Featured Book – The Antitheist’s Dictionary – Pt. 9

Posted on by Opher

Clergy

The clergy are foot soldiers of the mighty pixie. They go into battle with ordinary folk. Their job is to use whatever means to twist the minds of gullible people into believing.

Some use helping the poor, bereaved or sick – sort of getting to them when they’re vulnerable. Some use hypnotism. They drone on and on until the congregation is mesmerised into a state of quiescent vacancy so that they’ll believe anything as long as it will stop. Others use fire and brimstone to cause a major evacuation of the large intestines. Most aim to implant their evil time-bombs in the brains of young children so that they can never be free to think for themselves ever again – for religious doctrine is like the most addictive crystal meth – once addicted you are an addict for life.

Colossal

Colossal is a word that means of immense size. It can be deployed to describe the magnificent awesomeness of the universe or to portray the gigantic lie that is at the centre of all religion. There is no evidence of a god, an after-life, or a purpose for existence. To categorically state that there is would be a colossal lie. There is however an immense universe out there. It is awesome.

Confession

Confession is one of the best ideas the Catholic Church ever had.

A great way to deal with all the guilt that builds up because you can’t manage the absurd set of rules laid down by the hypocritical guilt racked clergy.

Have a wank – take a Hail Mary – all is good with god.

It is psychologically brilliant. It made the church first choice for a lot of sinners – ‘Hey guys – do what you like all week and get blessed on Sunday!’ You start the next week as pure as a newborn baby. Doesn’t that make you feel good? You can’t beat a good dose of religion, can you?

But what was that stuff about original sin?

Confucius

Confucianism is not so much a religion as a philosophy. It deals a lot with morality rather than gods and souls although many treat it as a religion and Confucius is worshipped in temples all over China.

I’m not sure what he would have made of this though. Confucius gave us many pearls of wisdom. He said such things as ‘man who cooks potatoes and peas in same pot is very unhygienic’ and ‘woman aviator who flies upside down will have crack-up’. ‘war not determine who right. War determine who left’ ‘man who sleep in bed of nails is holy’ ‘man under wheelbarrow playing with tool, not necessarily mechanic’ ‘girl who sit on judge’s lap get honourable discharge’ ‘support bacteria – is only culture some people have’ ‘man who push piano down mine shaft, likely to get A flat minor’ ‘man who masturbates in cash register come into money’. As you can see Confucius was a man of great wisdom and I’m sure his teachings are worthy of further study but times have moved on in the course of thousands of years. I’d rather have the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights any day.

Consecration

Consecration is when something or someone becomes associated with the sacred. People can become consecrated and ground can become consecrated.

For me it is an all or nothing. Either everything is sacred on the basis that it is absolutely awesome. Or nothing is sacred on the basis that there are no supernatural beings or events. One day I believe that science will explain the things we currently call supernatural. There is much that remains to be discovered.

I do find it a bit sick that they choose to bury executed murderers in quicklime to dissolve them in unconsecrated ground. For people that believe in that mess it is plain vindictive. The only thing is that the executed murderers would never notice?

Convent

 This is like the playboy club for the religious. All these women go around in costume. They lead a simple life of talking to the invisible, tending the garden and making simple meals. Some convents specialised in making their own clothes but they had to put a stop to it because it was habit forming.

Convents are very good for women who are nervous about sex. There are a lot of these women in religious countries because the churches and temples and mosques spend so much time telling them how terrible it is to put anything near your vagina, let alone a penis. You’ll be instantly damned to eternity, besides you’ll get a disease that’ll rot your insides, get pregnant which will not only damn you but put your life into shame for ever more and what’s more it hurts like hell. Women’s bodies are really sinful. Best cover them up and sublimate the sexuality into talking to yourself while seated in a pew.

Nuns are lucky they don’t have their clitorises chopped off and their labia sewn up like millions do in some misguided parts of the world.

Contraception

Religion is such a negative force on the planet. The biggest issue we face at present is overpopulation. We’ve hit 7 billion and rising fast. It is causing immense pollution, environmental damage, ravaging of limited resources, climate change and destruction of nature. There have been two major environmental catastrophes in the past when asteroids collided with the planet. We are the third. Never have there been such a wave of species destruction since the Gulf of Mexico asteroid put pay to the dinosaurs and most of the rest of life on this planet.

