Rant - Just ignore me

I really think it’s time to ban religion. In fact there are three things which need banning – religion, the media, politicians. I just read that 14 people were killed in India because they were protesting against the cancelled Koran burning threatened by  Terry Jones. Well if those killed were all religious fanatics sorry folks, it goes with the territory. I’m all in favour of ridding the world of as many religious fanatics as possible along with as many sensationalist journalists as possible and any and all politicians on the planet because they are all dangerous in the same way. But can we guarantee that those killed fit into any of these categories? It seems like just a bunch of religious fanatics protesting over another religious fanatic because they don’t agree and drawing innocents into the fray. What a sick world. God may be good but Man certainly isn’t. There’s always some fuckwit fanatic with weird religious beliefs wanting to stir up trouble and some other fuckwit fanatics with even weirder religious beliefs just looking for a good excuse for a pogrom or a bit of flag burning.

On a day to day basis people with a modicum of brain ignore this sort of person. If you met one in a pub you’d go drink in the other bar to get away from him. But that’s the problem because to be active in either religion or especially the media and politics there is no requirement to use your brain and so of course they cannot leave this sort of thing alone. If there were no sensationalist coverage, which is what all this has been, there would have been no story, no manipulation for religious/political/media purposes, no deaths. Just some sad imbecile in America with yet another loony idea of what it is to be a christian getting totally ignored by everyone except other sad imbeciles with equally loony ideas. If the church had rapidly excommunicated him or whatever they do for even thinking about doing what he threatened to do there also might have been no deaths. If there had been no political religion to start with, idem.

Personally I’m tired of all this crap. People’s reactions are so predictable so why bother even reporting it. The journalists know what the result will be before they even put pen to paper as do the politicians and it all stems from religious zeal.  I know every thinking person knows this already but shouldn’t we start doing something about it? Get rid of these churches, nay, get rid of ‘all‘ churches. Get rid of the bloody clergy of all religions. If there ever was such anything positive about organised religion I’m having some difficulty seeing it.  It just seems to be a bunch of  mindless devotees with a bad idea being nasty to each other. Don’t get me wrong there are good people who are also Christians or Moslems or Buddhist or whatever but there’s an important distinction: they are good people first and religious people second. Some of the nastiest people I have ever met have been devout born again Christians. Not God’s fault. It’s just that they were nasty people to start with. Religion does not make you good. It exacerbates the characteristics you already have maybe but there’s nothing good in organized religion at all.

It’s not even really the  belief system that is at fault, though the bibles of the world if you actually read them are anything but  ‘good’ books, no, the problem is this sheep-like propensity to want to orgnise into hierarchies and to want to be organized into hierarchies. Priests and congregations, heros and normal people,  generals and squaddies, bosses and labourers. Whatever branch of society you look at it’s all organized into those that command and those that obey. It goes back to what I said in a recent blog, people just have to pedestalise. Got to have that idol must have someone above us, preferably someone to look up to, must organize, federate, congregate. Bolix to that. Because that’s where things start to go pear shaped. Yet again it’s all about power. As soon as you get hierarchies you get leaders and with leaders comes the trouble.  Even the pagans, generally a nice bunch of eclectic people, have started  organizing themselves into pagan federations. Then you ask them why and the answer is, to fight for pagan rights and gain recognition. Oh my gawd off we go again. Next thing they’ll be finding some tablets under Stonehenge or something testifying to the existence of a prophet and POW! you have organised religion and can therefore in the name of paganism or druidism or whatever now go to war, express racism, prejudice, intolerance, misogyny, homophobia and develop a healthy fear of sex,  just like every other organised religion.

Believe me, when the world finally realises it’s folly and votes me to the position of dictator of the world things will change radically, politicians will all be shot (sorry not a popular move maybe but necessary I’m sure you will agree), religious organization (though not belief) will be banned. Any journalists found writing sensationalist clap trap will be stripped naked and flogged through the streets before being sentenced to a life in perpetual darkness down the mines. This will leave those who wish to believe in a god or gods free to do so but to do it ON THEIR OWN. You don’t need a bloody book or clergy to know the will of God/Gods. If you can’t get the message from God him or herself then it’s not real folks.

If you can’t read the sun or mirror or mail or telegraph or watch BBC news you’ll have to figure things out for yourselves and you’ll feel much better for it believe me. If you can’t figure it out yourself  you were probably one of those people who just absorbed without critical enquiry anyway so you’re better off not knowing and leaving more space in your head for important things like big macs, beer and sport.

And politicians. Billy Connolly once said “the desire to be a politician, should ban you for life for ever being one. Don't vote, it encourages them.” Something that I took to the letter even before he uttered the words. Criminals the lot of them. Forget politics folks. It doesn’t work. Look at history. Has there ever been a moment in history when politics has actually done anything useful?? Like religion we’d be much better off without it.

Any way, I’m getting bored now, but thinking on it, maybe this terry Jones character got something right. Burning the Koran sounds like a sensible move. But of course to make it a fair and useful activity for all we’d need to burn ALL holy books of all religions thus simultaneously making the clergy totally superfluous to requirements and putting belief back in the hands of the individual where it belongs.