Matters of Church & State
The Discussion About Religion That Nobody Wants To Have
Before I proceed with my conclusions on the topic of religion, and inevitably put you in the uncomfortable position of making difficult ethical decisions regarding the future of the human race… I’d like to ask everyone some questions. You can answer them directly and voice your response, or simply mull them over in your head. Either way, asking questions has always led to greater understanding.
1. Do you find it odd that politicians freely talk about (and even endorse) religion, while clerics and church leaders refrain from talking politics?
2. What does “separation of church and state” mean to you, and does the U.S. practice this principle?
3. What does “religious freedom” mean to you, and does the U.S. practice this principle?
4. Can religion be dangerous or detrimental to an individual or society, and how can you tell when it is?
5. Are the “laws of god” and the “laws of man” at odds with each other?
What is an Atheist?
Ladies and gentlemen, I am an atheist. I do not have faith in your god, or anyone else’s, but please don’t let that get between us and our conversation. I am more than happy to explain the good news I have. Before I tell you some of the conclusions I have reached, I can tell you’re curious, so I’ll just come right out and say it: I’m no religious “scholar.” I’ve never read the Bible. Or the Quran. Or the Torah. Or the Vedas, the Book of Mormon, the Satanic Bible, the Watchtower, or Dianetics. But I can tell you, they are all fiction, as fallible and biased as the men who wrote them.
Let me give you my synopsis of religion. Then, you can tell me about yours. Think of all the various religions around the world… How ever many you just came up with, you’re wrong. There may be 5 or 6 “major” religions, but there are thousands upon thousands scattered across the globe, past and present. When a religion becomes extinct, as many have, we simply call it a myth. What makes your god more than a myth?
Drawing Parallels
Around the globe
Many religions and myths claim similar things: A creator, an afterlife, endless dualities, prophets, origins and end times, the list goes on… But not all of them say the exact same thing. Much like how different people looking at the same object don’t all see the same thing. Furthermore, a man in the desert will not tell you of the plentiful life in the forest. People were simply trying to interpret their environment, and shortly after, they began trying to interpret something a bit more “universal”: the stars. Yes, many religions have astrological origins. I encourage you to explore them.
Not only are religious beliefs specialized and localized by region, they have also traveled as people began to travel. We know these things. America wouldn’t have had Christianity if western Europeans didn’t bring it, and they wouldn’t have practiced it if Romans didn’t have it. Romans got it from Canaan, who got it from Egypt. The story changed as it was passed along, like a game of telephone, getting muddled up by the people who use it forcefully and with institutions. Make no mistake, domination, conquest, and trade are critical factors in the spread of religion.
“I distrust those people who know so well what god wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” — Susan B. Anthony
Everywhere the Romans conquered, Christianity took hold. Everyone who tried to challenge it failed because the religious used force. Murder, threats, etc. Their authoritarian ways made sure that nobody would question the system. They burnt literature, literally trying to destroy knowledge. There is believing, then there is knowing. Without evidence, truth, and knowledge, one has desperation, and must resort to force. Christians are not first or last to conquer in the name of religion. The story still plays out today, sometimes as if nothing has changed. If history is any indicator, it’s simply “the name of the game.”
Death
Death is supposed to be the equalizer of all species. All are organic, all are mortal and face an end. But the the creation of an afterlife changes that. No longer are we all doomed to suffer the same fate. We get the idea that there are ways of escaping death and achieving eternal life. If this life is not the only one, it loses its importance and you will find people essentially wasting it on their efforts to get to the “next life.” Is Earth not enough, or does the afterlife seem like a carrot dangled before us? Those constrained and prohibited from reaching their full potential in all that they do and think, for the sake of reaching a promised afterlife, may very well have done so for nothing
Great White Lies
Remember as a child, when we would question our parents, and instead of explaining, they would just say, “because I said so,” and that was the end of questioning? Because they had the power and dictated what you could know. Same as when the devoutly religious say, “its god’s will.” It is a deflection, quite boldly claiming, “you don’t need to know.”
