The belief in a personal god that drifts over the planet sprinkling miracles and dishing out eternal damnation is idiotic and childish. The idea originates from people who lived in the stone age and who knew nothing of the world around them.... a reality check would be visiting a medicine man somewhere in the African bush and seeing the intellectual/spiritual equivalent of the 'prophets' worshipped in most of the organized religions we have today. You'd laugh at his rituals and beliefs, yet the sad truth is that it's exactly the same shit.
The 'religions of the world' base themselves on nothing more than the writings of some schizophrenic, psychotic cavemen and theirs are dangerous to boot. In the past I used to wave off allegations that religion contributes to radicalism and, like many, stated that "the message is pure" and "oh it's not the fault of X religion that kids strap bombs to their bodies and blow themselves up" but actually it is. The system promotes indoctrination, zealotry and ignorance. Surrendering your conscious to a religion is something that is praised in the respective 'holy' books, these also provide plenty contradictions so that once someone accepts it as the only valid truth he/she can now easily find the reasons and justification to do the most despicable things. The existence of islamic, christian, jewish radicalism (and I'm sure radicalism in many more religions) is, for a large part, the fault of these books and their teachings. On one hand it can manifest itself in some locking themselves up in monasteries for the rest of their lives, on the other hand it can lead to people conducting suicide bombings and wars based on some 2000+ years old scribblings. The latter is a problem and the sad part is that in many cases the only cure seems to be taking a bullet to the face.
What's clear is that the morality and "lessons" these religions teach are horribly outdated and have no place in our modern society, these and their systems belong in the past for us to read about in history books. I sincerely hope to see each and every one of them either die out or are significantly marginalised in my lifetime, I'm no longer willing to give these glorified circuses any respect or room whatsoever. Having recently followed lectures on the history of many religions and being taught by a theologist who did nothing but try and justify all the wrongdoings or otherwise ignoring them has greatly contributed to this militant stance tbh. All of it is ridiculous.
That said, I subscribe to complete agnosticism and like the idea of Spinoza's god.
Last edited by Shocking (2011-12-28 05:49:31)