What can be more untrue than religion, and what can make people more dishonest, than religion? The two go hand-in-hand! Religion needs dishonesty, while dishonesty keeps religion alive, especially in this country, where religion thrives on dishonesty, supported by sheer stupidity. Religion is all based on lies, made-up stories, and fictional, impossible characters.
The worst part is that religion hampers and affects negatively both science, education, and especially, politics, where uninformed people are lured into electing totally incompetent, superstition-infested characters, especially on the Republican side. George H. W. Bush even said that Atheists shouldn’t be allowed to be citizens, while his son, George W., started unprovoked, unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq thanks to a fictional, divine voice inside his head that told him to do so! All Donald Trump had to do, was to wave a bible, even upside down, – and the evangelicals fell flat and took him in as their new Mesias.
In the more progressive countries, like Scandinavia, religion is pretty much passé, left behind as a medieval oddity. You are more likely to get a good laugh, if you ask someone if he or she believes in “God”. Why is that? For one thing, Scandinavian people aren’t that easily fooled. In general, they are better educated, very rarely indoctrinated from birth, and not raised in an environment saturated with religion. As a politician, you wouldn’t get very far by claiming divine backing! Going back some 70 years, in my own HS class, there was only a single religious guy, raised in a sect-like family, where the grandmother dictated all, with a firm, religious hand, – often applied to the children’s bottom. But even he grew up to become a decent citizen, – and an HS math teacher! In front of me in class, there was a son of a Bishop, – nevertheless, my classmate was not at all interested in religion, and basically an Atheist
Of all the thousands of “gods” invented through the ages, religious people only believe in a single one of them. Which one, and why? In that sense, we Atheists are just a single “god” ahead of the “god-fearing” crowd, nor do we need the fear of god to behave ourselves. But to be fair, if you need the fear of god to behave yourself, by all means, – stay religious! The rest of us don’t’ need it, and behave ourselves just fine!
In my own, otherwise well-educated neighborhood, there was only a single, out-of-closet religious person, a devote Catholic, who was rumored to have raped all his daughters. Talk about following the lead of Catholic clergy, who for hundreds of years have sexually abused other people’s children, – offspring of parents who should have known better than leaving their own children in the dirty hands of religious perverts!
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