Irreligiosity

Irreligiosity is all about religion gone wrong.

If you count yourselves amongst the devout in a particular religion then please give me at least to the end of this post, and if you count yourself as a member of the neo-atheism movement that has been gaining popularity in recent years then please hold your vaguely smug approval to the end as well.  I’m not going to attempt to debate with billions of people around the world as to whether or not their invisible friend in the sky exists or not.  The focus here is on religion, the earthly institution that inevitably springs up around any group of worshipers who happen to agree that their invisible friend is the absolute correct choice and everyone else can go to hell.

Put simply, religion is an anachronistic plague on otherwise perfectly functioning and advancing secular human societies.  Examples abound of the evils that religion has wrought on our world and on human society, but in the interests of not outlining the entire history of western civilization and not rehashing the same tired arguments about the merits and drawbacks of religion, I’ll start with a simple story that I think illustrates where I am coming from on this subject.

Back in high school I was acquainted with a girl, let’s call her Heather, a year older than me who loved Jesus, singing, and acting about equally.  She had been involved in the drama club for a couple years when she landed a role as one of the three members of the Greek chorus in an abysmal high school production of Little Shop of Horrors.  She was ecstatic at landing the role and threw herself into a part that was a little more involved than the usual fare at our school because it involved singing and dancing.  The choreography wasn’t the greatest in the world, but it got the point across.

The problem?  Heather was also involved in the youth group at her local Lutheran church with a nice young youth pastor who informed her that she was a terrible sinner for dancing, and that she was no better than a whore for being willing to dance on a stage in front of crowds of people.  He finished off this trifecta of religious guilt by assuring Heather that she would burn in the pits of hell for all eternity unless she quit the drama production immediately (I guess he could have cared less about the understudy’s eternal soul, she was a Catholic and he was pretty sure she was burning for eternity thanks to her evil papist ways anyways).

So we have two things that are very important to Heather’s life which should be making her happy.  She’s in a prominent and challenging role in a musical and she is committed to her faith in the Lord her God.  Everything is just fine until the human element of religion sticks its ugly nose into the whole thing and fucks it up beyond all recognition.  The entire production is thrown into a minor crisis as she works through her crisis of faith trying to decide whether she would rather dance in the play or be thrown into a lake of fire for all eternity by the God that she has loved (and who apparently loves her as long as she isn’t dancing) so much up to this point.

Now, I’m willing to bet that if there is a God, he doesn’t give a flying fuck whether or not we dance.  If there is a supreme intelligence who called the entire cosmos as we know it into being with a single thought then I imagine there are more pressing things on Its mind than the choreography for Rockette #3 in the Podunk High School production of Little Shop of Horrors.  I imagine the Supreme Being would be happy that one of Its creations is enjoying the world that It made for us.  There’s even a convincing argument in the book this Supreme Being left for us that dancing is alright in Its book (for the detailed argument I’d refer you to the last 20 minutes or so of the 80s Kevin Becon vehicle Footloose).

So religion came in and made a cock-up of a perfectly okay situation.  In the end Heather decided to tell the youth pastor just where he could stick his literal interpretation of a few select anti-dancing passages of the Bible.  I think that their family even decided to switch to a more liberal denomination as a result of the dust-up, something I applaud them for.  But there are countless other victimized individuals out there in the world who don’t have the courage or the ability to stand up to self-righteous bullies who think that their interpretation of religion is the only correct one out there.

Irreligiosity is dedicated to the stupid side of religions both mainstream and off the beaten path.  If you’re a believer then consider this a rallying cry against extreme elements of whatever belief system you hold dear.  If you’re atheist or agnostic then consider it a rallying cry against religious domination and for a more secular society, because God knows we need it.