I take it all back!

About 2 years ago, I published a rather an un-uniquely vitriolic diatribe about hating Richard Dawkins, who no doubt has been the target of that sentiment many, many times before. I even went so far as to defend religious belief as a necessary balm for the ignorant masses to soothe the aches and pains of their existences, and thought Richard cruel to deny them that, the way denying crack to a crack baby would be cruel.

What the fuck was I thinking? Please forgive me Richard, I take it all back.

I've been on a bit of an anti-religion kick lately, and Bill Maher said it best in that even the most benign defense of religious belief is not benign at all. This benign defense that I brought up in a previous blog was that the masses need their opiates, cause life is hard and people gotten believe something. If they are only using their beliefs as a coping mechanisms for the trials and tribulations of life, then what's the harm?

Well, the harm is that people don't confine the influence of their beliefs to only a single aspect of their existence. People form other beliefs based on what they already believe, pardon me, what they know , and at some point they ACT on those beliefs.

And religious beliefs are total crap. This doesn't mean that religious people are horrible, by any means. Most believe what they believe because they were raised that way, and I am no different. I was basically raised atheist, and just lucky to live in Boo-Yah-We're-Right-Ville (pop. approximately 60% of Czechs and Estonians,30% of Canadians, 2% Americans) because that is incidentally where all the evidence points.

The only religious values/beliefs/teachings that aren't crap aren't crap because they make sense and have backing and validation OUTSIDE the the realm of religion. After all, the religious texts were all written on earth by people, so they do occasionally hit on some thread that actually applies to real life, you know, thanks to the "real-life" circumstances the books are describing. But all the purely made up ones are just that...made up. Again as Bill Maher said, these books were written when people didn't know where the sun went once after dusk, so they aren't great sources of factual information.

When people make real-life decisions based on suppositions that are not grounded in reality, bad things happen. This applies to the most benign type of religious behaviour, nevermind the deliberately wicked shit that people do in the name of the religion. Even simple, day to day decisions, if made based on false information, can have potentially disasterous consequences, and it's just a crazy miracle if they DON'T, and that, friends, is beautiful randomness and circumstance.

I used to cling to a false sense of "spirituality" under the pretentious belief that spirituality isn't as stupid as religion because it's more personal; you know, everyone knows someone who is all, "Man, the problem isn't religion, it's ORGANIZED religion." The problem is the belief system itself; it's level of organization makes it either a BIG problem (Catholicism/radical Islam) or a smaller problem (that cult with the leader who looked like a thin Donohue and they all committed suicide so their souls could ride a passing comet).

And the term "spirituality" applies to loosely the same set of baseless beliefs; i.e. David Ike and lizard men ruling the earth, the idea that the "Universe" is looking out for you, and that some things "are/aren't meant to be". I got this new soap, and my hogs need a bath...

At some point, the prospect that Universe was doing anything intentional for me lost all it's emotional appeal, and this is the point that really gets me in the end. I used to accept that there is no evidence-base for believing anything religious or spiritual, but I thought that religion was a valid tool for coping with "life: one damn thing after another" because it provided a cushion of perceived justification, hence predictability, hence sense of security and relief to life's events.

If you furrow your brow and think really hard though, this belief system isn't comforting at all! It means that every time things go wrong in your life, you must have done something wrong and are being punished. Religious texts will all have some opinion on what said-wrong could have been, but considering that Leviticus cites eating shellfish as one of the possibilities, how the hell do you narrow it down? Especially if you are a woman - most religious texts were written over 1500 years ago, when having your period was still considered a sin.

How do you feel if you're a devote Muschrisbudjew all your life, then you get hit one day with the news that you have cancer of the everything (which by the way, your chances of getting is now a staggering 2 out of 3)? Does that mean you recently ate shellfish and now God hates you? How comforting is that!?

Even if good things happen, how do you know which particular good deed you've done caused your good fortune? Because again, according to evidence-based statistics, being born a Caucasian man might be the best decision you ever didn't personally make to ensure a blessed and (literally) rich life.

Would it not in fact be far more comforting to believe that things happen to you based on a set of predisposing factors, some of which are in your control and to which you can proactively make changes, and that the ones your can't affect exist largely because of chance, are not your punishment for wanking off or listening to death metal at your unholy friend's house?

The greatest pile of bullshit about religion is how it takes away agency for individual beliefs, actions and outcomes, while simultaneously placing blame and punishment squarely on the individual. Sin is personal, but salvation is delegated to other forces a devotee must try to appease for his/her redemption without having a very clear idea of how. People are also taught to appeal to an invisible deity for help and they thank said deity when help is given when it's generally PEOPLE (or animals) that help you and PEOPLE to whom thanks should be given. It's almost like religion exists so that people can pretend that they don't depend on one another, and that hardly forms the basis for a cohesive and cooperative society. People often cite charity work as a supposed benefit of religion, as if charity is an inclination only the God-fearing have, and that is total bullocks.

Fundamentally, most major religions are diametrically opposed to democracy; right wing religo's just want Big Daddy to lay down the law and tell them how it's done. This is where the basis for the separation of Church and State: it is widely recognized that the church and all organized religious structures are hierarchical and unequal, and tend to be bizarrely secretive, which is also bad for democracy as it leads to lack of transparency in government reporting and lack of public policy based on evidence. This is why I don't think that highly religious people should be allowed run for public office in a democracy - Harper and Bush come to mind...

So yeah, 1200 words later, my final conclusion is "God bad: Critical Thinking good". If any out there reads this, then dies, reanimates and brings back evidence of an afterlife and a supreme being (or beings), let me know and I'll publish a retraction.

Hell might freeze over by then. Oooooooh, SNAP!