What Is Wrong with Religion?

Objections to ‘Faith’ Now hope that is seen is not hope,for who hopes for what he sees? Romans 8:24–25

 There are thousands of variations of religion, which suggests that its roots lies in something inherent in the human animal brain, albeit a misinterpretation of some natural by-product of natural selection but the fact that there are so many variations attests to its falsehood.They can’t all be right. It is perhaps an artefact of expanding consciousness or an expression of humanity wondering about its place in the universe but one that is observed through religious falsehood. We all may share a sense of the numinous but it doesn’t mean we’re all right about its interpretation. Why should Christianity be any more relevant than Navaho beliefs?  Only because certain men say it is and nothing more. 
When backed into a corner the theist will then produce what he considers to be his trump card. That trump card is ‘faith’. By using the word ‘faith’, the theist is actually agreeing with the atheist. ‘You’re right,there is no evidence that proves my god exists.’ Faith is the last redoubt, the last rampart to hide behind.As there is no evidence for god, the atheist is told, often in patronisin tones, to accept the vacuous idea of faith, which is nothing more than wishful thinking. Faith is a desire, a hope that something might turn out to be true against all evidence to the contrary. A theist may believe that god exists, may have faith, but nothing is there save dreams and phantoms.

 Bertrand Russell said:

We may define ‘faith’as a firm belief in something for
which there is no evidence. When there is evidence,no one
speaks of ‘faith’. We do not speak of faith that two and two
are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when
we wish to substitute emotion for evidence.


Something quite bizarre as well as revealing happens when a priest lectures his congregation about faith.What he or she is saying is that it’s better to believe through faith than evidence because there isn’t any of the latter. It’s an admission that the answers are unavailable. Faith is a magician’s trick, a sleight of hand used to confuse and befuddle. Derren Brown, in his televi- sion programmes, tells the audience that all he does depends on mind tricks and psychology. If only the priesthood could be that honest. Interestingly, in one of his shows, Derren Brown used psychological techniques to make believers out of atheists and atheists out of believers. If it’s that easy, surely religious experi- ence has a more prosaic source than believers contend. Put simply, theists have been duped.


When a man who, say, is supposed to have killed his wife is brought before a court, the jury demand evidence for the charge – even a jury made up entirely of theists. No one would accept the accusation of murder if the prosecution said they had no evidence to back it up but they did have faith that he was the murderer. Nothing else, just faith. Not a court in the land would find the alleged murderer guilty. But this is exactly what happened in the witch trials. The prosecution in such cases were simply acting on faith. Look at the destruction their faith caused. If all the theist has is faith, they have nothing at all.


Dan Barker in Losing Faith in Faith:From Preacher to Atheist wrote:




The only proposed answer was faith, and I gradually grew to dislike the smell of that word. I finally realized that faith is a cop-out,a defeat – an admis- sion that the truths of religion are unknowable through evidence and reason. It is only undemonstrable assertions that require the suspension of reason, and weak ideas that require faith. I just lost faith in faith. Biblical contra- dictions became more and more discrepant,apologist arguments more and more absurd and, when I finally discarded faith,things became more and more clear.



Faith is often a motivator for war. We have seen this  in the invasion of Iraq. President Bush talks about faith in his actions and faith in god who told him to invade. Stirring up the national psyche on the basis of faith is both idiotic and lethal. People die over unsubstantiated nonsense. (How can that be moral?) Faith can supposedly move mountains but why does that have to include mass slaughter? Through faith, humanity can be duped into religious or political compliance.


God’s Benevolence?
Charity shall cover the multitude of sins… 
Peter. 4: 8 

Is God willing to prevent evil,but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able,but not willing? then he is malevolent.Is he both able and
willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
Epicurus

Theists claim that many of their charity organisations look after the needy, the hungry and those less fortunate.This is admirable indeed but does it not involve an implicit statement that their god is pretty useless? If he was a benevolent entity, why are there all the hungry children dying by their thousands every day? Some claim that the suffering are there to teach man a lesson – to be better people. Evil teaches humanity the ideas of good.This is a disgusting concept – that most of the world should suffer in order for others to learn from their misfortunes.This excuse is the last refuge of the worst kind of theistic apologist.

As Douglas E. Krueger writes in What is Atheism?:

God must not be too bright,on this view,if he can’t
think of any way to impart knowledge of good other
than to slaughter billions of people throughout human
history.If god is omnipotent why can’t he just put the
idea of good into our heads,without killing someone?

How easy would that be, for a god? If he wants us to worship him as a benevolent deity, then why all the death and destruction, often done in his name? In the universe of an omnipotent, loving deity, all would be well. If, as the old expression has it, there are no atheists in foxholes, how is it that god allowed the country to be at war in the first place when thousands of people, including theists, would necessarily die?
 One of the oldest and most obvious forms of evidence for the non-existence of god is the prevalence of evil in the world. How can a deity or deities who claim to be all-powerful, and benevo- lent, allow such horrors to continue.Theists have tied them- selves in knots to explain this but have yet to come up with anything remotely like a common sense answer.They never will. The old cop out – that ‘it’s just god moving in a mysterious way’– is lazily employed.The more stupid argument is that god gave us evil so that we can be better people. Innocents have to die in order to make us better individuals. It would be hard to find anything more blindly arrogant than that belief.Three-year-old children die lonely deaths, far from home, at the hands of murderers just so we can learn about god? Six million Jews, homosexuals, intellectuals, atheists, and handicapped people die in the gas chambers so we can know god? A suicide bomber sets off his bomb in a crowded market so we can understand god? This is truly despicable thinking and brooks no excuses.
 It should be noted that theists like to attribute the word ‘evil’ to events such as tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, floods and droughts.These are not evil.They are part of the natural processes of the Earth.A devil does not stoke magma beneath Mount Etna.These occurrences are what they are – amoral events in the natural world – and labelling them as evil provides further evidence of humanity’s ridiculous and juvenile predilec- tion for anthropomorphising everything.

Religion as a False Construct of Myth
The Christian religion not only was at first attended
by miracles,but even at this day cannot be believed
by any reasonable person without one.
David Hume, 
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. 
Stanley Kubrick

