It's Sunday and here I sit in my nicely tidied office at the Ashram, contemplating the week passed and the week ahead. Suddenly, I decided that I should bother my followers with a little explosion of concern, an ejaculation of anxiety if you will.
Which reminds me, I learnt yesterday that the reason some faiths used to ask women to keep their heads covered is because the superstitious monkeys thought that sperm was stored in hair...stay with me. The hair on a ladies head has the power to suck sperm up her body after sexual intercourse, so you didn't want all that sperm laden hair just staring at you did you? Keep it covered ladies!
I head this story from a lady vicar named Kate Bottley, she is more recently become famous for a viral video clip of her 'flashmob' dancing with the congregation at a wedding.
She is one of those 'reasonable' vicars who swears during ceremonies and offers ice-pops to her congregation on hot days. The sort of vicar who has a quick retort for every dig at religion and offers a 'reasonable' answer to the sort of questions people like me send in her direction.
By the way, I use the word 'reasonable' as it was a word used to me in describing this modern almost secular approach to faith. The actual quote was "it all seems very reasonable, and what's the harm in religion being human".
So, a 'reasonable' vicar, the sort of vicar who avoids the literal reading of the bible, embracing instead both science and faith by accepting the concept of evolution and thereby undercutting any chance of debating the idea of god or gods in any logical way.
These sorts of 'reasonable' vicars make religion appealing to the masses by basically inviting and allowing you to believe in both fact and fiction and treating them as equally valid.
Kate Bottley is a force of nature, larger than life and someone who would no doubt fight very VERY hard for what she believes in and I have respect for that, we all follow our own path. It's harder to respect an attitude to life that says all we have and all we are, all progress and science and understanding of human development is only ours through god.
How can you argue with that?
It's ALL part of gods plan. Forget the bible, forget the obvious flaws in that story, just believe in god and have faith. We will tell you which bits of the bible are to be adhered to and which can be ignored, you just have faith. Don't worry, just join the queue and believe.
How can you argue with that? You can't - and that's why 'reasonable' religion is dangerous.
The basic premise of religion is that god exists, that's what you have to accept. That god is real, and not just any god.
You see the 'reasonable' religious are actually as atheistic as me because they don't believe in all the other gods that people have worshiped in ancient Rome or Greece or Egypt for example. They just have their god who we have to accept exists and that there are no others...
How do we know that? How do we come to accept that there is only one god?
Answer... it says so in the bible - the very book that the 'reasonable' religious now say we should not take literally.
You see the real danger is that the 'reasonable' religious make everything seem so warm and human and safe so if you ask questions you seem to be questioning your own faith in humanity not humanities fear of the dark.
The worst thing is that the 'reasonable' religious sneer at those of us that don't believe and they undermine us in very subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways. Like telling me, it doesn't matter what you believe, god is always with you.
How can you argue with that when they seem so 'reasonable'?
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