Religion and Fear

[53v3N]

I was walking home on the freeway one dark night; as an atheist, with cars coming pretty close to me, my mind began to wonder about organised religion and the after-life. I actually got scared that if at this point in my life I was going to die, and indeed Christianity was true after all, that I would face eternal suffering.

After coming home and not facing eternal bliss, I realised how many people must live their entire lives in fear like this, and I started to think how much religion is kept afloat by this very emotion - fear through uncertainty. So many people would be swept into this religion not through love, despite their desire of superficial appearance, but through fear.

What right do Christians have to go into foreign countries and spread their beliefs to those predating in age to theirs five, even ten-fold?

Of course the typical response here is for a Christian to write the token reply of, 'why target Christianity over all others?' Well it is in my mind that is it not without good reasoning on my behalf: when I look around it's the Christians and their fundamentalism inhibiting my society from furthering, not Islam or Buddhism.

My perspective on morals and ethics is that as long as I am not doing anything that harms anyone in anyway, directly or indirectly, why should it not be allowed? And indeed most of the people living within society I live possess this value. People are allowed to have their perspectives, but if it interferes with this lifestyle of others against their will of medical, personal or scientific furthering, it should in itself be prohibited. Having an invisible sky-daddy and a very disjointed, outdated book from a society so different to our own, then having the nerve to judge and condemn subjects of the status quo based on interpretive merit falls nothing short of stupid.

From stem cell research to pro-choice and same-sex marriage, it appears that it is indeed trying its hardest to outstrip personal choice and technological advancement in the name of 'morals'.

But that's just it, morals are only relative to their geographic counterpart and in essence are supposedly justified as they have been derived from obscure bible interpretation; and that's the problem right there. God's supposed "word" changes from time-to-time to accommodate with what's socially acceptable at the time of 'interpretation'.

I won't go into largely subjective rants as tempted as I am explaining why religion, at least this one, is absolutely full of shit, but I will say this. Why would anyone with a logical frame of mind believe in something so young (relatively speaking) as Christianity? Does the scale of the Earth's existence or even the history of man, when compared to the age of this religion not in itself render it silly? Even when compared to other organised religions, its youth and ambitiousness is astounding.

2009 (guesstimation of how many years have passed the prophet's birth) / 15,000,000,000 (scientific estimation through many different kinds of dating) to me = the very ignorance and arrogance that Christianity and its followers relish in. Even the four million years of man's evolution shows how ridiculous it is, not only that but the correlation between cognition of self (in terms of mind) and invention of organised religion.

Jesus was not important, special or unique. He just was. And what he was is a random genetic mutation child derivative of Mary and some guy she slept with, indifferent to any other, but nonetheless romanticised. Sure, he might have been nice but nice guys, maybe even nicer than him, have passed and will indeed continue to pass through history. In this digital age of recording facts and figures, could they stand the test of time and gain similar status through misinterpretation, exaggeration and infatuation? No. Fucking. Way.