A topical favorite of religious people, particularly conservative Christians, is so-called 'sexual immorality'.
What is that exactly?
To the rational mind, that would mean sexual-related activity which (so long as all participants are willing, consenting adults) results in harm to another person, or creature.
To the conservative religious mind, this would be 'any sexual activity outside of the biblical defined' parameter - a debatable schematic which is open to individual interpretation. This view is framed by 'sin' and the concept of guilt and punishment and the concept of compliance and reward.
A typical response below (complete with spelling errors):
"God made sex as an intamacy between husband and wife. Not between any other relationship."
Seems to me that even animals disagree with this view. Even animals have sex and masturbate for pleasure or out of boredom, and engage in same gender relationships, in many cases, lifelong relationships. Are these people suggesting that nature (to borrow one of their own phrases) 'goes against god'?
Meanwhile, while they argue that nature reflects "gods design" they completely fail to recognize the fact that nature itself appears to contradict everything they claim "god" restricts humans from doing!
If nature were a reflection of "god's intentions" would that even be possible? Of course not! Animals would essentially be mindless automatons operating as extensions of "god's will" and "intent" - much as these religious fanatics wish humans did!
It seems far more likely that their understanding of "god's intentions" is flawed because, if their notion of "god" ever existed, then nature as it IS would very much reflect its "intent" - that is to exist and conduct itself as nature does, complete with gay animals, transgender fish and hermaphroditic worms, et al.
Instead they blindly close their eyes to reality, science and the true face of nature as espoused by the animal kingdom by saying "humans aren't animals" - when the fact of the matter is, we most certainly are.
The only real, important differences between Humans and animals - that is, aside from opposable thumbs, DNA sequences, upright posture, having a rudimentary grasp of quantum physics and occasionally dabbling in art, is our ability to harm others on an industrial scale whilst also wittingly and unwittingly destroying the planet for profit.
The only other difference of note is hypocrisy, in which we try to force people to have faith in imaginary deities who we claim are "good, merciful and loving", and then indulge our very real propensity to kill anyone who disagrees. Humans have a weird tendency to enjoy inflicting pain, suffering and cruelty on those they disapprove of.
Humans are truly fucked up animals. Whoever supposedly spliced our DNA millennia ago basically just ruined a perfectly good ape.
While some of us can easily 'live and let live', for some unfathomable reason, some of us simply cannot. It bothers them to no end what John and Phil get up to in the privacy of their own home, or Jane and Carol do in their own bedroom. The debate around same-sex couples being allowed to adopt children is a prime example of the hypocrisy of these 'Christians' - they care a great deal for the life of a zygote to the point of pushing to make abortion a capital crime, but couldn't give a toss about the kids who end up poor, deprived, in foster care, or requiring funding for school meals. In this sense, they would rather see an orphan languish in a cold loveless institution that churns out damaged individuals, or in the care of an abusive 'god fearing' heterosexual couple than find a home with a loving same-sex couple - ostensibly because it would 'confuse them'.
For some reason, the notion of having to share a bathroom, bus or restaurant or public street with a transgender person is somehow perceived by them as threatening - and the sheer amount of lies and bullshit made up about LGBT people over the last half-century by insecure internally-homo/trans-phobic persons would be enough to sink a battleship!
Yet they stand there, with their hands haughtily on their hips demanding that we "fall to our knees and beg for forgiveness"!
Why should I care about 'forgiveness' for something that harms no-one, from some sky-fairy that may or may not have created me? Taking that to the next level, why should I require forgiveness for acting in accordance with my nature as that 'god' - the 'god' they believe created me as well as them - would have created me?
Abrahamic religion (specifically Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity) creates the notion of 'sin' in terms of people automatically (in terms of their Human nature) owing a debt of guilt to a deity for breaking its moral 'laws', thereby creating the leverage of punishment and atonement to be absolved of that guilt.
This is a perfect system for control over the masses, and wielded by the priesthood or clergy which essentially controls the path of the entire religion, no matter which faction of the religion they belong to!
Fear is the controlling factor - fear of what could happen in the afterlife. These legions of charlatans capitalize on that fear, raking in vast fortunes in wealth and power from the faithful multitudes of sheep - and I name them sheep because they don't realize what's happening - and they resist any attempts to make them aware that it's happening. Like the forest who confused the axe for one of them because its handle was made of wood, they don't recognize the wolves among them wearing sheepskins as they both fleece them and misguide them as they will; the choir-masters who direct their emotions, thoughts and actions!
