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Hi everyone. I've been asked by various people where I get my morality without religion.
Well, isn't it obvious? I get it by mail order. That's right, it comes in a plain brown wrapper
because I don't want the neighbours to know what I'm up to.
No seriously, I simply ask myself, "What would a Christian do in this situation?"
and then I do the opposite.
I'm kidding, of course. No, I just trust my feelings to tell me that good things are right and bad things are wrong,
and it just seems to fall into place. I don't know, maybe it's a miracle.
Well, what's the alternative? A Christian morality that embraces all the barbarism of Leviticus,
while ignoring the simple wisdom in the Golden Rule? Thanks, but no thanks.
Even if you believe in the Bible, you know that Adam and Eve gave us the knowledge of good and evil,
which presumably means right and wrong, so why do we still need guidance?
If you can call it guidance being bullied and threatened with violence by some celestial thug.
I'm actually amazed that anyone even trusts God to tell us how to behave.
If you used him as a role model you'd probably end up in prison, because that son of a ***
is about as qualified to preach morality as Charles Manson.
On every second page of the Old Testament somebody is being butchered for the glory of,
or directly by God. This is not a loving entity I see in these pages.
This is a deeply disturbed individual.
This is the kind of personality the police always tell you not to approach.
This character would give Hitler a run for his money.
And any morality that's there is really just a list of rules, some of them quite barbaric,
which must be obeyed on pain of eternal torture. What else?
But this is not really surprising, is it, because scripture is not actually about morality.
It's really about believing in the impossible. And the more impossible a thing appears to be,
the more likely we are to believe it, it seems to me.
And the morality is really just a garnish, a dressing, which is usually ignored
for the meat and potatoes of the magic and the mumbo-jumbo.
For example, if you take the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount,
which is probably his greatest ever gig, and strip away all the Christianity,
then you'd have something worthwhile. But all the miracle stuff, the *** birth,
the resurrection, redemption, helllfire, damnation, and all the Cecil B. deMille stuff,
that has all been put there deliberately to obscure this simple fact.
The last thing any clergyman wants is people living according to the words of Jesus,
because if they did there would be no need for organised religion
and a lot of people would find themselves out of a job.
They need the miracles to keep the cash rolling in,
even though they tell us that it's not actually about the miracles, it's about the message.
Oh yeah? And what message would that be, then?
"Believe in me for, behold, I can do miracles." That's the message.
Because if you take away the miracles, what are you left with? A pretty decent guy talking common sense,
which means that nobody on this planet is going to take him seriously if he lives to be a million.
The miracles are everything. And all the stuff that Jesus said about
blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the peacemakers, you're the salt of the earth, the light of the world,
turn the other cheek, don't give alms in public, don't pray in public, you can't serve God and Mammon,
consider the lilies of the field, judge not lest you be judged, don't be a hypocrite, whatever you ask for you'll get,
do unto others as you want to be done by, beware of false prophets -
people have said that stuff for thousands of years, and nobody has ever listened.
So let's drop this idea that it's not about the miracles. It's all about the miracles,
it's all about the magic and the mumbo-jumbo, which is a shame, I think,
because that's probably the last thing that Jesus would have wanted.
Of course, I can't be absolutely sure about that, because, after all, I'm no theologian.
But, given all this, I'd now like to ask you, where do you get your morality from?
I'd be very interested to know. In the meantime, peace to everyone,
especially Christians with guns who support the death penalty.