Keeping the Faith (2014)

The Halo Halo! column from the January 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

A large dose of gullibility and desperation must be needed before reasonable adults become hooked on the opium of the people. But once they are, a regular diet of religious hogwash is also required it seems, to keep them in a state of faith-fuelled stupor.

One website that doles this out by the bucketful is The Christian Post. Typical articles currently on offer complain of an ‘attack’ by the media when they dare to ask questions like ‘Can we trust the bible?’ or make programmes questioning ‘the true story of Christmas’ etc. This is exactly what the media ought to be doing you may think, but the true believer disagrees. After all, if God had intended us to think for ourselves he wouldn’t have sent Jesus would he?

There are also handy hints such as ‘How to overcome Impulsive Behaviours’. But instead of the righteous ‘plenty of fresh air, cold baths and healthy exercise’ advice you might expect, the Christian Post assures such sufferers that God ‘takes our sin and gives us his righteousness’, but ‘we have to study the word and spend time with God so he can do this work in our soul’.

‘How does God juggle so many prayers?’ asks another, apparently serious, article to dispel any lingering doubts its followers may have. ‘God has millions of prayers coming before him at any given moment’ it assures us. ‘How in the world does he hear each one and answer them all?’

Well, ignoring the fact that if even a single prayer were answered it would be hailed as a miracle, how indeed? This question must have crossed the mind and been worked out by most reasonably bright nine year-olds. The answer though for Christian Post readers, who are apparently not bright nine year-olds, is ‘Allow this fact to blow your mind: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day’.

These efforts to justify the big religious lie are not just childish stories or unscientific mythology; they are totally meaningless garbage, and an insult to adult intelligence. ‘Religion with the drains blocked’ as someone once put it.

It’s not just Christianity that has to come up with a constant flow of hogwash to keep the faithful in awe of course, and no list of religious absurdities would be complete without something from Islam. Here’s a few uncovered by a Cairo university committee, set up to study the fatwas issued by the Muslim Brotherhood and reported in India Today (28 Nov 2013).

When a woman goes swimming, as the word for sea is masculine, when the water touches the woman’s private parts, she becomes an ‘adulteress’ and should be punished.

Another prohibited women from eating certain vegetables or even touching cucumbers or bananas.

One directed women to turn off the air conditioning at home in the absence of their husbands as it could indicate to a neighbour that the woman was at home alone, allowing them to commit adultery with her.

And another decreed that a couple’s marriage would be annulled if they had sex with no clothes on.

Allah makes other religions look almost sensible doesn’t he?

NW