So what is the religious response to this disaster?

  1. god gave us the world and all the creatures on it to do with as we wish
  2. Go forth and multiply

I despair of their stupidity and blinkered view. It is so selfish and greedy, so cruel and uncaring.

Despite all the mounting evidence the major religions continue down the path to annihilation on the basis of; ‘We’ll outbreed the other heretical bastards’. They are nuts.

As a biologist I love animals and plants and it pains me to see them being systematically destroyed through greed and religious indifference. It almost seems to me as if some of the nutters actually welcome this destruction of the planet. It is some apocalyptic nightmare that will fulfil their wildest fantasies. In their horribly twisted minds they think that if everything is destroyed it will complete the prophesy and the End of Days will ensue.

They are lusting to bring it on. Anything they can do to help destroy the place is bringing them closer to god’s will. They can’t wait for the end to come. They are on a par with the suicide bomber. At least both types of nutters will not be disappointed when they are dead. They won’t be anything.

Overpopulating the world to the point of destruction is seen as fulfilling the command to go forth and multiply. The fact that it will cause that destruction is an added bonus. It brings the end nearer!

They are so indoctrinated they are stark raving, dribbling saliva, mad.

Religion is evil.

Convert

A convert is a deluded individual who, while in the state of immense confusion, has been snared by the devious psychology of organised religion coupled with their desperate wish to believe that magic is real.

Poor sods.

Cor Blimey

Probably the worst swear words possible a few centuries ago. How times change. Back then you could call someone a fucking cunt in genteel company with no blink of the eye. But use a religious term and that was blasphemy. People have been burnt for less.

Cor blimey is a corruption of God Blind Me. Other corruptions like Gee and Jeez and Golly were also popular. Crikey, the lengths people go to – zounds, gadzooks.

Me – I wouldn’t know what blasphemy was and seriously doubt that it is at all possible.

Covenant

This is the agreement the supernatural fictitious pixie made with the jewish people. Seemingly they are the special ones chosen by the pixie. The rest of humanity can rot.

The christians disagree with this. To them the Old Testament was the first covenant but that was superseded by a second covenant which is the New Testament brought in by Jesus and featured a god who has mellowed a bit over the years. This does present a few difficulties in trying to bring the two into line. The whole tone and lessons are different and it’s as if it’s a different pixie altogether.

Never mind – it’s all phantasmagorical anyway.

Crazy Horse

North American Indians kept their names secret. To know their names gave you power over them. Crazy Horse took his name from a vision. He dreamt he was on a prancing horse that was painted in a particular way. He believed that the magic symbols on the horse made him invincible. Subsequently he painted his horse with these symbols before he went into battle.

The American Indians had some great philosophies about living as hunter gatherers on the plains of America. Their lifestyle was hard and at times extremely idyllic. Most of us secretly crave after a simple life of a similar nature. It is the lifestyle of our ancestors.

Unfortunately it was also a lifestyle that was full of ignorance and superstition in regards to science and the supernatural. It is no wonder they got wiped out by superior technology when they go about believing daft superstition like Crazy Horse did. No matter what magic symbols you plaster on your horse it’ll be no match for a bullet. You can dance and wear your protective Ghost Shirts but soon find out that bullets pass straight through.

You don’t really need telling. No matter how seductive it might sound; no matter how much you want to believe it; if I was to stand you ten metres away from me and tell you to paint yourself with any amount of magic symbols while I pepper you from a machine gun you would, unless you were a complete religious nutter, feel a little uneasy about doing it. That is because you know, in your heart of hearts, that all this religious, supernatural nonsense from our primitive past is nothing but mumbo jumbo.

The North American Indians found out with their last desperate ‘Ghost dance’. That didn’t work either. They were virtually annihilated in one of the worst acts of genocide in history (on a par with Cortez and the Incas – as, ironically, illustrated by Neil Young and Crazy Horse).

Creation

According to the great fairy tale this was carried out by the supernatural fairy in 7 days flat.

