In the past few weeks, I have been asked by several different people where my disdain for organized religions stems from. How do I have any morality without believing in God? I decided to use my usual Sunday rant about religion to explain myself.
First, I spent twelve years in Catholic school. Now, let’s be honest, I was Catholic because my parents were Catholic and they were Catholic because their parents were Catholic. That’s the way it works in this world, you are born in Israel, you’re Jewish, your born in Iran, you’re Muslim. It all follows suit that you are going to be whatever religion your parents are.
Parents start early with indoctrinating their kids into these religions, mainly because if you start down that road at a young age, they will not question anything.
It wasn’t till my high school years when I started to ask questions about the bible that I realized, we weren’t allowed to question this stuff. I was a sophomore at Roman Catholic, I asked a priest in class this question, “Why did God kill the first-born children and livestock of the Egyptian leaders when his chosen people weren’t released from captivity? Why didn’t he kill the leaders? For that fact, why is he killing anyone, isn’t there a commandment against murder?” The priest came down the aisle and smacked me on the head and told me I was being disrespectful. Not sure how, but I guess it sounded good in his mind.
I went into the Air Force right out of high school and went through basic training and then onto technical school. The only book in the room in my dorm was a Bible. I read many passages from the Bible in school, but I now had time to read up and see if I missed something. I read it for the next month and found out two things, I had an exceptionally good memory as I could remember everything I read clearly and these stories were utterly ridiculous and it some cases, downright despicable!
For the record, doctors tested me and found out I had an eidetic memory, it’s why I remember things so clearly.
It also dawned on me later in life, that many of the folks who taught me this religion were child predators. Literally holding the book of God in one hand and abusing children with the other, how could any God watch that and let it happen.
This leads me to where I am today. I was lucky to have an awesome Air Force career which allowed me to travel this beautiful world, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Some places were nicer than others but there was one consistent thread I discovered throughout this world. How despicable religion is! I have seen some awful things in this world, mans inhumanity to man more than anything else and usually there is some religious leader or church behind it. One of the funnier things I see on Facebook and Instagram are people spreading their hatred for immigrants, gays, trans people while wearing a crucifix on their body. I always like to say to them, “be careful, your racism and bigotry is showing through your cross!”
Just for the record, I dislike all religions. You could wrap up Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all together and drop kick them from the planet. I told my kids and my grandkids the same thing, you don’t need any religion or invisible man in the sky to be a good person. As my mom used to say to me, Anthony, there are a lot of good people in the world, if you can’t find one, be one.
I’m pretty sure this will offend many religious folks, feel free to unfriend me, I will not be offended.