If you are a God botherer then you may not want to read this post, but you should.

As an alternative (or in addition) to the Queen’s Speech this year, there was a speech made by an extreme religious asshat who preached his usual run of the mill prejudice. No, not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Pope, who informed us that mankind faces a threat akin to that of global warming – the gays. Seriously, explain to me the difference between denying the holocaust and declaring that the gays are going to kill us all, there isn’t one and that’s why the Pope is as extreme and irrelevant as Mr Ahmadinejad. Yet there are still plenty of Church of England clergy members threatening to switch allegiances to the Roman Catholic church if the ordination of female bishops is allowed to go ahead. My understanding of the objection is that it is based upon the fact that none of the Apostles were women, but I’ll ignore the obvious sexual discrimination here and head straight on to what I think is the larger issue: since the beliefs of the two churches in question are different how can anyone switch sides? As a non believer this sort of thing does little to convince me of the strength, or accuracy, of such people’s faith and leads me to be very glad of the separation between church and state.

The bottom line (and I’m aware that this may sound very smug – it’s meant too), out of all of your religions, only one is can be right.

:P

*I could find no evidence of a legal separation between church and state in the UK, after all the Church of England is a state religion, but I’m pretty sure that the majority of Britains no longer believe in divine right.

Post tune: Killing In The Name, Rage Against The Machine, Rage Against The Machine.

People who seek “success, career or money are building on sand”, said the man who had forged his career in the multi billion dollar Catholic conglomerate. If money means nothing, then why was the Catholic church so quick to hand out the Scrooge McDuck paper when multiple cases of child abuse were uncovered in America and why do you regularly appear draped in more gold than Mr T?

Away and raffle your donought… sucka!

I watched an interesting programme last night on BBC2, it was all about religion and why some religious people are considered to be mentally ill, whilst others are not. The programme was part of a series about normality and was hosted by Dr Tanya Byron (I think), someone who I had never seen before watching the series, but who strikes me as someone who thinks along similar lines to myself. This particular programme was so interesting to me as it covered areas which I had myself considered and discussed with friends (hi Nige). Here are the key points I gleaned from the programme:

A preacher on the street is more likely to be labled as a “nutter” than the Pope. I don’t agree with this point of view, I consider them to be equal in their beliefs (delusions?), however, I have never been chased down the street by the Pope.

The onus is on religious people to prove the existence of God, or any other SCB (supreme cosmic being), as science dictates than we can only consider ourselves to know what we can prove – inspite of the fact that there is no greater preponderence of evidence to prove either standpoint. Religious people will always fall back to saying scientists have been wrong in the past (true) and that they *know* that they are right. Science will laugh in the face of this argument and state that science is not so arrogant as to know anything, rather it tends towards saying that our current understanding tells us that something is so, science will then laugh again and state that there are many different religions and only one of them can be right! (Science will laugh about this one for a while).

Religious people will be quick to tell you that religion has been a source of much good in the world, however, they will neglect to tell you that it has also been the cause of much suffering.

We (the non religious people) are in the main, happy to be tolerant of religion as long as it stays in it’s box. As soon as it begins to try to infringe upon our lives or is seen to be trying to con/ensnare the more susceptible among us we get cross. Britain tends to be much more secular and tolerant than other places, especially the United States – which is odd considering the reason why the United States was founded.

When speaking in tongues, a different part of the brain is active than when speaking normally. This proves…precisely nothing.

If there were no such concept as religion in todays world, most of the religious people would have been sectioned.

And finally – this is the best one. A religious person (TV presenter Jeremy Vine), when asked where he would take his daughter if she was ill, responded by stating that he would of course take her to a doctor and that taking her to a church would be a last resort. Draw your own conclusions.

So are religious people schizophrenic, or are they talking to God and more importantly is there a pixie sitting next to Nige right now?

I happened across a quote today, taken from Bertrand Russell’s 1927 lecture “Why I am not a Christian“. The statement was made as part of his discounting the First Cause argument:

“If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.”

It is this reasoning which means that I cannot say with certainty that there is, or isn’t, a God/supreme cosmic being (and why there very well might be an invisible pixie sitting next to you right now Nige).