We have seen how, in the very short period of time since 1947, the UFO myth has been blown out of all proportion.The reporter who spoke of Kenneth Arnold’s experience of witnessing ‘strange craft’ near Mount Rainier in 1947 – the event which kickstarted the modern UFO craze – was the one who described them as ‘flying saucers’.Arnold did not. It would be interesting to see how things would have turned out had the reporter said ‘flying oblongs’ in his radio broadcast.Would ‘flying oblongs’ have become the norm of observed phenomena? Distortions are often the root of myths and legends – and of religion. 
 In the case of flying saucers, a mistake, (much like the idea of the ‘virgin birth’, or The Great Commission i.e. the big monothe- istic religions just out to convert people which is nothing more than a mistranslation of the Greek word, matheteuo – to teach), has developed into full-blown myth.The whole flying saucer ‘mystery’, like all pseudo-scientific and religious beliefs, is the result of one long game of Chinese whispers.Take the Roswell incident, for example. Not only is this now a massive money- spinner but also a whole religio-philosophy has been built up around something that never happened.A myth was born and, over the relatively short time frame of 60 years, it has become a legend far greater than the sum of it parts.The Roswell incident has been explained – it was the consequence of a top-secret nuclear detection system under the code name Project Mogul – but there are countless believers out there who refuse to accept this and are on their own quest for the ‘truth’.
People have great difficulty in reaching, or perhaps are unwilling to reach, consensus about something that happened in less than the span of a lifetime.The Kennedy assassination is another classic example. How infinitely more difficult is it to say with certainty what happened two thousand years ago? The passage of time has allowed the myths that make up religion to propagate, develop and evolve until the sources are lost, the truth (if ever there was any) confounded, muted and conspired against even more thoroughly than the truth about the events of Deeley Plaza in 1963. To use any religious book as a reliable source of history is profoundly wrong.
Religion, as a creation, behaves very much like the Star Trek universe or Middle Earth.A basic set of characters and ideas are drawn up which are then added to over the years by fans, adher- ents etc. Plots are discussed and debated, character motivations highlighted and pondered, and the morality at the heart of the show or book takes on great significance.The true meanings of the programmes or stories (if any) deepen as time progresses. Star Trek fans meet up and swap icons of the show.There are even some deluded theists who, in one of Christianity’s countless spin- off stories, believe that one day they too are going be‘beamed up’.Star Trek probably has greater relevance to the real world than religion. In many respects, it was not afraid to tackle social issues of all kinds – from acceptance of homosexuality (something the church won’t always do!) to the basic rights of man.And one only has to watch documentaries such as Trekkies to see how seriously followers of the show take it – Klingons doing charity work!
What about the Land of Mordor? Does it exist? There are many books that refer to such a place.There are films that also back up this claim, as well as websites and computer and role- playing games. So Sauron’s a real entity then? Or the ring of power? Some Tolkienites perhaps wish all this to be true; some might actually believe it to be. But is Middle-earth a real place? Well, no. Of course not, and it would be madness to claim that it is. But why stop there? Writers, filmmakers and fans for over 60 years have added to the characters and the history of the make-believe realm, beefing up its ‘reality’.Who is to say that religions might not spring up from Tolkien’s world? 
But the bible’s full of real places, the theists claim. So is Star Trek– San Francisco
Picard really exist? How about Adam or Noah? In short, why should one set of fairy tales be taken as (pun intended) gospel truth while others are seen for what they are – invention. Religion offers comfort? So does Star Trek to countless numbers of fans. So does any myth-based construct.What makes religious myths any more believable? Nothing. 

The freethinker WS Ross (1844–1909), who became an atheist after reading the bible during his studies for the ministry, wrote:
Jack and the beanstalk was just as suitable for the nucleus
of a religious system as Christ and his cross;but the one
has been taken and the other left.

Exactly.

Will Self’s novel,The Book of Dave, is about a London taxi driver who, 500 years in the future, becomes the unwitting instigator of a religion based on writings to his son that he left buried in the garden.This is probably nearer the truth in reflecting the source of their own holy book than any theist would admit.
There is something dangerous and sinister about myths being used to execute great crimes against humanity.What if people used Lord of the Rings as an excuse to murder people of short stature? Silly example? Maybe not.

Just Why Does the Church Fear Atheism?
Peter pumpkin head came to town
Spreading wisdom and cash around
Fed the starving and housed the poor
Showed the Vatican what gold’s for
But he made too many enemies Of the people who would keep us On our knees…
XTC,
The Ballad of Peter Pumpkin Head

 Why is the church so opposed to atheism? This question is rarely asked, if at all.There are, perhaps, several reasons.The most obvious one is that we are told the lie, repeated so often that it is unquestioned, that society’s morality is on the line if we give up faith.This is obvious nonsense. It is evident that religious morality is dubious at best – certainly it is contradictory and muddled. Being willing slaves to a capricious deistic monster is hardly the best way to live but that is exactly how theists who see no harm in mental dictatorship tell us we are supposed to act. 
Theists often make the claim that god has given us free will so that we can make our own minds up.Then, of course, they say he will punish us if we don’t believe in him.They say their god has given us the ability to think for ourselves but that he punishes us for free thought. Numerous theologians – cheery Martin Luther among them – have stated that believers must crush all reason so that they may know god.‘Give up thinking’, in other words.This makes a mockery of the idea that god has given us free will.‘Stop thinking and you can believe anything we tell you.’ This is immoral, to say the least.
Is it more likely that those who preach from the pulpit are the ones living in fear? That in their hearts they know it for what it really is? Surely, theologians who take empty degrees in theism must read about the biblical forgeries, the arguments that it’s all myth, that most of the characters in the bible didn’t exist and have no basis in archaeology or are at best, like Herod who has been re-imagined as a kind of Hollywood villain, gross misrepresentations.
 Do theologians fear the dark? (Yes.) Do they fear that the universe is an amoral place? (It is.) Do they fear that, if humanity was wiped out by natural disaster (or fundamentalist religion), everything would carry on regardless? (It would – without so much as batting the proverbial eyelid.) That we are insignificant on the cosmological scale? (We are.)
The most treasured elements of society are its freedoms and its power of democracy – religion offers neither. Religion is seen as part of the democratic process when it is nothing of the sort. Democracy is not something religious people, particularly at the fundamentalist end of the spectrum, genuinely like. In democracy, we are free to pick and choose but religion, because of the constricting system under which it operates, will not tolerate such freedoms.Theists of all faiths fear the loss of power.
At heart maybe those who shout the most about atheism, science and evolution are the ones who fear that something they believe in may very well turn out to be utter twaddle. (They are right to fear. It is.) Darwinian evolution, which necessarily goes hand in hand with atheism, is one big spotlight to illuminate the dark.That darkness, in the hands of theists, is a powerful tool for compliance.

As Steven Pinker writes in The Blank Slate: 

The religious opposition to evolution is fuelled by
several moral fears.Most obviously,the fact that
evolution challenges the literal truth of the creation
story in the bible and thus the authority religion
draws from it.As one creationist minister put it,
‘If the bible gets it wrong in biology,then why
should I trust the bible when it talks about morality
and salvation’…

The minister shouldn’t, of course.The bible is full of immorality, contradiction and savagery. In fact, to draw inspiration for morality from such a flawed work is a dubious practice at best. Any serious theologian, worth their pillar of salt, knows this.To deny this fact is to deny the very substance of a book that defies reason.

 As Thomas Paine declared: 

 Whenever we read the obscene stories,the voluptuous
debaucheries,the cruel and torturous executions,the
unrelenting vindictiveness,with which more than half
the Bible is filled,it would be more consistent that we
called it the word of a demon,than the word of God.
It is a history of wickedness,that has served to corrupt
and brutalise mankind;and,for my part,I sincerely
detest it,as I detest everything that is cruel.

Is it not likely, though, that men in positions of power simply do not want to lose their exulted pontifical posts? Would the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury give up their power and wealth and live in caves? Of course not.Why doesn’t the Vatican and the Church of England lead by example and sell its stocks, shares and assets and actually make a genuine difference in the world by sharing it with the poor. Surely that is the height of Christian benevolence, the highest moral good. 
Theists attempt to fill our minds with strident lies, among them the idea that non-believers perform great evils. Greater evil has been perpetrated by theists (often in collaboration with those they claim to despise) in the name of their myths.They revel in their ability to scare us – they demand conformity through fear. Isn’t there something psychologically perverse about that?
Pope Benedict XVI has been condemning the creeping rejection of Catholicism in South America by using scare tactics about Marxist ideology, which appears to be on the rise as a bulwark against interfering American foreign policy and Papal domination. Being a conservative, the Pope is keen to reassert theistic domination, which he thinks is better for the people. (He has stated that Catholicism is the ‘one true way’, how so?) As well as claiming, erroneously, that the people were ‘silently crying out’ for Christianity (such startling hubris and arrogance!), he’s resorting to tinkering with history (not the first or last time) and spouting the old and hideously false maxim, Ecclesia non novit sanguinem (‘the Church is untainted by blood’) in an effort to play down the role of the Catholic Church in supporting Conquistadors such as Hernan Cortes, Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro who ravaged the continent and put to death great numbers of the indigenous peoples in the name of Christianity in the sixteenth century. Or the destructive extremism of the fanatical Spanish monk, Diego de Landa, who, after burning many of the priceless books of the Maya, compounded his assault on their culture by becoming interested in their system of writing but in the process making a real and insulting hash of it.The Catholic Church’s power base in the continent is under threat and powerful organisations resent rejection. Power and control are at stake.
 It may very well be that in this case, as in others in the past, a mixture of theism and politics, god and mammon, has come together in a neo-con, anti-Marxist political manoeuvre to keep an influence over (oil) resources – especially those of Venezuela. Whatever one thinks of Chavez, he is keen to keep foreign inter- ference out of his country. Wouldn’t any country want that?
Simply put, many theologians have an all-too-human love of their exalted positions.There is nothing more potent than the combination of god, money and power.Atheism threatens to take that away.There are many theists out there who really do think we have souls and that they are under threat if we disbelieve in the ‘sky fairy’. But they are surrendering themselves to archaic fears. We must always ask, what have theists got to lose?

