England

Well, if we're going to start down that track, I can give a four hour improvised lecture on why all religions are bad and harmful. When religion comes in, reason goes out the window and people stop looking for answers in science and research and instead take advice from money grabbing preachers who claims that they and their lambs are superior to everyone else and are the only ones that will go to their heaven because everybody else believes in the wrong God. It wasn't called The Dark Ages for nothing. Almost 1500 years of brutal suppression during which everyone who even mentioned astronomy, medicine, or even logic in Europe was stoned or burned. Not until the 18th century when the church in Europe was finally pushed back, the society began to flourish and there were suddenly tremendous advances in science, medicine and human rights. A hundred years and we had again finally reached the scientific level that the Babylonians held before they were crushed 2500 years before. It took us a few hundred more years to get to where we are now, but under religious suppression we would never have come to where we are today.

Religions all have one thing in common; the extreme suppression of women. Religions always have a male interpreter who is the only one who can mediate the God's words and give directions on how to live. In the three Mediterranean religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, that are all basically the same revision of the Babylonian religions, women were reduced to breeding cattle to be owned and used. There were an important reason for this. By depriving women of their human rights, strip them of the right to own and inherit and imprison them in their homes, nativity increases heavily. This is necessary for the religion to grow and to get more believers and to have soldiers to wage wars on other religions to take market shares from them. Religions work like heavily competitive companies whose goal is monopoly and for that you need plenty of foot soldiers.

Another important aspect of religion is that it justifies vicious human rights violations. People of other religions are worth less than people who belong to the right religion and it's always a benefaction to decimate the forces of your enemy. Dehumanizing people of other religions makes it so much easier to kill them and take their land. It was frequently used to motivate the colonization of the world in the 16th to 20th century.

Religion is about setting people apart, to create a rift between the ones with the right belief and the ones that doesn't. It is never about uniting people. It's never about trying to accept the differences between people and trying to work all together for a better future. It's never about taking in influences and the best from all parts of the world.

Religion is about resisting nature. To honor your God you always have to do two things. One is to wear a really stupid gadget or follow some strict rule that signals that you are different, that you are better and that you are chosen. It can be a circular pointless hat that doesn't serve to protect from the sun, refuse to trim your beard, carry an X around your neck, having ridiculous whiskers, put a colored dot on your forehead, refusing to eat pork, or cow, or something else. Some of these rules have a reasonable origin, like that it was not good to eat pork around the Mediterranean back when you had no idea about bacteria. You just knew that if eating pork, many people died. So let's say that God forbids you from eating it to save lives. But these rules tend to stay on even though they serve no meaningful function any longer. They only serve to set you apart, to point out that you're different and worth more than the ones that doesn't do as you do. The second one is to enforce a stupid rule that makes life really difficult to prove your submission to your God. One example here is Ramadan, when you don't eat during daytime to honor Muhammed's fast in the cave when he was given the Koran by the arch angel. Why it is that Gods always demand that you punish yourself and make your life hard to prove that you love them? Why is it that Gods never demand that you are good and help others instead for just inflict harm to your own body? That comes back in the Bible, when Abraham was told by his God that to prove that he was really, really honoring his God, he had to kill his own son. Even as a kid I found that remarkable. An all knowing God who has created everything. Still he doubts if his creations, who he knows every atom of, since he has created them, believes in him. And this God has an extreme desire to see his creations prepared to kill their own kin to prove their love to their God. Now what kind of God is that?! Not to mention that if you read the Bible, we are all the result of incest.

