Adventure Capitalist

Even if a billion people believe in something, it can still be ridiculous. Religion, in particular organized religion is the biggest scam in the history of mankind: it deprives man of his rationality and critical thinking and puts him under the control of corrupt “religious leaders” who more often than not have their own self-interest at heart.

Quite often the church/sect he is a member of will also deprive a man of his wealth by requiring rich “donations”, funds which are ultimately used by religious leaders for their own purposes, or in some cases to build very ungodly monuments for their supposed religion (do you really think Jesus Christ, if he existed would have wanted monuments like this built in his name, rather than have the money used to help the needy?).

Perhaps worst of all, most organized religions encourage people to live a life poor of experience and.. life, deferring the one life people get to an imaginary afterlife.

Now, someone who is religious might accuse me of being intolerant of their beliefs: not so, people can believe in the tooth-fairy or flying spaghetti monster for all I care. But there is a difference between me tolerating religious beliefs and respecting them: you cannot possibly ask me to respect beliefs which are so plainly ridiculous and can easily be proven to be works of fiction. Would a Christian or Muslim “respect” someone who believed in and worshipped Santa Claus? Don’t think so. Why should I be held to a different standard just because more people may share a delusion?

Jesus - man or myth?
Let’s take the myth of Jesus Christ as the son of God for instance: first coming of the Messiah, an original work? Hardly. Persian religion had Mithra 800 years prior, Egyptian religion had Horus some 600 years before that before that. What did Jesus, Mithra and Horus all have in common?

• Born to a virgin mother, and the son of a God
• Born around Christmas time (Horus on the 25th of December)
• Baptized in a river by a baptizer later executed
• Tempted while walking alone in the desert
• Healed the sick, blind and cast out demons
• Walked on water
• Had 12 disciples
• Where crucified..
• ..to 3 days later be found by women who claimed he had been resurrected

Seems to me good stories are viral - they come in slight variations and stick. But that is what they are: stories, fairy tales. Jesus the man may or may not have existed, but the backstory of divinity and miracles is clearly historical plagiarism of the highest order.

Why we don’t need the fairy tales
Is religion all bad? Well, mostly yes, but actually if you take some of the teachings of Jesus and remove all the miracles, God-stuff and other fairy tale material, there is some wisdom in there.
It seems to me that human morality has no need for ancient mysticism and fairy tales: the faculties we are born with, combined with reason are quite sufficient to work out right from wrong, good from evil.

Religion is the simple answer to complex questions that have no easy answers. It is the act of deferring the one life you have to an imaginary afterlife. Religion makes you miss out on all the simple miracles and beauty that are plain to see right in front of your eyes in this life.

So do I think I have all the answers? Hardly. But blind faith is no valid replacement for an inquisitive mind, critical thinking, rationality and applied logic.