I’m not quite sure how you measure days when you don’t have a revolving planet yet but we’ll brush over that. I’m also not sure if he’d already done the rest of the universe and was just doing a few finishing touches with the odd planet here and there and earth just happened to be the last, or whether he filled the backdrop of the trillions of galaxies later.

Doesn’t it make you wonder?

The races of man all have their little stories concerning the creation of the universe and the creation of man. They are all really nice to study. They show the lack of understanding of science and the brilliance of human imagination when it comes to story telling. The christian one is not one of the best. There are a lot better.

The Hopi one is good. Seemingly this is their fourth world. They got chucked out of the other three because of …… yes, you’ve guessed it …. Sexual promiscuity!

There are so many different ones.

Just think what you would believe if you’d been born into a different community elsewhere on the planet or at a different time.

Then we’ve got Adam and Eve with Eve being made out a rib. What’s that about? Did the all knowing being simply forget to provide a mate in the first place?

I like the myth where the supernatural being is a baker and he makes people. He bakes some and they’re underdone and come out white. He bakes them for longer and they’re overdone and they come out black. Then he gets it right and the come out brown.

There are some things all the thousands of creation myths have in common:

They were believed by the people in that culture as being true;

They are fun;

They are complete bullshit.

Creationism

Creationism is a complete insult to the intelligence.

Only out of America with its religious fanaticism, indoctrination, poor standards of education and levels of arrogance and guilt could such a perverse stupidity arise.

Contrary to all the scientific evidence of the fossil record, carbon dating, genetics, astronomy, geology and biology they persist in saying that they world was created in seven days and is only 100,000 years old. They also believe that the whole universe was created at the same time (but we are the only important bit – he made it all for us!). I know! Nuts! Some even base the age of the Earth on the reported ages of people in the bible. Evolution didn’t happen. God put all the fossils in the rocks and created everything at the same time. Men and women walked with dinosaurs. People were made in god’s image and so are perfect (I don’t know what went wrong when he put my body together!). The ideas are so absurd they’d make you laugh out loud if it wasn’t taken so seriously. Only in America could a bunch of ignorant, sometimes intelligent but highly blinkered, fools persist with such a stupid idea.

The worst aspect of it is that they want to officially put it in schools and brain-wash kids with it. It is monstrous. This Tory government has ridiculously allowed the insane creationists to set up Free Schools and Academies over in this country where they can set about indoctrinating our children.

The worst thing of all is that some of these twerps are exceedingly rich and they are after setting up schools all over the planet to snare young kids.

The UN should set up a law preventing stupidities like this. It should be covered under human rights legislation. It’s child abuse.

Creationism is disgusting, an insult to intelligence. I’m with Christopher Hitchins who commented on the evangelist TV nutcase Jerry Falwell and said: ‘If you gave him a big enough enema you could fit him in a matchbox.’.

Featured Book – The Antitheist’s Dictionary – Pt. 9

Posted on by Opher

Creationism

Creationism is a complete insult to the intelligence.

Only out of America with its religious fanaticism, indoctrination, poor standards of education and levels of arrogance and guilt could such a perverse stupidity arise.

Contrary to all the scientific evidence of the fossil record, carbon dating, genetics, astronomy, geology and biology they persist in saying that they world was created in seven days and is only 100,000 years old. They also believe that the whole universe was created at the same time (but we are the only important bit – he made it all for us!). I know! Nuts! Some even base the age of the Earth on the reported ages of people in the bible. Evolution didn’t happen. God put all the fossils in the rocks and created everything at the same time. Men and women walked with dinosaurs. People were made in god’s image and so are perfect (I don’t know what went wrong when he put my body together!). The ideas are so absurd they’d make you laugh out loud if it wasn’t taken so seriously. Only in America could a bunch of ignorant, sometimes intelligent but highly blinkered, fools persist with such a stupid idea.

The worst aspect of it is that they want to officially put it in schools and brain-wash kids with it. It is monstrous. This Tory government has ridiculously allowed the insane creationists to set up Free Schools and Academies over in this country where they can set about indoctrinating our children.

The worst thing of all is that some of these twerps are exceedingly rich and they are after setting up schools all over the planet to snare young kids.

