What’s the number one thing which many people find supremely important, while others don’t even believe it exists? I’m not talking about global warming deniers, flat earthers, or evil morons talking about how they want to promote racism, oops, I mean yapping about critical race theory. These are all valid points of contention, but I’m talking about the number one thing which bell curves from controlling lives, human rights, and in some cases whole countries, but on the other side of the spectrum the majority of humans think it’s just a silly fable.
Of course, I’m discussing religion.
Step back from however you feel about such things for a moment. Is there anything else you can think of which is so important to so many but other people think is a myth? If you are religious and reading this (weird) you aren’t off the hook, because even if you truly believe in your version of god and creations there are billions of people who YOU think are doing it wrong and praying into the emptiness. As Christopher Hitchens said, everyone is at least 99% atheist, because they are rejecting hundreds of other faiths, real atheists just take it one step further.
As a lifelong atheist I can kinda groc the concept that maybe something created some parts of existence. It isn’t impossible, but certainly the popular religions on this planet have nothing to do with it. What I really can’t wrap my head around is things like a person thinking Satan exists or that they might be going to Hell or Heaven. Such ideas are fine for Dungeons and Dragons, but how an adult could really believe these things are real remains difficult for me understand.
It must be so strange to believe supernatural and magical things are happening to the billions of people roaming this globe. I can understand why religion evolved. Like all myths it was used to explain the unknown and perhaps more importantly, was designed to control and often grift people.
In antiquity when humans discovered the uses of grain (beer) and put their hunter and gather modality behind them and began to live in larger settlements, crime became a problem. This is because for the first time in human existence, some people had a lot more than others. They made laws, but laws don’t work as well if you can break them without getting caught. So the elites needed something else. Some way people could get in trouble for stealing even if no one was watching.
The myriads of religions fit this bill with style. If you steal from me and get caught you could lose a hand, but if you don’t get caught you could still lose because now you will burn in Hell, fade into nothingness in the glooms of Hades, or be tortured in Gehenna. And boom, bang, bingo, the masses are double controlled and your brother with a big mouth can fleece the population while convincing everyone they are the special chosen people. In fact, hey, since we are all so important let’s steal stuff from those other guys, cause, you know, they aren’t the special people who follow the same guy in the sky as we do.
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Sort of a ‘we’re special and you suck,’ paradigm. And we are still dealing with this mentality and yeah, it’s ruined the world more than anything else.
Of course, the history of most religions includes genocide, rape, slavery, subjugation, imprisonment, torture, execution, and grifting the poor of their money. In the past, as well as today, we can find multiple countries run by religion. These countries use their religion with an iron fist and citizens who proclaim their atheism are imprisoned or sometimes killed. Most modern religions punch down on women. In some circumstances doing something as basic as dressing as you wish, or driving is forbidden.
Also included in most religions is the hatred of the outsider. The Abrahamic religions all include passages where the unbeliever must be destroyed. In the Bible and the Torah, genocide, rape, and slavery are encouraged. Fear of different people is one of our species’ most primitive emotions. It doesn’t speak highly of these faiths when they seek to make use of such primordial impulses.
What really amazes me is when these people, who worship a god which by any definition is evil, somehow claim to be the vanguard of morality. If you don’t follow their god of murder, rape, and slavery, somehow, you are the one who is evil and has strayed from the light. If, when playing Dungeons and Dragons, I came across a xenophobic god who preached the destruction of everything which was different, but had followers who claimed to be peaceful, I would tip my hat to the Game Master for providing a complex set of villains and then go about taking them out.
This brings up my final point. I have heard religious people say, “What if you are wrong? What if you find out (my) god is real?” Well, I can answer that. If it was the Abrahamic god, somehow, I would call it the monster it is and probably try to fight against it if I could. Hell’s Bells, where did I leave my Hammer of Thunderbolts?
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