Are you there God? It's me Robert? What do you mean No?!

Time to talk about something that is a teensy bit controversial, religion or to be more precise, God.

I'll kick off with saying I don't believe in God, I don't believe in Heaven or Hell and I think when we shuffle off this mortal coil, that's it, we're dead in the ground, we're worm food, except for me. I am going to have myself cremated and my ashes spread at Disneyworld, and that is just so the people who are scattering the ashes can get a holiday out of it too.
But when it comes to religion, I don't buy it, and I don't persecute others for buying it.

However, I have gotten into arguments about religion from time to time, one such argument was in an office job and one of the girls in the team started talking about confession. She mentioned about confessing her sins to the priest and right away that got my hackles up. So I asked what difference did it make for me to tell a priest the bad things I had done when supposedly God was everywhere so if I did something bad then felt remorse, surely God would believe me? Yes? See what I mean? Personally I think confession is a load of crap, a sin you must confess before marriage is that you had unpure thoughts about a woman, if that was a sin then the entire race of heterosexual males would be burning in hell right now. We're men! Our primary driving force is sex, we're thinking about it all the friggin' time.
We wake up in the morning and our morning buddy is standing proud, our first thought "Man If I didn't have to pee right now I'd do something about this bad boy."
On our way to work, we think a number of things "a little sex would be a good way to start off the day."
In work, "I wish I could get some sex during my lunchbreak, that would cheer me up."
At the end of the day "Hopefully I can get a nut off tonight, that would do me the world of good."
Its constantly there. So if it is a sin to have unpure thoughts then I confess to sinning my heart out 7 days a week, 52 weeks of the year.
Or if you commit a sexual act with a woman you need to confess about that, but how much detail do you go into?

"So father, we were both naked, in the lotus position, she was bouncing up and down on me, and I was getting close to busting a nut and then we shifted positions I could run my finger up and down her.... father? father? what's that fapping sound?"
"Nothing my son, carry on..."
"Uhhh I don't think I should, in fact I think I should go."
"My child, you must keep telling the story or... or you'll burn in hell... yes that'll work, you'll burn in hell."
"Ummm okay father, so like I said... wait there is that fapping sound again."
"Ignore it my child and continue."

It has to happen, a lot of priests are basically told "you can never have sex, ever" and then they have to listen to people confess filthy dirty sexual acts that would make some porns stars blush, of course it is going to cause a reaction and some of the priests are going to give themselves a "deep tissue massage" as they listen to the descrpitions, how do I know this? Because the priests that would do that are men, we are low creatures and we will do stuff like that just because of what we are. Never fear dear reader, the priests are okay because all they need to do is ask God for forgivness and they are golden.
So my argument in work was along similiar lines, I said that if I am truly sorry for something I have done, then God should forgive me, I shouldn't need to speak to some man in a box and tell him everything bad I have done, or in some cocked up religion's idea of what is wrong.

Then came my worst religious argument and it led to me never engaging in an argument about religion ever again, I was working in a Jewellers at the time and the assistant manager was religious but I didn't realise how deeply religious she was. So we got talking about stuff and she mentioned Jesus and I said something about his brothers and sisters, which I had gotten from Kevin Smith's movie Dogma. The idea behind it made sense, Jesus was supposed to be the son of God, not the son of Joseph but once Jesus was born it made sense that she was going to have more children, but to Joseph and not to God.
When I said brothers and sisters, the assistant manager freaked out and told me I was wrong and that it was a stupid idea. I shrugged and left it at that, but the concept I had thrown at her must have ate at her and ate at her, so when a regular customer came in, a customer well versed in the Bible and the assistant manager threw my idea at her, this customer nodded and said "yes, it's in the bible." I was shocked, I didn't realise it was there, but more frighteningly is the look on the assistant manager's face, she sat stock still and you could almost hear an audible pop and her idea of Jesus and his family burst in her head. She had a mini-breakdown where she questioned her own faith, she "lost faith" so to speak in Christianity. Her reasoning was sound in a way, she said that if she had been choosen to carry the son of God, she would not have allowed her self to bear any children after that and devoted all her time to her son. Okay fair enough, but her husband was a man with a man's needs and they loved each other so it is only natural that they have another child. But for the course of 8 weeks I watched in horror as this mini-breakdown progressed, the assistant manager became emotional, took to shouting at other stuff with no provovation, and I was taken aside by the shop manager and forbidden from speaking of religion in the shop again. Ultimately she found her faith again, through Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion Of The Christ, so everything worked out for her in the end, but it put an end to me arguing my point about religion, some stones are best left unturned.

