Wall of text, you have been warned.
This semester I (had to) take a religion class, Islam to be precise. As some of you might know from my twitter feed, I have been actively swearing during the classes due the massive amount of nonsense that came out from the lecturer’s mouth. Now please, don’t attack me yet, I have nothing against Islam. It’s just that what the lecturer is teaching is NOT Islam, I think.
For instance, he once mentioned that if you are ill, no medicine are going to make you healthy again but God’s will. So he told a story about how someone (whoever this dude was) got sick and then he believed in God and prayed and ate leaves, and by God’s will he was healed. Wouldn’t it be dangerous if some people actually believed in this? People could die.
Another examples are these rules he mentioned, some of them are as follows:
- Let’s say you got sick for a day and you didn’t complain about it, but instead you praise the lord for giving you this test. One day of sickness eliminates your 2 years of sin. That’s pretty specific, not to say utter bullshit.
- If there are two obedient and faithful persons, one is poor and the other is rich. The poor one is going to heaven 500 years earlier than the rich one. Oh why?
- Interesting one: black dogs with while spots on top of their eyes are DEMONS. Kill them if you have the chance! *seriously, the lecturer said this*
So yeah, I have nothing against Islam but I do think that that lecturer totally got it wrong. Perhaps some others too, I dont know.
Religion promises a lot of things, if you become a good man and do some certain things you get to go to heaven, if not, you’ll be thrown to hell.
Some people need these promises to carry on with their lives.
These people will then subscribe to whichever religion they think makes most sense. Some didn’t actually choose, like most people in Indonesia. If your parents are Moslem you’re automatically a Moslem, if your parents are Hindu you’re automatically a Hindu. No big deal, all religions teach the same thing anyway: to be a good person.
Up until that part, I totally agree with you and I support you all the way. But then some people having their own agenda, use religion to enforce people to do what they want. This is where it goes downhill. Suddenly there are weird rules that don’t make sense but you feel like you have to follow them in order to go to heaven. Yeah these weird rules are out there, ask those suicide bombers, they thought they were going straight to heaven.
Boom! Booyah! Straight to heaven!
We’re not buying that, are we? Nowadays there are too many suspicious rules in religion, we’re not sure anymore if it’s the original rules or human composed rules. Carlin discovered many.
Isn’t it about time we start to question these rules? Just question them, not attack them. If they make sense, yeah let’s follow. If not, it’s your call.
I personally do what I think it’s right. If you see me out there doing good things you can bet your pretty ass it’s not because I want to go to heaven. It’s because I want to do good.
And oh, if you see me being a jackass out there that’s because I have little to no tolerance to stupidity. But that’s another story :)
