THE VIEW OF YOUR RELIGION FROM MY RELIGION

I am a Jewish Atheist. I am an atheist Jew. "A" means "non." "Jew" hm, means, well, equals a whole bunch of different things. I guess that three things make one a Jew in one's own eyes; being born to a Jewish mother, calling one's self a Jew, and practising the Jewish religion. I have two of the three and since I have no belief that god exists, the two are that I was born of a Jewish mother who was born of a Jewish mother who was born of a Jewish mother, etc. etc. etc., and that I call myself a Jew. (A Southerner with whom I worked many years ago insisted that I couldn't be Jewish because I didn't have horns protruding from my forehead. Believe it!! He did!)

Frankly, I think that the most benign thing I can say about religion is that it is ridiculous. (The least benign thing I can say about religion is that it is exploitative of the enormous human need to believe in a "Higher Power" by con-men and con-women acquiring enormous wealth and power.) Believers will find this assertion disturbing or perhaps stupid. So I want to provide a short rationale for my describing as "ridiculous" so powerful a force in the lives of billions of people.

It will be easier to understand how ridiculous religion is by viewing different religions from the perspective of one’s own religion. I recently attended a burial service in a Catholic church. I read the prayer book from the rack in the seat in front of me. I listened to the priest and the congregation as they went through the liturgy. It was difficult to comprehend how intelligent, cultured, modern, people could be saying the things they were saying. They were spouting obvious nonsense. They had to confirm their undying belief in the power of the (WHAT???) the CHURCH. The church is a building, a system of belief, a group of living representatives who will die, and a bunch of words written by con-men twenty centuries ago. And to show that I am not prejudiced, I must tell you that I feel the exact same way in synagogue, to which I rarely go. Now, imagine yourself a Muslim sitting in a church or synagogue, listening to the mumbo-jumbo of praying to someone other than Allah or his son Mohammed. How squirmy that must make you feel. And you are not even banging your head on the floor. Such prayer cannot be efficacious!
A nine-year-old child once looked at me in amazement when I told him I didn’t go to church. “You will burn in hell,” he assured me. I did not inform him that I went to synagogue, if I went anyplace. It wouldn’t have made any difference to him, let alone make any sense. He also told me that he was Jewish (despite the cross he wore around his neck). "How come?" I asked. "Because Christ was Jewish," he answered. So, even without knowing it, he agrees with my statement that all religions are ridiculous.

Today, I look at various world religions with a scoffing attitude, wondering how such nonsense could be acceptable to thinking people. I read the Book of Mormon and was incredulous that the patent con job was believed by large numbers of people, American people, not primitive gullible people. I read of the battle between Sunni and Baath and Sushi, or is it Shiite, Muslims. Is chopping off hands worse or better than burning in hell? The battle between and among religions is based on what a human being said and did and where he came from mostly centuries ago. And Christianity is based on a miracle, essentially, an unbelievable event. The religious killings in Africa going on day in and day out in the year of our What?

Finally, if Bin Ladin is a high-up religious figure, and presuming his request for the destruction of the Western World and its people and his calling for the elimination of the Jewish People from whom the prophet Mohammed was born, is indeed what he really believes will save the world, is that not ridiculous? Or is religion more dangerous than ridiculous?