I know most of the previous posts have been technical, but I started this blog as something where I just write anything that I felt like sharing. That also includes non-technical stuff, and today that includes religion.
I’m not religious. My mother has been raised a protestant, I’m not sure about my dad, but from an early age I’ve basically been raised with a general idea of not doing to someone else what you would not want to happen to yourself. The laws and morals in the Netherlands are highly based on christianity, and I agree with almost everything that’s still part of those. That’s about how far my grasp of religion goes: I’ve never attended church, and I’m just not sure if there’s anything out there. Maybe there is, maybe the christians are right, maybe there is a god. But hey, maybe the buddhists are right, or maybe the muslims. I could’ve picked any of those, but I’d rather just admit that I don’t know and will most likely never know.
Now, lately I’ve been reading a lot of articles on reddit.com, and someone the whole thing about atheism keeps popping up. I totally agree on opposing proposition 8, and I am completely against trying to spread faith. And that’s what most atheists are saying: Just let people make their own decisions, be it gay or heterosexual, christian or muslim, religious or not religious. It’s their own decision, and who the hell are you to judge that ?
What does however piss me off about this whole atheist hype nowadays is how they’re not acting as they’re preaching. For example, I’ve been watching “Religulous” today, and it just pissed me off. Yes, Bill Maher has a valid point. Yes, I totally agree with his point of view. But I don’t like how he’s almost attacking each and every religious person he’s interviewing. Take the jew-turned-to-jesus guy for example[1], he says that he’s seen some miracles and to him that is enough prove that there is in fact a god or a jesus. Surely we can accept that? Not Bill though, he asks what kind of miracles and, instead of simply having a few side-notes or a small monologue afterwards, actually tells the guy that his “bar for miracles is pretty low”. Come on? He believes in God, that’s his constitutional right, just as it’s your right not to, you have every right to disagree with him, but it’s just nasty to attack him like that.
If Religulous would have been a movie looking at christianity, proof of some of the flaws in the bible, and proof of other theories, it would’ve been all right with me.
However, going around publicly ridiculing everyone is something that I, for one, do not condone. Sorry Bill Maher, but this is one hell of a crappy documentary. I highly doubt that it’s done anything else than simply insult a whole lot of people.
[1] If you haven’t seen it, google it, it’s all over the web.