Faith

Believe what you want. I won't take your right to do so away from you. But then again, how often do you extend me the same courtesy? One of the biggest problems with the religious is their constant efforts to shove their beliefs down the throats of others. Whether it be imposing their "laws" on everyone around them, or their religious convictions that mass murder, violence, degradation, and blind hatred are not only justifiable, but mandated by a higher power. The ironic part is that these same people preach love, kindness, acceptance, and compassion. All the while they look down on homosexuals and followers of other faiths. They turn their backs on their own family members for not fitting the cookie cutter image their faith aims to broadcast. They ask for any given situation questions such as "What would Jesus do?" while shunning their siblings or children. They talk about how showing compassion makes you better than your enemy while also saying the infidels do not deserve mercy.

This is nothing new. It has been going on for as long as man has believed in a god. Just looking at the history of man since the dawning of the times of the deity shows you the hypocrisy behind every word the self-righteous utter every day. Did you know that Jesus was just an ordinary man until a group of highly secretive early Christians decided more people would follow them if they worshiped a god-man? Not to mention that it was only after 300 years had past that they decided that Mary was the "mother of god" and not until 1854 that the "virgin birth" was ever mentioned. Is it any wonder all this happens in a faith that bases so much on books in the Bible that conflict each other and in most cases just make no sense? Does anyone actually believe that these apostles of Jesus had a scribe jotting down everything they said and did over an extensive period of time? This does not even touch on the stories of Adam and Eve, Moses, Noah and the arc, or Abraham, Isaac, and the branching off of the 3 Abrahamic religions.

The most amusing thing about all these religions fighting each other and preaching how they are the only true faith is that it all stems back to a faith each and every one of them attempted to stamp out: Paganism. The major three faiths of today all have one thing in common, that being they are monotheistic.  That means they only have 1 god. Pagans worshiped many gods, and to these three faiths, that is a major no-no. Christians insist you cannot go to heaven without accepting Jesus. Muslims insist that Allah is the only god. Jews believe they are the original "chosen" people of Yahweh, and nobody else will ever go to heaven but them. But considering that Christians were once a sect of Jews known as the Essenes that felt that the Jewish tradition of being a pure race faith you had to be born into and nobody else could join it at all was unfair. They just wanted to have a god that accepted anyone that wanted to believe in it. Now, if there really was a god, something like this would not fly at all. Obviously, it is not up to us humans to decide what our god allows or not. So right from the beginning, the Essenes (Christians) already violated a key aspect of an infallible and superior god by deciding the rules and laws already set by it could be altered to suit the plans of those in power. It wasn't for centuries later that they became known as Christians and somehow had a man born as the son of god that somehow allowed sins to be forgiven and became the only way into heaven. Then the Muslims, led by Mohammad, decided that the prophets of the Bible were actually Muslims and not Jews, and created an offshoot of Isaac story with his "brother" Ismael that supposedly traded his birth right and thus forever caused a rift between Jews and Muslims. Ironically enough, Mohammad only hated the Jews after they refused to convert to his new religion. He originally respected them and wanted to befriend them.

It is just sad that so many use religion to make themselves out to be better than their neighbors. They use it to justify violence, hate crimes, rape, murder, disowning children, burning of books, slaughter of millions of innocent people, the destruction of ancient cultures, and the suppression of science. Galileo's eyes were gouged out for suggesting the earth revolved around the sun. They were so determined to keep the earth as the center of the universe because it was where god created man, and man had to be egocentric as he is superior to all else. I could go into every other atrocity committed by the religious, but that will have to wait for another blog.