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the rest of us, the non-believers, will be consigned to the eternal flames of hellfire.
    But where’s the justice there? Whatever happened to: “Do unto others as you would be done by” – or is that all being quietly forgotten now?
    And how ironic, too, that I am now being victimised as a non-believer. I’m being persecuted for my beliefs, by Jesus Christ, the one person who you really would expect to know better. He could save me but he’s choosing not to. What a Judas.
    Still, on the other hand nobody’s perfect, so I’ll forgive him. Why not? I’m in a good mood. It’s Easter. Peace.

7.
Absolute Certainty
    April 13, 2007
    Although I’m an atheist, I prefer to think of myself as an agnostic fundamentalist. In other words I don’t know, I don’t think anyone else knows either, and anyone who disagrees with me is a filthy infidel swine. I’m sorry about that last bit, but apparently those are the rules.
    Of course it’s fun to speculate, and it’s been human nature ever since the first caveman watched an eagle soaring above the clouds and thought to himself: “I wonder what that tastes like. Might be nice with potatoes and gravy.”
    We’ve always speculated about what might lie beyond the stars, an activity a bit like theology, only without all the cast iron certainties.
    And it’s fun to speculate about the big questions like the meaning of life, because you never know, somebody might actually come up with the answer. So far nobody has, which would explain why there are so many expert opinions on the subject.
    But there’s just something about human beings when it comes to the unknown, that we don’t seem able to just wonder about something and speculate creatively, maybe have a bit of fun with it. No, not us. Instead we like to decide beyond all possible doubt without a single shred of evidence. We prefer to nail our colours to the mast before we even know if there’s a ship attached to it, and often we’ll defend that position to the death. If that doesn’t qualify as serious mental illness I would love to be briefed on what exactly does qualify, and why.
    It’s unfortunate that many people on this planet seem to believe the very first thing they’re told, and stick with it for the rest of their life.
    Not only does it remain unexamined, but any attempt to challenge it is taken as a grievous insult.
    Clearly those early few months and years of life are a very sensitive time, and whatever ideas are imprinted into the soft putty of the unformed mind at that stage stay there pretty much forever.
    And yet for some reason here in the civilised world it’s still perfectly legal for us to indoctrinate our children with the most hateful and divisive absurdities it would be possible to imagine (and imagine them we have), creating in them not young vibrant healthy inquiring minds, but rather stunted little freakish bonsai minds that are no use to anyone but a bloodsucking preacher.
    We not only allow this abuse, we actively encourage it. We throw public money at it when we’d be better off subsidising the tobacco industry, because that does less harm. At least cigarettes carry a health warning. How about a mental health warning on the holy scriptures?
    Especially now that, for the first time since the middle ages, faith and politics go together like sex and violence, only this time space-age weapons are controlled by stone-age minds, and right now, especially in the Middle East, things are shaping up quite nicely to blow us all to kingdom come. Except that no kingdom is going to come, because this is the kingdom. It has already come, and we’re already living the dream.
    Religion knows this, but it doesn’t want us to know it, because then it would no longer have any reason to exist. So instead it seeks to place itself, to position itself, between us and our experience. A self-appointed filter. A parasite.
    Now maybe that’s OK with you. Maybe you’re fine with that because maybe you don’t want