Did the world come crashing down when you discovered that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the tooth fairy didn’t exist? Did you all of a sudden become a different person and throw your morality out the door? Did you lash out in anger and try to make them exist again? Nope. We all got on with our lives, looked back and said, yeah, I guess that was pretty silly of me to believe in such a thing. But if all of these myths had churches of their own, books that reinforce that their existence is absolutely true, and people consuming that ideology, we would find people digging in their heels to assert that Zeus is real, that cthulu is real, and that leprechauns are indeed real and want your gold.
Rejecting Superstition
Life, we can see. Our actions can be measured. The good we do is felt, as is the harm, and they both leave their marks. What we do to the land and other organisms, especially other humans, is glaring us in the face, yet we tailor our actions not to those around us, but to ourselves, our own desires.When looking for meaning and answers in life, you must simply examine life itself. You wouldn’t call the headquarters of a dairy company to find out if the milk in your fridge is expired. Just smell the milk.
“Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn’t there, and finding it” — Oscar Wilde
“All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.” — Edgar Allan Poe
“The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.” — Neil Degrasse Tyson
If I May Venture a Guess…
Let’s all do ourselves a favor and stop denying the root cause of terrorism and it’s companion, fascism. It is becoming more and more obvious, with every passing murder, that religious fanaticism is the culprit. Before I lose you, I want to make a clear distinction between religion and religious fanaticism. Religion can be explained simply as acts of devotion to a perceived creator of earth/life. Religious fanaticism, on the other hand, is an extreme devotion that demands subservience and promotes bigotry. A fanatic, a zealot, an extremist, whatever you call them, they believe there is no length too great for them when it comes to serving their god. These people are willing to die, and willing to kill, because of the confidence and pride they have, or should I say, faith. Atheists like myself are jailed and killed under blasphemy laws in some parts of the world.
Just for a bit more clarity, let’s define faith: confidence or trust in a person or thing; the observance of an obligation from loyalty; fidelity to a person, promise, engagement; a belief not based on proof; may refer to a particular system of religious belief.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities” — Voltaire
God & Country
Contrary to the cries of U.S. fear mongers, some of whom hold public office, Islam does not have a monopoly on terror. It is incredibly disingenuous of anyone to claim Islam as the sole threat to peace when it is clear that violent acts of terrorism are perpetrated by people of all faiths, across the globe. These groups seek to govern with an iron fist and eliminate dissent. They have theocratic aspirations, blatantly combining church and state, and they usually have an armed militia. I’ll name a few.
In the Islamic world, they are groups like the Taliban of Afghanistan, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram of Nigeria, Al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, Al-Shabaab of Somalia, Al-Nousra of Syria, Jemaah Islamiah of Southeast Asia, and Abu Sayyaf of the Phillipines. Often aligned with an ideology known as Salafism, they want to establish an Islamic State, or caliphate, governed by theocratic Sharia Law.
In the world of Judaism, it is groups like Kach, Kahane Chai, and Lehava, who hold religious supremacist views and commit acts of violence in the name of their cause. Jewish extremists, often aligned with Zionism, would like to see Israel become a Jewish state, or rather, remain a Jewish state, as Israel was designated as such since it declared statehood in 1948. Jews have their own religious law, known as Halakha.
And perhaps the groups you are (or should be) most familiar with: Christian Extremists. In America, they are often tied to the white supremacy and Christian Identity movements. These are U.S. groups like Aryan Nations, the Army of God, the Ku Klux Klan, the Westboro Baptist Church, the “Covenant, Sword, and arm of the Lord” or C.S.A. Others violent groups such as the Lord’s Resistance Army of Uganda, and the Anti-balakas of the Central African Republic, espouse a Christian brand of terror elsewhere. Just like extremist Jews and Muslims, many extremist Christians desire biblical, or Divine Law.
All of these groups have things in common: Violence, male superiority, ethnocentricity, anti-intellectualism, and aversions to sexuality. What they advocate is nothing more than exclusion. There is no reason why their wild misconceptions should be law. They do not want a world for all, they do not want peace, and they do not want freedom. They want a world for themselves, void of dissent, where all it takes to justify domination is the evocation of a divine ruler.
