In Continuum.

It began with death, which is a strange phrase by itself, but it did. Nobody really knows what happens after death, and neither did I as a child. I'd be sleeping in between my parents at night for the fear of death, and I'd question my mother as to what happens after we go into coffins and then be buried six feet under. She'd tell me all kinds of story about the afterlife, and how everything we do in this life has a consequence in our next. You know, karma. So I believed her, because parents are supposed to be right, they are adults after all. Everything that they did or say were standards that I followed, which was why the concept of a God was slowly embedded into my head over the years. Then something happened when I entered a Catholic school when I was thirteen years old, and it was strange how everything I have learned in life up to that point clashed with whatever the school was trying to teach us. I learned about the Bible, some dude named Jesus, his mother who had a baby without having sex, and all that kind of stuff you get to learn in a Catholic school. I wasn't convinced about their brand of God, and yet my original concept of a God started to falter as well. Over the years, I pretty much understood the concept of there being a God, but one that does not subscribe to any religion known to mankind. 

That'd be someone who is agnostic, somebody who believes that the existence of a superior being cannot be proven or unproven. Then, something very strange happened: I saw the light. I realized how little evidences there are to support to existence of a superior being, and even stranger how so many crimes around the world has been committed in the name of religion and of God. I think the final straw really came after 9/11, when over three thousand lives were lost because a bunch of lunatics declared a Holy War against a bunch of innocent people. Anyway, I remember this time during a mass, and the school actually invited this priest of some kind to bless the students and stuff like that. All the catholic students gathered in the center aisle to receive their blessings, and I was standing right behind Krishna when he noticed me there. "What are you doing here?" he asked. "The wafer, I'm hungry". So you see, it started in my teenage years. The more I read about religion, the more illogical and irrational it became. History lessons also taught me just how much death has been caused by religion, and it pushed be gradually away from the concept of everybody being bound to the same spiritual belief. 

But I am fine with my friends most of the time. I know baptists, christians, catholics, whatever, they've all been fine in my books, just as long as they do not tell me about going to hell if I do not follow in their paths. I get along well with most of these people, but some of them tend to rub me the wrong way from time to time. They never fail to rile me up with their arrogance and ignorance, and we are talking about the extremists and the purists here. A friend of mine recently visited a church to support a friend, who was a cheerleader in a play they put up. I do that kind of things from time to time, I don't exactly see a reason in staying away from churches when I am really there to show some support. But you have to sit through the preaching and even more preaching, all the rituals that'd come along with a church visit before and after the play. My friend is not exactly an atheist, but she has a thing against christians in general. They are like splinters in her index finger which she can never get rid of, and I suppose it must have been a great milestone for her to have visited the church in the first place. 

It's fine if you are going to keep your preaching to your followers, but it was a big turn off when the pastor started talking bad about other religions and stuff like that. Now, hold on just a minute there. If you want to be all evangelical and try to save us all from our doom, there are better ways to do that don't you think? Talking bad about other religions isn't the way to go, I am sure, and I'm certain that there are laws in this country to pin you against. According to my friend, the pastor went on and on about how "illogical" it is to burn paper money to dead people and to pray to wooden statues. Wait a minute there, again. Let me get this straight: you are a pastor in a church, talking about "logic" when the whole idea of religion is anything but logical in the first place? How do you accuse of people burning paper for the dead as being illogical when you are praying to an invisible man in the sky, listening to every single one of your murmurs at night? So, a man flying around in a sledge and putting presents through chimneys is impossible, but a man who listens to all your prayers and then coming back to life three days after his death is, well, more believable. I totally see your angle of argument - it sucks.

