Ok, so that’s the last time I post an animated GIF at the top of an entry– Far too distracting! Already I want to bump it down the page, hence this post.

Also, I’m no good at being controversial, because I feel the need to explain myself constantly and get along with everybody– It’s my nature. Christian hubris really does annoy the bejesus out of me of course, but I can’t honestly say I want to draw a bunch of evangelicals here for a slanging match…

… Except that sometimes I do want exactly that, because I read the crap that some people get up to what with their fight against "Darwinism" and it makes me want to scream.

Just about everything the average human has to be "thankful" for comes from agricultural, industrial, technological, and medical advances made over the last several thousand years. And none of these advances could have happened without applying a scientific approach to some degree, which is to say that every advance was based on knowledge gathered from previous experience.

Religion however, comes from a book, or on high or however you want to look at it. It’s dogma, handed down by authority and not open to question. It only ever changes when there is no other choice, eg because social change starts making its policies on witches and demons look rather suspect, along with stoning of wives etc etc. To believe in messiahs, gods and prophets is as superstitious as believing in faeries, goblins, dragons and vampires. Religion has got in the way of many advances that would have improved the lives of billions (yes billions) had they not been obstructed by idiotic church dogma. That a percentage of the population claims to draw some sort of nebulous solace from the belief that there is a giant sky fairy watching over their every move hardly seems reason enough to cling onto it.

Of course the Bible can be cherry picked for "good messages" but those same messages can be found within every community in the world, including non-religious ones. Don’t hurt people. Don’t steal. Be considerate. It‘s not that hard. All primates exhibit a capacity for morality, because almost all mammals are born with an innate need to belong to a group and are therefore hard-wired to get along, and us primates also have brain enough to create complex systems to support and extend such groups, and even develop a philosophy of morality, called Ethics. If we want to thank anyone for codifying such ideas we should probably be thanking Aristotle. Not Moses. Not Jesus. Those guys were hacks.

The thing we higher mammals are not hard wired to do, probably because there wasn’t much need for it until relatively recently, is to get along with people who are unfamiliar to us– but unfortunately it seems religion is not much help in this department. The Jews killed Jesus, and both they and Muslims reject the notion that he was the son of God, so it’s really hard to see any big reconciliation happening there. But then, there’s always "common ground"… and the common ground among the big three Abrahamic religions is that they all try to teach people to get on well and be tolerant of others. Horray for that! Except, there’s nothing inherently religious about that. That’s just humanity being mistaken for religious common ground.

We can’t allow religions to continue laying claim to our humanity! It’s ours to keep, not by some divine gift, but by a wonderful quirk of nature.

Who do I think am I preaching at here? I honestly have no idea, but I’d love to think that maybe someone reading this might take a moment to seriously question a belief system which predates the Dark Ages.

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BTW the image above was originally posted here, but I just tried pumping it through this online vectorizing tool and am very impressed by the results (SVG)