For the most part...
...I've kept my mouth shut this week. I'm a staunch Atheist, but I try to keep my opinions to myself as they're massively offensive to anyone with even a scrap of faith. Whilst I have no respect for religion or religious faith, I do have respect for the feelings of other human beings.

But no-one else seems to give a fuck who they piss off, so here it is:

Religion is a scourge. It is the greatest source of misery, death and pain, and the greatest hindrance to our evolution as a species that has ever existed. Bar none. Granted, there is half-a-handful of good points from the establishment of some beneficial moral principles to the sense of meaning, belonging and community that it brings to some but these are far outweighed by the Dark Ages alone, never mind modern fundamentalism, religious genocide, indoctrinated xenophobia and intolerance to name just a few of its many more dubious effects. I mean, centuries and centuries of religious persecution where even science was herecy punishable by protracted and gruesome death. Fucking CENTURIES. Think where we'd be now if we'd had a freer hand to examine the universe then.

Granted also, a thousand-and-a-half years ago when people began to question the nature of the universe then thier brightest sparks came up with the best answers they could, and they turned out to be crap guesses. But the fact is we've learned enough as fact now to know that most of it is bollocks, and if that's the case then likely ALL OF IT is. Back then it was, as stated, a means of understanding the universe. Now all it is is a tool used by the state to control the simple-minded and there appear to be a depressing number of these in the world.

The fact is, religion is a crutch for those lacking the wit to realise or the will to accept that there really is no point to life. None at all. We are insignificant specks scurrying on the surface of a larger but no less insignificant speck in a limitless universe. We're nothing, and there's nothing waiting for us when our bodies fail us. No eternal damnation, no sweet hereafter. Nothing. This is it. We are born, we scurry, we die. How good a time we have on the way is entirely up to us.

Not all believers are harmful in-and-of-themselves, but as has been obseved within and without this QOTW, those lil' folk pottering along harming no-one are the foundation on which those with a mind to cause harm, power-monger and generally be a fucking massive nuisance stand, and stand firm. To my mind, the little harmless ones are as much to blame as the fundamentalists for the mess religion has made of our kind's collective psyche, and the harm that has resulted from it.

The sooner the world wakes up and abolishes this nonsense is the sooner that everyone's lot will improve and we can make some noticable progress as a species and make life better for future generations. Maybe one day they'll look back with pride instead of shame, as I do. I'm ashamed of my species for being so pathetically fucking stupid as they are and I really do hope to see at least the beginnings of some change to that in my lifetieme. It can't be long now, surely.

Don't bother to reply. I'm not interested in debating this. I'm not saying it's the absolute truth, it's just what I see with these here peepers.
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Thu 26 Mar 2009, 16:50, 6 replies)

you contradict yourself somewhat, however,
by saying "there really is no point to life" and following it with some guff about "make life better for futre[sic] generations".
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Thu 26 Mar 2009, 16:53, closed)

I also said...
...'Don't bother to reply'.
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Thu 26 Mar 2009, 16:54, closed)

and yet
you just have :)
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Thu 26 Mar 2009, 16:56, closed)

interesting note
not that I give a fuck either way

but man, gays hate the church
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Thu 26 Mar 2009, 16:58, closed)

It's because it was the priests
who made them that way in the first place.
( Bert Monkeysex is waiting for the mods to delete him, Thu 26 Mar 2009, 17:02, closed)

Lots of
lols
(Tom Jones's Mojo Hasn't had any since, Thu 26 Mar 2009, 17:10, closed)