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15 Numbers Which Prove That America Is Turning Away From Religion and Christianity

The decline of the religion and Christian faith in America is accelerating. The results of a last year survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and the numbers are staggering. The percentage of all U.S. adults with no religious affiliation at all is nearly up to 20 percent. Even more frightening, 32 percent of all U.S. adults under the age of 30 have no religious affiliation whatsoever. Meanwhile, the percentage of the U.S. population that is Protestant has hit an all-time low. This survey just confirms what a whole bunch of other surveys have shown over the past few years. The truth is that America is very clearly turning away from religion and Christianity. Right up front I will disclose that I am an atheist, so I consider this to be a very good thing. Others that are reading this may consider the statistics below to be bad thing. But what we should all be able to agree on is that the long-term trends clearly show that Americans are increasingly rejecting the Christian faith. So what does this mean for the future of our nation? Where does America go from here? Those are very interesting questions.

Once upon a time, the Christian faith had an overwhelming influence on every day life in America. Even as late as 1972, a whopping 62 percent of all Americans were Protestant and an astounding 93 percent of all Americans claimed to be affiliated with a religion of one sort or another.

But now things are dramatically changing.

Posted below are 15 numbers which prove that America is turning away from religion and Christianity. The first 10 numbers are from the new survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

#1 Nearly one-fifth of all U.S. adults have no religious affiliation whatsoever. Back in 1972, only 7 percent of all U.S. adults had no religious affiliation.

#2 The number of Americans with no religious affiliation has grown by 25 percent over the past five years.

#3 The younger you are the more likely you are not to be affiliated with a religion. 9 percent of all U.S. adults that are 65 or older have no religious affiliation, but a whopping 32 percent of all U.S. adults under the age of 30 have no religious affiliation.

#4 88 percent of those that are religiously unaffiliated “are not looking for religion”.

#5 73 percent of the religiously unaffiliated support gay marriage and 72 percent of the religiously unaffiliated support legalized abortion.

#6 The religiously unaffiliated now make up 24 percent of all registered voters “who are Democrats or lean Democratic”.

#7 For the first time ever, Protestants do not make up a majority of the U.S. population. In 2007, Protestants made up 53 percent of the U.S. population, but now they only make up 48 percent of the U.S. population. Way back in 1972, Protestants made up 62 percent of the U.S. population.

#8 29 percent of all U.S. adults “seldom or never attend religious services”.

#9 51 percent of all U.S. adults believe that churches and other religious organizations “are too concerned with money and power”.

#10 66 percent of all U.S. adults believe that religion is “losing its influence on American life”.

Here are some more numbers which show that Christianity is declining in America….

#11 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of Americans with “no religion” more than doubled between 1990 and 2008.

#12 According to the American Religious Identification Survey, only 76 percent of all Americans identified themselves as “Christian” of one type or another in 2008. Back in 1990, 86 percent of all Americans identified themselves as “Christian” of one type or another.

#13 A study conducted by the Barna Group discovered that nearly 60 percent of all Christians in the 15 to 29 year old age bracket are no longer actively involved in any church.

#14 It is being projected that the percentage of Americans attending church in

2050 will be of what it is today.

#15 According to a study done by Life Way Research, membership in Southern Baptist churches will fall by close to 50 percent by the year 2050 if current trends continue.

If you are a Christian, those numbers should be very sobering. The Church is most definitely losing ground in the United States.

Okay there's a little more:

Success of anti-God books by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, AC Grayling and others, the different faiths - though each believes it has the one and only divinely revealed truth and often fights to the death to prove it - combine in curious harmony against secularists.

They blame us for all the evils of modernity, as if they could point to some morally better time when people feared God and sinned less. There is, of course, no evidence that God-fearers ever behaved better than the ungodly. One of the great mysteries of religion is why, even when people believed that heaven awaited the virtuous and everlasting torment was the destiny of sinners, there is no sign it made them any less prone to all the sins flesh is heir to. Yet they turn on atheists for lacking any moral base without a God.

I could say we are mortally offended and demand protection from such insult. But it is the prerogative of religions to be protected from feeling offended. Priests, imams and rabbis reserve for their beliefs a special respect, ringfenced from normal public argument. It is abusive and insulting to suggest that belief in gods and miracles is delusional, or that religions are inherently anti-women and anti-gay. Meanwhile, non-believers suffer the far worse insult that we inhabit a moral vacuum. But we will live with the insult if we are free to reply that there is no inherent virtue in being religious either: it does not make people behave better.

The unctuous claim there is a special religious ethos that can be poured like a sauce over schools and public services to improve them morally has been bought, to a depressing extent, and over a third of all state schools are now religious institutions despite overwhelming evidence that their only unique quality is selection of better pupils, storing up trouble with ever more cultural segregation.

To be human is not to be particularly rational, the senses often overwhelming common sense. There is no emotional or spiritual deficiency in rejecting religions that infantilise the imagination with impossible beliefs.

Sexual Abuse In The Catholic Church

Over the past several decades some major newspapers have been exposing the problem of priestly sexual abuse of boys, girls, women – and even nuns – within the Roman Catholic Church here in the United States of America. Please carefully consider the following quotations

“A large part of the history of celibacy is the story of the degradation of women and – an invariable consequence – frequent abortions and infanticide”.

In the ninth century, many monasteries were the haunts of homosexuals; many convents were brothels in which babies were killed and buried…Promiscuity was rife in monasteries and convents. The Ivo of Chartres (1040-1115) tells of whole convents with inmates who were nunsonly in name. They had often been abandoned by their families and were really prostitutes.” – Peter de Rosa (“Vicars of Christ”)

“According to the 1996 survey of nuns in the United States (which was intentionally never published by the Church but was leaked by some Vatican insider), it is reported that a minimum of 34,000 Catholic nuns (about 40% of all American nuns) claim to have been sexually abused. Three of every four of these nuns claimed they were sexually victimized by a priest, nun, or other religious person. Two out of five nuns who stated they were sexually abused claimed that their exploitation included some form of genital contact. All nuns who claimed repeated sexual exploitation reported that they were pressured by religious superiors for sexual favors.” – “Boston Globe” (1-8-2002)

The testimony of Sister Charlotte is disturbing and shocking. Sister Charlotte (Ex-Carmelite nun; a.k.a. Charlotte Wells; excerpts are from a taped presentation by Sister Charlotte):

“Then sometimes the priests come to the convent and they get angry with us, the young nuns because we refuse to have sexual relations with them voluntarily and many, many the times to have him, the priest to strike you in the mouth – is a terrible thing! I’ve had my front teeth knocked out by a lecherous priest who was trying to force himself on Sister Charlotte and then get you down on the floor in order to molest her. Here we are – a body a group of little young nuns. One morning the mother superior might say this: ‘We’re all going to be lined up here’ Then you know, there might be ten of us – there might be 15 of us. She the mother superior will tell us all to strip. And we have to take every stitch of our clothing off. Here we are lined up without any clothes, and here come two or three Roman Catholic priests with liquor under their belts the priests are intoxicated, and there they march in front of those nude girls the nuns, and choose the girl they want to take to the cell with them. These are convents – cloistered convents – not open orders. The priest can do anything he wants to and hide behind the cloak of religion! Then that same Roman Catholic priest after sexually molesting a nun will go back into the Roman Catholic Churches and there he will say Mass – and there he will go into the confessional box and make those poor people believe that he has the alleged power to grant absolution from their sins – when he the priest who has recently sexually molested a nun is full of sin, full of corruption and vice. Still he the priest acts as their ‘god’.