That brings us to sex, which is a red flag for all religion. Which leaves me clueless, because it's actually the only reason why we, as any other being on this planet, exists. To breed and get offspring. So why the hassle from religions? Well, there is a strong need to control sexuality for several reasons. One is to ensure that the religion grows and that there are many soldiers of God. To ensure that and to control people you must force them into controlled and registered marriages. That also creates an opportunity to tax people, which is why the church always is and was in close cooperation with the rulers. That leads back to the need to control women. To do that you need to deprive them of the possibility to rule their own lives and educate themselves. That is achieved by banning birth control, which is a fight that still isn't won. The religions are still battling this all over the world, fighting human rights and women's rights to have a say in their lives. Before Christianity invaded Scandinavia in the 10th century, women could own and inherit. That disappeared when the three Mediterranean religions rolled out to cover the world.

But to stay on sex. For some reasons the interpreter, the male priest, usually can't have sex, because he is somehow married to God. Which is a bit odd since all religions are extremely against LGBTQ because it threatens the supply of new believers, people who pay tax to the church and diminishes the number of possible foot soldiers. Anyway, this all too often leads up to the priest getting caught with his pants down with his dick in the arse of the nearest choir boy. And this is in no way restricted to Catholicism. Even in Hare Krishna you had and have the same problem. This is again because religions are constructed as to force us to try to fight our natural instincts.

From this springs an obvious question. All religions claim that we were created in the image of their God in question. This of course means that God is an evil, petty-minded, stealing, raping, plundering, lying, murdering, sex addicted, war-mongling arse, which surprises me. How can anything with those properties create something as beautiful as this planet? No, of course he/she/it couldn't, because there is no such thing as a God. There are only people who are looking for easy answers and to blame someone else for their problems. That is also why all religions have one thing in common; to fiercely battle atheists like me, because they don't want people to look for answers, because answers to questions always show that there is no God. Religion is about not wanting to know. Religion is about stopping progress. Religion is about making people small and yielding. And to obey someone else without asking why or having a reason to do what they are told to do. Religion is about controlling other people and suppressing them.

But to religious people, their holy book always have all the answers. Did you know that this planet is only 6000 years old? If you're a true Christian you know that so it is. So why are there fossils in the mountains? Because it proves that the flooding and the voyage of the ark did indeed happen. But where do the dinosaur skeleton come from? The devil put them there to make us doubt God. Well, he did a very good job on me. Religion is about fighting knowledge. Religion IS not wanting to find the truth or to understand the universe. Any day, any time, I'd put my faith in a scientist than in a priest.

But what about the holy books? Well, the bible as we know it today is completely different from the one that saw the light of day beginning in the 4th century. The testaments were largely written down hundreds of years after the scenarios they describe and they were from the beginning extremely contradicting. To fit their own purposes, the bible has over the years been heavily adapted by kings, popes and rulers. Not many of the original words remain. Maybe it does in the parts used in today's bible, but so many section appears to have been removed, or added up to well over a thousand years after that carpenter walked the earth. The Koran? Well, it was written by a man who hadn't eaten for a month and claimed that the words came to him in a vision. Well, if I don't eat for a month and only drink water, I also get massive visions. Try it, you'll see. Mohammed, how was his private life? Well, he was educated, but poor. His lifeline was actually that he could marry rich, to an elderly widow and run her company (which he did quite well). But she was way older than him. Way older. So what was one of the first rules that this new God presented to him in this vision? That you may take up to four wives. Go figure. I could go on here forever and dissect almost any religion on a zillion points, but you'd all die from boredom before I was through.

But, if now anyone has been able to make it through my rambling, back to the subject. No, I don't agree. I don't see the terrorists as religious representatives, they are but extremists. There are always a few percentage of those in the world and they are always drawn to terror, to get to live out their hate and need to slaughter. Sometimes they can find their place in a vicious murdering army, as torturer in a totalitarian dictatorship, as a rogue liberation front in a war torn country, but Daesh beats most of it. There has been terrorists before and there will be terrorists afterwards. Right now they pay homage to Daesh, tomorrow it will be something else. But there will always be terror attacks - religious, political, criminal, but it is the same people.

Oh well, I'd better stop here before I get too much into detail why I dislike religions.

Why don't you tell us how you really feel? Seriously, no disrespect intended...

