It is about time for religious fervor to end.

We live in a world dominated by free thought and scientific innovation. Religion is an antiquated thing from the past. Religion frequently ignores scientific reason for the sake of dogma, in the face of overwhelming evidence. Religion ignores freedom of speech and cries out for the censorship of "blasphemous books" (like the Potter series), so long as they can still speak their hypocritical viewpoint. Religion demands that it place its stories in science classes, without providing evidence or providing room for the other religions with ID stories. Religion leads people to kil other people simply because those other people believe in a different invisible sky-daddy.

I guess this is why I've become so cynical about religion and practically fell off the agnostic fence on the athiest side of things (but I'm clinging to the edge with my fingers.)

It is everywhere in the news. Sarah Palin herself claims to be appointed by God and is an advocate of the 'theory' of creationism being taught in a science class.

A christian woman cried out in a town who named their football team "the Diablos." Next thing you know, they changed the team's name, so they don't offend the poor christ-fearing woman.

I love how these hypocrites demand that other beliefs are banned, but their beliefs should be pushed on other people. Baptists wanted Harry Potter banned because of the witchcraft. Don't Wiccans and practicers of black magic have as much of a right to have their beliefs on bookshelves. I'm offended by the bible, they should ban that. It is only fair, they want to ban Harry Potter because it offends them, so I want the bible to go. It offends me.

This can be further illustrated by the mock religion, Pastafarianism, which is belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastafarianism). If Christians are going to force science classes to teach Genesis, then they also need to teach my religious viewpoint as well. I believe that a giant monster made of spaghetti invented the world (and pasta,) science teachers must teach that point of view as well or they are playing favorites with the Christians. But advocates of ID in science classes never say anything about other religions being included.

Lets look at the whole "my magical sky daddy is better than your magical sky daddy" debate that has been raging since mankind invented religion. We've been warring over what other people believe in for so damn long that its just getting stupid. I understand a nation going to war because it needs resources or going to war because they were attacked, but going to war because "he believes in something different than me" is asinine, especially now that we live in a world that is, for the most part, secular and religiously tolerant (at least the developed nations). And then the real problem is, all the religions believe that they are right and the other guy is wrong, so who's right?

Religious people are always shoving their crap down the throats of other people. I joined a facebook group called "1,000,000 strong get the original facebook back," which was a group that was formed to protest the forced change of the facebook layout which most people don't like. There was a post by some guy claiming that Thiesm was more rational than Athiesm. And no matter your thoughts on that claim, that argument was so obviously a christian pushing his beliefs on people. Otherwise, he'd've posted it in a group that was centered around religion, not around Facebook's layout. And the claim itself is foolish because Thiests claim there is a god without empirical evidence and then try to tell the rest of us that the world was created in 7 days and is 6000 years old, damn all the fossils and astronomical, scientific, evidence that the world is 4,000,000,000 years old in a 25 billion year old universe.

The universe was created some 13 billion years ago. Scientists have studied this and have found that their findings all point to some sort of Big Bang that initiated this universe. All matter came from an initial point of singularity. They know this because they know the universe is expanding and that expansion can be defined mathematically and through physics, thus they can work backwards and find out what happened 13 billion years ago. All scientific, empirical, evidence points to the fact that there was an explosion, a Big Bang, in which all matter was formed. How did it explode? Scientists don't know.

But the point is, the thiests do not support their beliefs with empirical evidence, and then they go and try to push it on us and call it "science."

There was a cartoon I saw somewhere that I can't find. It was a two-panel cartoon. The first panel was labeled "Scientific Reasoning." It showed two men. The first man says, I have a baseball. The second one replies, "prove it." The first man pulls out his baseball.

The second panel was labeled "Religious Reasoning." Again, two men. The first man says, "I have a baseball." The second one replies, "prove it." The first man shouts, "YOU CAN'T PROVE THAT I DON'T."

We could also look at the middle east where the nation of Israel struggles to exist simply because muslim extremists can't stand the fact that someone, who believes in the same god that they do, worships him in a different way.

I wonder when the muslims will ever grow up and stop being children.

My whole point is, have faith in whatever religious system you chose, but keep it out of science and don't push it on other people. Faith is a personal thing and if John Doe wants to believe in a flying spaghetti monster, thats his perogative, don't hold it against him. Your religion isn't the only one, which is why there is no religion in schools. If they do have religion in schools, they better be teaching all the major religions. Heck, if it wasn't unrealistic, I'd say they better be teaching ALL the religions.

My magical skydaddy is better than your magical sky daddy.

J Kuhl Signing Off