Don’t Damn Me!

This post is inspired by a post on another blog, and probably posts on every internet forum around the world.

It really irks me how people around the world blame the world’s problems on religion, like it’s some sort of bandwagon everyone is free to jump onto, should they be pissed off at how crap the world has turned out.

I’m not for one moment saying religion is blame-free, or pure and perfect in any way.  What i’m saying though is, religion is nothing more than a grouping of people, who THINK they are lead by God and his divine teachings.

If we look around the world, at any group of individuals, be it a football team, a set of football fans, fans of a particular rock group, people who dress in a similar way, even just people from the same nationality, they are all guilty, via at least a few of their members, of heinous crimes.

If a businessman rapes and murders a three year old child, do we all rise up in arms and claim that businessmen are evil?  And we’d be better off without them?

If woman drives her car off a pier into the ocean, while her two young children sleep in the back and a Britney Spears CD is playing through the speakers, do we all rise up and claim that listening to Britney is evil?   And the world would be better off without it?

To make my point a little clearer, i’d like to point out i’m a resident of Northern Ireland, and have been since the day i was born in October 1974.  I’ve grown up among the troubles, i’ve gone to school with boys who when they turned into men, signed up for paramilitary organizations and took up arms to protect their cause.  I’ve even narrowly missed out on being in places where bombs have gone off, and actually been caught up in riots, where beer bottles and bricks have buzzed past my head like overfed wasps.

People will look at that and say, there you go, religion, it causes all the wars in the world, if it wasn’t for religion we’d not have had the troubles in N.I.

Bullshit.  The people i went to school with, who later took up arms to fight the cause probably didn’t go to church a day in their life, after the age of 10.  Not counting weddings and funerals.

Yet they fought in the name of God and Ulster.  Not really knowing what either really meant.

And this is the problem.  They didn’t give a shit about any God.  They were drunk most of the week, and off their tits on cocaine or speed, shagging anything that let them, come the weekend, if they weren’t out learning how to fire a gun, or teaching kids to make and use petrol bombs for the next staged riot at the top of the estate.

Religion was merely the excuse they used to justify what they wanted to do with their lives.  They hated Catholics, because they were different, and because they’d been brought up to think that way, by their relatives and elders in general.

It’s the same with any of the other problems, that get blamed on religion.

Queers?  Boo!  Hiss!  Ungodly acts, how dare they?  Most of the people screaming this from the rooftops wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in the presence of Jesus, if indeed Jesus ever actually existed and he was who he claimed to be.  How would these same people feel, if another Christian is out screaming about adulterers, thieves, blasphemers, etc?  Would any one of them be able to stand proud?  But because homosexuality isn’t as socially acceptable as the other sins (according to their understanding of the bible), it’s ok to jump on them and remind them how disgusting they are in the eyes of God.  Even though the bible says love the sinner, hate the sin, and that sins aren’t better or worse than each other, apart from blaspheming the Holy Spirit, and one other which i can’t remember (i’m a bit rusty).

So you have some homosexual-hating person out on the streets screaming his disgust at another human being, just because he happens to be sexually and/or emotionally attracted to other human beings of the same sex.  Justifying his actions because the bible says homosexuality is wrong.  Yet not at all bothered about the countless other sinners he knows, including himself, even if he is a Christian, after all, we’re all sinners in the eyes of the bible, and only through Jesus are we forgiven, if we ask, it doesn’t absolve us of our sins, it merely washes them clean, day after day, minute after minute, second after second, as we continue to be sinners and gain wisdom and righteousness through his teachings and blood.

Does anyone really believe that George W. Bush went into Iraq on religious grounds?  Or that the problem between Israel and Jordan is a religious matter?  Bullshit.  Wars come down to the flaws mankind has always suffered, greed, pride, the promise of land, rape, pillaging and filthy lucre.

Just like during the Crusades, in the name of God and his teachings.  Regardless of the gold, slaves and other rewards taken as a coincidence.  Even if you disregard the treasures, it wasn’t the love of God and promise of heaven that led people to torture other human beings, it was the pride of their beliefs, that they were right and anyone who didn’t agree was sub-human and undeserving of compassion and/or any kind of mercy.

Man likes to kill each other, man likes to steal, man likes to judge and look down it’s nose at others, man is corrupt.  Religion is merely one of the vehicles man uses to justify it’s own means and agenda.