Godless And Free (8 page)

22.
Unholy Scripture

August 31, 2007

Hi everyone. I’d like to say a couple of things here. Firstly, about my videos. I post them on various websites, and I appreciate all the comments and messages I get, but I could really do without seeing any more racist comments if you wouldn’t mind. I’m speaking here to the white racists, but this applies equally well to the brown ones. I don’t share your pathetic obnoxious views in any way imaginable, so if you really have to show the world what an intellectual insect you are please don’t do it here, because every time I see one of your comments it’s like stepping in dogshit, and I don’t want to have to follow you around with a pooper scooper, so if you could help me out and just put them somewhere else, preferably up your own fundament using the business end of a pineapple, I’d be much obliged.

And secondly, I’d like to say a few words about the Bible.

It seems to me that, because faith operates outside the bounds of reason, it feels entitled to claim knowledge from unreasonable sources, such as divine revelation, which is a fancy way of saying voices in the head, or dreams, or even drugs, if you read the Book of Revelation, which is an extraordinary account of a bad trip through the canyons of a frazzled mind.

It’s the last book in the Bible, and it was written by John of Patmos. And he was definitely on something, because the island of Patmos is notoriously abundant in psilocybin mushrooms, and you don’t need to ingest too many of them to start having rabid visions, maybe even scribble a book of wild ramblings and ravings while you’re at it. What could be more natural?

Although, reading Revelation, I don’t get the impression of anyone actually having written it so much as shouted it while hanging upside down by his ankle from a bell tower, or scrawling it in his own blood on the city walls.

It’s fair to say I’m not entirely convinced that this is the product of a healthy mind.

Of course I have to balance these doubts against the counter argument, which is: “But it’s in the Bible, so it must be true, because the Bible is the word of God, because it says it is, so it must be true because the Bible is the word of God…” etcetera, etcetera.

Clearly, for some people, God doesn’t move so much in mysterious ways, as in ever decreasing circles.

I wonder if he goes in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere. Maybe somebody can write and let me know.

I find it quite ironic that some Christians would like to ban the Harry Potter books in case their children turn to witchcraft and away from Jesus, as opposed to turning to Christianity and even further away from Jesus, from what I’ve seen. Jesus Camp, anyone? I don’t know about you, but I smell sulphur.

But you know, I think once you start banning books, you really start banning civilisation. And that’s why I would never be in favour of banning the holy scriptures (which is a question I was asked recently) even though I think they do more harm than good.

I think the Bible, and the Koran for that matter, are very ambiguous books to quite a dangerous degree, because they both preach peace, as they often claim to do, yes, but they also preach violence. So really it depe what you’re actually looking for when you open the book, because that’s pretty much what you’re going to find.

And if you choose to read it literally, well then yes, you’ve got yourself a charter for barbarism. But if you approach it as the inspirational text it was doubtless meant to be, you can access a world of subtlety and wisdom.

But you have to actually want to do it, and unfortunately too many people prefer dogma to enlightenment. They’d rather use their holy books to reinforce their own narrow prejudices and then try to impose them on everybody else. Like cavemen using a flashlight as a hammer, they’ve missed the point completely. And for me this is the most depressing thing about the holy scriptures.

But, since we are using them to lay down rules of behaviour for other people, it’s clear to me from the New Testament that anyone who goes to church on Sunday is a blasphemer, because Jesus specifically said don’t pray in public, keep your religion to yourself, didn’t he? In the Sermon on the Mount, I think it was, Matthew 6, verses 5 and 6.

Don’t be like the hypocrites, he said, who pray in the synagogues and on street corners where they can be seen. No no, not you. You go into your closet and shut the door, and pray to God in secret, and God will hear you in secret and reward you openly.

That’s what he said. Keep your religion to yourself. It’s right there in black and white in the Queen’s English in the Holy Gospel. How much more true could it possibly be?

Clearly, therefore, every Christian church is nothing but a halfway house on the road to hell.

