Hey everyone,

ill post a formal introduction in a second, however I just wanted to post an essay I finished writing about the problem with faith. My name is Galen, im 17 and like in the United Kingdom currently doing my A-Levels. I am a proud atheist and I have started a chapter of the SSA at my school which i named the Fellowship of Atheists, Infidels, Thinkers and Heretics or F.A.I.T.H. Anyway, I would appreciate if you could read my essay and let me know what you think. It is opinionated (obviously) and i was trying to find a way to email it to someone on this site to see if they wanted to use it but could not find a way to do so. Anyway, cheers!

[b][i]The Problem With Faith[/b][/i]
[i]By: Galen Howe[/i]

Within the recent months that have led up to the writing of this essay, books that discuss atheism have become international best sellers while leaving books that preach about god a considerable distance behind them. After September 11, 2001 the world was forced to confront the problem of absolute faith in a deity, and the many horrors that such a belief can bring about. While politicians may dance around the issue, and news broadcasters will carefully avoid the subject, the majority of the world needs to become aware of the ever-increasing sound of war drums being beaten by a body of people who do not fear death. Our values of freedom, democracy and equal rights are nothing but a scoff in the face of their divine ruler, and they will stop at nothing to ensure that our way of life, our civilization, does not continue and they are willing to sacrifice themselves in the process to see that this is done. At the same time, we have individuals who chastise these people of faith for their beliefs and their actions, yet every Sunday they enter a pew and pray to a god who, according to his own account, has been responsible for the deaths and suffering of billions of people. They stand in the way of scientific discovery, whether it be the true origin of the universe or stem cell research that has the power to save lives. They are an obstacle of free speech, equal rights, and sexual freedom. Hypocrisy at its finest.

Islam is a religion that is growing at a frightening speed. It is a wave of terror that is sweeping Europe and has dominated the Middle East, with its eyes set on the United States of America. A poll was conducted by The Guardian and ICM revealing that 61% of British Muslims support Sharia Law being implemented in Britain. Let it be said that anyone who supports Sharia law is an enemy of individual rights. Do not fool yourselves, Sharia law has never and will never be compatible with freedom. A judicial system which not only supports but mandates the forced veiling of women, mutilation of new born children’s genitals, censorship on many issues including any criticism of Islam, and horrible acts of torture inflicted on individuals who break any law (ex:“The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication—flog each of them with hundred stripes: Let no compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by God, if ye believe in God and the last day.” Qur’an 24:2) is one that should be removed from modern civilization. Political correctness, despite popular belief, has not been the major factor stopping the majority of people speaking out against such a draconian system. The true culprit is the fear that is implanted by the Muslim community in every institution, media related or otherwise, which has been used to silence the voice of reason and justice. When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad in an unfavourable way as a response to the international censorship of criticism dealing with Islam, the western world turned its back on the newspaper and refused, out of fear, to reprint the cartoons. This is not an isolated incident either, recently we have seen the naming of a teddy bear Muhammad that resulted in the jailing of a British school teacher who went to Sudan to help underprivileged children while having thousands of Muslims around the world screaming for her blood. Alternatively we can look at the murder of secular filmmaker Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands who created a film accurately depicting the repulsive and sickening treatment of women in the Islamic culture. His murder was condoned and approved of by Islamic scholars and clerics around the world, offering the killer a clear path to paradise for him and his family. I suppose it is still true that greed can motivate even the most ignorant and vacuous of individuals. If you are still not satisfied we can look to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a woman who escaped Somalia and is an outspoken feminist and critic of Islam who now must travel under 24 hour armed guard to protect her from the threat she faces from the Muslim community. It should also be noted that anyone who succeeds in murdering her is offered the same deal as the murderer of Theo van Gogh.

At the same time as this happening we have people all over the world who believe in ridiculous superstition and use it to determine how to live their life. I am in no position to tell people what to believe or what not to, as this would conflict with my firm belief and support of individual freedom, however it becomes my concern and the concern of the international community when these people are the leaders of countries who have deadly weapons at their disposal. The fact that there are leaders today, in the middle east who believe it is their holy duty to bring about the end of the world to insure that the 12th Imam returns to earth should scare you, and the idea that they are about to obtain nuclear arms should soberly frighten you. Every day thousands of people fall victim to the horrors which are Islam as dictated by the Qur’an and the Hadith in their own countries and the world sits idly by and watches, waiting until they will come and impose their barbaric ‘morals’ (I use that term lightly) upon us, and on September 11, 2001, they arrived. If 9/11 taught us only one thing it is that there is no such thing as ‘over there’ and ‘over here’. They are here, they are willing to die for the cause of Islam, and the threat they pose is a very real one.

