Yesterday's Homework for Nan-Fiction was to Write About Something We Hated

[skull_bearer]

I picked religion. I decided not to draw my claws this time, my characters don't, so why should I? The result was a roaring tirade:

 

I have very little to no patience for religious types, whether they come from England,  Americas, the Middle East or a small island off the Philippines. They might be perfectly nice people but then Himmler was a perfectly nice person too when you got to know him, and I still would have trouble being friend with someone whose philosophy I consider to be repulsive.

This may be a prejudice, but it is anything but uninformed. My childhood was secular, it is true, but my parents taught me that everyone is equal and that religion is a person’s choice, and that choices have to be respected.

Fine good, all present and above-board. But it gets tiring when you’re the only one playing that game. They scream ‘religious prejudice!’ The moment one voices an opinion that differs in the slightest to that of their imaginary big beard in the sky (because it’s nearly always beards, bloody chauvinists). They howl that without their gods we would all be immoral and cruel, or that we are immoral and cruel, and that only by repenting and worshipping their god can we become moral (their idea of moral, which seems anything but in my opinion). All the time forgetting that the time their god was in control (The Dark Ages, today’s Middle East and Israel), were a time of horror and death.

But Oh! They cry, what about NAZI GERMANY tm? Weren’t THEY atheists? What about THEIR human rights abuses?

Firstly, no, they were not atheists. Hitler was Catholic, the army went to war with ‘God is with Us’ on their belt buckles, and their human rights abuses would not have been possible without the silent consent of the masses, already prejudiced against the target groups by the very churches said to be so ‘moral’.

Quite simply, I hate religion because religion hates me. For all the Lamb of God and acceptance rubbish, at the end of the day a truly Christian nation would burn me as a witch, and a truly Islamic nation would stone me. I’m not entirely sure about Judaism, but by what I’ve heard of Israel I’m not in a mad hurry to go and live there.

But again, aren’t I being unfair? What happened to my parent’s reminders of being accepting of other people’s choices?

That jumps the shark every time I see signs outside churches reproaching me for a fool for not believing in their dead zombie god. Every time I get sneered at for not being ‘one of the chosen’, and condemned to go to hell for my refusal to believing in an invisible, inaudible and incorporeal being that has shown me no sign that he ever existed. And while I know that variety in the human race makes the world a more interesting place, every time a doctor gets shot by a Christian fundamentalist, every time yet another terrorist bomb goes off, killing people who were most likely against the wars now raging, every time the peddlers of hate mount their pulpits to spew their loathing like true latter-day Hitlers, then I can’t help but wish they’d all evaporate off the face of the Earth.

To my surprise, the group I read it out to all laughed. At least two were Christian and one was Muslim. When each group had to choose one group to read, I got picked. The response was... well, I don't think most of them were expecting this one. Felt pretty good about it, although I can't say I was feeling too safe about walking home, with the glares some people were giving me. One person all but accused me of being a nazi, which, coming from her, is a compliment.
Oddly, loads of people were congratulating me too, mostly due to sheer balls. So I think this made me more friends than less.
One think I've learnt this past year is that some people really aren't worth the bullets it would take to kill them.

Comments

[almightyspaz.livejournal.com]

You rock my little demonic world. That was really good

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I hate to tell you this, but the polytheism that still survives in Asia and its equivalents elsewhere in the world was not much better. Monotheism is a failed idea with a sky-high body count, to be certain....and I say this as a Christian....but where Nazi Germany was not an atheist society, the Soviet Union and today's PRC damn well are and one of the world's largest societies currently represses religion and I would hardly call China a bedrock of science.

Ever since man began to write and erect cities, life has sucked for the vast majority. Religion has had an incidental nature to that various fact. It truly is still for a lot of people the heart of the heartless world and the soul of the soulless world.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

I don't like religion full stop. I just didn't bother to mention them because it would have been out of place and I only had 500 words.

[arkan2.livejournal.com]

underlakers:Ever since man began to write and erect cities, life has sucked for the vast majority.

Specifically, ever since the human race invented social stratification (that's what social stratification means - another good term is "structural violence"), which may have been as early as the changeover from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural.

