Saturday 24 December 2011

i see religion as a test ... (religiorant)


i see religion as a test

a test for people to learn the good things it has to offer without getting weighed down by all the frivolous details of the religious story and how that story was told and who the characters were...

the important thing in a religion, is the meaning of what is said in a religion; not what the characters were called; not where and when it was set; so in that regard, it doesn't matter that the bible has been translated and chopped and changed a gazillion times, the basic message, is still the same, mostly.

"After thousands of years superhero dude came along and taught a bunch of backwards people how to be good to each other by helping those people in need, but other snooty people didn't like that for some reason so they killed him, in spite of the fact that this dude could have used his superpowers to smash them, because that would not have been a nice thing to do.. the end."

See, it didn't matter what the dude's name was, nor who his mother was, nor if he was gay or not, it doesn't matter when he died nor when he was born nor what all his powers were nor where he came from nor whether he was real nor whether he was god in the flesh... these are all trivial and frivolous additions to the basic story, designed to flush it out, no doubt to give the characters some charm and have the reader identify with the characters.. like any other book.

I view religion in the sense that once I had learned about what it had to say in terms of moral lessons, i could discard and not bother with anything else in it and most of it was summarily discarded by me.

For instance: I often see christians talking about how they revere the ten commandments, but just because someone mainly adheres to most of the ten commandments, that doesn't mean that they automatically can regard themselves as being a good person. Why should it?

These people who cling to the ten commandments are using it as a thing a prop up their own beliefs - they look at the ten commandments and say .. "I am a believer!"

However, an evil person, can follow the ten commandments exactly and still be a hideously cruel human being to everyone excluded by those rules.

Throwing away religion means that you are throwing away the irrelevant things that surround that religion's basic message, which means that you are then able to grow by reading new stories to expand your moral pool of knowledge! Most people gain their morals from their family and friends and from going to school. Religion would seem to throw a spanner into the works to provide interference to mess up the moral compass.

And when a person throws away their religion, they are not necessarily rejecting any good lessons it has taught them, they are merely rejecting the frivolous paraphernalia (aka "bullshit") surrounding the religion, thus freeing you to actually follow the message of the religion, without getting distracted by all the superfluous rituals that allow you to identify with a religion in the first place..

the test of religion, is to learn its lessons and move on and live those lessons that you have learned, not prance around chanting your praise to god, when you know damn well that you are supposed to praise your god by following those good lessons that you have supposedly learned from your precious and sacred thousand year old stories.

Tuesday 13 December 2011

The War On Christmas breaks the first commandment (religiorant)

I find it utterly pathetic that this "war on Christmas" is mostly over *things* that are *nothing* to do with the actual teachings of Jesus Christ, which according to christianity itself, is a *very* bad thing to do.

In fact, it breaks the first commandment.

If you make a fuss over a *thing* in relation to your Messiah, then you are making that thing out to be important to your belief in Jesus Christ, and that is called *idolatry* - in other words, you are breaking the first commandment by thinking there is a war on Christmas, especially when Christmas is something the bloody Romans made up centuries after the alleged death of that Jesus guy, and especially worse still is that Christmas was based on Roman/Pagan traditions that existed long before the time of this Jesus.

The first commandment wasn't just about worshipping "false" gods that other people or cultures have made up; like Baal, Odin, Justin Beiber etc etc .. it was also about gods that *you* make up yourself, unintentionally or otherwise.

If you make Christmas out to be important to believing in Jesus Christ, then you are believing in a *false* Jesus that you or somebody else has made up - this is because you or somebody else has taken this thing called "Christmas" and mashed it together with Jesus, so you are worshipping this Jesus guy, at least in part, via your associating Christmas with Jesus. in other words; Christmas is making your faith in Jesus more real for you, Christmas is giving you a thing to point at and say "Look at this Christmas thing that I do!! Therefore, *I* am a believer in Jesus Christ!"....

No, that is not how it works - read your bible - your faith says that if you want to follow Jesus and get into heaven, then you need to adhere to the *second* commandment, ie. "love thy neighbour" ie. give to the needy - that - i believe, is what was meant by "spreading the word" - you aren't supposed to go around preaching about how great Jesus was, you are supposed to emulate him and go around helping people out and give money and food away yourself!.. ie. seek the needy people out and help make them to be not so needy with the idea being that if every one helps their neighbours in need, then the whole world can live in peace in some sort of fair society but this only works if everyone does it, so we know that can't happen because most people would not give away their money, not unless they are *sure* they can afford to do it.

Furthermore, to make a *facepalm* situation into even more *facepalm* situation - if your faith is so strong, then your faith should stand by itself, it should not need to wrap itself with frivolous and shiny *things* that are in fact, nothing to do with what your Messiah taught.

I mean, did Jesus say, "celebrate my birth once every year"? because I'm pretty sure that he didn't, and if he did, I pretty sure he would have meant that you celebrate his birth *every* day and honour him *Every* day by actually doing what he commanded his followers to do, *every* day.

But, why is this not-using-*things* so important to following Jesus Christ, even if this "thing" is the celebration of this Messiah's supposed birth???

Because when you fuss over these things that aren't anything to do with the actual teachings of Christ, you can end up not following the teachings of your Christ at all, so how do people expect to get into heaven when they have not met the requirements? I bet there are people who haven't given a cent to a person in need and yet they think they will get into heaven because they believe in Jesus

Only one gospel (**1) says that mere belief in Christ gets you into heaven, the other three say you need to give your money to the needy. so who are you going to believe, Matthew, Mark and Luke or just John?

So as far as I can see it, this "War on Christmas" is just another thing "christians" rage about so that christians don't feel bad about not actually following the teachings of the Jesus

non-believer: "hey, shouldn't you be out helping the needy?"
"christian": "NO!! there's another war on Christmas!!"

ps. there was nobody called "Jesus" 2000 years ago, by the way...

how could there be?

the letter "J" wasn't invented until about 500 or years ago ...

UPDATE: 2/Dec/2012

(**1) even though the verse John 3:16 implies that mere belief is all that is required to receive eternal life, if you read the whole chapter, it does go on to say that you need to do good stuff in a subsequent verse...

ie. John 3:21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

so, John 3:16 is probably being taken out of context by most people.


the religious should not read these blogs, they *will* be offended

these are my rantings about religion - i speak fluent sarcasm - know this when you are reading and it will save you some heartache.