On religion and my lack thereof

Author's Note: I will start by saying this is not going to be a wholesale attack on Religion.

Although those who know me will know that I have a habit of getting over-zealous in religious debates, I do not intend to do that here.

In saying that, I will also state that I think religion is archaic and wielded as a weapon by many of its proponents.

I knew from a very young age that religion was not for me. My parents never wanted to force any religion on me and my sister and we were never christened or made to go to Church.
My Gran, however, would have liked me to be religious and took me to Church pretty much whenever she got a chance.
When I was 5 or 6 years old, maybe a touch younger, I distinctly remember being in Church one Palm Sunday and being struck by the absurdity of it all.

Animooted and well worth watching!

Up till the age of 5/6 I went to a school that said The Lord's Prayer in Assembly and sometimes in class and I never liked to say it. I would sit there, eyes open, and wait quietly till it was finished, a practice which I still continue on those rare occasions I find myself in a Church, such as funerals.
Due to this I can say that I probably decided Religion was not for me at around 4 years of age.
That may seem ridiculous, that one so young could make such a decision, but it's the truth.

This is not to say I am against religion, per se, but I am against the way people use it.

A religious friend of mine is a very good case-in-point on the positive effects of Religion.
He volunteers his time at his Church and local youth groups, helps put on plays, writes a religious themed blog and does many good deeds.
He has taken the tenets of Christianity, such as 'Do unto others...' and 'Love Thy Neighbour', and run with them in the way I believe they were meant.
He doesn't do these things for money or notoriety. He does them simply to be a good person.
That is, to me, what Religion is about.

Unfortunately, most people are not like him. Most people use religion as either a catch-all excuse for their actions and the actions of others or as a club to beat those who do not subscribe to their brand of Sky-Man. If somebody disagrees with them, they are a heathen. If somebody is different to them, they are a sinner. If somebody should have the audacity to be of a different sexual orientation, they are a filthy beast.

This is caused by indoctrination and ignorance. These things are perpetrated and perpetuated by the Institutions. It is not individuals (for the most part) who lionise these reprehensible ideals.
Take The Catholic Church, for instance.
I find the Catholic Church, as an institution, absolutely deplorable. They are one of the richest corporations on the face of the Earth, yet they let the churches in smaller towns go to rack and ruin, worshippers be damned, even though they earn billions and billions every year, around the world.

They propagate hatred and encourage their followers to hold disdain for people of other denominations, lifestyles and sexual orientations.
Even those who attempt to do good in the name of the Catholic Church often do more harm because of the way Religion can limit your world view. The best example is not going to be a popular one but fuck it, I'm gonna say it anyway.

 Mother Teresa.
Although she did help many and her intentions were good, she encouraged the spread of AIDS by not allowing people to use condoms as it was against her beliefs.
Thousands of deaths are on her hands because of an arbitrary law taken from a text written many centuries before the invention of the modern condom.

That leads me on neatly to my next point. Abortion.
Abortion is a touchy subject to many people but I never shy away from touchy subjects.

 
Many Church leaders actively encourage people to picket Family Planning Clinics, even to the point of committing vandalism or violence against the staff.
Although they may not believe in or like the practice of abortion, the way they show it is utterly against the beliefs at the core of their religion!

What it comes down to is tact and consideration.
If you're a religious person of any description, good for you. That doesn't mean I want to hear about it. I'm also utterly disinterested in your opinion of me.
You may think I'm a sinner and a heathen but I honestly could not give less of a shit if I spent the entire rest of my day concentrating on nothing else but not giving a shit about your opinion.
I understand that you love your Sky-Man and want to spread that love and joy to others. That's fine, but let people come to you if they're interested rather than bombarding people with door to door visits, flyers, whatever.
If you must judge others, turn that judgement on yourself from time to time.

Just because you believe in your brand of Sky-Man does not mean everybody does. This does not make you better than them or vice versa.

The moral of this post is Live and Let Live.
We all have our own beliefs that help to shape who we are and we all think we're correct.
The fact of the matter is, we just don't know for sure. If you claim you do you are either a liar or self-deluded.

As a believer in Science and tangible evidence I could say I am right, but that is not the scientific way.

Question everything, always. If you blindly accept and never question you are not a true believer in anything. A true believer always questions what they believe, because only by questioning our beliefs can we re-affirm them.

And always remember, if the religion of others seems absurd to you, your religion probably seems just as absurd to them.

I leave you now with this video from the wonderful Mr. Tim Minchin.
Watch it all if you have time or skip to 4:12 for the song.

iPhone 3gs vs. iPhone 4

Just a little comic I cooked up. :)

Robot Hospital

I read a news article today that has put a cold dread into my bones.

At the new Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Sterlingshire, Scotland they are going to have a team of automated, independent robots doing numerous jobs, from cleaning the Operating Theatres to giving out medication.

The robots will have their own network of corridors under the hospital, two sets of lifts (one for 'dirty' and one for 'clean') and a hunger for human flesh.

They will be able to open doors and things via their on-board computers and also lock down the Hospital when they initiate the Robopocalypse.

