A Letter To A Religious Nation

I have thought long and hard about whether or not to write a blog on the subject this blog entails. The large quote from the writer and dramatist Douglas Adams I include below goes some way to highlighting both my initial doubt and subsequent decision to write upon the subject of religion. Before I begin however, read and enjoy this fantastic quote:

“Religion . . . has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? – because you're not!' If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday', you say, 'I respect that'. Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows - but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe ... no, that's holy? ... We are used to not challenging religious ideas but it's very interesting how much of a furore Richard [Dawkins] creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you're not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be.”

          I am an Atheist, and although I do not spend my days knocking on doors preaching (I choose the word advisedly) my non-beliefs and forcing others to adopt them for their own, I admit I am not entirely silent in publically airing them. And why should I? Religion is, somehow, the default position society finds itself in. Someone writes a tweet exclaiming their love for Jesus, someone else walks around with a Jesus tattoo adorning their arm, no one says a word. Someone writes a tweet exclaiming their non-belief or walks around wearing a t-shirt saying “God Does Not Exist” (which I don’t by the way) and society looks down upon them and berates them for expressing their thoughts. Something which, wrongly, does not occur in the opposite sense.

          I don’t believe in the existence of God, I also cannot see how religion is a force for good in the world. People claiming the Bible contains a blueprint for a successful moral compass have clearly not read it. There are countless examples in the Bible of tales that if we were to adopt them as morality guidelines, society as we know it would fall into disrepute. There is a rather large passage of writing by Professor Richard Dawkins in which he works his way through dismantling each and every one of the ten commandments. It is too long to reproduce here but I will give you a short snippet:

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy": this commandment is regarded as so important that a man caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath was summarily stoned to death by the whole community, on direct orders from God.”

          This in turn goes on to explain how the ten commandments lay no orders against rape, torture or the selling of one’s own children; acts that are rife during the time in which the bible stories allegedly occurred. We can only presume that God was fine with these things happening as long as everybody worshipped him and no one else. Of course, anything other than that would be barbaric.

          My final quote comes from, as ever, the eternally erudite Mr. Christopher Hitchens, the late hero of mine. One of his many splendidly phrased anti-theist quotes reads as follows:

“In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks "That's enough of that. It's time to intervene," and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't let’s appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person.”

          But alas, my aim here is not to berate religion as much as I can, and guiltily love to do. No, it is simply to address this damning of non-believers expressing their opinions. Mentally I am a militant Atheist, publically however I haven’t the platform or the status to express my non-beliefs it seems to a willing public (something which I grasp and many religious people seemingly do not).

          My hatred of religion however isn’t, as some people would refuse to believe, on a personal level. People want to pray, that’s fine and no one including me can stop them even if they wanted to, which I don’t. My opinions are loaded more towards the institutions and central bodies of religion; I have no problem in people believing what they want to believe, I just want to be afforded the opportunity to be able to voice my opinion without getting both barrels every time I do.