The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2640 by Angharad Copyright© 2015 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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“Pre-arranged as in planned and fate and predestination?” I muttered to Danielle.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“What’s right with it?”

“I don’t get you.”

“Fate, kismet, karma, call it what you will is all nonsense invented by religions to try and explain things they couldn’t understand. So if you seemed to have loads of bad things happen and claim to have prayed to your god for help but the bad things kept on happening, your priest would suggest you deserved it.”

“So if bad things happen it’s because you deserve it?”

“That’s why this all powerful, all seeing god hasn’t helped you, because you brought it upon yourself.”

“What about babies, do they bring it on themselves and they can have bad things happen? Natalie Wilmott’s baby brother has awful things wrong with his heart, did he bring that upon himself?”

“So the church says or used to.”

“How can a baby do anything wrong? That’s total rubbish.”

“I agree, but one of the founding fathers of Christianity a bloke called Irenaeus developed the idea of Original Sin from the fall of man which was about Adam rebelling from god in the Garden of Eden. I think St Augustine also went on about it as well but then he was so up his own backside, he was more constipated than consecrated.” Danielle chuckled at my narrative. “So being descended from Adam, we’re all sinners one way or another.”

“But that sounds stupid.”

“It gets worse, if you’re not baptised as an infant especially if you have problems like your friend’s baby brother and die, you can’t go to heaven, so the babies go to limbo in one model or to hell in another.”

“But Jesus said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me,’ I’ve heard it quoted enough times.”

“Two things, Jesus was a Jew, not a Christian. Christianity came from his followers and was originally a Jewish sect, until Paul got his paws on it and turned it into something different. I suspect were Jesus to return, assuming he ever came the first time, he wouldn’t recognise the current religion in any shape or form. It’s been hijacked by psychopaths ever since who use it and the scriptures to commit all sorts of crimes but because they’re doing god’s work or opus dei, they’re absolved of any of it.”

“Children don’t go to hell, do they?” Danielle looked quite anxious.

“The only hell is this world and we make it for ourselves or for others. The biblical hell is nonsense and a later idea to frighten the gullible.”

“But it’s dreadful, Sister Ignatius is always telling us girls we’ll go straight to hell if we do sex and things.”

“And you believe her?”

She blushed, “Um...”

“How can there be a hell for doing what comes naturally?”

“It’s okay in marriage.”

“But for a whole millennium the church wasn’t interested in marriage. People used to have to get married outside it, it was a legal thing. Then they saw it as a way of generating income and further controlling people, so they took it over and have caused would be newlyweds trouble ever since. I mean, marriages done in church are only allowed because the state allows the priest to act as a registrar and all the mumbo jumbo stuff beforehand except the declaration that each of the parties enter into it freely is irrelevant. All that counts is the signing of the register and it being witnessed. That is a legally binding contract, the rest is pure crowd pleasing stuff.”

“You know such a lot, Mummy.”

“It was rammed down my throat as a kid until I told them to stick it, then I spent even longer hours trying to find evidence to disprove all of it.”

“Did you—find proof.”

“Lots of it.”

“Oh.”

“Look, I agreed with all of you that you could attend religious education lessons if you wanted or opt out if you wanted. Sister Maria, agreed the same to me, so she would support you if you opted out.”

“Is all Christianity such crap?” she looked somewhat disenchanted.

“All religions can be beneficial to the believer or restrain, confine and destroy him.”

“Sounds more like the latter, to me.”

“Danielle, Christianity is full of the most wonderful encouragements to help each other, which comes from Judaism. If people heeded this social awareness stuff it would be wonderful, instead they’d rather fight wars over who said what and the context. I’m sure the same is true for all the major religions but they’ve all been hijacked by psychopaths who read bits of the scriptures very narrowly and apply them as narrowly and rigidly as they possibly can. Then they have the cheek to suggest their god said it was right.”

“So it’s all a load of cobras.”

“The story of the serpent is, yes.” I refused to look at her understanding of the fable or allegory, if she did understand she got house points. It pushed her ahead on the chart above her arch rival, Trish. Neither listened to the facts so frequently got their interpretation of the chief protagonists badly wrong. Oh to be young and innocent again, although at her age I was just reaching my own conclusions helped by all sorts of factors and research I had done myself. I hated religion, seeing it as a con trick on the masses by priests who played games with them. Some probably believe it themselves but would have to be somewhat deluded or dumb to ignore the evidence against it.

"Evidence for evolution is overwhelming but I get sick and tired of hearing so called Christians denying it by suggesting that the world is only four thousand years old according to archbishop Usher who calculated all the times mentioned in the new testament. They suggest carbon dating is invalid because of all the fallout from atomic weapons saying it affects the calculations of the carbon isotopes. As they’re comparing carbon with Strontium which is another element it shows they have no idea."