Religious Bullshit

Bill Maher's Best Commentary Yet on Christian Hypocrisy

A love so deep, you just want to kill

A few days ago, the non-blinking, non-thinking Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin sent her son off to Iraq to kill people who had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11.  "You'll be there to defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the deaths of thousands of Americans," she lied.  What's more, this insufferable zealot (I hereby dub her: W--with a clit) predictably invoked God, calling this mindless crusade a "righteous cause." This is what we must expect from adherents to a religion that perfected the notion of murder in the name of love.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16.  Arguably the single most-quoted verse to explain the "majesty" of Christianity.  In fact no other verse could quite so neatly sum up why, even if the Christian God existed--which of course no rational person can conclude--he is one sadistic, Jew-hating mother-fucker.

My wife and I were discussing my lack of faith the other day.  She's witnessed my steady progression, just in the short time I've been writing this blog, from an agnostic more "anti-religion" than "anti-spiritual," to an atheist.  (For fans of Dawkins and his belief scale, from a 5 to a strong 6.  Probably destined to land firmly in 7.  Any day now.)

As we talked, I had a bit of a flashback to my adolescence.  A time when I still regularly attended church with my family, never yet questioning the existence of God or the veracity of Christianity.  But nonetheless, the first doubt I ever had remains perhaps the single most important reason to doubt--and in any case, reject--Christianity. 

Just why, exactly, did Jesus have to die? 

That some poor Jew in Israel 2,000 years ago needed to die in order to save the "souls" of all humans past, present and future who "believe" in him, is at best incompatible with the notion of an all-loving, all-powerful God.  At worst, it's sadistic and depraved and stands as the single most insidious idea ever perpetrated on humanity.  (Nutjobs, please, comment away if you must.  I've read it all.  I've heard it all.  And don't tell me, Oh, it but wasn't God's plan, it was our sin.  Just stop.)

I have spent a lot of time agreeing vociferously with Dawkins and Hitchens that faith itself is a rottenness at the core of all religions.  To teach our children to believe in fantastical things that cannot be proved, to turn off their brains--and to honor and respect this quality--is malignant. 

But Christianity's core contains something far more immoral than the lie of faith.  Christianity is alone atop the heap of the world's many fraudulent religions, not just for conflating love and murder, but for making it the very foundation upon which all of its lies are built. 

So why rail against Sarah, after all?  Her boy Track is just the latest foot soldier sent off to kill innocents in the name of God.  After all, if it's good enough for Him, certainly we can do it.  If you love enough (your country, for example), you kill.  In His name.