I don’t really do religion. Not in any meaningful way. Because I don’t think slagging off people’s deep-felt beliefs counts as ‘meaningful’ in any real sense. However enjoyable it may be. But my problem is not religion as such, they’re the symptom, the problem starts with God. Everything starts with God, we are led to believe.

There used to be loads of gods. Hindus still have over a thousand. 1500 is not enough; one is too many. And gods were used to explain the inexplicable. Crop failure, weather shit, tides, wars, the stars, chartered accountants, all the things we really don’t understand. But then… we understood.

Weather is controlled by the BBC and the weather girls, not God. Computer systems tell us precisely what time we should play tennis, in between the early rains and the later storms. Michael Fish controls the wind. Then he got it wrong and they employed 17 babes in short skirts to do it instead. The tides are governed by the moon, gravity is elevated to a deity. Once Newton and then Einstein got hold of it that was 17 more old gods made redundant. The stars, the moon, the sun, the universe, all neatly and succinctly explained by the new god; Science. Evolution was a real problem. It took God 6 days to build a human. Whereas it took Darwin 4.6 billion years. Darwin really needed to up his game. Though how long was ‘a day’ before He built the heavens? Ooooohhhhh.

So now we’re down to just one God. Whodunnit? Who/what made it all start? The universe, the everything. Where’d it come from? And although this God is, apparently, omnipotent and omniscient, he actually, in the vernacular, don’t do nuffink. He didn’t stop the wars, the deaths, the diseases. Like, March would have been a really good time for a miracle, Oh Lord!! The holocaust, AIDS, even cancer. So why would anyone bother to pray? If this omnipotence and omniscience is never actually deployed?

Yet pray is what people do. To an entity of dubious existence, who/which if he/it does exist, never takes any action anyway.

And not only do people pray, the extremists of all religions will compromise their and everyone else’s safety and security by insisting to pray and worship and gather as if Covid 19 was half of a rugby scoreline. Be they Christians, Muslims or Jews, those at the extreme of any religion will forgo any consideration to others as being way secondary to their continued rituals. And now the right wingers in Israeli government have threatened to boycott Netenyahu’s always fragile coalition if he locks them down over the upcoming high holy days. Because praying this year is much more important than being alive next year. Regardless of the adverse effects it may have on the rest of society.

Join me today in devil-worship, paganism, whatever. It’s safer than being religious.

Shabbat Shalom

A xxxx