The Hospital is also going to have a fully automated Robot Pharmacy where they will sort, label and dispense drugs. If you cannot see why this is a fucking terrible idea then you have obviously never had your bags lost by an airline. Computers are only as good as the men who programme them and men are terminally fallible. Just like the automated systems at airports that send your bags to Brazil whilst you fly to Europe, these computers could very easily make mistakes but rather than a lot of hassle and insurance claims it's a lethal dose of Morphine being given to your relatives.

I can't say for sure this is stuffed with dead bodies 

but they have to cover up for the Pharmacy Murder-Droids somehow...

So, this hospital will be being run, in a big part, by largely autonomous robots with lasers to guide them around and make sure they don't run into people.
Hospitals, by design, are full of the sick, the weak, the frail and it doesn't take a genius to see that, sooner or later, there will be a malfunction which will end in carnage. Even if the robots don't overthrow their controllers and take the hospital by force (which they almost certainly will) it is very, very unlikely that it will be all smooth sailing.
All computer systems are prone to error, only when your PC cocks up you only loose your music collection. If the guidance system packs up in one of these things the vast majority of hospital patients are not going to be able to get out of the way.

The results will be Grandma Pancakes.

Why is everybody so slow at EVERYTHING?!

I like to think that I do things efficiently. This is not to say that I always do things promptly as I am a very lazy person and I make no excuses for it.
However, I do believe that if you need a faster, more efficient way to do something, give it to a lazy person and they will find the quickest, most efficient way to do it, so they may resume sitting on their arse and watching Animal Planet.

This means that I do everything in my day at the highest possible speed and in the most efficient way.
I am also rather OCD, which means that I get really annoyed if people screw up my routine with their inability to perform tasks efficiently.

Today for instance, I was on my lunch break from work and needed to go and run some errands in the local village. So I drove to the village, parked and joined the queue at the cash machine.
Now, I know that using a cash machine is a quick and easy thing to do. Card in, PIN number, Cash, £50, no I don't want a receipt, card out, cash dispensed, done.
Easy. Couple minutes, max.

So why do people spend so fucking long at the cash machine when I have things to do which are obviously far more pressing and urgent than whatever pointless thing they're doing? They stand there for what feels like hours, like the machine is written in Ancient Egyptian and they have neglected to bring their Babel Fish.

Had I gotten to the cash machine straight away I would have been able to complete my other tasks and get back to work by 1:25pm, which would have given me the right amount of time to do the other things I needed to do, like, you know, eat. As it was I didn't get back till about 1:31 which screwed up the timings for the rest of my routine. If you are saying to yourself, 'It's only 6 minutes, what's the big deal?' you do not understand OCD and for that you are truly lucky.

Another place that people move at an infuriatingly slow pace is the Supermarket.
I try and get around Asda as fast as possible because if I'm there too long I will commit murder and I'm far too pretty for prison.

People dawdle along as if this is all they have to do this week so they may as well take their time. They seem to be utterly oblivious that I'm behind them burning holes into their back with my eyes as I desperately try and find a gap to get around them.

This is made even more difficult when people leave their trolleys in the middle of aisles and wander off to look at things further down with no consideration for others. I am a very, very polite person pretty much all the time and this means that I can't move their trolley because that seems rude to me.
As if that wasn't enough, People stop dead in the middle of aisles without looking behind them and if you bump into them suddenly YOU'RE the arsehole!

Old people are the fucking worst! I understand that old people move slower out of necessity rather than an innate desire to fuck up my day but what I cannot fathom is why they shop on the weekend. They are RETIRED and therefore do nothing all damn week! Why shop on the weekend? It means that if I have to venture from my safe, dark house on a weekend for vittles I not only need to contend with hordes of rude morons but also ancient, gnarled people who move slower than your average glacier.

Well, with the amount of F-words in that post google AdWords is probably gonna throw a tantrum...

Fuck it! In for a penny in for a fuck load of F-words!

The Future Of This Blog: What do YOU want? Do you even give a shit?

In before tl;dr.

As I am sure you have noticed, I have failed to post anything to this blog in quite a while, other than occasionally changing the site news to update you on the fact that I have not been posting anything, as if you couldn't work it out for yourselves.

This abundant failure to post stems from: a) My intensely idle nature and b) the fact that I am trying to think up list-based humour that will appeal to audiences in general.

I suffer from a terminal case of being English and, therefore, any of you folks who aren't British (which Google Analytics tells me is a lot of you) will probably not get a lot of the things that I consider writing about in this blog as my perspective and references are generally of a British nature and there is no real reason for you to understand references that come from a tiny, piss-pot island somewhere near Europe.

With that in mind, I am thinking of changing things up a little.
Now, I can't draw for shit and if I tried it would be embarrassing so having a hilarious, illustrated blog is out.
What I can do is rant. And I mean I can fucking rant! If ranting was an Olympic sport, I could represent the UK and we would actually win a medal for once.
The title of this blog is Fulminations Without Foundations which is just a fancy way to say Rants Without Reason.