People at the top of such societies naturally preach the essentially rightness of social stratification, seeing as how it's what keeps them at the top. The only way for an ideological system from below (such as a religion) to become predominant is for some group or groups at the top of various societies to appropriate and bastardize it to suit their own needs - which means naturally, to make it agree with the rightness of social stratification/structural violence. So the predominant version of an ideology in an unequal society is always going to have some revoltingly anti-human elements; doesn't mean the ideology itself is inherently corrupt. Least ways, that's how I look at things, anyway.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually, religion has its origins back in Neanderthal times, if archaeology is any testament. It's not uniquely human, we were the second bipedal ape to have the idea. Religion in the sense that we think of it is no older than the 19th Century, in days gone by it informed all aspects of all levels of society. Indians and Aborigines are just as religious as Christians, it's just that traditionals of both cultures adhere to the older ethnic-regional model of religion.

Extremely hierarchical societies are a rarity and do not tend to have real staying power in human history.

[arkan2.livejournal.com]

Interesting. But I wasn't talking primarily about religion (and what I did have to say was about specific religions, not "Religion" as a whole) you were talking about how long its been that life has sucked for the majority. You said it was "Ever since man began to write and erect cities."

I countered that it's been since the creation of social stratification (or structural violence). It's not necessarily extreme hierarchies (depending on your definition), but it is sharply defined hierarchies, and very big hierarchies when you get to a national scale, even a small nation.

And for whatever reason, with hierarchies on that scale, life tends to suck the lower down the ladder you go. Interestingly enough, it isn't necessarily that great for those towards the top, either. This describes pretty much every society currently on Earth.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It's been that way since life became at the level of protists. And cities tended to draw people in to labor to feed them, and not even all the inhabitants of the urban environment benefited, perhaps, but their lot was still better than the slave who worked for the landowner.

Our political structures wrap our leaders in a great aura of mystique and tend to support themselves by tremendous bloodshed proportionate to each era. A truly equitable world with the global South able to determine its own destiny would be the economic ruin of the global North. Albeit it would also be a world with a Global South that isn't both extremely poor and extremely populated in that time bomb of a connection.

This is not a great or a grand world, it's mostly been a harsh and brutal one and only in the last century or so has that moderated to a great degree even in the Rich countries.

[arkan2.livejournal.com]

It's been that way since life became at the level of protists.

What has? Social stratification? How can we ell?

It's not just the global South that's impoverished ... large numbers of people in the North are living in wretched conditions. While Russia acquired a number of millionaires and billionaires post-Soviet Union, the majority of its citizens saw their standard of living decrease drastically in the ensuing years. The moneyed elite in Russia are living large, whereas a large portion of the rest are living in 19th century conditions. You could tell a similar story, more-or-less (maybe not quite as extreme in most places) about every other country in the global North.

Conversely, while the majority of citizens of the global South is also impoverished, there's a small but significant number of people whose standard of living is actually higher than most middle-income people in the North.

A truly equitable world with the peoples of the global South and North able to determine their own destinies would be the ruin of the systems which keep this kind of stratification in place - though not necessarily ruin of the people who benefit from them. And as far as I'm concerned, ruining systems of stratification is a bit (actually, quite a bit) like ruining a system like slavery - all to the good.

This is not a great or a grand world, it's mostly been a harsh and brutal one and only in the last century or so has that moderated to a great degree even in the Rich countries.

Maybe if you only look at it from the top. Looked at from the ordinary, everyday point-of-view of the third estate, the people who've hardly ever had a real say in their own destinies, you see something quite different, something impressive, something truly inspiring.

[sorion.livejournal.com]

I don't mind faith, any faith, but I do mind politics. And as soon as faith becomes religion, there's always politics in it. That's just a matter of logistics. And with politics, it is no longer a question of faith, but "us against them"...

What I'm trying to say... I'm with you, basically ;)


I'm born, baptised and all that Catholic. I remained Catholic because our local church helped me (financially) when I literally didn't know what else to do, anymore. Sometimes, some people still get what it's all about...

