The more I look into it...

Religion is incredibly bad for us in so many ways. I started my journey into religion as a born again Pentecostal Christian and bought into this way of living for about 3 years. I learnt about all the good things the bible has to say, how you should love everyone including your enemy and turn the other cheek and all that. All good stuff. I learnt how to be humble, how to think more about others (sort of) and how to appreciate the simple stuff in life. I also learnt how to serve both the church and others and volunteered on a regular basis for a whole range of different activities (driving buses, collecting the offering, heading to schoolies week to look after drunk teenagers and so on...).

I don't go to that church anymore because whilst it was overwhelmingly abundant in people who were same sex attracted, it demanded that these people suppress these feelings as they were of the devil. Since then I've also learnt that until recently the church didn't allow women to speak from the pulpit (and in some churches this is still the case). Poor woman were also taught (and still are) that they should be obedient to their husbands; to let the husband make the difficult decisions and be supportive of that; and to ensure they maintain their 'position' in the family (cook and clean no doubt). I learnt that different races (particularly of colour) weren't treated equally by the church and that they based this on scripture. I learnt that there is a whole bunch of hateful, dark and evil shit in the bible which is the book they hold up and say is written by their God. Yet somehow I sort of missed that bit when I was diligently learning about it. Not too sure how they managed to gloss over that. If their God really did write that book, and Christians acted in the way that they did, then God is a freaken Arsehole.

My point is, the more I objectively view the church and religion as a whole, the more I tend to hate it. What is obvious to me (and I suspect to any reasonable person) is when a debate is started between atheists and christian's, it is a very rare occasion that the christian is able to cite a reasonable answer to any question of substance. Often when it's too hard to answer or makes no logical or practical sense at all, the line 'it's about faith' is rolled out (snore). Search 'ABC Q&A God, Science and Sanity' on itunes for a very clear example. They actually appear very uneducated and unconvincing on the very topic they 'stand for'.

I've never considered myself an atheist but rather agnostic. The more I want to believe in something more though, the more I find unsatisfying answers on this stuff. A perfectly reasonable person would have to say that religion is actually a very mentally disturbing condition which is far more evil and damaging that the so called 'mental disability' of being homosexual.

I pose to you this. If someone out of the blue came up to you and started telling you about Christianity without ever having heard it before, would you not think they are completely ridiculous? Changing water to wine; walking on water; being dead for three days and then just marching on out of that tomb; eating apples from trees and turning the human mind evil who then need to be controlled and condemned. I mean it is absolutely absurd. But because we've been told from a young age that this is a belief system we should respect and believe in ourselves (well... some of us) we just let it pass. Ironically, we're told that homosexuals are unnatural and we should not accept this as a normal, equal and important part of society and some of us believe that too even though deep down we actually have no problem with it. I dream of a day when you can be in a mixed crowd (including openly gay people) where people are more concerned that others think they're christian than gay. There is something worth being worried about.

What a fucked world we live in.