And then sometimes the priest, while attempting to molest a nun, will kick you in the stomach. Many of the precious little girls have babies under their hearts, and it doesn’t bother a priest to kick you in the stomach with a baby under your heart – he doesn’t mind – the baby is going to be killed anyway – because those babies are born in the convent. Why wouldn’t those babies be born, when you run places like these cloistered convents under the cloak of ‘religion’ – the world thinks they are religious orders. And there are babies born in there! I’ve delivered those babies with these hands; and what I’ve seen with my eyes and done with my hands – I just challenge the whole world to say it isn’t true.

And oh I wish you could see that little pregnant nun. She is not looking forward to that having a baby. There won’t ever be a blanket around his body. They’ll never even bathe that baby’s body. But he can only live 4 or 5 hours, and then the mother superior will take that baby and put her fingers in his nostrils and start to cover its mouth – and snuff its little life out. And why do they build the lime pits in the cloistered convent? What is the reason for building it the lime pit if it isn’t to kill the babies? And that baby will be taken into the lime pit and chemical and lime is put over its body – and that is the end of baby!”

Pope John Paul II (1978-2005) presided over the second ‘pornography of the Papacy’. He presided over the greatest, most widespread, immoral scandal of sexual perversion in church history. Never in the annals of recorded history has such a scandal been displayed for the entire world to see. Documented case after documented case in the courts of the world, joined by thousands of other cases which never came to light as the BAG-MAN, as he was called, bought the silence of thousands of young men whose cases never came to the courts. Combined with other ‘faithful’ souls who, although sodomized as children, in their loyalty to mother church never even complained.

The late pope John Paul II was the voice of a religious institution which became the reservoir of the most egregious sexual perversion known to man: MEN CALLED PRIESTS PREYING ON THEIR HELPLESS LITTLE ALTAR BOYS to satisfy their lust which arose in part from their enforced celibacy. So as the chief voice of this reservoir of unnatural perversion, the late pope of Rome was surely the spokesman of a ‘Church’ which was filled with immoral priests under his authority and a man who himself claimed to be the Vicar of Christ on earth, making him then without doubt the MOST INFLUENCIAL IMMORAL VOICE OF OUR TIME.

“David Rice (a Roman Catholic writer) in his book “Shattered Vows” states the figure 100,000 several times to describe the number of Roman Catholic priests resigning from the priesthood usually over questions of their own morality.” – Ronald Cooke (“The Death of the Pope of Rome”; 2005; Page 15)

The policy of silence and cover-up concerning sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church promoted by the Vatican is mind-boggling. The vast amount of data which the Vatican collected concerning the sexual activity of the Roman Catholic clergy makes it clear that the Pope and the Roman Curia were well aware of how wide-spread and common the sexual abuse problem was in the Roman Catholic Church. It did nothing to redress the situation but continued with a policy of cover-up and silence. It seems that the only reason the Vatican ordered these secret sex studies was to get a global picture of where they stood and to develop informed strategies for hiding the problem in the future. Never was the welfare of the victims of sexual abuse taken into consideration, nor was the question of broken chastity vows by the celibate priests apparently of any real concern.

The media black-out of the sexual abuse of women by clerics in both ritual and non-ritual cases is a great disgrace. The plight of male children who suffer under abusive priests is, of course, horrifying and should receive wide media coverage. However, the sexual abuse of nuns and women by clerics is a far larger problem.

“It’s tough to stay a Catholic when you’ve been sexually abused by a Roman Catholic priest, then raped again by the Roman Catholic Hierarchy.” – Miguel Chincilla (a Roman Catholic sexually abused by a priest)

For decades in the USA the Roman Catholic Church’s hierarchy tried “to keep a lid” (as much as they possibly could) on the extensive abuse of children – almost exclusively boys – by Roman Catholic priests. Many of these pedophile priests were moved from diocese to diocese as their patterns of sexual abuse became known. As much as they were able, the last two popes Pope John Paul II and the Pope Benedict XVI protected these priests accused of sexual abuse from prosecution, even bringing some of them to Rome and putting them up in apartments in order to prevent them from being brought to trial. In many cases, Roman Catholic prelates and other clergy brought tremendous pressure on Roman Catholic victims and their families in order to get them to drop charges against the abusive priests. In other words, the Roman Catholic Church’s hierarchy was much more concerned about protecting the Church’s already tarnished reputation (and protecting its finances against lawsuits) than it was in removing pedophile priests from the priesthood or helping the victims of the priestly abuse!

Why Your Religion Is Like Your Genitalia

As you can tell by the title, I'm tossing political correctness out of the window and opening a vein in this entry. Love it or leave it.

I'm not against people being naked under their clothing. I'm not even against people running around naked. But imagine a world where people not only run around naked but some people, because of their beliefs, thrust their genitalia upon you.

This is the world I live in. It may even be the world you live in, whether you shove your genitalia in other people's faces or you are on the receiving end. Granted, some people like having other people's genitalia in their faces - maybe with some women I may encourage them to do so - but having random people try to hump my head is not something I'm into. There is a fine line between tolerance and being trod upon.
Today, without realizing what would happen, I posted this quote on my Facebook status:

"There's no one so self-righteous as someone policing someone else's morality."

- Laurell K. Hamilton

And in speaking to a realtor today who has done quite well at making unprompted excuses, we finished talking about business. I was about to leave when the realtor decided that I needed to be saved. Quaint. So I diplomatically tried to extricate myself, telling the man that I respect that he has beliefs but I do not share them and would ask that he respect that. That he has a right to believe as he does and that I have the right to disagree.

March on Christian soldier, as they say. Or whatever it is that they say.

He asked me if I was happy in the spiritual sense. I responded, 'Sure'. He, apparently having a dixie-cup and a string with his God on the other end, told me that I wasn't. I then told him in an even tone that I get disrupted enough at home with people trying to press Jesus and Jehovah on me and I really don't appreciate it when people try to do it to me. That I can choose to walk away. That he could continue his attempted rape of the beliefs and thoughts of others if he wished to, but he would do it on his time - not mine.

He, of course, persisted.

I, of course, walked away.

He attempted to continue the conversation. I told him with a dismissive wave that if he couldn't respect that I didn't believe as he did that I had no reason to respect his beliefs. So I hopped into the pickup and drove off. Slowly and emphatically.

But I know that he thinks I may be going to his religion's Hell. Maybe he'll pray for me. Poor fellow.

His actions are not the actions I support in any religion. This frantic humping of other people's heads is, at the least, desperate. At the worst, it's disrespectful and creates friction - as I saw it today. My friends are of varying religious backgrounds. Some practice their religions and, as I joke, some are perfect as they apparently need no practice. I've been known to participate in religious discussion and explore the beliefs of others, but I don't take part in the 'my God can kick your God's ass' sort of discussions. That's basically why the Middle East is as it is today.

You see, I keep my atheism to myself for the most part. I don't feel the need to press onto others my own lack of belief; I am happy with it- so happy that I don't see it as a lack and often see it as an asset. That I could be happy with it seems to stun people into pressing their faith upon me. I don't go door to door preaching evolution (why would I have to? It's a scientific fact, though still not completely understood). I don't go around telling people that they need to accept my savior (myself).

I don't go around humping other people's faces. I think that this makes for a polite society. I can appreciate what other people believe without having to believe it myself, and yet - I can have ethics and morality without a textbook. Examples even show that it can happen without parents. Most stuff is simple empathy. Do unto others: Empathy.