[sookail.livejournal.com]

I`m quite religious but LOLed and approve of the message 100% :D
It describes very nicely all the "godly" people who forget to be, like, human.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I'm what you term a 'religious type' but agree with your viewpoint entirely. This may be because I am a Quaker and we tend to think, shall we say, outside the box :o)

I tend not to approve of extremist anything...........

part 1

[arkan2.livejournal.com]

... Should'a known my reply would be too long for just the one post.

I wasn't offended, because it seems to me you're not so much talking about "religious types" as you are about "theists" (whether mono- or poly-). Like cmcmck I consider myself a Quaker, and believe in faith and practice ... I just don't believe it stems from any supernatural, incomprehensible force, God or otherwise.

All the same, I think you sell theists too short. Since you've already brought Godwin into the discussion, I'll counter with a couple anti-Godwins: Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. They were both committed believers, and their followers also went to the front lines of the struggle in the belief that "God is with us."

Solidarity, in Poland, drew great strength from its members commitment to Catholicism and love for the Polish Pope. (And this later bit them in the arse to an extent, as the post-Soviet government, in the interest of toeing the orthodox Catholic party line, proclaimed abortion illegal once it was in power.)

It's true, religious figures have been prominent in most of the world's great tragedies going back millennia ... just as religious figures have been prominent in the struggle against oppression for the same period.

As underlakers points out, while Hitler was Catholic, Stalin and Mau were atheists, and it didn't stop them seeing his bodycount and raising by a hefty margin.

In my Women's Studies class this Spring, we read an excerpt from a book titled something along the lines of The Rise of Secularism. It points out that secularism was originally touted as an antidote to religion because (as you point out) "look at all those wars and slaughters and general intolerance." Well, okay, many nations have adopted secularism to an extent, and, astonishingly enough, the net effect on wars and slaughters and general intolerance has been practically zero.

Where religion has gone out of fashion, the zealots and butchers merely adept their language to e.g. nationalism (now there's an odious ideological system for you). While the US is in some respects very much a Christian nation, my countrypeople (including large numbers who weren't even Christian) have historically been hugely susceptible to nationalist demagoguery when it comes to killing and dying throughout the world to free another country for US markets. The so-called Communist countries did much the same in their time.

Zealots and extremists crop up most everywhere, and they always take their cue from whatever's hot at the moment: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, nationalism, neoliberalism, Marxism, what have you. Nothing, it appears, is so sacred that it cannot be appropriated by the forces of bigotry and oppression.

[arkan2.livejournal.com]

at the end of the day a truly Christian nation would burn me as a witch, and a truly Islamic nation would stone me. I’m not entirely sure about Judaism, but by what I’ve heard of Israel I’m not in a mad hurry to go and live there.

Here in particular, you're making the extremists' arguments for them. I am quite sure that the historical Christ would not have burned you as anything, and I doubt Mohammad or Abraham would either.

This is the core of Judaism in a nutshell, and it could stand just as easily for any other religion you'd care to name (courtesy of the Rabbi Hillel): "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary."

I'm not any kind of Jew except by heritage, but in interpreting Judaism, I'd sooner take my cues from Hillel than Avigdor Lieberman. Just as I'll take my cues on Christianity from Martin Luther King Jr or Walter Wink before Torquemada. Just as I take my cues on Islam from Leila Ahmed over Ayatollah Khomeini or Khameini.

Your hatred of religion in general seems to me founded in accepting the latter individuals' claims of representing the only "true" version of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or whatever. By implication, it denies the validity of all those who have drawn upon their belief in a beneficent deity or pantheon in their own struggle for good in the world. (Including the many Christians who saved Jews from the Holocaust.)

I can see how progressive religious types might agree with you, seeing as how I imagine their opinion of the kind of person you're talking about is approximates a Marxist's opinion of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, I know how ticked off I'd be if somebody were to point to the flaws of representative electoral politics (infinite) and then used that as an argument for the inherent oppressiveness of democracy.

... I feel like that all may have come out harsher than I'd intended. Obviously, you're free to feel what you like, so long as you don't try to to punish others for continuing to believe in God/practice their religion. I just felt these were some important considerations that you don't really address (although it is hard to fit everything you have to say into just 500 words, I am aware).