I have always found religion moronic. I have always had fairly extreme views against it, mostly based on two perspectives.
The first being, religion is has caused more pain, suffering and death than any single evil force on this planet. The second, that it makes good people do bad things, and let’s bad people get away with horrific things.

Yet, I think the final culmination of my war against religion was personal. It was the death of my mother.

My mother, died of cervical cancer. When she was diagnosed, she was already at stage IV, which is pretty much a death sentence. She went to astrologers, she went to her “Guru”, everyone of who assured her that she would recover. All of that, despite being stupid and silly, I excuse.

My mother, had a tumor two years before the discovery of her cancer. She went to a doctor, who told her that she needed further tests and may need her uterous removed. This drove her into a fearful frenzy. She found solace, in her God. She was a devout Hindu who had prayed for 4-8 hours a day for the last twenty years of her life. She believed that her God would make everything okay. On that faith, she didn’t tell us about the extent of her tumor and simply claimed that everything was just fine – and that she had seen a doctor who confirmed it.

Of course, her God, didn’t. Instead, her God, let her die a horrible and painful death.

People argue, carefully of course, trying not to offend my sensibilities, that maybe? just maybe, she was going to make the same decisions anyway if she wasn’t religious. She may have just chosen to hide the harsh reality she had to deal with and religion was just a way to do so.

Possibly.

Of course, religion gave her a conduit to do so. It gave her a way to hide away from the truth, facing which, would almost definitely have saved her life. Religion gave her hope, when she should have been given care. Religion gave her delusion, when she should have faced reality.

Even if religion just played a small part, even if it were just a factor that increased her chances of dying, religion is what killed her. It was the one thing that she depended on. She believed. She had FAITH in her God. Her God, never came to save her, because he never could. He didn’t exist.

Had she maybe just, just realized how fake this God of hers was that she had spent so much of her life investing in, she could be alive today.
Whoever says that “religion”, doesn’t do evil, is sticking their heads into the sand. They are preaching a dangerous message that is killing people every day. I am not just talking about the Jihad or the massacres in various parts of the world by one religion on another. I am talking about the fooling of innocent, good, people, into believing that there is someone out there watching out for them.

There isn’t. Get out of your fucking stupid shell and START taking responsibility for your own lives.

There is no God. At least no God that gives a shit about you.
Get used to it. It is called “growing up”.

 

If we didn’t have religion, then this problem wouldn’t exist. Maybe we wouldn’t be killing each other in the name of a deity, maybe we wouldn’t be discriminating based on which invisible man we believe in. Maybe we’d have one less thing to use to do evil with.

Fuck that. If that religion didn’t exist? My mother would still be alive.