Wait. Do unto others? For some, that door doesn't swing both ways when it comes to the beliefs or lack of belief of others.

Religion is sort of like genitalia. You can keep your clothing on, you can take your clothing off - but refrain from humping people's faces without invitation. And when they say 'no'... bugger off.

If you were wondering, now you know.

The Historical Construction of the Atheist as the ‘Other’ in the United States

To better understand how an “atheistic American” came to be understood as a “contradiction in terms” and what this negative perception of unbelief reveals of the importance of religion for civic belonging and collective identity in the United States, it is first necessary to study the theological, cultural and political patterns that have contributed, from the colonial times until the 21st century, to the constant “othering” of atheists from a certain American collective imagination: how and why not to believe in God came to be regarded throughout the centuries, not only as a moral and social stigma, but also as an essentially “un-American” behavior. Throughout this historical analysis, religion will clearly surfaceas a significant “moral boundary” - as a “principle of (private and public) classification and identification” within American society – closely tied to the dominant ideals of morality and citizenship in the United States.

Village atheist

In American colonial society, as in John Locke’s England or in Voltaire’s France during the same period, non-believers – even though they were almost inexistent – were commonly loathed and feared. The figure of the “village atheist” pertained to the collective imagination, as that of an immoral and dangerous individual abandoned by God, unable to distinguish between good and evil, and condemned to be an eternal outcast, “detested”, abhorred and despised by everybody, as pest and plague to society.” In a traditional rhetorical script that became known as the “Jeremiad”, religious and political leaders often instrumentalized this popular fear of irreligion to guarantee the social order and the unity of the community. Prophesying the decay of religious beliefs and the imminent spread of atheism almost became a kind of “cultural ritual” among New England pilgrims, designed to guarantee religious, social and political obedience. John Winthrop, the Governor of the Massachusetts bay colony, often agitated the specter of atheism in his sermons, warning immigrants that a “laissez-aller” in their religious commitment could lead to the breach of the Covenant they had passed with God, and thus to the fall of the “city upon a hill” they had dreamt of building in their new land. A century after Winthrop, during the first “Great Awakening” of the 1730s, the preacher Jonathan Edwards similarly warned people of

the risks of religious indifference and enjoined them to turn to God in order to avoid a moral decay of the community.

Irreligion in Winthrop’s and Edward’s discourses was not only rejected as a religious fault, as an individual sin, but also and above all as a social and political offense that could have threatened the moral purity and the stability of the whole community. Atheism was therefore stigmatized as what Jeffrey Alexander calls a “civic vice”, i.e. an “impure”, “illegitimate”, and ”unworthy” social behavior that could have represented a potential “pollution” of the community – bringing immorality, licentiousness and anarchy - and thus that had to be legitimately “kept at bay”, on the margins of society. As Alexander further argues, it is precisely “in terms of symbolic purity and impurity” that within a community, “marginal demographic status is made more meaningful”, and “centrality is defined.” Thus, in American colonial society, religion was already emphasized as a crucial individual, social and political value, as a “symbolic boundary” – one among many others – safeguarding the community from the danger of moral deviance and distinguishing between those who had the legitimacy to belong and those who did not. It was, for instance, for the very purpose of avoiding a “pollution” of the community by potential irreligious individuals, that most colonies decided to limit their rights and their participation in the life of the polity. Atheists were traditionally prohibited from serving as witnesses in a trial or from being members of a jury. A vast majority of the colonies also required candidates for public office to take a religious oath, thus excluding religious minorities (Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, Jews, etc.), when there was an established church, as well as non-believers in any case. In this regard, it is interesting to note that John Locke himself contributed to the political implementation of his philosophical rejection of atheism in the American colonies, when he took part in 1669 in the drafting of the “Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina”, of which Article 95 stated that overt irreligion was “illegal” on the whole territory of the colony: “No man shall be permitted to be a freeman of Carolina, or to have any estate or habitation within it, that doth not acknowledge a Lord and that God is publicly and solemnly to be worshipped.”. Belief in God became therefore in this particular case a requirement of the law itself, necessary, even if not sufficient, to be considered a “pure”, “virtuous” and legitimate member of the community.

After the War of Independence



After the War of Independence, some of the new American states similarly continued to impose restrictions on religious minorities and, of course, on non-believers, notably by requiring individuals to take a religious oath to testify in courts or to hold a public office. Even in cases where the official church had been disestablished and religious liberty inscribed in the law, political authorities, convinced of the social utility of having religiously committed citizens, still tried to foster belief in God and an active religious practice, as exemplified in the Constitution of Vermont. Ratified in 1786, the text guaranteed complete religious freedom, but nonetheless explicitly stated that citizens ought to practice their faith, in order to maintain a “religious spirit” indispensable to the “moral purity” of the society. Chapter I, Article III affirmed that “all men have a natural and unalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences (…). Nevertheless, every sect or denomination ought to (…) keep up some sort of religious worship, which to them shall seem most agreeable to the revealed will of God.” This official discouragement of religious indifference clearly indicates that religion was considered in Vermont – as in most of the new American states – as a necessary “civic virtue”, as a basic and essential attribute of the new republican citizen.

More significantly, this ambiguity between the necessary protection of freedom of conscience and the promotion of religion as a useful social and civic value was also salient at that time in the Founding Fathers’ thoughts on the place of religion in public life. Both the Federal Constitution of 1787 and the Bill of Rights of 1791, which they contributed to draft, by respectively prohibiting religious tests for federal public offices (Article 6) and the establishment of religion at the level of the national government (1

st Amendment), made clear that belonging to the political community – citizenship - did not depend at all on a belief in God, and that the (federal) state could not legitimately use religion to distinguish between citizens. As James Madison wrote, “no man's right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and (…) religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance.” All the more emphasizing the secular character of the new federal government, the founding document of the United States made absolutely no reference to Christianity, to God or even to a “Supreme Being” or a “Divine Providence”, as such was the case in the Declaration of Independence in 1776, leading many alarmed commentators to denounce the dangerous religious “infidelity” of the drafters. And it is indeed true that, far from being pious Christians, some of the most important Founding Fathers – Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Adams - were closer to Deism, influenced by Enlightenment philosophers in their conception of a “benevolent Supreme Being” who created the world but did not intervene in human affairs.

Yet, even those “infidel deists”, who wrote and ratified a “Godless Constitution”, seemed to believe, as Locke did, that some sort of “religious spirit” was necessary to maintain a healthy republican society. Indeed, once elected presidents, George Washington, John Adams and James Madison regularly exhorted Americans to believe in God. Despite their deeply held conviction that the “business of civil government” was to be “exactly distinguished from that of religion,” they still closely associated belief in God, morality, and “good citizenship” as three complementary qualities. Encouraging some kind of diffuse religious spirit was for the Founding Fathers a way to guarantee that people would have a minimum set of moral values, which they believed could contribute to make them more virtuous citizens, and more likely to respect the new laws of the young republic. Washington, in his 1796 Farewell Address, written by Alexander Hamilton, famously stated that it was unreasonable to believe that “national morality could be maintained in exclusion of religious principle.” John Adams similarly wrote in 1798 that “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people”, one year after he had signed the Treaty of Tripoli, whose Article XI reaffirmed the secular character of the American Republic (“The American government is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion”). Jefferson, who was perhaps the only Founding Father who was openly willing to tolerate atheists, suggesting that they could be protected under the 1st Amendment, allowed during his presidency the public funding of American Bible Societies. Created at the beginning of the 19th century by another Founding Father, John Jay, they were supposed to “promote the extension of true religion, virtue and learning” in order to “clean” the “impurities of our moral atmosphere”. Therefore, it seems that even for the most skeptical Founding Fathers, religion appeared as one of the most useful warranties of “civic solidarity” in a Republican society. Overt atheism, if it could not legally alter one’s status as an American citizen, was still to be discouraged as deviant social behavior, better confined to the margins of the Republic.