Don't believe me? Then look at the recent situation in the USA, where conservative 'Christian' religion fully impregnated and corrupted the political system, undermined government, law and order, the courts, and influenced virtually half of Americans to forsake their 'god' for a sickly orange calf under a pale yellow toupe whom they embraced as the messiah of white supremacy. As a result, a coup very nearly took place in January 2021, and the nutters who participated in it considered themselves not only 'patriots' but also 'Christians' to boot. Even today, 'Christian' leaders and media personalities (and even shockingly, politicians) stoke the flames of insurrection by calling for 'gods intervention to restore Trump' virtually in the same breath as calling for civil war.
Take stock of the horrendous human rights abuses that took place on Trump's watch between end 2016 until January 2021 resulting from NPA deregulation, stochastic terrorism, continued inaction against mass shootings, children languishing in cages, immigrant children separated from their families and sold via orphanages, the thousands upon thousands of blatant lies, crooked deals, rapes, treason and cover-ups, incitement to violence, and everything between - and you'll start to get the picture I'm looking at. Even today they cling to their orange calf, hoping he'll somehow regain the somewhat sullied, tarnished and broken office of President of the United States.
It's going to take the incumbent Biden administration the whole of the next 4 years to finish undoing most of the damage done to the USA and its relations with foreign powers by Trump and his cronies and to perhaps make any progress on top of that - and then it'll be time for another election... 'gods' only know what will happen in 2024. Perhaps by then, they'll have got rid of the pervasive stench of pee in the Oval Office, in Congress, and the courts, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
And in spite of the mass of evidence - even recorded in their own words for perpetuity - the lunatics who absolve Trump and his host of sycophants still cling to 'god' or the idea of 'god'. More disturbingly than ever, even some of the good guys do, which is that much more confusing to anyone who is actually a functioning adult with more than two brain cells and none out on loan.
Perhaps that's because only an outsider can really observe and take stock of how the same holy book - perceived as 'inerrant' - so easily lends itself to being interpreted by both good people and bad to mean whatever they want it to mean - and to excuse whatever horrid things they've done to anyone under any circumstances whatsoever.
I can think of no more striking examples than the scene from the movie "Kingdom of Heaven" when a friar stands at the side of the road recruiting fighters for the Crusade, saying "...to kill an infidel is not murder..." and the later scene where Christian nobles governing Jerusalem demand war with Saladin, crying "God wills it!"
It must be very convenient for those wanting to commit atrocities, that their version of 'god' happens to agree with their hatreds, prejudices and designs for the future.
Every single day, people all over the world commit atrocities against animals, against people - and they use their faith in 'god' as justification to do so. Israel uses 'god' to justify its presence in the Middle East, and its continued bombing of civilians and shooting of aid workers, women and children and unarmed protesters. In Uganda - and at Kenya's shocking refugee camp at Kakuma, 'god' is the excuse for homophobic refugees to murder their LGBT fellow refugees. In South Africa in 2021, 'Christians' bombard transwomen who enter a beauty pageant with messages of hate, while atheistic Satanists are greeted openly with threats of violence, rape and death while practicing their religion legally and in peace.
It's simply astonishing that these people can manage to reconcile their faith in a religion that teaches love, tolerance, non-violence and forgiveness with threatening people who have committed no crimes against man, beast or government with hatred, violence and death. Just what is it about the right-wing, extremist brain that is so dysfunctional? How do they do it?
The hypocrisy necessary to do so is not only mind-bendingly brazen, but their own failure to notice it speaks of something far more sinister - something I would venture to say is not adequately described under the loosely-fitting term of 'mental illness'. No, it's far worse than that.
Denial. Self-delusion. 'Group mass self-delusion' might begin to describe it. Self-mitigating, stochastic social narcissism fits a little better... But I digress:
Great evil has been done to people in the name of religion, where the perpetrators claimed to have been doing 'god's work' or 'fighting evil' as they perceived it, etc.
The rational mind argues that their 'god' wasn't the one who did these things - they did themselves, of their own accord, willingly and deliberately.
There is no proof of what these people insist is true: there is no proof of 'god', no proof of 'heaven' or of 'hell' waiting on the other side, no evidence of judgment or reward depending on if we've been naughty or nice - or even nice and naughty. Nothing which could remove the blame they willingly accepted when committing atrocities - no stain remover to clean innocent blood from their hands.
Yet these same people expect us to live an entire lifetime in hopeful and expectant obedience and compliance with their doctrines, ideologies and 'world-views', depriving ourselves, chastising ourselves and subjugating ourselves, accepting a blank check in blind faith?
They have the audacity to call this 'freedom'? It's madness! Worse still, it's abuse!
True freedom is freedom from oppressive systems - which is won through the rejection of the entire system along with its religious trappings! This holds true for every form of system which imposes external control by means of undue guilt and empty promises - be it religious or secular.
It's time the Human race - a race of bald, gene-spliced apes, part animal, part god - took a long, hard, critical look at itself.
Otherwise nothing will ever change, just repeat.
This website is about Christina Engela's human rights advocacy work.
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