Monday, November 27, 2006
Crusading for nothing
Once and just once I was intrigued and almost tempted to stop and talk to a religious nut.
He had the standard act, sitting behind a wallpaper pasting tables covered in pamphlets on a busy shopping streets from where he pushed his brand of religious fanaticism. The difference was that this fellow was pushing atheism.
Now this is a pretty hard sell, I mean you can't offer a great deal can you! Your common or garden religions offer some pretty nice options, for a start there's eternal salvation for just an hour or so a week chanting some drivel that was written by con men a thousand or two years ago (ok so I’m showing my personal views a little here) but what can atheism offer.
“You're all alone and with no one to help you except yourself!”
Put like this I can see why the other options may look pretty good (except catholicism’s purgatory and islam’s suicide bombings maybe, but at least they're entry tickets to nirvana).
But think about it another way, no god, allah, brahma, adonai, messiah or anyone… you are in control of your own destiny, you're own master (ok, George W may be able to f**k with that but essentially...) that has to be good doesn’t it?
I don't intend to hit the streets and start preaching myself but if I wore a hat I'd take it off to that lone nutter!(on Elizabeth street in Brisbane as it happens).
He had the standard act, sitting behind a wallpaper pasting tables covered in pamphlets on a busy shopping streets from where he pushed his brand of religious fanaticism. The difference was that this fellow was pushing atheism.
Now this is a pretty hard sell, I mean you can't offer a great deal can you! Your common or garden religions offer some pretty nice options, for a start there's eternal salvation for just an hour or so a week chanting some drivel that was written by con men a thousand or two years ago (ok so I’m showing my personal views a little here) but what can atheism offer.
“You're all alone and with no one to help you except yourself!”
Put like this I can see why the other options may look pretty good (except catholicism’s purgatory and islam’s suicide bombings maybe, but at least they're entry tickets to nirvana).
But think about it another way, no god, allah, brahma, adonai, messiah or anyone… you are in control of your own destiny, you're own master (ok, George W may be able to f**k with that but essentially...) that has to be good doesn’t it?
I don't intend to hit the streets and start preaching myself but if I wore a hat I'd take it off to that lone nutter!(on Elizabeth street in Brisbane as it happens).
