Fluff religions.02:41 Jan 04 2007
Times Read: 607
I am getting sick and tired of fluff religions. Or faiths, belief systems, whatever you want to call them. When I say this, understand that I have no problem with the religions themselves, I'm talking about the namby-pamby system some of the so-called believers work out so that they have to do as little as possible to maintain them.
For example, Wicca. From what I'm told, there is a whole set of rules or guidelines to that. The major one being, "Do what thou will, an it harm none." Admittedly, that's odd language for a religion that came into being about 50 years ago, but the point is clear. And yet, somehow there are people who even manage to screw that up. They just forget the second half of that and keep going. You hear them talk about hexing people and putting curses on anyone who pisses them off, discussing the best love spells as though forcing someone to love you against their own will weren't the worst kind of mental rape, or even causing the rain to start or stop without a care in the world for what that might be doing to the local environment.
Would any of this be okay if you were doing it physically? Can I rip your dress as you walk into a room, or knock you down a flight of stairs? Can I slip you a date-rape drug? Can I walk up to you with a hose and spray you down, or march up to your house and turn your garden sprinkler off? Does any of that sound okay to you? No. Because it's not.
And yet some people will still justify themselves when doing it. Most of them are suburban teenagers who read about Wicca on some teenybopper's website, renamed themselves Silver Moonflower or something equally ridiculous, then decided to buy some incense, start a coven, and make their own website with even more sparkles, but a few of them are adults who really should know better. I feel sorry for the real Wiccans who have to deal with the negative image that these morons give to everyone else.
Next, (and I'm going to generalize this) are the Eastern religions. People read an article in a magazine and all of a sudden decide they're Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, Muslims, or whatever else, without knowing a goddamn thing about it. This came in with the celebrity religion bandwagon. Just because something is popular, doesn't mean it's easy. Most of these imbeciles are defying the very deepest foundations of their "chosen faith" every day of their lives because all the research they put into it was a quick search on Wikipedia and a trip to the mall to buy some cute accessories.
Even made up religions like scientology have serious expectations from their faith base, so what makes these idiots think they can go around calling themselves whatever, without actually doing research and practicing the beliefs of their faith? Nothing but sheer self-absorption. The kind of egotistical idiocy that tells them it's okay to do whatever they feel like because no one else knows that they don't know what they're doing. They bask in the reflected glory of a religion they know nothing about, just because they think it's cool. Sickening.
Now I know that this post has hit home with a lot of people. Too bad. If this offended you, then you are probably one of the idiots that I've been talking about. Smarten up. If you aren't, then I don't know what you're mad about. Take it up with me in a PM. Either way, if you actually read this far down, then I suspect you're mature enough to read the last bit without adding it to the repertoire of hate that seems to be so prevalent recently. I don't want my posts on one type of religious person to be used against every single person of that religion, or that religion as a whole. Since Christianity is such a popular religion to bash these days, I thought I'd save this statement and this section for now. That said;
Christianity. This is, in fact, an umbrella word for the entire Christian faith, whether of the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, or Eastern Church, so understand that I am referring to all of them. My first problem with them is common to many religions, but this is one that is so obvious in Christians now and historically, it's impossible not to mention it: Using the religion to justify your actions, even if said religion is directly against it.
Conducting wars, torturing and killing individual people, improper enslavement, genocide, forcible conversion, oppression by gender, and the shunning of those who do not conform are all things documented as having been done by Christians in the name of a god that specifically ordered them not to do that. A lot of that is still being done right now, even as I type these words. You people make my brain hurt. It seems like a lot of people here were raised by them or are surrounded by them and have come to hate the whole religion for it. For that, I'm sorry. Now get over it. I did.
My second problem is with the other side of that kind. The Christians who think that you only have to believe the parts that sound nice, and the mean stuff (or anything that doesn't agree with your beliefs) was put in there by 'human interpretation'. Basically, the guy who wrote it was a jerk who put in a bit of 'God's message' then filled the rest up with his own personal prejudice. Okay, maybe that's true, but who the hell made you an authority on what Almighty God Himself wanted put in there? Who are you to decide what parts are real and what parts aren't? They all look the same. They're all typed up on the same page.
If that's how it worked, I could just disregard the whole "Thou shall not kill." part and mow you down with a chainsaw. Does that sound alright to you? Actually, I could just ignore everything in the book and say that it's all wrong and the world was actually created by Chuck Norris, who came down to the human world once, called himself Jesus, then came back a second time as the Chuck Norris we know now, bringing justice to the world through bad movies and roundhouse kicks. That sound like something a good Christian would say? I didn't think so.
And finally, I hate the people who don't go to church, don't follow the religion's beliefs, have never read the Bible, and still somehow think that they are going to heaven. Some of them don't even believe in hell, but they think guardian angels protect them, God is watching over them, and they are going to be with their families in heaven when they die. Now, going to church has nothing to do with whether or not you are a good Christian. It comes in handy if you want to know anything about your religion, but if you really wanted to, you could find out on your own. Reading the Bible is pretty important. It is the handbook of Christianity. It's got all these nifty rules and guidelines for not going to the bad place. And when I say "read" I do not mean "pick a random sentence out of context from an entire book with many different and completely unrelated sections, and base your entire belief structure off of it". That would just be stupid (and unnervingly common among your peers). I mean read the damn thing from cover to cover. You would be amazed at what is in there.
For example, there is no such thing as a guardian angel. If you sin you are going to hell. Accepting Jesus is not going to get you out of it. You actually have to work to keep your favour; if you become Christian and continue to break the rules without apologizing to the man upstairs, making up for it, and trying to stop, you are going to hell. These are lessons the Bible is full of. It is very strict on this sort of thing. If you call yourself Christian, and you are disobeying the rules, you damn well better believe you are going to hell for it.
And none of that deathbed repentance crap either. If you are converting at the last minute because you're scared and don't really mean it, do you honestly think the All-knowing Creator of the Universe isn't going to cotton on? If not, what the crap kind of creator are we talking about here? Certainly not one who'd demand a religion with strict unenforceable rules that result in a multitude of disbelievers and a horde of 'faithful' too lazy to even find out what the rules are before they start disobeying them.
So that's my rant on fluff religions. If you made it this far and still don't get it, let me say it once again. This is not a rant against the religions mentioned, or the practitioners of such. This is about the people who pretend to believe in something, and misuse it to make themselves look good or feel better about themselves.
Faith is not an accessory. It's not a crutch, a status symbol, or a weapon against those who disagree with you. It is a system of beliefs that should reflect who you are, and how you should behave, how you see and understand the world around you, and how you think the world should be. I can't force you to see it this way, but I hope that at least some people, even if it doesn't apply to you, will read this and think.
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