Godless And Free

by Pat Condell

  As for Iraq, you know as well as I do that virtually everybody on the planet wants the troops out of Iraq now, except for the idiot in the White House, the same one that you helped get re-elected, by the way, the last time you popped up on our screens, remember, you interfering son of a bitch?

  Because the truth is you wanted the war to continue every bit as much as he did. You wanted Muslims slaughtered and at each others’ throats, purely to embarrass the Americans, which is all you really care about, isn’t it, you hypocrite?

  You know, Osama, there are over a billion Muslims living on this planet, and I think every single one of them should be cursing you for what you’ve done to their religion, because you’ve actually achieved the impossible – you’ve set Islam back several hundred years, so that even for someone like me making this video it’s very difficult not to resort to obscenities, especially when there’s more obscenity in what you stand for than I could possibly generate in cursing you and all your worthless ancestors back to the year dot, you cowardly violent scumbag, you self-righteous piece of shit.

  But hey, I don’t want to get abusive here, because that creates enemies. On the other hand, you’re already my enemy, so what the hell, you murdering lump of slime.

  However, I want to make it very clear that the idiot in the White House is also my enemy, just in case you thought I was taking sides. Of course he’s a much bigger enemy to the troops he actually sent to Iraq. In fact he’s probably the greatest enemy they’ve got. He’s also now an enemy to his own people, thanks to you and your activities, Osama, on this very day six years ago when you deliberately attacked civilians like the unprincipled oil slick you are.

  Now, thanks to the sacred war on freedom, I mean terror, America has something called the Patriot Act, which is essentially a charter for fascism in the land of the free.

  It could have been written by Hitler, somebody with whom I think you would have a lot in common. After all, a bunker or a cave. Ultimately there’s only one way out, isn’t there?

  Anyway, Osama, I can’t stay around chatting all day. I just wanted to say thanks for the offer, but, as you can see, it would be impossible for me to become a Muslim, even if I wanted to. How fortunate for me that I don’t want to.

  Besides, you know what? I think I’d probably be a bit of a Catholic Muslim, if you know what I mean, and what a combination that would be, eh? Look out Jews. Only kidding, Jews. It was a joke.

  Peace everyone, that’s all we really want, isn’t it? Well, most of us.

  24.

  Hello Angry Christians

  September 25, 2007

  Hi everyone. I’d like to thank all the angry born again Christians who have been writing to tell me how much they’re looking forward to my eternal torment in the flames of hell. It’s nice to know that I’m in your prayers.

  And you are rubbing your hands with gleeful anticipation, too, some of you, by the sounds of it, when you’re not furiously typing pages and pages of scripture. And yet if I call you crazy, apparently I’m the one who’s being offensive. It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?

  To be fair, I do actually sympathise to some extent. It must be quite galling for religious people to see atheists like me going about their business without a shred of guilt or self-loathing, and not in the least inclined to pray or do penance of any kind, and not in the slightest bit worried about any form of eternal punishment. I have to admit if I was religious I’d probably think to myself: “How come I’ve got all this weight on my shoulders while these bums are getting a free ride?”

  And I don’t even think that I’d be comforted either, as some of you clearly are, by the prospect of their eternal torture in the flames of hell, roasting in agony and tormented by demons, because I don’t really buy that scenario. I think if hell does exist it’s probably not a place where you physically burn forever, but perhaps a metaphor for something more subtle that consumes from within. Something like eternal regret, perhaps. Something not done, not challenged, not risked, not loved enough. Or maybe it’s just burning in fire. I don’t want to get heavy about it.

  I mean it’s bad enough that Jesus died for my sins – I still haven’t really gotten over that. (And thanks for reminding me about that yet again, by the way.) I do feel somewhat guilty that I’m not more grateful to Jesus, but I just wish he had taken the trouble to ask me before he went ahead with it, because now I feel I’m being billed for something I didn’t order.

  And that really is the deal, isn’t it, if you’re a Christian. You’re born already in debt to Jesus, and it’s a debt you can only repay in full by dying.

  That’s some deal you’ve got yourself into there. That’s like being asked to pay off the mortgage on a house that you already own.

  Especially as there’s no hard historical evidence that the Jesus of the Gospels even existed. What records we do have were written by people who were born long after he died, so they were just passing on what they had heard.

  And of course the same is true of the Gospels themselves.

  Curious, isn’t it, that nobody who was actually writing anything down at the time appears to have known anything about Jesus, despite the fantastic miracles he was performing, the multitudes he was preaching to, and of course his momentous and spectacular public demise.