While Christianity may not constitute as much of a physical threat as they have in the past, there is still a clear danger posed by it. We have the leader of the free world believing that a mythical man tells him how to live his life and guide the country’s affairs. I have never understood why if you were to hear a sheep talking to you about the purpose of life you are deemed schizophrenic, yet when an invisible deity does it it’s called religion. At least we can see the sheep. It will not be discussed in great depth here the almost impossibility of god’s existence, I will save that for a later date. You need only look as far as Epicurus’ Problem of Evil, or Russell’s Teapot, or even common sense to see that there is no such thing as a celestial dictatorship (a phrase coined by the stunningly brilliant Christopher Hitchens.) If god truly existed we would all be dead, for both sides pray to god for the other’s destruction, yet we are both still here. Christians are forever intervening in individual’s private affairs. Abortion should be a private issue between the potential mother and father of a child, and there should be no religious interference with its legal status whatsoever. Anyone who comes to the decision to have an abortion does not do so lightly, it is a decision made with great hardship. How dare the religious throw their bloodstained book at a 16-year-old rape victim and demand that she keep the child. It is truly unfortunate that there is not a hell for these ‘people’ to go to. The fact that the United States Congress was called together to move Terri Schiavo’s case to a federal court should be a clear indicator that church and state are not as separate as we would like to think. The idea that lies such as creationism would ever be taught in any educational system is a repulsive idea that should be rejected similarly to teaching zodiac signs in school, and telling students to make crucial decisions in their life based on them. This is nothing more than preposterous, superstitious nonsense and should be treated as such. Do not pray in my school and I won’t think in your church.

Religious sympathizers will often claim that examples such as these are merely a small group of religious extremists who have warped religious doctrine and used it to justify their own personal beliefs. If you truly believe this you need to have your literacy level evaluated, because if you read any book of religious doctrine concerning the three major monotheisms (Christianity, Islam and Judaism, the former two being blatant plagiarisms of the latter) you will see that the literal interpretations of these books demand a grotesque amount of blood to satisfy the needs of Jehovah and Allah, they all outline barbaric punishments for small crimes. If anything, religious people who commit atrocities in the name of their god are merely living by their religious doctrine. Moderate religious individuals are hypocrites and more illogical than the devoutly religious because they attempt to fuse logic and reason in with religion failing to realize however that these two concepts are not compatible. To believe that some parts of the bible need to be interpreted as literal and some to be interpreted as metaphor is not concurrent with the belief that the doctrine is the word of god. If god, in all his wisdom, truly provided us with his laws and stories, who are we as mere mortals to interpret the bible and say which parts are literal and which need to be taken with a grain of salt? Not until people started questioning religion did the church change some of its stances on the accuracy of the bible. Moderately religious people also harm society by aiding those who interpret doctrine literally. How? As long as a large mass of people give support and demand respect for these doctrines there will always be room for people to commit an atrocity and justify it with the ideology being supported word for word by the doctrine itself. We need to let the world know that we realize that these books are nothing but words on a page and that freedom of speech and human rights are worth more than a set of books that has caused the deaths of millions of people. It is true that to make a good person do terrible things, religion is needed.

Religion is nothing more than a diabolical system developed by a frightened species to explain natural and scientific phenomena that they had no knowledge about. Now, in the 21st century, we as a society need to shed our superstition that is killing hundreds of thousands of people and hurting even more. Putting aside the countless contradictions in doctrine, the complete lack of evidence for a divine force in our lives, the horrible sexual repression and mistreatment of children and the torture inflicted by religious institutions the fact remains that religious clerics are lying to people and trafficking in their misery. When a priest is consoling a crying person he will have a bible in one hand and a collection plate in the other. We stand on the brink of oblivion, we need to make a stand as an internationally free, and secular community and stare down the oppressive forces of Islamic, Christian, and overall religious tyranny and let them be aware that there is a force stronger than them in this world that will not change its morals or guidelines based on a whim. They need to know that we will stand up for the rights of every individual regardless of age, race, gender or ethnicity because we are human beings. As a non-believer I am insulted at the religious suggestion that I need a god to know what is right and what is wrong. These are preposterous notions that undermine the entire complexity of our species, and the time has arrived where we need to decide what we will choose, civilization or self destruction brought about by religious indoctrination, deception and stupidity. The choice is yours.