The UN should set up a law preventing stupidities like this. It should be covered under human rights legislation. It’s child abuse.

Creationism is disgusting, an insult to intelligence. I’m with Christopher Hitchins who commented on the evangelist TV nutcase Jerry Falwell and said: ‘If you gave him a big enough enema you could fit him in a matchbox.’.

Cross

 Jesus was killed on a cross. That’s why Christians go around with crosses around their necks. George Carlin that it was lucky he wasn’t executed in an electric chair.

That cross that Jesus was murdered on was then considered a relic. Supposedly it was chopped up and bits sold. Though how anybody identified which was the original cross so long after Jesus’ death is a complete mystery. However, these relics were very popular in the Dark Ages. They were sold by the Church for huge profit. At one time there were enough relics of the original cross to have reconstituted a hundred crosses.

The church is never slow when it comes to making a buck or two.

Being crucified is a nasty death but there are a lot worse. Being slowly tortured for weeks on end or slowly burnt alive must have made the eyes water. Impalement can’t have been pleasant and stoning is pretty horrific. ISIS, a different bunch of religious fanatics, thought up so pretty nasty tortures and deaths for the unbelievers to satisfy their blood-thirsty god.

The Catholic Church invented some horrendously painful deaths for supposed heretics. Putting hosepipes down your throat to fill your intestines with water and then rolling a heavy log over your abdomen to rupture all your bowels was supposed to have been pretty dreadful and gruesome. Being hung from rafters in cathedrals with weights pulling your joints apart and suddenly dropped to dislocate all your joints, wheels, red-hot pokers, pliers and knives were all tools of the religious trade. Confess and repent and we’ll let you die.

Back in the old days, when they regularly burnt people for believing the wrong thing they would try and drag it out for fun. They found if they didn’t use as much wood or the wind was blowing in the wrong direction they could get a lot more shrieking for their money. How the faithful loved it!

We are extremely lucky that it was a cross that Jesus died on. Things could have been a lot worse. It was relatively quick. I wonder if christians would be going around with Jesus with a big spike stuck up his arse on a chain around their necks if Vlad had got hold of him?

Crucifix

The crucifix is a symbol of insanity. It is worn by devotees of a minor jewish cult leader who, like hundreds of thousands of others, was executed in a fairly unexceptional manner for that time. Crucifixion was a very common. You could reuse the wood. It just cost you a few nails and the public loved it.

Like all other religious symbols it should be banned in the work place as with any other form of advertising. Whether it’s crucifixes, sacks, daggers, turbans or fat smiley Buddha ear-rings they are symbols of a sickness that is best left to personal choice not public display.

Crucifixion.

Perhaps that should be spelt cruci fiction. But no – it was real.

It was a favourite past-time of human beings. They liked nothing better than devising more and more cruel ways of killing people; the more slow and painful the better. Religions have been right at the forefront of this technological innovation. In that respect crucifixion is one of the less gruesome.

It is quite probable that Jesus, like millions of others, was subject to this torturing death. The only mystery is what makes this so special? Millions were tortured to death for public entertainment.

Nowadays we laugh at the old stocks and joke about cabbages and rotten tomatoes. That is far from the truth. Not too many people survived the stocks. People were free to do anything to them and did. Fists, boots, cudgels, rocks – you name it. It was little different to the primitive, and still present day, barbaric sharia law of stoning women to death.

I would not have wanted to die by crucifixion. It wasn’t pleasant. Neither would I have much enjoyed being slowly grilled, have molten lead poured down my throat, red hot pokers up my arse, be torn apart by dogs, ripped to pieces by horses, or slowly pressed under a board on which rocks were slowly added day after day until the life was squashed out of me. Though if I had a choice I think I’d try and avoid impalement. Vlad was meant to be good at this. The art was to slowly lower someone on a great long pointy thing so it went up his arse. You then eased him down and down until the point came out his mouth. The art was to avoid any vital organs and blood vessels so that your victim remained alive, in agony for a long time.

Crucifixion was more of a doddle.

