On blind hope and the awful truth

Don’t get me wrong, I love church architecture, cemeteries can be very peaceful places to sit and ponder things and some of the pageantry of the more arcane religious practices can be quite interesting to watch.

But I also like museums and art galleries, public parks can be great places to loll about in and there are plenty of sub-cultures out there that are fascinating to watch (from boot scooting grannies to face painting footy freaks to sweet, yet angst-ridden young Emos).

The thing that gets me about religion is the pomposity and self-righteousness that goes with so much of the territory. The defenders of religion preface their entire argument upon the acceptance of their position on blind faith. Now most children will until a certain age accept almost any information their parents dish up to them with hardly a raised eyebrow. But as adults we must be cautious of any call to accept anything based on the uncorroborated testimony of the long dead. We must always ask of anyone trotting out that proposition: “But how do you know that is so?” and if they cannot give us a response that satisfies our (hopefully innate) scepticism we must - for safety’s sake - treat them with suspicion.

I imagine this article will draw a string of critics, invective mixed with spleen in an attempt to drown out my core message.

But hopefully one or two of those critics will consider this: no one can disprove that human decency predates religion, nor can they do the same with love, tolerance or peace. If humans are only half as old a race as science tells us we appear to have done perfectly well on our own most of the time without Christ, Buddha, Allah or anyone else to “guide” us along life’s path.

To summarise:

Letting religion obscure your rationality is your own personal problem unless and until you drag the rest of us into your strange little world.

Using your religion as a pretext to cause others pain is an obscenity.

Believe in whatever helps you get through the day but spare us the sermons - and the violence.

We must all ultimately come to terms with our mortality. The prospect of some post mortem paradise may help placate little children in need of comfort when faced with death of a loved one but let us not go into adulthood allowing blind faith in such things to obscure the awful (yet beautiful) truth - life is pitifully short, so grasp it and enjoy it as much as you can, and try to leave a better world behind when you go.