Sometimes I think that there must be a God. Certainly not a benevolent deity that heals the sick, gives help to the poor or is in anyway fair. Good Lord, No.
No, more of an all seeing bastard who is pretty vindictive and cruel and, in the words of the great Stephen Fry, a bit of a cunt.
When I am sweeping leaves from my patio on a calm spring morning, not a breeze in the trees, suddenly a great gust will pick up those leaves like a tornado and hurl them about the garden. See also, putting up a tent and hanging out the washing. It is at this point, when a leaf smacks me in the chops that I think there must be a God, and they are a prick.
Because this is the default position for all Gods. Hiding in the shadows, used by their followers to bring a self righteous or condescending or down right malicious moral high ground to proceedings. This God decides to smite me by whipping up a wind to piss me off. They are just fucking about with me, for a laugh. Other times they want to be pretty fucking evil and allow innocent children to die.
But then its all down to Gods will. You have to believe and have faith because its all written down by someone between a few thousand and several hundred years ago. Irrefutable evidence. How could you think its made up? The Bible or Quran or other “scriptures”, any one of them is definitely right or wrong, presumably. Or not.
And its so very handy to help prove your point or cause. It can relieve you of a burden of moral weight for so many things. War, murder, forbidding homosexuality and abortion. So useful.
For instance, the bisexual Reverend Hannah Barraclough posted a delightful letter she had received from a “born again Christian” who believed her “homosexuality” was blasphemous and that she was a “disgrace to God” because the scriptures told them it was.
Never mind the milk of human kindness for another human being, a book written by a Council based on alleged gospels and writings says being gay is evil. How bonkers is that?
People say religion created the morality we have today. I disagree, anyone who thinks gay people are evil are not basing it on morality they are basing it on doctrine. Evil doctrine. Morality, human decency has evolved DESPITE religion not because of it. Religion is a man-made construct. Perhaps there is a God, but every version of the thousands of organised religions worldwide has made it up. Sometimes to comfort people, but mostly to control them. To strike fear into them that when they die, if they don’t repent, they will be thrown into Hell.
For centuries the church was obscenely rich, and the Reformation removed that wealth for the benefit of the crown but removed some of that control. Now we don’t all fear the abyss of death, we enjoy life in all its shapes and colours and sexes and genders and sounds and yet we still have to put up with the backwards thinking of “god fearing” fuckers who think abortion is a sin and those cunts, mainly men, sit in high government and law making bodies and they decide these things based on what a fictional writing about an invisible sky wizard has to say about it.
This is not morally right, not today. We’ve moved beyond the dark ages by quite a few hundred years. We’re enlightened now. Not everything is written in an old collection of stories.
But then this is the problem. Some of us are more forward thinking, maybe a little too forward thinking, but then too many still cling to the teachings from, whether true or not, two thousand years ago.
Take the disgraceful overturning of Roe v Wade in the U.S Supreme Court last week. For decades conservative Christian movements and right wing powerful political-legal groups have attempted to get the ruling overturned and they have now gotten their wish as the legacy of the Trump Presidency is that six conservative republican judges sit in the Supreme Court with just three liberal Democrats. Those three dissented against the ruling as the other six passed it and now dozens of mainly southern and mid-west states scramble to make abortion illegal.
Progress in the name of an ancient book and a constitution written whilst they were still slaughtering native Americans and enslaving Africans. Times have changed, too many people have not.