Believe it or not, my original intention was to express sympathy to the victims in particular and the country in general for their loss. But my anger at the senselessness of this kind of shit just got the better of me. This has gotten way out of control, especially across the pond and in Europe and it would seem that the problem was facilitated by years of uncontrolled immigration from Muslim countries, as well as very lenient policies on integration and assimilation of the new residents, i.e., "Welcome to my home, but it's my home and here are the house rules: We don't allow smoking in the house. If you want to smoke, go outside. If you can't live with that, perhaps you'd be more comfortable elsewhere." You'd think refugees, of all people, and those fleeing oppressive regimes or seeking a better life might be down with that. "We don't DO that here, OK? Our house, our rules (and our laws). Have a nice day." Simple, right? Otherwise, go home and if you can't go home, go somewhere else. It's not really a lot to ask, IMO. At least you have a choice. Get comfortable with the house rules or seek other accommodations.

I'm not going to get into religion vs. atheism or other belief systems, except to say that this particular problem is, in fact, motivated by religious fanaticism, however wrong-headed, and must be confronted on that basis, i.e., the fanaticism part. The vast majority of Muslims who reject this abomination, along with every other civilized person on earth need to reject this viewpoint utterly, as well as emphasizing that continuing this kind of behavior may have long-term, fatal consequences. I'd hate to see that happen but sometimes circumstances force one's hand.

As I said before, when will this end? And how? Because it has to end, one way or another...

Well said Glagla - this is all the fault of religion isn't it. Let's get rid of God(s) and religion and turn to the great atheists of our age for guidance- let's hear it for Hitler, Stalin and Chairman Mao - great humanitarians all !

As G K Chesterton wrote "When a man stops believing in God he doesn't then believe in nothing, he believes anything."

Chesterton's an enjoyable writer, but he was strongly Catholic, and anti-Semitic. He loved winding people up with clever paradoxical remarks - one of which you quote - but they don't stand up to much analysis. How many atheists can you cite who will 'believe anything'?

Your suggestion that the only alternative to religion is a totalitarian political doctrine falls into much the same category. In any case, Nazism, Soviet Communism and Maoism were in effect all absolutist religions - they just dispensed with the concept of a supernatural supreme being.

Well, just as Phil has pointed out already, I fail to see the connection really. The German Nazi party always worked in close cooperation with the Catholic church and after the war many top Nazis were aided by resources from the Vatican to hide in South America. Most religious leaders tend to be very close to the political leadership, the closer the worse they are. Just look at South America during the military era in the 60s to 80s, the church was always there in the middle, backing the government up. Of course there have been brutal leaders throughout history who were atheists, but you'll find even more brutal leaders who consistently incorporated religion into their agenda.

And I completely disagree with Chesterton. It's religious people who believes just anything their leader tell them. Atheists tend to search for the truth and find true answers, which is what is driving research forward.

Really??????

Yes, that should of course have been the topic for this thread, but sitting in front of the computer in the middle of the night my back bone impulse of dislike for religions got the better of me. My thoughts go out to the victims and no matter the reason for the senseless violence, I do hope that we'll all move on into a calmer period of peace and prosperity soon again. Terror always moves in waves and every time it comes to an end, I am hoping that we're finally coming into a brighter future. But then the next conflict surfaces because there are always people who are easily duped and find no other purpose in their lives than to cause death and destruction. I have no solution except that we could try more education and less religion in our lives, having patience, helping each other and cooperation across the borders.


Uhm, I'm not certain if you're ironic here, or what you are referring to.



I quite agree and I have a hard time with people of any religion always putting their religious rules above national law. I believe strongly that you should adapt to the local culture where you move to, but I have to admit that even Swedes moving abroad suck at that. The problem isn't that simple though. The terror attacks are seldom or never carried out by immigrants or refugees. Rather it is third generation low-educated and often already criminally charged citizens who are born in and have lived their entire lives in the country where they carry out their act of terror.

