CHAPTER 7: THE TROUBLE WITH CHURCH
My point is not that religion itself is the motivation for wars, murders and terrorist attacks, but that religion is the principal label, and the most dangerous one, by which a ‘they’ as opposed to a ‘we’ can be identified at all. Professor Richard Dawkins, The Devil's Chaplain 2004
You’re the bestest and baddest fascist sociopathic intergalactic empire-building mass-murderer out there. And for good reasons – the Spice Girls, the Eurovision Song Contest and Arsenal football club – you’re thinking of denying the creation of planet Earth on the grounds of diminished responsibility. And you’ve decided on grounds known only to yourself that Faith will be the decided factor on who gets to rent property in downtown Heaven. So while you sit back and await the match result, and smoke a few nuclear trumpets, are you going to pander to the simple-minded with a Church or settle for a nice plump philosophy?
‘Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous. David Hume
Your favoured few will pervert your Church with a virus of contaminated opinion within five seconds of you opening the doors.
’Cause I got to tell you the truth, folks. I got to tell you the truth. When it comes to Bullshit, Big-time Major-League Bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims — RELIGION! Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man — living in the sky — who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if any of you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever till the end of time ... But He loves you! He loves you! He loves you and He needs money! He always needs money! He is all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing and all-wise but somehow, just can’t handle money. Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story, Holy Shit! George Carlin, Religion is Bullshit
For when your favoured flavour of Church stews in its own corrupted juices, you’ll have trouble dividing the sheep from the goats. ‘Religion poisons everything,’ charges Christopher Hitchens with vehement distaste. And into the boiling pot your bona-fide God fishes for the Kool-Aid the fake religions dish up with relish.
Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr’s death will send them straight to heaven. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
Hell, the more you beat this golden pot of Logic, the more you realise how culpable you’ll be for the off-the-wall favouritism that disfigures the family for good. With blood on the church floor this mash of messy religion is sour and divisive and contrary to your recipe of keeping the family together. In your universe black is turning into white. A bit like Michael Jackson.
How far from the seat of godhead flies reason and good sense!
The final insult that religion delivers to us, the final poison it injects into our system, it appeals both to our meanness, our self-centredness and our solipsism and to our masochism. In order words it’s sadomasochistic. Christopher Hitchens v Alister McGrath, Georgetown University Washington, 2007
Embalmed with a baptismal light, our soul-burning brothers and sisters soak in the sublime satisfaction and hot ecstasy enjoyed by the favoured few: far from a sinking feeling of abandonment in a cold, friendless universe they are part of a Grand Plan, a child of God and essentially speshul.
Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet found himself or has already lost himself again ... Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. Karl Marx, Introduction to proposed work A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
The addiction to religion transmutes the soft flow of human sympathy into hardened self-righteousness — the beginner consents to a divisive system of Heaven-worthiness, but the hardcore and back-flogging believer soaks in the perverse pleasure of picturing their dissenting sisters and brothers broiling in the cauldrons of Hell.
We are the pure and chosen few, and all the rest are damned. There’s room enough in hell for you — we don’t want heaven crammed. George Eliot, Adam Bede
But if you’re a God who is selective about which hymns are chanted on a Sunday morning, you’ll see we face the serial problem raised by Bertrand Russell et al long before you and I were glints in the milkman’s eye, that these sects are way off song, and sing from different sheets.
Living by a total falsehood, as I think they are living with their religious views, I can’t help admiring them, but despairing for them. Francis Bacon, cited The Art of Francis Bacon
Imagine the gut-churning sickness of the cult-loving souls on Judgment Day and the wailing and gnashing of teeth upon finding that through Life they have been batting for the wrong team. Be damned sure before committing the remaining years of your Life to a firebrand God who shows every sign of being a fascist sociopathic intergalactic empire-building mass-murderer.
‘Did I say ten years in purgatory?’ sighs God and shooting the pause button to the repeat of I Love Lucy. ‘Sorry. I’m a builder. That was just an estimate. Make it the rest of eternity.’
Am I attacking the Church? You’d better believe it. All churches, all organised religions, that have existed since the beginning of time. Am I attacking the religion of individuals? Never, not on your life. Bill Cooper
Our search presupposes God is logical and rational, a slap-on-the-back-can-you-lend-me-a-fiver reliable friend. Why would a God of science bother with a Mormon priesthood of Deacons and Seventies and High Priests?
Let’s face it, any fool can get religion, but it’s a lot more fun getting bevvied, innit. Rab C Nesbitt: Bug starring Gregor Fisher and Elaine C Smith
A fascist sadistic God creates us sons and daughters with kinks and sordid imperfections, then blames us for our supposed sins, and sinks us in a sulphurous Hell-fire and never-ending sessions of bingo.
Oh, wearisome condition of humanity
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity
Created sick, commanded to be sound. Fulke Greville, Mustapha
The religious syndicate faces multiple charges of adopting the devil against human rights, women’s emancipation, and the search for scientific enlightenment. Consider the cold case of a credulous Mormon black man who (when the Mormon Church — praise the Lard! — had a miraculous revelation from God shortly being facing legal sanctions) until recently was branded a descendant of the Mark of Cain, a fence-sitter from the War in Heaven, and denied the penis-hood usually the preserve of all white men (dickheads of their families). Is God a racist? Religions inevitably favour the structure, imagery and language of fascism; religions spread with delight the delusion that God must be a firemongering fascist.
It’s implicitly totalitarian. Second, it degrades our human self-respect by saying we wouldn’t act morally if it were not for fear of this celestial dictatorship ... Third, it seems to me to be invariably based on sexual repression and a fear and disgust of the sexual act. Christopher Hitchens v Mark Roberts 2007
The manhandling of its women and children is usually a fair test of a sect’s ingrown fascism. The Bishop of a Mormon Ward is obliged by his handbook of instructions to persuade any single mother foolishly seeking sanctuary in his office to give up her baby for adoption. No policy of support for the single mother exists in a church that preaches the sanctity and unity of family.