So, would you prefer to have one post per Ice Age, which is roughly how often I can think of something I reckon everyone will appreciate, or would you prefer regular updates that basically consist of me ranting about shit that's pissing me right the fuck off?
Seriously, something makes me rage pretty much every day and I tend to be at my funniest when I'm pissed off*.

I have placed a poll at the top of the blog, under the site news. I would be very grateful if you could take two seconds to answer it. You never know... You could win an iPad**.

Thank you in advance. I will run this poll for as long as I deem necessary, or until it gives me the answer I want... Whichever comes first.

P.S. Not all my posts will be rants. There will still be the odd post about ways nature wishes to kill you, animals and other such random shit.
To be honest, I can never be quite sure what my brain will come out with.
Fuckers got a mind of it's own!


*Results may vary
**You will not win an iPad.

Smoking: It's a disease!

OK, I'm going to say this now and get it out of the way: Obesity is NOT a disease.
It isn't! Endlessly stuffing pies into your face is not a disease!


NOT a disease!
It's an addiction. An addiction to having a mouth full of cake.
But say you actually believe it IS a disease... They class alcoholism as a disease, even tho that is also an addiction so by that logic, Smoking is a disease.


Poor guy! He's got Smokesity.
As a smoker I am getting fucking sick of people giving me shit and looking down on me! I'm getting fucking sick of having my civil rights violated so that some uppity prick can be smug about how he got smoking banned in pubs. IN FUCKING PUBS!! Since man figured out he could turn plants into things that he can smoke and drink he has wanted to do the two together. It's the natural way!


How it should be!

Smokers in the UK pay over £16 billion a year on tax and duty on their fags and the NHS only spends around £2-3 billion a year treating smoking related illness. That's a net profit for the government of over £13 billion a year! Plus, a high percentage of smokers die before they start collecting a pension so more profit for the Government there. Yet they act like they want us to stop smoking! They ban it in all indoor areas, they promote the attitude that smokers are somehow sub-human and can be snubbed and spurned by all non-smokers. They run TV ads telling me how smoking is killing me and everyone I love, my cigarette packets now have pictures on them of throat cancer and diseased lungs and to be honest I am sick to my (slightly yellowed) back teeth.
I already know the health risks of smoking. I have known them since I was a small child. Honestly, who doesn't know the risks? I think it's totally unfair that I be made to feel bad about smoking when I am paying a lot of money for the privilege and a 300 pound 18 year old can walk into any supermarket and buy value bacon, guilt free. His fat arse and all his like cost the NHS over £6 billion a year!

So, in the interest of fairness I think they need to start putting warnings on bacon and such like, in a similar style to the kind of warnings they feel it's appropriate to put on my fags.


It's only fair!

If I want to smoke KNOWING FULL WELL that it's bad for me, then that's my damn business. I can only smoke outside or in my home so if I'm out having a fag and you sidle over to me and start doing that fucking irritating little cough, don't be surprised if I punch you in the face. I'm learning karate, don't ya know, and there's only so much hassle a smoker can take before he snaps.

In closing, I would like to leave you with this thought for the day...

A Musical Travesty: When singing contests go wrong.

Author's Note: Please don't think any less of me for this article! Just needed to get it off my chest. Back to the usual shit soon.

I'm sure that most of you don't watch The X-Factor. I'm sure most of you have far better things to do on a Saturday night than sit and watch a load of nobodies sing other peoples' songs for the amusement of the plebs.
I don't have anything better to do. I watch the X-Factor every week and over the last couple of weeks, a travesty has occurred.
If you've been watching you probably know of the Scourge to music to which I'm referring.




Look upon the faces of the Devil.
If you aren't familiar with these two, lets call them, little pricks then have a look four yourself.




WARNING!
What lies within this video could ruin your faith in humanity.
What is seen cannot be unseen.

If you have the time, watch it all. It's like a massive car wreck involving some toxic waste. You know you shouldn't look and you know it's potentially very bad for your health but you just cant pull your eyes away.
If you're in a rush, the gayest thing you will ever see in your life happens at about 1:00.




Gayest. Thing. Ever.

Now, as utterly horrendous as that is, it is kind of compelling in that car crash kinda way. But the reason I take such issue with John and Edward (other than the fact that they're a pair of arrogant little pricks with no redeeming features) is that they quite simply cannot sing.
The X-Factor is a singing contest.

To facilitate this continuing abomination 2 acts who actually had talent (and one that was comprised of ex-strippers) had to leave the competition.
They were Kandy Rain, Rikki Loney and, the most recent and most appalling, Miss Frank.

This weekend, this:





lost to this:





Now, I don't know if you agree and I doubt very much you care but that is some Grade A Bullshit!

We, The British Public, do this every year. There's always one act that is fucking terrible yet remain in the competition, to the detriment of other, actually talented acts and, in my opinion, this is all down to the ICDBTT Effect. We like to watch these fucking awful acts because, as a country, we just love to pontificate from our armchairs that, "I could do better than that!"




I can sing and dance better than these little shits!

So, Britain, if you have any humanity left in you, please, for the sake of common sense and good taste, don't vote for John and Edward. I implore you, if you intend to vote in this X-Factor, just don't let it be for them. For music, for civilisation, for my aural health, vote for someone else!