My favorite hobby (followed closely by drinking) is problem solving, but I find little joy in solving theoretical logic puzzles in books you can buy at a major book chain. The real hunt is in solving real world problems…even if I just solve them on paper and none of my solutions ever become a reality…which is another problem I’ve been trying to solve. Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because I’m about to criticize religion again, and some of you may be wondering why I’m so hard on religion (Christianity in particular).
The reason is because I grew up in the Bible Belt of America, and I saw Christianity cause more problems for society than gangstas. I’m not one of these militant types who believe religion is the root of all evil. In case you’re wondering, I believe ignorance is the root of all evil. But I will say that religion is definitely in the top ten causes of needless pain and suffering in the world, and I’m about to point out another reason why.
Religion invented this horrible concept known as sin. The concept of sin is noble in theory because it attempts to point out behaviors that are destructive to society. The problem with sin is that it’s not based on a scientific deconstruction of society that attempts to determine what kinds of behavior will most help a global population survive in a diverse range of environments that are consistently changing while providing people the most room to grow to fulfill their potential as an individual as well as a group. What it does instead is reflect the behaviors of one group of ignorant, ethnocentric, theocratic, tribal, murderous, superstitious, chauvinistic goat herders from a backwards time and place in the world. The early Hebrews who gave us the concept of sin were basically an ancient Middle Eastern version of America’s red neck country bumpkins. Not the best people to take lessons on morality from.
In fact, the modern world has dismissed most of what they had to say about morality such the need to allow the church to rule the government, the right to own slaves, ownership of women, beating/murdering women, children and slaves, not eating certain meats, not wearing clothing with mixed threads, not cutting your sideburns, etc. However, despite the fact that we’ve thrown out those commandments there’s still a large portion of the world which still believe the parts from the same book that commanded all that retarded shit where it says fun and pleasure (especially the sexual kind) is immoral…even though God (if it does exist) made sex pleasurable and designed us to be addicted to it.
So now, thousands of years later we have all sorts of laws against gambling, alcohol consumption, drug use, prostitution and other victimless “crimes.” Granted, any of these behaviors can be destructive when taken to an extreme, but outlawing them is like outlawing candy because eating too much of it will make you fat.
Ultimately, all these laws really accomplish is taking away people’s personal freedoms to enjoy life and punishing them for victimless “crimes,” which ruins their lives with fines, jail time and criminal records. If we took these laws off the books the same people who are already doing them are going to keep doing them. The same people who aren’t doing them are going to keep not doing them. The only thing that would change is we wouldn’t be oppressing our fellow human beings for no reason, and people would be happier, more able to fulfill their potential, and the government would have more resources to combat society’s real problems.
But we’re having a hard time legalizing these victimless “crimes” because the religious population views legalizing sin as supporting sin. So out of blind fear they choose to continue to oppress their fellow human beings because they think oppressing people will please God more than helping people and leaving the judgment to God.
A vote to criminalize sin is vote to legalize oppression. And the religious population has voted by an overwhelming majority in favor of senseless oppression. That’s just one more reason why I hate religion.