And don’t blame me. I didn’t say it. The Bible did.

Peace, and all that jazz.

23.
Video Response to Osama

September 11, 2007

Well, this week we’ve heard from the Antichrist in waiting, Osama bin Laden, who wants everyone in the West to convert to Islam to stop the war in Iraq. Well, that sounds very realistic, doesn’t it? I’m glad to see he hasn’t lost his mind sitting up there in his little cave.

Osama, if you’re watching, thanks for the offer, but no thanks. There’s no way that I could ever convert to Islam, for a number of reasons. Firstly, I like beer. Now I know that sounds very hedonistic and shallow, but, as you know, it’s part of my culture to be hedonistic and shallow. Also, in my culture right now it’s become very fashionable to respect everyone’s cultural values, no matter how crude or barbaric or downright ridiculous they might be, and this is something which you and your Islamist friends have capitalised on with great success in recent years.

And yet you still don’t seem to approve, and I find that disappointing. To you, western society, or the Zionist Crusader Alliance (let’s give it its official title) is still an abomination which must be destroyed. It’s decadent and immoral; there’s too much sex, too much music, too much laughter, there’s just too much fun, isn’t there, Osama? And you want to put a stop to i before you have a brain haemorrhage.

To you, western women are whores, because they show far too much flesh for your liking, and I bet that brings you out in a hot flush just thinking about it all the time.

In fact, that’s another reason that I couldn’t possibly convert to Islam. Anyone who seriously expects me to stand by while the women in my life are compelled to dress or behave in a way they consider inappropriate is, frankly, living in a fantasy world. But then we already knew that, didn’t we?

As for Iraq, you know as well as I do that virtually everybody on the planet wants the troops out of Iraq now, except for the idiot in the White House, the same one that you helped get re-elected, by the way, the last time you popped up on our screens, remember, you interfering son of a bitch?

Because the truth is you wanted the war to continue every bit as much as he did. You wanted Muslims slaughtered and at each others’ throats, purely to embarrass the Americans, which is all you really care about, isn’t it, you hypocrite?

You know, Osama, there are over a billion Muslims living on this planet, and I think every single one of them should be cursing you for what you’ve done to their religion, because you’ve actually achieved the impossible – you’ve set Islam back several hundred years, so that even for someone like me making this video it’s very difficult not to resort to obscenities, especially when there’s more obscenity in what you stand for than I could possibly generate in cursing you and all your worthless ancestors back to the year dot, you cowardly violent scumbag, you self-righteous piece of shit.

But hey, I don’t want to get abusive here, because that creates enemies. On the other hand, you’re already my enemy, so what the hell, you murdering lump of slime.

However, I want to make it very clear that the idiot in the White House is also my enemy, just in case you thought I was taking sides. Of course he’s a much bigger enemy to the troops he actually sent to Iraq. In fact he’s probably the greatest enemy they’ve got. He’s also now an enemy to his own people, thanks to you and your activities, Osama, on this very day six years ago when you deliberately attacked civilians like the unprincipled oil slick you are.

Now, thanks to the sacred war on freedom, I mean terror, America has something called the Patriot Act, which is essentially a charter for fascism in the land of the free.

It could have been written by Hitler, somebody with whom I think you would have a lot in common. After all, a bunker or a cave. Ultimately there’s only one way out, isn’t there?

Anyway, Osama, I can’t stay around chatting all day. I just wanted to say thanks for the offer, but, as you can see, it would be impossible for me to become a Muslim, even if I wanted to. How fortunate for me that I don’t want to.

Besides, you know what? I think I’d probably be a bit of a Catholic Muslim, if you know what I mean, and what a combination that would be, eh? Look out Jews. Only kidding, Jews. It was a joke.

Peace everyone, that’s all we really want, isn’t it? Well, most of us.

24.
Hello Angry Christians

September 25, 2007

Hi everyone. I’d like to thank all the angry born again Christians who have been writing to tell me how much they’re looking forward to my eternal torment in the flames of hell. It’s nice to know that I’m in your prayers.