Pain and cruelty has long been the entertainment for the masses. They’d take the family out on Sunday for a day at the bear pit to watch wild animals being ripped apart, then off for a good burning, hanging or to poke the pirate in the metal cage. Religion was right up there at the forefront of the entertainment business. Dealing with heretics and blasphemers was fun.

Crusade

A Crusade is an excuse to go and slaughter, rape and pillage in god’s name i.e. in the name of a fictitious tooth fairy.

It was the legitimisation of great crimes. The general excuse put forward was to try to wrest the holy land back from the barbaric heathens.

The slaughter, rape and pillaging of people who did not share your own beliefs about the fairy was sanctioned by the church. People who do not believe the same as you are evil. They need exterminating until they do believe in the correct version. Rape, torture and murder were not merely sanctioned, they were mandated. The heathens had to be taught a lesson.

Crystal Balls

Yep. Those things the gypsies peer in to see your future when you cross their palm with silver. Seemingly they see even better and further when you cross their palm with gold. I think that’s the key to it. We’re talking about another commercial exercise.

It’s another con trick; a means of taking money off the gullible punters. When those gypsies are peering into the milky depths of the crystal ball all they are seeing in the misty future is the amount of money they’ll have in their pockets when they leave. I suppose, in a way, that is seeing into the future.

Crystals

Another new age pile of junk. Crystals are very aesthetically pleasing but they don’t have healing auras. That’s nonsense. They are an alignment of atoms to form lovely shapes that are pleasing to the eye. Humans like that sort of thing. They are aesthetically decorous.

The simple step was to then attribute powerful mystical forces to the aesthetically pleasing. The gullible went for it.

This is in the same league as grinding up rhino horn (a keratin based product of the same chemical nature as hair and finger nails) in the mistaken belief that it can cure impotency. Horns are hard, right?

There is no end to the stupidity of people.

Cults

The difference between a cult and a religion is purely one of numbers. All religions start as cults. It is a fairly recent sociological term used mainly to describe small groups that spring up using different rituals to mainstream groups.

For some reason all established religions (the big cults (should that be an L or should it be an N?)) take exception to anyone wanting to do stuff differently. They see all members of other cults as heretics and want to burn them.

Anybody can come up with a nutty idea and sell it to a few people so that they become a cult and over time many of these have – hence we have things like the Mormons, Amish, Scientologists, Plymouth Brethren and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The new brand of militant islam is a new cult and very popular because of its anti-secular, anti-western rhetoric and stated aim to take over the world and impose its views on all of us. It provides certainty and identity which confused young men find very reassuring. That excites people – particularly if it is violent, risky and full of foolhardy enterprise. They can also go out and kill and rape with impunity. It’s sanctioned. Young men, full of testosterone and adrenaline love a good violent spree with unlimited sex thrown in. And if it goes wrong you end up in paradise having sex with twenty four virgins for eternity. Young men are not rational. Cults exploit them.

People crave to be part of a family or one of the few who see the truth. They are easily taken in by charismatic people which is precisely how Jim Jones, Charles Manson, Osama Bin Laden and David Koresh proved so popular. They sold a vision to their followers and they fell for it hook, line and sinker. It got all the young attractive girls in bed doing god’s will (seemingly sex is evil but not if it is with a cult leader!) or feeding cyanide to their children or flying planes full of innocent children into office blocks full of innocent people.

Cults are powerful psychological tools. They become even worse when the cults expand into religions.

A cult is similar to a Sect. I particularly like the Downliners Sect. That’s the only cult I’d follow.

Curse

A curse is a vehement wish that something nasty will happen to someone. A lot of people are frightened by curses. Some people even go to witches or voodoo queens to intensify the curse. Seemingly witches and voodoo priestesses do it better. They are the professionals. They have the power.

Unfortunately this does not seem to be true. No matter how much they cursed and stuck pins into models of Maggie Thatcher she refused to succumb. Even so some people still believe there are some paranormal powers they can invoke. This is not true. We cannot alter the universe with words and mental power no matter how hard we try. If we could I would put a curse on all religion and put an end to the whole stupidity. Whole cultures have been paralysed by the fear of curses. Africa is still being held back by this superstitious nonsense. Haiti is another. There are no evil spirits. Witchdoctors cannot put a hex on you.

