Hopechange wins Nobel Peace Prize.

My point was that I didn't want to outlaw religion... but anyway, story time!

So, this year, at our local festival, there were two men who were "dooms-dayers." They marched through the festival, screaming about how they were going to be saved, and we needed to be saved, and everyone else was going to go to hell. The police showed up, as they are always hovering around the festival, and shepherded them to a far corner of the field it was being held on. My friends were standing around and listening to them yell. It was kind of amusing really. Then they struck a cord with me. They started screaming about how anyone who had killed themselves was infected by the devil, and what-not. About six months prior to this, a friend of mine, and my date to my junior prom, had killed herself. My friends had never[ seen me angry before. I am not an angry individual. I out-yelled and out-screamed the dooms-dayers. The police officers (as there were several watching, at this point), approached us, and informed the two wackos that they needed to leave the town immediately, or they would be charged with illegal trespassing and disturbing the peace. The officers then sat me down, and we had a conversation about what had happened, what was going on, etc. It was actually a rather nice discussion. On the alternate side of the coin, the local churches set up booths, and they offer free face painting, bottles of water and Popsicles, depending on the church.

The point of this story, Orintil, is that I have no problem with public religious events. The thing I have problems with is when it gets mean, rude, or disruptive of the lives of everyone around it.

 

Neither do I. I hope it didn't seem like that. I simply want it to be treated as any other aspect of freedom of speech. Sure, you're free to your opinion and you may voice it, but there are regulations as to how you can voice it in a public setting.

The doomsayers, zealots, etc are the sorts I'm talking of. The problem I have isn't with the events or the religions themselves, but with the people that far too often attend them. If it can be reasonably assured such things won't blow out of proportion to the point where the majority of the police force must be present to keep the peace, I wouldn't have any problems with it. It's not just religious gathering either. I have the exact same feelings on football/soccer games. If it could be reasonably assured that such events wouldn't turn into mindless mob driven violence that swarm professional swat members by their sheer numbers, I wouldn't feel any disgust about them.

 

That's another problem. It is said that 98% (or something like that) of Poles are Catholics. Bollocks. Where the hell did that number come from? Because everyone who has been baptized is counted towards the Catholic meter (and nearly every child is going through it here, for the social pressure towards church weddings and such are high enough that most parents just go through it for peace's sake, "because we don't want grandma disinheriting us, nor do we want grandpa getting a heart attack, not to mention our family and neighbours looking strangely at us and calling us infidels"), even though it's being executed when one is so young he possesses no awareness. For the church it doesn't matter if a person, after growing up and becoming aware, will become an atheist, a person of a different faith or simply a "believing but not practising" Catholic (which equals every person who doesn't really believe but is too limited/lazy/afraid to think things over and be honest with himself on what does or does not he really believe in and make an official statement on that topic) - as long as a citizen is marked as baptized, he falls in the filthy clutches of the statistics.

The truth is that most atheists don't take the effort to apostatize, bacause it doesn't make any difference for them if they are marked as Catholics, Muslims or Satanists, it isn't agains their faith after all, while those "believing but not practising" Catholics are being interpreted as eagerly believing ones whenever it is comfortable for the church/government. By the words of certain religion sociologist "If by believers we would understand those people, for whom faith directly affects their life, than by my estimate the population of believers in Poland would be be something between 4 an 10 percent".

 

Gosh, I'm happy to live in a country where religion is generally viewed as 'believe what you want, just don't try to convert me'. And when a religious leader crosses a line, the rest of us go 'you sick fuck! Off my planet!'

Just a pity a certain rape-advocating mullah wasn't launched into the fucking SUN a few years back...

 

We have a similar thing here Muro. Most aren't religious, yet most "belong" to a church and pay it taxes. Otherwise we wouldn't get a free grave plot or free weddings.

 

We have Ken Hutchinson as a local. He's a decent demonstration of religion-gone-wrong.

 

The mullah I'm referring to went on National Fucking Television and said that any woman who wears trousers, skirts shorter than ankle-length, shirts that showed off the arms or even worse the clevage... any woman who dresses like that deserves to be raped because they're an affront to god.

Last I heard he'd quit the country after a string of death threats. I just wish he'd quit the planet. Launched from a cannon. Into the sun.

 

My roommate is from Qatar and claims that not only are the men there not used to seeing female skin, they can even tell if you're really a Muslim or not even while you're silent and in a burka.

 

I don't know about that. When I was in Iraq everybody in town thought I was Muslim. Everyday I had to tell people that I wasn't. It did work to my advantage as everyone was really nice to me and gave me stuff to eat and drink. I was even invited to do drugs with one group, but I'm not big on getting high on Parkinson medication.

 

I disagree with this on the idea that if I willingly relocate to another country/culture center then I bear the responsibility of adapting to them rather than attempting to make them adapt to me.