Inconsistency

So yeah, religion, how about that eh? Me? I love it! Completely unfounded belief in something just because it feels right? Heck yeah! What I hate about it is (ironically) all the hate it causes...it's just...imagine you're God, or a god, whatever, you got all this fantastic power, you know everything, control everything, can see across the whole breadth and depth of existence and what's this?! Someone doesn't believe in you?! Out of the whole universe, from its birth to death, a statistically insignificant number of atoms either don't acknowledge, or even refute, your existence!  Drown them! Drown the lot of them!

Oh, okay, maybe that was an over-reaction, let's save a family of them and have them repopulate the Earth (itself an insignificant speck against the backdrop of, you know, the whole fucking universe!) because there's no way that the generations of inbreeding as a result of this will backfire in any way...not like the last time you did that it inadvertently created fucking Murder (.....that's not to mention that that could only happen because you created death simply because your creations, which you made that way, ate some fruit....which seriously, what were they supposed to do, they were idiots! they didn't have any intelligence until eating a fruit from the tree called the fucking tree of knowledge! what did you think was going to happen?! Oh, your arch nemesis who took the form of a talking snake told them to eat it and you couldn't do anything about it; least of all just let the thing slide like the forgiving being you are supposed to be??? Good for you! *rolls eyes*.)

Anyway, I'm getting away from myself here; the point is religion is okay. It is only a tool, after all, and you don't blame the hammer for being used to murder someone. The problem is many people just use religion as an excuse to inflict harm on others. He's eating a foodstuff that my book says we shouldn't! She's throwing away her hard earned cash by gambling! They're having fun on a Sunday! Those rat bastards!

The food thing annoys me. You can't eat pigs, because they're filthy! You can't eat cows because they're sacred! You can't eat people because oh so many calories! And I also guess it's a sin...the point is, the human thing aside, because that's a joke, because of the calories, it made sense when it was first introduced. "Don't eat the meat!" says noted historical figure Joe Blogg of Babylon.

 "But!" say the people.

 "You'll die unless it's super fresh because we can't store meat properly as we've not yet invented refrigeration and we live in a fucking desert," continues Joe Blogg.

"We don't care!" say the people, eating the bacon and promptly expiring post haste.

"Hmm," says Joe, "I know...People, hear me! You know that God dude? Totally hates you eating those animals because they're like, his favourite creations and shit."

"What, all of them?" says one of the audience, who somehow survived death by bacon.

"Erm, yes...I mean no! Some are also possessed by demons, which he hates, and if you eat them, you take the demon into you and become corrupted! For example, by eating a pig, you become like the pig demon, full of sloth and gluttony."

"Well, sir, I am convinced, because after that plate of bacon, and the second, I cannot move a muscle save to adjust the cushions on my ottoman...ottoman...say, that's a great name for an empire!" and off went that audience member to found an empire based around footstools.

It made sense back in the day, not so much anymore. People don't really die from eating meat anymore. It's an archaic practice that is only still done because it's what has always been done, which is no excuse to do things!

Then there's the whole thing of attacking homosexuals because a man shall not lay with another man and all that bullshit. Again, probably because back in the day that probably was far more dangerous to do because of hygiene reasons. Got shit on your knob? It's staying there because all you got to wipe it off is a dirty rag, or you can wash it in the river, I guess, but you know, that probably ain't much cleaner....because fish pee in it...you know.....doesn't just apply to homosexuals, but heteros as well, think about it. "Don't have sex!" "Why?" "Because demons live in semen and labial juices, they're attracted to it, and they can get into you via that and corrupt your mind and body!" "Are you talking about STDs?" "....that sounds like scientific demon lingo, you're not a demon wearing a man suit are you?" ".....no" then he grew fangs, his eyes glowed yellow, he sprouted wings and flew away....weird conversation, but he had a point, maybe this science thing could be right? Could it be that being promiscuous is looked down upon because it was ridiculously unhealthy back in the day? Probably. I'd also wager there was a lot of jealousy involved in making it morally reprehensible. 

Which leads us neatly to attacking women, denigrating the entire gender because of original sin, right? We only live these shitty, temptation-filled mortal lives because a woman had a major hankering for an apple, which to be fair, haven't we all had at some point (I may be projecting here, as I bloody love apples) so let's blame her! As opposed to, you know, the being who inflicted the punishment in the first place because his astoundingly arbitrary rules were broken by the crack team of his infinitely less powerful adversary and the woman who literally had the IQ of a retarded sponge (remember, this is before intelligence was even a thing, sure Adam had his little interview things with God, but they were on the intellectual level of say, your average sports journalist.). This is something I feel that gets overlooked a lot. In terms of plot hole, that ranks way up there, and the cover of "well, he's a bit unknowable, you know, we don't know why He does these things, but we do know that we shouldn't know, you know?" is fucking ludicrous. If God is truly unfathomable, then why follow anything He's apparently said, who interpreted it in the first place, how did they do it correctly if He is literally, not figuratively, but literally unknowable. He says woman are bad, maybe he meant it like 90s kids used the word bad, to mean good, and for centuries, millennia, that was (perhaps deliberately) misconstrued? 

I do realise I've gone on a bit too much here about religion from an Abrahamic perspective...mostly because that's the one I was raised with and the ones I despise the most because of the harm and hate they cause in the world. Announcing you're a Jew, a Muslim or a Christian in certain areas is likely to result in your head being caved in, and for what? It's not the religion that causes the hatred, well, sometimes it is, ("Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"...again, the woman thing, I wonder what's up with that, I reckon the bible writing men just had a serious vagina envy thing going on), but mostly, it's the users of the tool. They're free to pick and mix what to use, to take away from the texts, and instead they go with the stuff liable to do the most damage.

What's really sad is the ones who do do the good crap from the books are the ones you don't hear about. The ones who are temperate and who let things go on, not judging, letting people do their own thing, who don't proselytise, who just live their own fucking lives...course, you don't know how much of that is their own choice and how much of that was forced on them by their parents and how much damage they'll do to their own kids simply because they don't know any other way of being.

In conclusion, some religion is fine, most is bad and only used to exclude and harm others whilst making one's self feel better. Personally, I'd go with Norse mythology as it just makes sense, plus Vikings were pretty fucking cool, even if...no...especially because they spent hours before battle shampooing, conditioning and braiding their hair, because what point is there in looting, raping and pillaging your way through a country if you don't look fabulous whilst doing so?! Exactly! None at all!