But my point ultimately is God. What do you think of when the word God is put forward to you? The first image is a big bloke, white beard, white robe, sitting on a cloud watching the world, right? Probably variations on the theme, God watches over you. Not so much with me, but before I explain what he looked like to me, let me explain my reasoning. See I went to school in a non-denominational school in a housing estate in Glasgow, Scotland. Now a non-denomiational school means we should not be taught religion in school because people of other religions may be taught there and that school was for everyone, right? Wrong! They took that idea and kicked it out the window with Arden Primary School. We had religion shoved down our throats by the head teacher, she was a religious woman and made us sing religious songs in assemblies and had a priest come in and tell us stories, which we thought were fun but pull back those hidden layers and a religious message was hidden underneath, that treacherous bastard! The religious songs I have no problem with, we didn't listen to the words so much as just sing the songs and get really loud at the parts we knew, then mummble the parts we didn't and the stories we were told were fun. Stories about the Mr Men and their wacky adventures, but skewed to a religious angle, or Bible stories but with illustrations shown to us on a projector so we had something to keep our focus and interest. One teacher made us say the lords prayer every day of school for a whole year because she was religious, we thought nothing of it because we were kids, it wasn't until I hit secondary school that I started to question the whole religion thing and was able to say "no I don't think I will believe in God", but in Primary School religion was rammed down our throats, unsuspecting children who knew no better were being brainwashed because some old bat believe people sprouted wings and floated in the sky when you died.

The concept of God was talked about by the priest, I remember hearing him say how God was always watching you wherever you were. (No I didn't fear him watching me on the toilet or in the bath) Right away my small child's brain was working overtime, if someone was always watching us he had to have a massive eye, yes he had one eye! ONE HUGE EYE PEOPLE! So freaking huge that it could see everything and everyone. Then they talked about how he did lots of things at one time, he was managing the world and all it's people, so he needed at least 8 arms. Suddenly the image of God took shape in my mind, God was a giant one eye octopus! It made sense to me damnit! He had to see everything, one eye, he did lots of things at once, 8 arms, put them together in a child's brain: one eyed octopus. Funnily enough, no one else shared this vision of what God looked like. At the time I didn't ask what people thought God looked like, I just assumed everyone was the same, but as I got older and got into conversations with people, and brought up my One Eye Octopus theory, the looks I recieved varied from strange to "when did you escape the nut house?". One of my oldest memories is walking outside of the tenament building I lived in, looking up into the sky and imaging a giant one eyed octopus stretching out over it, so he could watch everythng and do everything he needed to do. Maybe that is what caused my reaction to religion as a whole, maybe the idea of following a being that looked like my vision of God was just to abhorrent to me that I actively rejected religion in later life.

Don't take what I said here as me saying "religion is bad and evil and must be stamped out" (it's a good start though), to do such a thing would lead to a dictatorship and people losing their rights which no one wants. But religion is one of the major reasons for mass bloodshed and senseless destruction in this world. Never has any idea or concept made me so passionate that I want to strap a bomb to myself and blow people up.... well when Sierra cancelled the Babylon 5 Game: Into The Fire, I was pretty close to feeling that, but apart from that, nothing has made me want to blow myself up.
People can worship what they like, it makes no difference to me, just don't push your ideas on me, I'm not interested in any religion.
And to quote Homer Simpson, "If I'm wrong I'll recant on my death bed", God's a forgiving fellow, if he sees I am truly sorry then surely he'll let me in to the mythical heaven.

On a side note: If you are a suicide bomber and are promised so many virgins, say 70, for the afterlife, well the reason you want virgins is so you can "break them in" so to speak. Now the afterlife is forever, so say you take 70 days or so and finally have had sex with all 70 of them, they are no longer virgins, five of them seemed to be fibbing about their virgin status but never mind, so now you just have 70 women there. Do they dissapear and 70 more virgins appear? Or once you've broken them in, that's it? That sounds like a HORRENDOUS idea to me. Do you know how demanding women are for your time? I'm married and I struggle to get in ample time to myself to play games and watch tv shows I like, I couldn't imagine what it would be like for 70 women who want your time. I think the only thing you could do in that situation is kill yourself, but you can't because that is what go you into that mess in the first place, you dumb fuck!