(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.
“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."
Comments
As I've so often quoted Kipling -
He that hath a gospel, whereby heaven is won, ............... and so on.
Like you Ang' I eventually deduced that it seemed to me that religion was and still is the cause of much ignorance and suffering. Sadly I did not reach this deduction with any certainty until I realised I was born this way - and that was in my third decade. The most evil component of religion for me was the emotional and psychological abuse heaped upon me as a child. How can anybody forgive that!!!?
Oh Ang, shaking the tree, see
Oh Ang, shaking the tree, see what falls. You're such a bad girl.. Tssk. Really!
You're 2000 years off, btw, Usher calculated the beginning at 4000 years BC, so it'd be around 6000 years now. That said, I agree with your position on the utter hardheadedness of the 'true' believers, who argue scientific evidence. It's quite sad. In a way you have to give them believers kuddo points for sticking to their guns that it's all god's work.
I think it gets a little funny when going so far as postulating that 'he' fabricated this evidence as a way of testing the depth of their beliefs. What divine and omniscient and omnipotent being would need this trickery?
Oh well, I gladly leave religion to the believers, they're happy to it.
Kind regards,
Jo-Anne
Not to mention all those idiotic jihadists
The religious mafia would have us believe that if they did not exist that humanity would dissolve into a mess with no moral compass. I firmly don't believe that since I had a moral compass before I even heard of the name 'Jesus'. And all of a sudden they feel they have the right to judge me merely because I don't follow their book chapter and verse.
I am not atheistic for I believe totally disproving that some kind of deity exists is impossible too. Both sides are just as egotistical imho.
Dear Guest Reader,
Dear Guest Reader,
your comment that it is impossible to prove that a god does not exist is only correct because Any Negative is impossible to prove.
It is just a few years since certain stupid politicians demanded of the then president of Iraq that he PROVE that he did not have "weapons of mass destruction". Messrs Bush Jr and that unspeakable liar Tonibliar, both devout christians, knew of course that to prove a negative is impossible (or more likely the cleverer individuals behind them knew this ) and so they gave themselves what they felt was a justification for releasing all of their combined military might upon a small country whose leader was no saint by any means but then, neither were they either. Over 100 000 women and children died from the bombing and the invasion and three times that number were seriously injured. Due to the use of "spent uranium" armour-piercing shells to knock out tanks, the fine desert dust and sand in the deserts of Iraq now contains plutonium, which is an impurity in "spent uranium", and these days many babies born in Iraq are born disfigured and doomed to very early deaths. The poisonous and radioactive plutonium, an element that is not naturally found on this planet, will be around for thousands of years.
The end result was that a relatively progressive Arab country where women were allowed to go to university, to vote, and were treated like Humans, was pushed back into the mediaeval times, and now they have to walk about in the hot sum covered in black blankets, following behind their menfolk, and the only thing children can learn is all about an illiterate camel driver from a book who the believers in the faith forced onto them is supposed to have written, in a language he did not speak, some 1600 or so years ago, back when people thought that the sun revolved around the earth, and lots of other things that we all know now to be untrue.
One just HAS to recognise that belief in a supreme being is and always has been a dangerous mental disease, like a kind of parasite or virus, that invades the brain cells of humans and seeks to grow and infest its host, then to breed and spread its kind.
I was raised without any religion, and taught that they were "only for weak people", and that we Atheists were strong enough not to do naughty things to other people, without believing in fairy tales. So far I have not killed anyone, stolen anything, broken any marriage vows, covetted any neighbours' ox, or any of the other things nice people are supposed not to do. Indeed, working in medical research I have actually saved lives, which I submit is a morally better thing to do than to kill people.
Briar
I never said Atheists are not moral people
If you read my comment carefully you will see that I clearly said I had a moral compass BEFORE I was introduced to religion. Technically all babies are atheistic after all and my parents never were deeply religious.
And yes, one cannot prove a negative and since we are all merely a sample of one I and we none of us (that I know of) will return from that 'undiscovered country'. Granted there may have been some unproven possibilities like near-death experiences where people who were in arrest seeing what loved ones were wearing say in the waiting room but of course that can never be proven of course.
It doesn't matter. Then again, no atheist will ever return ever to admit they were wrong either or a religious one come back and say they were right.
Or vice versa of course
That is implied.
Proving a negative
I have to disagree that proving a negative is impossible. In general, I've noticed that the examples chosen are those that support that belief, when those that would expose the limited nature are swept under the rug.
To use your own example: you use the existence/nonexistence of god to support your argument that Bush & Co. demanded the impossible of Iraq. This is where your argument falls apart. Unlike god, WMDs are tangible - you can see them, touch them, maybe even smell them. An unbiased investigation CAN determine if the WMDs are there or not. Its the same as if somebody claimed I possessed shoulder-fired missiles. A complete search of my property will prove or disprove such a claim.
It's when you place unreasonable requirements on such proof that it may become difficult if not impossible. For instance, if it is required that I prove there are no shoulder-fired missiles anywhere I've been that it becomes impossible to prove/disprove. I went to Walmart, are there any shoulder-fired missiles there? What about the convenience store, or the grocery store? Manipulating what proof is required can change the subjective truth of a statement.
No religious or political beliefs were harmed in the writing of this (I think).
I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.
Thank you,Angharad,
I have always believed that one should never discuss religion or politics,so that way we can avoid arguements that
are of no consequence.When the "God botherers " come knocking on my door I always announce that I am the second
coming of Christ and they must have been sent to be my disciples and I suggest that we should go to the pub to get to
know each other better-----they usually run away !! So,let us each have our own beliefs and keep those beliefs. to ourselves.
ALISON
An agnostic view
Dave Allen on religion - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxo81Ok9Urk
Shiraz
And here I was thinking
We were about to hear cosmic (or is that comic) truths from the mouths of babs.
I'm glad to see Cathy not dismissing the visits from various dead loved ones as total fantasy. She was heavily traumatized at a child, which explains the unreasonable denial to date. She has had more truth than any 10 other people.
I have a problem with churches. I can't believe God needs us to praise him, instead how we treat each other is much more important. It is a point many Christians (who don't act much like it) seem to have trouble understanding that point.
What's the odds
Danni will take up her mothers offer to kick R.E. into the long grass. I only wish I could have done that when I was at school. Talk about boring , If there has ever been a better solution to insomnia I have yet to find it...
Kirri