There’s a little rant that I’d like to get off my chest, but I certainly don’t want it to misunderstood, or misinterpreted.

I hate religion.

Now, this is a very bold statement of course, and any initial presumptions you might have for my meaning need to be set aside for a moment. I don’t hate religious people; I don’t hate people who believe in god, or worship him, or put their faith in Jesus, or believe in a higher power or a creation theory. I don’t hate any of these people much in the same way as I don’t hate an owl for eating a mouse, a cloud for blocking the sunshine, or my girlfriend for using a Mac instead of a Windows. Every life form on Earth operates in the way they believe to be in optimum equilibrium with what they want, what they need, and what they perceive of the world around them. If a person wants to find their strength and faith in something supernatural or religious, then I’ll gladly march for their right to do so. No, I don’t hate any religious person, even to the level of zealots and extremists taking lives and terrorising people. They too are simply trying to live in accordance with what they have been taught to, or chosen to, believe.

Religion itself however, as a singular entity, is something I can hate.

It is a single idea that exists on a plane free of logic or observable fact, amidst a sea of denied philosophies and repressed ideas. From the extreme, to the conservative, no religious denomination has been able to fit itself into the modern world without some degree of a needless logical leap or an unessasary suspension of disbelief. The apparent answers provided by religion pose no benefit to humanity that a person can’t find for themselves via a more appropriate passage; and as such, the anger and the hate and the racism, the misogyny and the homophobia, are in no way an acceptable counter-balance for the negative reapercussions of many of today’s modern religious organisations. I accept the good that many of these groups do for the world, but as I said, these are not deeds that need to be applied to religion, but actions that man is perfectly capable of rationally deciding to undertake, for the benefit of those around them

If your god tells you that it’s wrong to be gay, or that women should be subservient, or that people who believe in something that contradicts your own views should burn in hell, then that’s fine. I accept that you’re only following the beliefs and ideals that you have been raised around or have stumbled upon, and while I hope you decide to some day walk a different path, I understand that you have the right not to. I don’t hate you, nor do I harbour any ill-will towards you.

Religion itself however, I do hate. I hate that this is a world in which it needs to exist. I hate the notion that people need it, and willingly perpetuate its existence in the face of all the bad that it has done and will do to the collective people of this world. I hate the concept that there exists something that after over one hundred thousand years, still controls people’s thoughts and actions despite no credible proof of its validity.

One day, I like to think that it will be gone, and then at least people will have a little bitless to fight about.