“Only if we play by my rules…”

The Cancer That is Religion.

It has never been a secret that religion exists to spread, just like a tumour it wants to infect new minds and make them function under its rules. Don’t eat this, don’t drink that, hack off this or that part off of your children’s genitalia, don’t make love in that way or with that person, wear this hat to show your devotion, make “your” women veil themselves; pray x times a day, make this day of the week special, cut off people’s hands and stone or lash others to death and call it justice. Just some of the many head-scratchingly, ridiculous and condescending tenets of some of the worlds major religions.

These rules exist for a reason of-course, many reasons beyond the obvious ones, “women cover yourselves or else you are promiscuous sluts” and “men make sure you enforce this because other men can’t wait for the slightest provocation to go on a rape frenzy”. Religion assumes that all people are inherently evil, it’s just condescending like that. Of-course that’s only the obvious reason, another reason goes a little bit deeper than that. When a woman doesn’t wear her veil, a person eat’s pork or drinks alcohol, or when a person doesn’t show up for the Friday prayers in a predominantly religious community they are instantly identified as social outcasts, people to be shunned and hated and ignored because they’re not pious enough or that they’re a bad influence on the community. This serves to make life difficult for them, a slight improvement of the early Islamic stone to death for apostasy thing, but it is the same fear that keeps people in line with the rest of the flock, and all religions thrive in these conditions: Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Poverty, and they spare no expense trying to maintain these conditions.

“Only if we play by my rules…”

It is a reasonable expectation that most religion’s collide in politics and society, and they all maintain a very childish mentality when it comes to dealing with other belief systems or non believers. “The Palestinians can stay in Israel as long as they follow our game plan”, and “The Israelis can stay and live under Islamic law or get out”. This phenomena is also present in other situations, you have  The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis in Egypt who, slowly but surely want to bring about Sharia law and turn it into another Iran or Saudi Arabia, ’cause that’s just what we need in the middle east right now another theocratic, totalitarian regime that is against human rights and freedom of speech. The Sharia doesn’t work, plain and simple, it always lead’s to the same shit going down.
The Christians are also playing this game in other parts of the world, the Vatican as always wants to dictate how people live their lives,
and they absolutely thrive on poverty and keeping it around, “if you pray hard enough god will make you rich/healthy/etc. until then pay your tithes and don’t wear condoms because they’re evil” of-course this brings about more poverty. The Christian right in the USA is all about anti-abortion and banning the teaching of evolution or demanding creationism be taught along side it. “Only if we play by my rules” seems to be their mentality, “Secularists, Atheists and Christians  in my country? well they can stay as long as they follow the Sharia”. “Teaching science in schools? well sure only if you teach our superstitions alongside”.

The religious majority whatever it may be, always wants to force its beliefs and ridiculous laws on other people, even if they do not pray to the same magical sky daddy or even pray at all. Secularism, the separation of religion and government, and the definition of laws and governance by means of academia and research is the only way to have a truly prosperous society, where ideas stand on their merits alone and require not the carrot and stick of heaven and hell or the dogmatic and idiotic rules of religion that cannot withstand the slightest bit of scrutiny and shout blasphemy to anyone who questions them.

Judaism, Christianity, Islam and all the other religions of the world are just fairy tales, so please people, grow up and realize that the religious only want to control your life and take away your freedoms.

Jackrabbit.

A Closer Look at Islam

This last month i made a videos on islam as part of an ongoing YouTube series called “A Closer Look at Islam”.

In this episode i attempted to explain how moderate muslims behave and I made the point in my video that moderates pick and choose which islamic teachings to follow and which to ignore based on their personal preference.

The corollary of that point means that the extremists we see on the news aren’t really extreme in relation with the actual teachings of islam, they’re following the religion to its exact teachings and dogma and adhere to them and would be considered as the champions of the religion. While the moderates are ignoring the islamic teachings or simply nod in agreement without acting on these beliefs or  not even bothering about learning about their faith or teachings, islam to them is no more than a label they grew up with while adhering to very few of the rules and dogma, e.g. the once a year fasting month of ramadan, the once a week friday prayer, abstaining from pork.

Even moderates in the islamic world are mostly looked down upon by the scholars and true believers.

That is why I think that there should be a clear distinction between moderation and non-religiousity in islam and that islam as a faith should be examined with disregard to the followers “moderate” or “extreme”, when that is done, the true essence of the Quran and Hadith(sayings and actions by the prophet) is revealed. They are preachings of violence, ignorance, oppression of women, injustice, slavery, a theocratic state, persecution and suppression of freedoms and human rights.

Jackrabbit.