Philip Norton

The Pope has apparently written a document that attacks Atheism, calling it the cause of "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice". The document, which consists of some 75 pages, has been entitled "Saved By Hope" and seems to have been getting a lot of press since it’s release on Friday.

What an idiot! He has been quoted in the text of the paper as saying that Atheists should stop looking at science and knowledge for the answers and look at the Catholic Church instead. This paper is obviously an attempt by the most foolish man in the world to rescue the dying religion that he is the head of. He is attempting to make his mark on his time as ruler, rather than fade into obscurity. The fact that he said this clearly shows that he hasn’t a clue what he is talking about. If I wanted to get answers from a bunch of geriatric crazy people then I would go down to the local old peoples home. Except that I would have to go to a foreign country and do that as the Catholic Church, being the "progressive" church that it is, still speaks a language that died out in common usage more than a millennia ago. Namely Latin. I know a few words of Latin, going through a biology degree it’s hard not to pick them up, but what is the point of learning it only to read out a bunch of drivel written by some crazy stone age man centuries ago?

Looking at his main point, that Atheism is the cause of "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice", I find questionable to say the least. Christianity has been oppressing peoples for more than a thousand years now, with such horrible periods as the crusades, the Spanish inquisition and the Northern Ireland conflict to name a few. Whereas The Pope can only draw his conclusions from a few people who followed what Karl Marx said to the letter. The thing about Marxism is that is has been tried, but it hasn’t worked. This is fair enough, you make mistakes and you go on. However, I wouldn’t say that communism was Atheist. Indeed the main point of communism is that the state is usually turned into a religion in itself and everyone preys to the state and not the church. The Pope seems to have forgotten that Atheism is more than just saying "I don’t believe in god", it’s about not going in with everything that religion stands for. The oppression of knowledge, the oppression of free speech, the oppression of free choice, the oppression of minorities. One of the reasons I am not religious is because I do not want to be associated with anyone who singles out a particular race, creed, life style and says "I hate you because you are different".

The main theme of this paper is hope. That for some reason everyone should have hope that god will fix everything. I notice a small lexical transition from the word "faith" to to the word "hope" here, and I really do hope that it goes no further. I find it totally and completely abhorrent that anyone would sit about for their entire life and say "well there is no point in doing anything because I know god will sort it all out for me". The only person who will sort out your life is yourself. If we all actually got off our backsides and stopped crying and complaining at each other about how he believes in that, and she doesn’t dress properly, and actually DID something about the world it would be fantastic. I would love to live in it! Religion doesn’t have the answers because it just gets you to "pray" for someone, rather than helping them. Oh yes, I won’t actually do anything for you, but I will "pray" that everything becomes good. This is quite clearly rubbish and I feel sorry to anyone stupid enough to fall for it.

I sometimes find it hard to imagine what The Pope does all day long. I know that a certain amount of his time is spent "making stuff up", but what else does he do? Obviously he is looking for more people to join the Catholic Church, and for what reason? The answer is simple, to line his pockets with huge piles of cash. I’ll bet it isn’t cheap to run an organised religion! With the recent best selling books that have published on the subject of Atheism I suspect that he is trying to jump on the gravy train and soak up some of the cash to be made in publishing. Either that or he is trying to get more bums on seats, or pews in his case, but only from a monetary point of view.

Personally I can’t stand The Pope. He stands for everything I find hard to understand about the human race. I don’t see that he serves a useful purpose, other than to "make stuff up". The only good use I can see for the Vatican City is to bulldoze it down and make it into farmland. Feeding people, now there’s an idea that doesn’t involve sitting on your bum and praying/doing nothing.

Tags: Atheism //