It is one thing to preach about your religious beliefs, it is the other to question and thrash whatever the other religion preaches. You don't threaten people with eternal damnation just so that they'd follow your religion, to be on "the winning team". That's as good as living in a totalitarian state where you have to do what the government tells you, or get shot in a dark alley. The only difference is that your puppets don't know of their strings, others do. I have a friend who recently went to a predominantly Buddhist country for her mission trip, and it was strange to read about how she saw buddhist temples across the street as being "the opponents" or "the enemy" in some kind of game. The rules of the game, you try to take in as many followers as you can in a given period of time, and there isn't a fixed method as to how you are going to do that - just do whatever it takes! Suddenly, human beings are like this giant fruit cake, and different religions are trying to get a slice of it before it all runs out. Of course, they walk under the banner of "evangelism", but what are they really there for, anyway? What is the point of seeing the other religion as some kind of opponent when they are there happily minding their own businesses? And no, "I give them food!" isn't a good argument when you want to think that your religion is superior. It's a poor argument. Wait, it's an awful argument. I'm pretty sure even your religion tells you, that faith is more than just food given freely. If you think that your religion is better because you give out food, I'd rather worship NTUC Fair Price. 

Like I mentioned, I am pretty sure there is some sort of law that prohibits one religion to bash the other. It's the same as parading in front of a church and saying that Islam is the right religion. Muslims don't go around "saving" people, because they know how religion should really be a choice of oneself, and people shouldn't be threatened into one religion by fear. Then there is that incident concerning an employee at my father's office and her daughter. Her thirteen year old daughter has recently joined a very well established church in Singapore that harvests people like wheat, if you get what I mean. Her mother allowed her to join the church simply because they offered free tuition at the beginning - who wouldn't agree to that? A few sessions later, the church called up the mother and told her that they'd only continue with the hourly free tuition classes only if she'd allow her daughter to stay for two more hours of religious classes afterwards. Her mother agreed, and that was how her daughter got into this whole christian mumbo jumbo. That was also when the daughter started to donate all her weekly pocket money to the church, leaving her with nothing for school. 

Her mother got worried, but she got even more worried when the people from cell groups started to call her family repeatedly over the next couple of weeks, to urge her daughter to bring even more non-believers to their church. Oh, imagine all the money flowing in without tax, wouldn't you like that? Anyway, they held a cell group meeting at her house one day, and her mother evacuated the scene to the grandmother's house as the event went underway. When she returned, however, she was shocked to see people crying and fainting in her living room, and then some of them telling her that she has some demon inside of her body because she isn't a christian. These are the kind of christians that I hate with a raging passion, the kind that accuse you of being unworthy, being evil, being everything bad because you are not a part of them. What are we, high school kids with cliques now? I don't have a demon in my body, not only because I don't believe in angels and demons, but because I also have, in place, a brain to think. I mean, this is a thirteen year old girl we are talking about, does she really have the ability to differentiate between right and wrong when she needs to be eighteen to legally have sex, and still needs parental consent to go on field trips? There's something really wrong here, and christian purists are dirts. 

So yes, I firmly believe in keeping your religion to yourself, and everything would be fine. I'd like a cell group meeting to happen at my house though, and I'd like to see them attempt to alter my thoughts and then call me an anti-christ later, or something. Whatever, pastor, nothing you say is really going to work on this steel-plated mind of mine, so give it up. It won't even work if you tear the pages of a Bible and force feed it into my stomach - then again, isn't that blasphemous? Don't talk about logic inside a church, that's like talking about faith in a science laboratory. My fellow scientists, you don't have to do tests and redo these tests to prove the results, you really only have to blindly believe that it'd work. That's not how it works, right? At the end, I shall end off with a couple of my favorite atheist quotes, dedicated to all christian purists out there. And as for my friends who are christians, catholics, and all the other religions, I love you all still. 

Why can’t we see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? - Douglas Adams

Animals do not have gods, they are smarter than that. - Ronnie Snow

If god is the alpha and the omega. The beginning and the end, knows what has passed and what is to come, like it states in the bible, why do people pray and think it will make any difference?- Mark Fairclough

I wonder who got the shit job of scouring the planet for the 15000 species of butterfly or the 8800 species of ant they eventually took on board Noah’s Ark. But at least we got that magical rainbow for all their trouble. - Azura Skye