  And don’t forget this is a guy whose birth was marked by a celestial event, who was born by a miracle to a virgin in the year 6 BCnt color="#000"> – two miracles for the price of one, talk about hit the ground running! And then it was one miracle after another; fed the multitude, healed the sick, walked on water, raised the dead, was nailed to a plank and came back to life again. How can nobody have heard of him? He should have been the talk of the desert. He should have been as famous as Elvis.

  And yet all we’ve got is hearsay; second and third hand accounts which have been doctored and edited and translated through a hedge backwards so many times that the truth no longer even bears any resemblance to itself, if it ever did.

  So I don’t know who you think you’re praying to, but it doesn’t seem to have done you much good, does it? Maybe you should try praying to Elvis for a while, see how that works out. I mean at least we know that Elvis actually existed.

  But just because Jesus is a storybook character that doesn’t mean he’s not a good character. It doesn’t mean he hasn’t got wisdom to impart.

  Didn’t he say the kingdom of heaven is within? Luke 17, verse 21, I think it was. And what a useful piece of information that is when you think about it. Now I realise that, as an angry Christian, you probably pay lip service to those words, but you don’t really believe them, and so, for you, it doesn’t happen. And clearly it hasn’t happened, otherwise you wouldn’t be so angry, would you?

  Turn the other cheek, forgive trespasses, love your enemy? That’s a foreign language to you. No, you want punishment, don’t you? You want eternal torture. You want unimaginable suffering, for your own satisfaction.

  So I think it’s probably just as well that Jesus didn’t exist, because if he came back and he saw what people like you have made of his teachings, he’d quickly realise that nobody has listened to a word he said, that he was wasting his breath, and that he’d wasted his life.

  Oh well, we’ve all got our cross to bear.

  Peace to everyone, especially Christians, both inside and outside the kingdom of heaven.

  25.

  More Demands from Islam

  October 9, 2007

  Well, it’s a gloomy rainy old day to be here in London, but it could be worse – I could be in Saudi Arabia, where men are men and women are cattle. Can I say that?

  The Saudi Arabian Human Rights Commission, now there’s a collection of words to boggle the mind, but apparently this organisation does actually exist, and they intend to complain later this month at an event in Copenhagen that Muslims living in Europe are denied human rights and are not allowed to freely practise their faith.

  How about that? Being lectured in human rights by Saudi
Arabia. What’s next, animal welfare from the Koreans? Does it get much more surreal? you ask. Well, yes, apparently it does. Because they also want us to stop linking Islam with terrorism, which is pretty rich coming from the guardians of Islam and the guardians of terrorism.

  In a sane society, the guy who actually stands up to make this speech would be bum-rushed out the door the moment he opened his mouth. Or even better, run out of town on a rail and dumped in the river.

  But this is Europe, so instead we’ll probably listen to what he’s got to say and take it all on board, and then change our way of doing things, as usual.

  Just this week in the UK we’ve been told that a leading supermarket chain is now allowing Muslim checkout staff not to handle alcohol if they don’t want to. So you can bet your life they’ll now be lining up around the block to not want to. We’ve had a pharmacist refusing to sell birth control because of religion; we’ve had a Muslim dentist who refused to treat a woman because she wasn’t wearing a headscarf, and now we’ve been told that some Muslim doctors are refusing to treat certain people because of their precious faith.

  Well, here in the UK we have a technical term for this kind of behaviour. We call it taking the piss. And we don’t like people taking the piss. It gets up our nose, and it gives us the right hump. (It’s a cultural thing.)

  If Muslims are really as downtrodden as the Saudis would like us to believe, why are there currently plans for a Saudi funded gigantic mosque to be built right here in London? The largest mosque in Europe, no less. (Eat your heart out, Denmark; we know you’d love to have it, but we’re getting it instead.) And it’s going to be built right next to the site for the 2012 Olympic Games, if they can get planning permission.

  Even some local Muslims have been protesting about this plan. They say they’ll be marginalised because this mosque will be run by extremists for extremists, which means it’s pretty much guaranteed to get the go ahead, and the London Olympics will doubtless be dominated by a mosque the size of a football stadium.

  I don’t know if the marathon will be interrupted for prayers, or if female athletes will be required to compete wearing a tent, though I’m sure if the mad mullah of multiculturalism, Ken Livingstone,* the mayor of London, has anything to do with it, that won’t be too far off the agenda.

