Trunkles at Large

THIS IS MY OPINION ONLY. I DO NOT SUGGEST THAT ANY OTHER PERSON SHOULD HAVE SIMILAR OPINIONS.

WOO HOO! After many years in the making, the Bible is now available in Australian Aborigine. Or so The Times tells us. Times article

Isn’t that wonderful! Thousands of people who have lived for millenia without Christianity can now have it. Did anyone ask them if they wanted it? I doubt it. Did anyone ask if they needed it? I doubt it. Of course, Christians think they need it, they think everybody needs their religion.

Well, to all you Christians, I DON’T need your religion! I don’t need people coming to my door to try and give or sell me their beliefs., they are theirs and I don’t want them!

Believe it or not, I do respect the right of everyone to believe in a god. I’d even fight for that right. What I don’t respect are people who have that belief. To suggest that natural disasters are “the will of god” is beyond my comprehension. To suggest that people dying in agony can’t be allowed to be put out of their misery because “it is against the will of god” is close to sadistic. If I am suffering in agony with a terminal disease and I want to end that misery then I have the right to do so. If you don’t agree with it then fine, don’t do it, but you do NOT have the right to put your beliefs on me! It is MY body!

How many billions of people have been killed because of religion. The inquisition, the witch hunts, the crusades, the pogroms - all were done “in the name of god”. Well, I ain’t a god, and I can only see those acts as barbaric and inhumane, so what any “merciful god” would make of them is beyond me.

To this day Christians are fighting Muslims who are fighting Judaism. I was under the impression that those who believed in god were nice people, who didn’t do that sort of thing. I am obviously wrong.

When I was a young child, my grand-parents had a lady who came to help clean the house. She was a widow with a string of kids. She was also a Roman Catholic. From her minimal income she had to give the church a significant proportion of her income. The priest lived in a lovely large house in some luxury, Mrs Latcham lived in penury and had to clean other peoples houses to make ends meet. To me there was something seriously wrong there.

In 1718 James Puckle demonstrated the “Puckle Gun”, (Wiki on the Puckle Gun) the forerunner of todays machine gun. It had two variants, one fired round bullets, the other fired square bullets which would cause larger and more painful injuries. The round bullets were for Christians, the square for Muslim Turks. Fortunately, the gun was never manufactured in quantity. But, um, Christians are good people and wouldn’t dream of coming up with an idea like that, would they?

The witch hunts that have occured over the last 600 years or more are another example of Christianity’s barbaracy. How many innocent people were tortured and killed because of that lunacy.

It is worth pointing out that St. Augustine, one of Christianity’s most revered fathers, decreed that to believe that witchcraft existed was a heresy, so you could hardly be persecuted for something the church believed didn’t exist! It wasn’t until the middle of the 15th century that witch hunts really started. From there on people were tortured and killed for spurious reasons, but all, of course, in the name of god.

Religion sucks. In my view it exists solely to give the clergy power, which they are remarkably good at abusing and to repress free thinking people. I can’t help noticing that religion is very good at repressing women. It’s only in the last few years that women have allowed to be ordained, and then only in some sects. Doesn’t seem that fair to me.

So, there’s my view of religion in general. I think it sucks. I feel sad for those that are gullible enough to believe in religious teaching and a deity. I feel anger against the hypocrisy in the clergy and those that pay lip service to a religion. I feel ashamed to be of the same species of those that torture and kill for any reason, but even deeper shame and disgust to be of the same species as those that commit atrocities “in the name of god”.