front of the crosshairs, yet loosely belonging to one of them makes it easier to scrutinise what I know. Well, I say belong. I used to be an active member of a church, and it taught me a lot. I met many good people there, but none of them were any better than some of the others I already knew. It began a niggle in the back of my mind which I could never really get rid of. What gives us the right? Well, I find it offensive when a salesman tells me I suit an article of clothing, or a pair of shoes. Maybe even some earrings.

 

I find it insulting mainly for the reason that it is their job and frankly, I would probably hear more sincerity from other shoppers than the staff. It is simple really, a shop worker who discourages a customer from buying anything rather than something else will probably not be the proud owner of their job for too long. In the same way that a car salesman who talked a customer into walking into the next forecourt up the road because they stock a bigger engine size would. So why would they tell me the truth? To me, religion is pretty much the same thing.

What gives -let’s say- a Christian the right to try and convert non-believers to their religion? Do they weigh up every other religion and help you decide which, if any, suits you best? Which one fits your own understanding of the universe and your own private spirituality the closest? No. They tell you that their religion is the real one. At the end of the day if you follow logic and science, you find yourself needing proof before you can commit to a religion, in the same way you can’t pick a wife from a picture, but you yourself are then wrong for not having faith.

Well, y’know what? I had faith in Gordon Brown, I had faith Fern Britton and Phil;ip Schofield would go on forever. So fuck faith.

I would rather believe that life is all there is than believe I should follow a bound set of inconsistencies in a single book, written by hundreds of men, over hundreds of years, and translated more times than cares to be mentioned. Frankly, and maybe just to me, anyone who follows a book like the bible to the letter hasn’t thought it through. Hell, anyone who followed the word of a god that was written by a man clearly isn’t the brightest. Especially when every god stresses the point that no man is perfect.

So which one of these fallible folk tasked with writing down god’s word didn’t maybe make a slight cock-up? You can’t seriously tell me that not a single sausage misheard the booming voice from above. Or maybe, more maliciously, edited the booming voice into something that would be more beneficial to them? Pose that to any true Christian and you’ll be met with as much grace as a yellow-fin tuna that pops its head out of the water to wave to that big metal fish up there.

This string of logic applies to all religions, all faiths that have been developed after the fact. Faiths that have holy books written by collectives rather than one voice. The only clear exception that comes to mind is Buddhism, but that is not a religion of deities, that is a way of life.

Years ago, I was told by my physics teacher when posing the question of being both a Christian and an enquirer, that energy can be converted to mass under the right conditions. It may have helped more at this present moment if i had asked what those conditions were but the point he made still stands. With his brief explanation it became easy to believe that some energy became an unstable ball of gas, that gas, as we postulate, caused the big bang. The rest is pretty much academic really, the only real question is where that energy came from.

The answer to that to me is some greater being. Not some deity, not some perfect being… just something we do not understand. I believe that if that entity had intended us to be the way we are, and for things to happen the way they did and still do, then it must surely just want us to live and work together in harmony.

Please though, do not let me be mistook for an angry atheist with a hidden agenda, i’d like to think my agenda is pretty clear. A militant atheist who tells a believer they are wrong, is just as bad as a believer who tells an atheist they are condemned. Women are most certainly our equals, (most of the women I know personally, appear to be our superiors for that matter). Does that give a militant feminist the right to discriminate against a man? Is that equality? That is my agenda, in all aspects of life. I am far from perfect, I judge and prejudge, but I am not claiming myself to be perfect, I am just trying to say, in my own unique way, can’t we all just get along?

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