Not Everything Is Good in Moderation.

Most people who dislike religion are critical of extremists, but give the moderates a pass. I'm not most people.

Alright. This is my first post about religion. (The Kent Hovind stuff is more about insanity and the dangers of mating with vegetables and semi-domesticated wildlife.) It's been a while coming, but it's time to finally start pissing people off. So let's get to it:

Told you I was going to piss people off.

That, is the most offensive joke in the history of the human species. Someone drew a 6th century hallucinating child-molester who lived his life by lying to people about God in order to control them and maintain the draconian laws which ran the middle east back then, with a bomb for a hat. 

This was offensive to followers of the religion he manufactured for two reasons:

1. For some reason images of him are disallowed by the religion. Although why someone who isn't part of the religion should abide these laws is beyond me. The old analogy: "I'm on a diet so no one I work with can eat McDonald's" sums up the silliness of this.

2. Explosives are one of the primary weapons used by extreme portions of Muhammad's religious following to instill fear in populations in order to force them to conform to their moral and political ideals. Acts of terrorism like this -not to be confused with drone strikes murdering civilians in the middle east because apparently it's only terrorism if you do it to white people- being connected to their "Religion of Peace" enraged many muslims around the world.

The response was simple. Moderates across the globe politely, but firmly and in large numbers protested the publishing of the cartoon and asked for us to respect their beliefs in future. And fundamentalists across the world decided to burn, butcher and behead hundreds of people in embassies and print offices, to cheers and applause from the aggressor hordes. This disgusting and despicable conduct was tolerated. Tolerated by people because these extremists claimed to be acting on behalf of a billion moderate muslims.

The Press in England and America condemned the cartoons. The then British and American governments condemned the cartoons. The Pope condemned the cartoons. Everyone condemned the cartoons. People died. People died horrible and in agony. Terrified and alone in a sea of angry, screaming savages. Anyone who would take pleasure in destroying a human life in this way, for something objectively physically harmless that an entirely unrelated person did, thousands of miles away, deserves to be called a savage. They deserve to be called much worse.

If tomorrow, Tom Cruise saw a joke about Scientology on South Park and convinced deranged and preposterous cultists to mutilate and behead over 200 Americans in retaliation, there would be immediate repercussions, the world would know that free speech will not be curbed because of the threat of barbarism and cruelty. But this does not happen when there are a billion moderates who would be offended by a response.

And not to pick on Islam, in America the religious fundamentalists have got creationism in schools, they have institutionalised discrimination of homosexuals and transgendered people. Women can't get birth control on their health insurance plans, children aren't vaccinated, and sometimes die because of easily treatable illness due to lack of hospital care, and medically necessary abortions are not performed. None of this fundamentalist dogmatism which has become policy would have been possible without the so called "moderates" as a power base. 

"So what?" I hear you say. "Are we supposed to just stop believing in God because some monsters do as well?" No. Not at all. 

You do, however, have to stop saying you believe the same things as the crazies. Because you don't. Their belief comes from literal reading of religious texts. But you don't really believe those books, no matter how much you try to tell yourself you do.

If you're reading this, then there's probably a 50/50 chance you've read some of the Bible. If you have, then you know how crazy it is. And if you admit that parts of it are crazy, and clearly false or stupid, then there's a huge problem. If you're a christian moderate, then you ostensibly believe the God of the Bible. You believe this because the book is so compelling and perfect in it's wisdom and moral compass that it must be divine. 

So you believe this book. But there are parts you hate and dismiss. You don't believe the world was created in 6 days. You don't think that it's only 6,400 years old. You don't think that water flooded the entire earth and that every species of animal all lived within walking distance of Noah. But wait, didn't we just say that this book was so good it had to have been written by God? Yes we did. But I was asking making a smug rhetorical point. That can't be your real reason for believing, otherwise you'd believe all of the other stupid horseshit as well.

So you must have put your faith in this particular religion for a reason. I'm going to make a few guesses, here. You didn't choose it because it explains a bunch of physical phenomena in a way that makes sense. You chose it because it offers you comfort and solace in a time of need. Or maybe because your parents or some other authority figure follows the religion and you followed their example. 

The second reason is the most common reason for adopting a specific religion. All religions and cults supposedly offer comfort, so any will do, in theory. The reason for choosing just one of the thousands of afterlives on offer is that you've been sold the idea by someone else. If you've ever observed this process happen from the outside, it is identical to the workings of cults and pyramid schemes and other scams.

The point is, that your true, honest beliefs about the universe don't map onto the specific dogmas and rules and claims of the major religions. Even most of the people in them don't really believe them truly, hence all of the different sects and subdivisions and changes and different versions of the books.

You have your own spiritual ideas and views, and there are plenty of philosophical looks at the world which offer the exact same emotional benefits as the communities of religious people, but without the double-barreled problems of making abhorrent and repulsive extremists appear to have literally millions of times more supporters than they do. And the problems associated with trying to justify claims which you know are false.

And I'm harping on this idea of appearing to have more support than in reality exists, because it's very, very important. Popular opinion governs everything in the world. It does it on a micro level, being that we navigate our space in accordance with what other people do, and claim to think. But in the grander sense that the politicians and corporations who make the big decisions in our society, get to essentially design the environment we're navigating, are massively guided and influenced by the trends and perceived allegiances of the public. If they think an opinion will be profitable, they will back that position.

In summary:

Extremists are bad. They're like the kid in school who gets called out on being an arsehole by someone, and says: "Look, I'm popular, you either get in line with me, or we'll all start bullying you." Except you in this case are not the victim. You're one of the kids stood behind him, backing him up without even realising it, or wanting to.

The only reason you're in this position, is that you decided to buy into dogma which you don't believe in. You reject well over 90% of the religious text you work from, and you only pretend to buy into the other 10% is that you either haven't read it, or did and rationalised it weakly to yourself to hide from things that scare you.

Explore the other spiritual options. Read your holy books, then, when you realise they're nonsensical collections of gibberish and hatred, look up the explanations from preachers who try to make sense of it. Watching them try to explain the books should be all the evidence you need that it would be better to let them go, and figure these things out on your own.

Just think critically, be independent, and stop accidentally aiding terrorists. 

Oh, and stop indoctrinating children. (If you're religious because your parents told you to be, then you don't really believe it. Stop lying to yourself.)

Don't squander free speech and exchange of ideas to protect ideas you know are silly.

This has been an Empirical Opinions journal, allow me to play you out: