Religion - What Is It Good For?

Absolutely nothing. Say it again!

I've been thinking a lot about religion lately. I'm not a religious man, in fact I believe that religion is daft. It doesn't make sense to me that people can put their sense aside for a textbook that was, allegedly, written two thousand years ago by a man claiming to be the son of God. Not only that, but it was't actually written by him, but by people who claimed to have known him. So there is no guarantee that anything in there is accurate, even if he did exist.

So what if I were to write my own holy book? I could pepper it with pious references to myself and the great things I've said and done, claiming that I was the reincarnation of Jesus, but would anyone believe me? Perhaps a scattering of lone nut-cases, but no-one with any sense or perhaps, for that matter, faith in "the good book" (a name which I find, frankly, a little offensive). So why believe in the bible? It reads like a book of Greek myths but, thanks to some aggressive promotion over the centuries, it's widely believed by idiots and the intelligent alike.

At this point I would like to mention that I have no problem with faith in a higher power. Faith can be a beautiful thing, and I'm sure that it has done wonderful things over the years. And for the most part, religion tries to lay down a basic way that people should respect each other and help each other out. An admirable goal, really.

But organised religion. It really gets on my nerves.

The current Pope, Benedict the whatever, is visiting our country for four days starting tomorrow. I, personally, am opposed to the idea of letting this man into the country. He is considered the head of state of Vatican City, admittedly not the largest state in the world, but he is head of a powerful army of religious nuts. There is a fairly well publicised list of pretty bad things he's responsible for, but I'm going to cover my favourites now.

Firstly, the Catholic church is opposed to contraception of all forms, and as such have been spreading the outright lie that condoms actually increase the chance of contracting HIV to uneducated people in developing nations, most notably sub-Saharan Africa. The official standing of the church is that abstinence is the only way to prevent AIDS, and that contraception contributes to a "breakdown in sexual morality". Thus, they withhold aid to people who really need it until they renounce the use of condoms. Nice.

Next the ever-present issue of Catholic priests abusing children. Benedict has been covering this up for years. He also states that the worst thing the church can do is bring in the police, and thus anyone who is involved is sworn to secrecy. Belgian police recently raided Catholic churches, investigating over 500 suspected abuse claims, and were condemned by the Pope and his subordinates as attempting to discredit the church. And let's not forget that, while the Pope has only been Pope for a few years, he was previously head of the Vatican's doctrinal office for, I believe, around 25 years. So he's been suppressing this kind of activity for nearly 30 years.

Now, I realise that the Catholic church is now a popular target in the media, but this doesn't change the facts. Moreover, it stuns me that people can actively oppose fundamentalist and extremist Muslims, when the Pope himself is quite clearly an extreme fundamentalist Catholic. In fact, I'm starting to wonder how long it will be before the Pope will be brought to account for these crimes against humanity. Not quite up to the magnitude of a tyrannical dictator, but where does it end?

My one other gripe is the length that the state goes to support the religious in their bizarre needs, but never the atheists. Perhaps I'll start a national atheism day, where all of us atheists can parade around and lord our belief that there is no God over everyone else, and rest assured in our moral superiority, for what better reason is there to feel superior than the fact that we actually take account for the things we do, instead of hiding behind some fictional creator whose words are so vague they can be interpreted to back up any action we choose to take? I think we deserve a day off for putting up with their religious crap all year round, personally. And I fail to see how it's any less legitimate than any religious holiday.

At least this one has a rational basis...

Something I Obsess About For No Apparent Reason.

My lovely other-half will surely tell you that I have a pointless obsession with folding plastic bags in a certain way. To the uninitiated, this may seem like madness, however there is method to this madness and history, to boot.

When I used to work at the Probation Service, many moons ago, I would often (and in fact, usually) buy my lunch from the Sainsbury's across the road. I was hungry, so my lunch often looked like this:

Can of soup/curry/chilli etc.

Six-pack of rolls.

Large bag of crisps (the big bags of kettle chips, and the like)

Tub of houmous, in which to dip said chips.

Chocolatey goodness of some variety.

This, of course, meant that I would need at least one plastic bag in which to carry my lunch back to the office. As you may expect, I lacked the foresight to bring a bag to the supermarket with me, so I quickly accumulated a large collection of bags, stuffed in my bottom drawer.

It was when I was trying to stuff another empty bag into said drawer when I decided that perhaps a different strategy was warranted, and hence the bag folding technique was born. For those who want to know, it involves flattening the bag to it's production shape (that is, how you see them in the shop), folding into thirds horizontally, in half vertically, and then in thirds horizontally again. The resultant rectangle can then be tied into a small knot, which takes about 15-20% of the space of a bag simply stuffed into the drawer. Success!

Having now quintupled the capacity of my drawer, this then became a daily ritual, and is now firmly engrained into my brain as the right way to do.

So there. Next time you think I'm weird, well, I'm not. And fuck you. But mostly the first one.