I am most definitely not a knowledgeable political or religious animal, so opinions expressed are just that, personal opinions.

The Koran and the Bible both promote violence if their words are taken literally as written.

The UK has history of protecting religions by their PC behaviour, the Muslims now, but likewise the christian church, regarding the horrific historical physical, mental and sexual abuse, having been carried out by its priests and nuns.

Religion has much to take responsibility for of that there is no doubt, but blaming religion alone, almost absolves the personal responsibility of the individual who carries out their evil.

I personally despise all these phrases that are created after terrorist acts, that suggests terrorists won't win, we are not afraid, peace and love will prevail etc etc. The fact is the terrorists are winning, they are making folk fearful and the peace and love approach is not working, i want the terrorists to be fearful of the State, not the innocent citizen of the terrorist.

A oft used phrase here in UK after after things have gone wrong is "Lessons will be learned", well now seems a damned good time for that to be put into practice, regarding these vehicle crashing, knife wielding and suicide bombing scum, deal with them, their religious practices and their communities.

But likewise the government must look at itself, such as our foreign policy like our excursion into Iraq and assistance in overthrow of Gadaffi, which has left vacuums that terrorists have filled.

The fact is if the State does not protect its innocent citizens, then certain groups of citizens who have their own warped agenda will endeavour to do so, which then creates another band of evil.

I don't know really. My daughter was on Queen's Street in Stockholm when the truck ran down that road a few months ago, killing several people, but she made it out in one piece. But it hasn't really affected us as a family. It is still tens of thousands of times more likely that any of us will die from a traffic accident on the way to the Queen's Street than being killed by a terrorist there. My wife worries when I fly, but I say that if I survive in our kitchen in the morning and the taxi ride, I'm statistically safer on the plane than on the ground. Just because there are terrorists out there we can't let it affect our daily life. The chance of being killed in a robbery is a million times higher than being killed in a terror attack. In the US more than 500 people die annually from negligent discharge of firearms, out of a total of roughly 35,000 deaths by firearms every year. This means that statistically, as a Swede, the most dangerous part of my life, with the highest hazard of being shot and/or killed, is when I visit the US. So I'll keep smiling and walking along Queen's Street because it's statistically one of the safest places I'll ever be. We do some precautions like placing permanent obstacles at the end of the pedestrian streets and see what else we can do to minimize the hazard, but apart from that I think the road ahead is more education, less religion in school and more integration. Get the immigrants working asap, that cures most of the problems.

Regarding the military involvement in Iraq and Libya, I agree completely. Europe/USA have a sad tendency to move in, fuck shit up and then leave a disaster behind with no idea how to rebuild society. Marshal plan - it worked last time.

Glagla your points are of course fact about 'dangers' and likelihood of them occurring, and yes we all just carry on.

But fact is terrorists are winning, ok they may not win the war, but by god their efforts are changing our lives, their actions are getting the publicity they crave.

In London within last 2 weeks due to terrorism, we have had the Army guarding government buildings, and at last terrorist situation 50 rounds of ammunition were discharged by the police towards the 3 choppy choppy terrorists, that is changing our countrys behaviour (i support it happening, needs must and all that).

The only way my government will make a truly concerted effort, and take some tough non PC actions to deal with terrorism, is if our citizens rise up and make them.

I am all for just getting on with life that is our way, it's the happy clappy slogans that are uttered and their ilk that annoy me. I want citizens to tell my government in strong terms they are angry, scared or whatever and demand they sort out this situation. Bad men are doing bad things to us, i want my Countrys state controlled 'bad men' to take action. My grandfather summed it up last evening when talking about the terrorists, "Lets do it to them before they do it to us" (he said it a phrase from some old tv police drama) which i thought clarified it for me.

Will action be taken, no doubt some pseudo action will, few 'tough' words said and then zilch until next time.

Ah well keep smiling, it makes folks wonder what naughty thoughts you are thinking