Religion

I saw this recently…. it sums up my feelings exactly…

Religion will fail because what holds true in the religious sense in Rome won’t hold true in Delhi or Beijing; but in the scientific sense it’s just the opposite. If it’s scientific it will work everywhere.

This is never truer than the technology which has made billions of human brains into a unique and immensely powerful array of thought the likes of which doesn’t exist anywhere else in a vast area of the immediate known universe.

This enormous collective intellectual power shall defeat religion for religion has no answer against science because it is greater than the “god of the gaps” idea which fails every scientific test.

It is science that will dictate morality not religion. Science has the credentials; religion has mumbo jumbo and dogma. Without the fear of the inquisitor, the pope or the high priest controlling the hands holding the sword and the torch of the brainwashed, religion hasn’t a hope; without the fear religion is less than nothing.

Science has no fear of the unknown; it embraces it and meets it head on intellectually. Religion, unable to deal with the unknown, conjures it up into scenarios of fear, punishment and reward.

Science is an intellectual discussion; religion is a mind-numbing dogmatic sermon.

The god idea, we now know, was a hypothesis for all that early man couldn’t explain. As science has explained almost all those things for which the god hypothesis was required, it has made the god hypothesis redundant.

Religion is not precious at all but a cheap and plentiful commodity limited only by the imagination and the gullibility of the ignorant. There are literally thousands of made-up gods.

Religion shall die, for ignorance cannot survive; it’s inevitable.

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Useless priests!

This morning I had the luck, or should I say ‘misfortune’ to read another rambling bunch of tripe from a certain bishop… talking about how family values will diminish in the coming twenty years.

And it strikes me as funny to read that somebody who was never married, had to live day in day out with his wife, and sometimes by default, her parents, can give us a homily about family.

How can somebody who has not had to struggle in life with ‘petty’ things such as the electricity bill, car license and insurance costs, school bus bills, or taking a step back at the supermarket due to lack of money, ever, EVER, tell us about family is beyond me.

To these people, family is a mum, dad, and kids! How about the single mothers who struggle daily to make ends meet, or the same-sex members who live and love together, isn’t that a family too? Why does the church continue with this idiocy? And why, in heck’s name, are these people still around?

Thank the stars nobody’s becoming a priest these days!

What are we teaching our kids at school?

Let me start by saying that I have absolutely no idea how a school curriculum is created, maintained or changed. And frankly, there was a time when I didn’t care at all. But with two kids, well, now teenagers, banging their heads against brick walls with their studies, I sometimes wonder whether this stress is all in vain.

I am actually writing this the day after my younger child just finished her homework at 11.30pm…. Yep…. Half an hour before midnight. I confess that there have been a few distractions here and there, but even so, finishing nearly at the witching hour can’t be good. So I naturally took a look at what subjects she is currently studying. It goes without saying that there is a lot. And a lot of it is simply shit. I mean, take this scenario. Rox wants to be a baker. She is mad about cakes, decorating, and sweets. I am absolutely positive she can more than hold her own with older girls and women with this regard. Her wonderful cakes, buns and cupcakes are a solid testament to the proof.

So naturally this brings me to my first question. Why are we filling up children’s heads with subjects that make no sense? What use are subjects such as Religion, Physics, Social Studies and Geography to a baker?

Even worse, what use is Art and Drawing to a baker who can hardly draw to save her life? We come from a long line of spectacularly unsuccessful painters. We simply cannot do it.

My other, elder, daughter Rachel, wants to be a German Language teacher. I admit freely that she is brilliant in the German Language, and it would not be amiss to hear her helping her GERMAN schoolmates with their homework. Yep. You heard right. Most Bavarians talk with an accent that is as far removed from Classical German as much as Siciliano is from Italian…ok… so at school she had to take another subject that she can alternatively teach. And that subject is religion. Now if there is anything in the world that I consider most futile and eventually senseless, it is religion.

I had voiced my thoughts initially upon selection of the subject, only to be told that I only loathed the subject because I am very sceptical of religions and gods. I tried to point out the fact that I only spoke thus because it is absolutely true. Who gives a flying fuck about religion these days? Where in hell’s name is it going to lead you unless you want to be a priest or a nun or something of that ilk. Utter garbage!

I’m sure that Mathematics and Physics are another useless burden on a language teacher. Adding insult to injury, my kids do not have an inkling on Maths. One is a brilliant linguist, the other is an exceptional cook and baker (and she’s only 14)…. and yet they might not reach their goals because of Physics and Maths…try to put those into the equation.

Like most students, I did my time at school and finished secondary with about 10 or 11 O-Levels… Since I was an electronics fan, I continued my studies at the Technical Institute…but I can’t remember diddly-squat of what I learned at school, because practically everything has changed! And in electronics!! What you know today is out-dated the next!

WHAT is required to jumpstart education on this island into the 21st century? When will the education department learn that it is easier and probably healthier to just let the students study what they really need or yearn after?

Unfortunately I have no answers to offer, except that I am so damned glad I am not at school anymore!