Moral boundary

The stigmatization and “othering” of unbelief still continued to sharpen in the first half of the 19th century, as religion also began to play a central role in the building of a certain American identity. During this period, the United States was indeed characterized by a powerful movement of religious revivalism, the second “Great Awakening”. Evangelical sects started proliferating throughout the country, converting people massively in famous “camp meetings”, while romantic historians undertook the “Christianization” – or more precisely the “Protestantization” - of the American Republic. They heightened in their works the myth of a Protestant nation founded for religious reasons on religious principles by religious men. More than being a “civic virtue”, religion became intimately linked with the history, culture and core values of the United States, thus gaining even more salience as a “moral boundary” in Americans’ collective imaginations.

In this context, where religious minorities such as Catholics were also stigmatized and discriminated against by protestant nativists, irreligion, more than being a threat for the “moral purity” of the community and for republican values, came to be progressively castigated as “un-American” in essence. As religion became more and more integrated into “the ethos of American life”, unbelief was becoming all the more inconceivable. Thus, the figure of the atheist became increasingly associated, not only with the figure of the deviant immoral citizen, but also with the figure of the alien or of the nation’s enemy more generally. At the beginning of the 19th century for instance, atheism came to be systematically linked to the violence of the French Revolution. The writer Mercy Otis Warren expressed her fears that the “cloud of infidelity that darkened the hemisphere of France” could travel to the other side of the Atlantic and poison the American “national character, (…) free from any symptoms of pernicious deviations from the purest principles of morality, religion and civil liberty.” Thomas Jefferson, who had lived in France during the Revolution, was accused by his Federalist adversaries and by Evangelical preachers of being an “atheist in religion”. Alexander Hamilton, in a series of articles entitled The Stand, repeatedly warned Americans against “French atheism”, particularly against the “political leader of the adherents to France”, the “pro-consul of a despotic Directory”, whose election as president would destroy religion. A Connecticut penman asserted even more categorically that we are not Frenchmen, and until the atheistical philosophy of a certain great Virginian shall become the fashion (which God on his mercy forbid), we shall never be.

This strong rejection of atheism and the importance of religion as a “symbolic code” – as a principle of social categorization and identification - , was noticed by Felix de Beaujour, a French diplomat assigned to Washington between 1804 and 1811, and who was surprised to discover that if Americans seemed indeed ready to accept almost “indistinctly” any kind of religious faiths or practices, “atheists alone [were] rejected”. He explained further that “[Americans] regarded [atheists] less as the enemies of God than of society”, (…) on the principle that the truth of each religion, individually, may be contested, but the utility of all is incontestable. Religion, as an indispensable basis for morality, “civic solidarity” and collective belonging in the United States, was thus more generally understood as an essential constituent of a certain Durkheimian “moral order”, i.e. of “a common public perception of reality that regulated, structured and organized relations in the community (…), (operating) less through coercion than through inter-subjectivity” and which contributed to “define the internal bonds” within American society.

This crucial role of religion in 19th century American society was confirmed a few decades later by De Beaujour’s fellow citizen Alexis de Tocqueville,

who also noticed that an individual who dared to express his irreligion publicly and – even worse – to criticize religious beliefs, was almost immediately despised and shunned by other Americans. In a comment that is still relevant today, he wrote that “in the United States, if a politician attacks a sect, this may not prevent the partisans of that sect from supporting him; but if he attacks all the sects together, every one abandons him and he remains alone.” Tocqueville acknowledged that some Americans probably did not believe very sincerely in their faith: “I do not know whether all the Americans have a sincere faith in their religion – for who can search the Human heart?”. But he also judiciously remarked that the skeptics would always rather lie and say that they believed in God: “among Anglo-Americans, there are some who profess Christian dogmas because they believe them, and others who do because they are afraid to look as though they did not believe them”. Thus, in order to hide and to overcome their “stigma”, the non-believers met by Tocqueville felt compelled to resort to what Erving Goffman called the strategy of “passing”, i.e. pretending to be part of the “unstigmatized (religious) majority” in order to “gain social acceptance,” an attitude that all the more testified of the “social desirability bias” of religion and of its strength as a “moral boundary” in American society.

The various trials for blasphemy that were held at that time in the United States give another meaningful illustration of the centrality of religion (Christianity to be precise), for a certain “moral order”. In various states, individuals were prosecuted for having denied the existence of God or for having attacked and insulted the Christian religion. Yet, blasphemy was not sanctioned for theological reasons – in order to defend the dogmas and beliefs of a specific faith - but rather because it served a secular purpose, i.e. guaranteeing public safety. In a country inhabited mostly by Christians, attacks against their religion – and thus their identity - could indeed potentially represent a source of conflict. When in 1837 the Supreme Court of Delaware condemned an individual named Thomas Jefferson Chandler for having declared that “the Virgin Mary is a whore and Jesus Christ a bastard”, the Judges clearly explained that the anti-blasphemy laws of the state were not designed to protect a faith in particular or even religion in general, but were necessary to preserve the unity and integrity of a community that such comments against its deeply held beliefs and identity could offend and divide: “The common law took cognizance of offences against God only when by their inevitable effect they became offences against man and his temporal security .”

As mentioned earlier, non-believers were of course not the only religious minority despised and stigmatized in that way in 19th century America: to the sound of “anti-Popery” cries, Protestant nativists regularly attacked Catholic immigrants, accusing them of being a threat to republican values and questioning their loyalty to the American government. But in the first half of the 20th century, the American “circle of the We” started widening progressively, as religious minorities were increasingly being culturally, socially, and politically accepted into American society. A 1959 Gallup survey testified of this process of inclusion, as 72% of Americans affirmed that they were ready to elect a Jewish President and 70% a Catholic, a result that was confirmed one year later by Kennedy’s victory. Yet, this broader tolerance of religious diversity did not necessarily imply that religion as a “moral boundary” - as a standard of morality and “good citizenship” and as a basic attribute of the American “self”- was disappearing and becoming irrelevant in the United States. Indeed, while the 19th century Protestant nation was becoming a “Judeo-Christian” country, the atheist continued to be perceived and stigmatized as an unacceptable “other” in American society.

“Godless communist”

Its symbolic exclusion and its status of “outsider” even worsened during that period, when in the official rhetoric of the US government against the USSR, Communism and atheism came to be systematically associated with each other, conflated into the common figure of the anti-American enemy. In the language of religious and political leaders, the “godless communist” was often contrasted with the “religious American”. Joseph McCarthy declared for instance in a speech, that the “Christian world”, led by the United States, was facing the “atheist world”, dominated by the USSR. Alluding once again to the “impurity” of atheism and to the risk of moral “pollution” it raised, American officials explicitly encouraged irreligious Americans to give up their deviant and “pernicious doctrine of materialism”, which, as the director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover pointed out,

“readied the minds of our youth to accept the immoral (…) system of thought [known] as communism”. And it was for the very purpose of exacerbating the religious identity of the United States against the “cold” atheism of the USSR, that Congress decided to add “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” on the dollar bills, respectively in 1954 and 1956. A few years earlier, in 1952, senators, supported by President Truman - to whom Communism was the “deadly foe of belief in God and of all organized religions” - had already decided to establish a National Day of Prayer. Their intention was to defend the United States against “the corrosive forces of Communism, which sought simultaneously to destroy [the American] democratic way of life and the faith in an Almighty God on which it was based.”