This is nonsense. It should stop. It’s as if the whole of humanity is cursed! Hey, maybe there is something in this cursing?

Damnation

This is what happens to you when you commit major sins like believing in the wrong pixie. You get damned for eternity and that’s a long sentence.

When you die the demons come and grab your soul and drag it underground. They then fiendishly start tormenting and torturing you for ever. Their activities are not even disturbed by such things as the excavation of the channel tunnel or drilling for oil.

This might sound a little harsh but you probably deserved it. Perhaps you got your hair cut wrong, ate pork or occasionally thought about naked women or men. Who knows? There was definitely something you didn’t get quite right.

It is quite possible that the only people who will be allowed into heaven will be that little sect of jews who have the Old Testament strapped to their foreheads because it says in the Old Testament that you should keep the word of god before you at all times.

Perhaps that’s the only one that’s correct.

I’m certainly damned. But what the hell!

Ho Hum – think I’m worried?

Dark ages

When did the Dark Ages End? The historian AJP Taylor said that we’re still living them. They will end when we finally free ourselves of superstition and religious indoctrination. That may take some while.

Death

Death is something you can get to wishing for after having to listen to the inanities of various religious fanatics.

Some islamic idiot declared that the difference between islam and the West was that we believed in life and they believed in death. In other words their real life does not start until after death.

You cannot argue with anyone who believes something as stupid as that. There is no point of contact. We are back to the Paradise of twenty four virgins and the beautiful fountains.

It isn’t merely sad – it is extremely worrying that many people, in this day and age, actually believe that garbage. Christians, muslims and jews all looking forward to blissful life in some after-death paradise. We’ve had a myriad of examples – Valhalla, Elysium, Paradise, Heaven, Shangri-la, Arcadia, Camelot… Every culture has its version. Some wonderful place you go to if you obey all the rules or are martyred. (The alternative being eternal torment in hell) That is extremely dangerous. There is no such place. In actual fact death is what happens when your cellular chemistry shuts down. They used to think it was when the heart stops beating and you stopped breathing. That is not quite the case. That is merely an indicator. Death is when your thinking organ – the brain – stops functioning. That is death. Your consciousness dissolves, you cease to exist and no longer have any awareness of the wondrous universe we so briefly inhabit.

Death happens in stages. Your most oxygen needy tissues shut down first such as the brain, while the less oxygen needy tissues take a lot longer. Skin for instance can stay alive for days after you stop breathing. Hence you have to shave corpses.

Despite all the stories of people coming back from near death experiences and reporting tunnels of light (probably due to the peripheral shut down of the brain in response to oxygen starvation) there is no evidence of any life after death. When you think about it there would really be a strange existence if all these spirits were wandering around fucking virgins and drinking from fountains forever, or singing in choirs of angels in praise of the Pixie. The thrill would eventually wane. Give it a few million years or so.

There is a lot for science to find out about death. Life after it is not one of them.

Death is the final frontier. It’s when your consciousness ceases forever, you cease to exist as a personality and you say your last goodbye to the universe. People find the concept of them ceasing to exist hard to come to terms with. It’s terrifying. But not necessarily.

Even after a mere lifetime that is long enough for a lot of people. They end up welcoming it. They’ve had enough.

Besides, it would take all the fun away. What’s the point of all those dare-devil kids doing all those death-defying stunts in order to impress the girls and get laid if, when it goes wrong, they end up getting fucked forever by twenty four virgins who are obviously capable of re-growing their hymens to order.

Flouting death gives life spice.

Death is final.

Deity

Deities are supernatural beings who are immortal. Many of them have human type forms and go around doing human type activities on a whole different level. Some do not have any tangible body. They are spirits.

The deities are gods with unique and great superhuman powers – a bit like Superman or Spiderman but not like Batman. Batman has no real super powers.

Whatever their powers they were believed in and worshipped by human beings with minds just like ours. That is the most incredible thing about them. Gods behave like us because they were created by us.

Déjà vu

I think I may have already done this one.

We have no past lives. We have never been here before. This is just the way your mind plays tricks with you.

The exception to this is television.