No religion, please

Sam Killay
Claremont
To the editor,

Excuse me, but what is this religious piffle by Kathryn Lopez that I see being regularly reprinted in the pages of the Eagle Times? If I wanted a sermon, I would go to church. I do not.

When I open a newspaper, I want news, not half-baked superstition. Yes, superstition: Ms. Lopez’s Catholic faith is based on a book of make-believe. People don’t walk on water (Matthew 14) or hover (Luke 24). The world is not 6,000 years old and most certainly didn’t come about as described in Genesis 1 and oddly again in Genesis 2, but with contradictions. There is zero evidence that a worldwide flood (Genesis 6-9) ever occurred. People don’t come back from days in the grave (John 11, Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20). And so on.

Listen, people are free to believe this absurd stuff if they want to, but I like George Carlin’s line here: “Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.”

For serious-minded people, religion is ridiculous: none of this can have any basis in fact. Silly me, but I thought newspapers were supposed to report the facts?

And since I notice that Ms. Lopez uses her position of faux compassion to turn her faith into a cudgel to bash other people’s reproductive choices, let her answer for her god’s order to the Israelites reported in Deuteronomy 20: “However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.”

Nothing that breathes. Fun stuff, right there. So I guess we can all stop with the pretend concern over the dead babies, right? 

And that’s not the only instance of Yahweh supposedly killing infants and small children in the Bible. Not by a long shot, in fact. You can Google it on your own time. So really, it’s a lucky thing that all of this nonsense is made up. Because if this weren’t make-believe, Yahweh (if actually he existed) could only be judged a monster.

Call me crazy, but I’m persuaded of the quaint opinion that newspapers should stick to information. Maybe we can leave the sermons for the churches? Thanks.

 

Sam Killay

Claremont