Socially and politically marginalized since the founding of the first colonies, stigmatized as an immoral and dangerous citizen throughout the 19th century, the non-believer became the official enemy of the American Republic during the Cold War. Professing one’s irreligion - even in one’s private life - meant to symbolically break away from the rest of American society and to share the same values as the Soviet enemy. As Will Herberg wrote in 1955, “declaring oneself atheist, agnostic or even humanist” in the United States during that period, almost inevitably implied “being obscurely ‘anti-American’.” During the Cold War, the stigmatization of the atheist as an “other” reached its climax: like Communism, unbelief was perceived as intrinsically incompatible - and irreconcilable - with the nation’s history, values and identity. Relegated beyond the boundaries of the “We”, the atheist, just as the Communist during the same period, could never be assimilated into the fabric of society and could only be imagined as a “dissident”, an “alien” or an “enemy”, fundamentally different from – and antagonistic to - the (good) American citizen. Religion clearly surfaced as a seemingly impassable “moral boundary”, separating the insiders from the outsiders (the atheists) - those “who did not share the core characteristics” of the “legitimate participants in the ‘moral order’ ” and against whom the symbolic “contours of American culture and citizenship were imagined.” The “good American” was the “good believer”.

The Cry of “Islamophobia” & the right to blaspheme.

“This loathsome term [Islamophobia] is nothing more than a thought-terminating cliche conceived in the bowels of Muslim think tanks for the purpose of beating down critics.“
-Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, Muslim, Ex-Cleric.

The journalist and writer Owen Jones made quite clear in a reposted article in the Independent from 2012, that he stands firm on the side of Mehdi Hasan when it comes to what they see as “Islamophobia“. This was reposted after Hasan’s spat with Richard Dawkins on Twitter. Dawkins wrote:

- An ill-judged, and inflammatory choice of words, no doubt. Interestingly, Dawkins has since made an apology and clarification. But I think Owen Jones is being incredibly hypocritical, and himself guilty of fanning the flames of an undefined “Islamophobia” that he seems so keen to call out at every possible opportunity. His hypocrisy takes on two forms; firstly Jones does not react with equal anger at any negative mention of other religions or religious figures. And secondly, he jumps to the unquestioning defence of Mehdi Hasan, despite Hasan’s equally disparaging remarks in the past, aimed at all non-believers. There is a distinct air of hypocrisy about Jones on this, but even more so with Hasan.

Dawkins went on a similar attack against Mitt Romney in the run up to the 2012 US Election, and his Mormonism. Stating:

- And yet, there remained an eery silence from Owen Jones and Mehdi Hasan on this. No cries of “Mormonophobia“. Similarly, as Trey Parker and Matt Stone released “The Book of Mormon“; a mockery of Mormonism, in musical form, Owen Jones registered no disgust. Apparently Mormonism is fair game. Islam though, we must never mention Islam negatively.

Owen writes:

- And yet, for all his apparent hatred of bigotry, another eery silence from Jones is brought to us, when we consider statements made (and very weakly defended) by Mehdi Hasan, in the past. For example, in 2009, Hasan gave a speech at the Al Khoei Islamic Centre, in which he quite openly states:

“The kaffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam, the rational message of the Quran; they are described in the Quran as, quote, “a people of no intelligence”, Allah describes them as; not of no morality, not as people of no belief – people of “no intelligence” – because they’re incapable of the intellectual effort it requires to shake off those blind prejudices, to shake off those easy assumptions about this world, about the existence of God.”

In a separate speech, Hasan also said:

“We know that keeping the moral high-ground is key. Once we lose the moral high-ground we are no different from the rest of the non-Muslims; from the rest of those human beings who live their lives as animals, bending any rule to fulfil any desire.”

- Is this not something along the lines of ‘Kuffarophobic‘? Is Richard Dawkins suggestion that Mehdi Hasan is irrational and not to be considered serious, at all different to Hasan referring to anyone who doesn’t fit his narrow view of what is correct, as “incapable of the intellectual effort it takes to shake off blind prejudices“? Hasan, during debates has often criticised Atheists who suggest Islam itself, creates violent Muslims. He starts one debate, jokingly apologising for Islamic terrorism. The suggestion being, that tarring all Muslims with the same brush, is wrong. And in this, he his quite right. And yet, he seems more than happy to suggest that all non-Muslims are a people of no intelligence. We live like animals. Hasan has concluded (and shrouded his conclusion in ‘faith’, as if that makes it acceptable), that I must live like an animal (though it should be noted, that he has since backtracked, and tried – very weakly – to explain his comments. Is this not the exact same form of bigotry that both Jones, and hypocritically, Hasan claim to disapprove so vehemently of? Can you imagine their feigned outrage, if Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins were to say that Muslims were to all be considered animals, unintelligent, and immoral, as a whole? The Guardian would have a heart attack. Owen Jones would spend his day on Twitter telling us how he’s an Atheist but disapproves of such vile bigotry. But when his friend Mehdi Hasan does it, Jones is forever silent on it.

There is no referring to Stone and Parker as bigots, for mocking Mormonism. No Presidential address in which we’re told the musical is “in bad taste” as we were told the cheaply made anti-Islamic film was in bad taste. No referring to Monty Python as bigots for mocking the story of Jesus in ‘The Life of Brian’. Only the Christian Right jumped in to attack “Jerry Springer the Opera” for its display of a grown Jesus in a nappy. The musical won Laurence Olivier Awards. Owen Jones, again, eerily silent. Would the same respect for free expression be accepted, for the portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad in a nappy? Given that Danish cartoons result in condemnation not only from Muslims demanding the execution of anyone associated with the publication, but also from liberals in Western countries, along with judicial inquiries, sackings of Ministers who supported the cartoons, and deaths… I’d suggest that a similar musical mocking Islam would not be met with the same respect. It is not just those of us who dislike Islam as a doctrine, who treat the faith differently from other faiths. So to, do those insisting on shouting “Islamophobia!” at every possible opportunity, shielding it from the treatment afforded to other ideas.

When States ban or openly discourage the challenging of one concept – such as the denying of the Holocaust – they are denying the Right of others to listen to dissenting opinions that might challenge us to inquire, and solidify, or modify our own perception of reality. It is almost criminalising the necessity to question. Why do I believe the holocaust happened the way it is consistently documented? I wasn’t there. I’ve heard about it from several sources. Shouldn’t I be given a plethora of ideas since I have no way of fully accepting just one, given that I wasn’t there to experience it first hand. By accepting the banning of unpopular, and offensive views, I am also harming the Right of others to hear a plethora of views and to educate themselves further. I am institutionalising a way of thinking that exists on the left of centre, whilst criminalising those on the fringes for saying words I do not like. This way, I become a slave to convention. I have learnt that this is unacceptable.

The word ‘Islamophobia’ is seeped in hypocrisy and inconsistency. It is a way to discourage free inquiry. To accept, without question, that this particular idea is off limits with regard criticism of any form. To suggest otherwise, gets us to the rather peculiar point in which even a cartoon of the Prophet, is “Islamophobic“. And yet, there is no balance by which they pour – not just equal – any scorn whatsoever when certain undesirable features of Islam rear their ugly heads; as they failed to do with Hasan’s speech; as they would almost certainly pour upon writers, if a “Book of Islam” musical, were to be made in the mould of “The Book of Mormon”. Islam suffers from an inability to accept criticism, and reacts viciously whenever forms of criticism considered perfectly legitimate for all other concepts, is aimed in its direction. This inability seems to be rationalised, by non-Muslim apologists, by subtly hinting that any criticism/satire, must be “Islamophobic“.

The vagueness of the term “Islamophobia“, the fact that the use of the suffix “phobia” is only used in defence of one particular faith, the flippant way people like Owen Jones, and the horrifically hypocritical Mehdi Hasan throw it around, is, to its users, a huge strength. There is a genuine attempt by apologists, to link any criticism of Islam to racism.

Grouping hostility and blatant racism and hate toward people, in the same category as criticism, satirism toward ideas is dangerous for discussion and for the health of that idea where it exists in a secular framework upon which all ideas are up for the same treatment. It is also quite absurd. It is this joining of race, with a faith, that makes criticism of the faith become synonymous with racism.

