On Religion

I was raised Quaker, but I have to admit that rather than getting more religious/conservative/libertarian in my views (as many people do), I've become far more atheistic.

The idea that people believe any one religious text over another, and are willing to go to war over it, and would be willing to kill over it to me is so phenomenally amazing that it's really worth studying.

I don't understand why any one religious text is right...because that same religious text says so? That's like looking at a bottle of ketchup that has "Best Ketchup in the World!" printed on it without any corroborating evidence, and saying to yourself, "Well, it's on the bottle, it must be true!"

I mean, who's to say the Olympians didn't have it right? Or the Norsemen (I'm a big fan of Loki the trickster, myself - I get the impression he's quite real and messing with us today). Or the Muslims? Or the Jews, saying, "Sure, that carpenter was a nice fellow, but not so much in the way of Messiah?"

Every religion believes that it is right, that it is the One True Path to Wherever We Go When We Die. Almost every religion has a stated willingness to kill for this belief. And even in those religions where pacifism is the name of the game, there are still extremists who are willing to kill for their religion in direct conflict with their own teachings.

I don't know for sure that there is no God, but I also don't know for sure that there isn't. I'm not a total atheist - perhaps some part of me holds out hope that some higher-plane being is going to rescue mankind from all the stupid shit we put ourselves through, and the even dumber shit we put other people through.

But I will say this much - I am totally convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that not one of us has got it right yet. We've had a hundred thousand years to figure out the way the world came to be, the way it works, and how we ought to behave to our fellow man. And I look at Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Mexico, and Washington DC and realize we haven't even begun to come to grips with any of it.

If there is a God, He's either laughing His ass off, or weeping. And either way, we're still idiots.