And you are rubbing your hands with gleeful anticipation, too, some of you, by the sounds of it, when you’re not furiously typing pages and pages of scripture. And yet if I call you crazy, apparently I’m the one who’s being offensive. It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?

To be fair, I do actually sympathise to some extent. It must be quite galling for religious people to see atheists like me going about their business without a shred of guilt or self-loathing, and not in the least inclined to pray or do penance of any kind, and not in the slightest bit worried about any form of eternal punishment. I have to admit if I was religious I’d probably think to myself: “How come I’ve got all this weight on my shoulders while these bums are getting a free ride?”

And I don’t even think that I’d be comforted either, as some of you clearly are, by the prospect of their eternal torture in the flames of hell, roasting in agony and tormented by demons, because I don’t really buy that scenario. I think if hell does exist it’s probably not a place where you physically burn forever, but perhaps a metaphor for something more subtle that consumes from within. Something like eternal regret, perhaps. Something not done, not challenged, not risked, not loved enough. Or maybe it’s just burning in fire. I don’t want to get heavy about it.

I mean it’s bad enough that Jesus died for my sins – I still haven’t really gotten over that. (And thanks for reminding me about that yet again, by the way.) I do feel somewhat guilty that I’m not more grateful to Jesus, but I just wish he had taken the trouble to ask me before he went ahead with it, because now I feel I’m being billed for something I didn’t order.

And that really is the deal, isn’t it, if you’re a Christian. You’re born already in debt to Jesus, and it’s a debt you can only repay in full by dying.

That’s some deal you’ve got yourself into there. That’s like being asked to pay off the mortgage on a house that you already own.

Especially as there’s no hard historical evidence that the Jesus of the Gospels even existed. What records we do have were written by people who were born long after he died, so they were just passing on what they had heard.

And of course the same is true of the Gospels themselves.

Curious, isn’t it, that nobody who was actually writing anything down at the time appears to have known anything about Jesus, despite the fantastic miracles he was performing, the multitudes he was preaching to, and of course his momentous and spectacular public demise.

And don’t forget this is a guy whose birth was marked by a celestial event, who was born by a miracle to a virgin in the year 6
BC
nt color="#000"> – two miracles for the price of one, talk about hit the ground running! And then it was one miracle after another; fed the multitude, healed the sick, walked on water, raised the dead, was nailed to a plank and came back to life again. How can nobody have heard of him? He should have been the talk of the desert. He should have been as famous as Elvis.

And yet all we’ve got is hearsay; second and third hand accounts which have been doctored and edited and translated through a hedge backwards so many times that the truth no longer even bears any resemblance to itself, if it ever did.

So I don’t know who you think you’re praying to, but it doesn’t seem to have done you much good, does it? Maybe you should try praying to Elvis for a while, see how that works out. I mean at least we know that Elvis actually existed.

But just because Jesus is a storybook character that doesn’t mean he’s not a good character. It doesn’t mean he hasn’t got wisdom to impart.

Didn’t he say the kingdom of heaven is within? Luke 17, verse 21, I think it was. And what a useful piece of information that is when you think about it. Now I realise that, as an angry Christian, you probably pay lip service to those words, but you don’t really believe them, and so, for you, it doesn’t happen. And clearly it hasn’t happened, otherwise you wouldn’t be so angry, would you?

Turn the other cheek, forgive trespasses, love your enemy? That’s a foreign language to you. No, you want punishment, don’t you? You want eternal torture. You want unimaginable suffering, for your own satisfaction.

So I think it’s probably just as well that Jesus didn’t exist, because if he came back and he saw what people like you have made of his teachings, he’d quickly realise that nobody has listened to a word he said, that he was wasting his breath, and that he’d wasted his life.

Oh well, we’ve all got our cross to bear.

Peace to everyone, especially Christians, both inside and outside the kingdom of heaven.