Racism, like sexism, is the institutional perpetuation of social privilege based on biological differences. There is no doctrine involved. To claim racism, alongside Islam, is like claiming a deep hatred for all people with brown hair, if we learn that most Muslims have brown hair. It is absurd. My contention is simple; to push discussion, criticism, satire, ridicule of an authoritative idea – be it religious or political – out of the public sphere of acceptability, has the opposite effect. It creates a taboo, and it is latched onto by dangerous fanatics like those of the EDL, who undoubtedly do mix their dislike for a faith, with racism and Nationalism.

I am quite unaware of what doesn’t constitute “Islamophobia“. Is it okay for example, to suggest that Islam, like Catholicism, is inherently homophobic? In fact, Hasan himself in an article on gay marriage, writes:

“As a Muslim, I struggle with the idea of homosexuality – but I oppose homophobia.”

- Irony at its finest. Homosexuality isn’t an ‘idea’. Islam is an idea. Sexuality is a natural spectrum much like eye colour, or hair colour, or skin colour. Consider a white supremacist saying: “As a white supremacist, I struggle with the idea of being black, but I oppose racism“. Irony.

Is it okay to simply argue that Islam is misogynistic (as I believe it is… as I believe Christianity is)? Is it okay to suggest that a secular UK is no place for horrendously patriarchal Shariah courts? Is it racist to say that punishment for apostasy or blasphemy, is unfathomably wrong? What qualifies as “Islamophobic“? Is it hate, or violence aimed at Muslims individuals? Is this not better defined as anti-Muslim hate (which I don’t deny exists)? Or is it distaste for the idea of Islam itself? If we are to alienate criticism of Islam as a concept or as doctrines, is this not a form of positive discrimination that has the opposite effect of what it sets out to do?

If we are to use the suffix “Phobia” to refer to criticism or mockery also, then we can also call out many religious doctrines and their adherents for being Feminismophobic Democracyophobic, Americanophobic, Westophobic?

It is my belief, that the freedom to satirise, mock, criticise, as well as question all authoritative ideas, including all religions that themselves are openly critical of how those outside the faith live their lives, is the cornerstone of a progressive, and reasonable society. Indeed, the freedom to criticise authoritative ideas is essential. These ideas include the freedom to satirise and criticise and question deeply held political ideals, including my own. We must not allow religions to be free from satire, nor criticism, simply because it is cloaked in ‘faith’. To close them to criticism/satirism by using State controls and violence, means that the idea becomes taboo, humanity cannot progress the idea, and it gives the idea an authority above what it is reasonably justified in having, over the lives of not just its followers, but those who don’t wish to adhere to its principles. This is dangerous.

The openness by which ideas are debated, satirised, and critiqued, is the most important way in which their adherents are taken seriously, become integrated, and viewed equally to all others. This is different entirely to discrimination (demanding deportation of Muslims, is quite obviously anti-Muslim hate, as is any suggestion that a Muslim shouldn’t be President of the US, this is different from satire/criticism of the concept of Islam) If however, their adherents demand a special dispensation and protection from the treatment that all other ideas are open too, or seek to silence, then inevitably, they are treated suspiciously.

It is absolutely right for all to be free to question and to criticise and ridicule the idea of Islam; as it is right for all to be free to criticise and ridicule every faith and every idea, especially if that idea is authoritative outside of the private life of the individual believer. This includes criticism and ridicule of Atheism, includes evolution, includes Conservative, includes Liberalism, includes Christianity, includes Mormonism, includes Communism, includes Capitalism. Islam is not, and should not be shut off from that, nor should it in any way, be linked to race from either the far right, or the far left. It is an idea. It deserves to be treated like every other idea. Those who shout “Islamophobia” at any hint of a dislike for Islam, lose all credibility the moment they do not apply the same criteria to the satire and mockery of other ideas, or when they seemingly refuse, or make excuses for people like Mehdi Hasan and his repugnant comments on non-believers.

Why People Believe in God

In The Beginning

Even the Bible declared it. In the beginning there was nothing until god created it. Null is the hypothesis. Before there is something there is nothing.

Pay close attention: No baby is born with any belief in any god.

A theist/polytheist is a person who believes in a god or gods. An atheist is a person who does not believe in any god, whether out of ignorance or not. A non-theist is a person who has no particular belief in a god but necessarily understands that there are those from which to choose. A baby cannot understand any such concept. It is beyond their cognitive abilities. There is total ignorance of any concept of god.

Therefore, this much is clear: Every baby is an atheist, by its very definition. Period.

Religious belief is adopted only after one or more options is presented and the child makes a conscious decision – whether the decision is well informed or not. And I use the word decision (not choice) because we ALL know how it invariably goes down 99.9% of the time. Children follow the religion of their parents or the more dominant parent if their beliefs differ. It’s more of a decision to accept or not accept what is taught [read: forced] in bias. But choice? There is no fucking choice. And shame on you for being so intellectually dishonest about it.

I have been asked too many times to number, “When did you decide to become an atheist?

What the WTF fucking fuck? No. Sorry. Wrong question. You’ve got the inquiry backward.

The only valid question is, “When did you decide to become a THEIST?”

But far more interesting (and disturbing) is what prompts the question in the first place.

Let’s face it. Atheism, by its very definition, labels those who believe as deluded. (Sorry, it does.) And so believers knee-jerk in a weak, panicky, defensive manner to try to turn it around – like somehow belief in god is the default position and that it’s you, the atheist, who’s made a decision to the contrary.

Non-belief is the only default position.

In all fairness, most atheists do go full circle from that default position to some flavor of god-belief and then back to rationality, but the first move (if there is one) is always to believe. Always.

Many atheists, like me, simply never budged from that default position. And this is what pisses off theists so much. From their perspective they see the atheist attitude as, “They fell for the con, we didn’t.” We think they’re deluded (and weak and cowardly and gullible), and deep down inside they feel silly about it. And they’re offended. I mean, how could they not be? Their deep religious insecurity renders them incapable of walking away in their perceived truth, with pride, and in silence – and so they spew the aforementioned tripe.

The Mother of Invention

Ignorant primitive people invented god(s) to:

1. Provide a crutch for their own inherent human weakness and fear of death

2. Explain the nature of the world around them when they couldn’t find logical explanations of their own

3. Control man and maintain order in society

So What’s Your Excuse?

Modern man with a heightened sense of awareness and a robust understanding of science and the natural world doesn’t have the easy out presented above. He needs a little something else to justify his patently silly beliefs. So when it doubt, blame your fucking parents.

Today’s average bible-punching idiot believes in god primarily because he was brainwashed as a child. Add to that some fear, cowardice, gullibility, and weakness.

Social Disease

Basically, people get together and form a society because they’re tired of mayhem, rape, and looting. Societies promote “the greater good” and “the general welfare.” The rules that members of a society follow to ensure the general welfare are what we call laws. Our social contract stipulates that we agree to abide by the laws of our society or else we’ll be excluded (jailed, exiled, sent to bed without din-din, etc.) and lose all of our membership privileges.

There are two levels of moral or ethical behavior: rule-based and principle-based. Individuals of malformed or immature ethical development (e.g. children, gullible adults, career criminals, common street vermin, Raiders fans) need rules to know what appropriate behavior is in a civilized society. People with a more highly developed sense of ethical behavior don’t need rules; principles like “do unto others” are sufficient.

Critics of religion like Gore Vidal have characterized the Judeo-Christian deity as an “angry sky god” – typically one that will judge and condemn you. Now I don’t know what psycho/sexual/logical need that meets but, as Karl “Opiate of the Masses” Marx observed, religion has been pretty good at keeping the lower classes in their place. The extreme right wing still believes in the supreme judge (“god is just”), but in general I think that the Christian god has evolved more into a Santa Claus who’s going to check if you’ve been naughty or nice and reward or punish you accordingly.