  The fact that the Saudis feel they can get away with this cynical bullshit just shows how far we’ve already allowed ourselves to be pushed here in Europe.

  Radical Islam has seen us for what we are, a soft touch. It sees that political correctness is like a drug that we just can’t stop injecting, even though we know it’s going to kill us. And they’re taking full advantage of that, turning our sense of fairness against us, and making us despise ourselves for one of our best qualities.

  And any concession made will be seen as a sign of weakness to be exploited further, because there is no dialogue with radical Islam. It doesn’t want to be agreed with. It wants to be obeyed. It thinks it has the God-given right, aptly enough, to make the rules, not just for Muslims, but for everyone. And some of us, frankly, think that’s a little bit too much to ask. And if you think that’s unreasonable, all I can say is my freedom is more important than your faith. Much, much more important.

  And besides, I just have this natural aversion to being bullied and pushed around by bigoted misogynistic ignoramuses, and I say that with all due respect.

  And before somebody accuses me again of insulting Islam, please grow up. I don’t need to insult Islam when there are already so many Muslims willing to do it for me every time they strap on a suicide belt or stone somebody to death for the crime of having a private life. These are the people who insult Islam, not people like me.

  Of course I realise Islamofascists take pretty much every criticism as an insult by default. But to be fair to them, it would be difficult to think of a compliment, wouldn’t it? What do you say? “Nice jihad. Like the dogma. Way to go with the bigotry and hate.” There’s not much scope really, is there?

  But these are the people who are actually insulting Islam. And these are the true enemies of Muslims.

  And the biggest enemy of all is the royal family of Saudi Arabia, because it’s thanks to their activities, funding and encouraging cold blooded murder in the name of religious dogma, that Islam is feared and resented all over the civilised world, not because of people like me. And the Muslim population needs to take that fact on board and recognise it.

  As for us in the West, well, our good friends the Saudis are waging war against us, and we’re so fat and complacent we don’t even know it. So maybe we deserve everything we get.

  People have said to me: “You know, you’re pronouncing that wrong. It’s not Sordi, it’s Sowdi.”

  Well, OK, fair enough, I’m happy to pronounce it Sowdi. I’d be even happier if the country was just called Arabia, and the medieval wackos who currently run it were back in the desert living in their tents with their livestock where they belong.

  In fact, I’m looking forward to the day when we finally wean ourselves off oil altogether and pull out of the Middle East, and then Sordi and Sowdi Arabia can quietly revert back into the Stone Age, unless they manage to exploit their other great natural resource and start exporting egg timers.

  Now that might even be something worth praying for. Peace.

  * Thankfully, he was voted out in 2008.

  26.

  What’s Good About Religion?

  October 23, 2007

  If you believe, as I do, that the purpose of religion is to suck all the pleasure out of life and spit it in your eye, then you might have trouble thinking of anything positive to say about it. But I think it’s important to try, if just for a sense of balance, so that’s why I’ve decided to think of one or two nice things that I can say about each of the main religions, in particular the three monotheistic dogmas which have plagued… I mean enriched, our civilisation for so many centuries. The three desert dogmas, as I like to think of them, because between them they’ve done so much to make a desert of the human soul.

  Let’s begin with Islam. Now in the current climate of intimidation and special pleading you might think it would be hard to say anything nice about Islam, but I can think of a couple of things. Firstly, I like their symbol, the crescent moon. I find it much more attractive than the cross, possibly because it doesn’t have anybody nailed to it.

  Also, whenever you see film of a large mosque full of worshippers praying together, I like the synchronised bowing. I think that’s always very well done.

  Also, of course, we have radical Islam to thank for showing us so graphically what a huge problem religion can become. If not for all the hysterical self-righteous bullying that we’ve been subjected to in recent years, many of us might still be labouring under the illusion that religion is relatively harmless. So thanks to radical Islam for the heads up on that one.

  What I like most about Christianity is that it’s not Islam, which is a major bonus in my opinion. Unfortunately it is Christianity, which kind of takes most of the shine off it for me.

  I like the fact that the Inquisition is over, and that Christian history is no longer being written in blood. I think that’s quite a positive development

  And recently the Vatican hosted a conference on astronomy, which is quite remarkable, given their track record in that area. I mean it was only a few years ago that the Catholic Church finally got around to admitting that Galileo may be right after all about the earth travelling around the sun.

  And that, too, was a very positive thing, because they didn’t have to say anything. They could have just kept it quiet, and then millions of Catholics would have been none the wiser.

  And of course you can understand why it took them five hundred years to get around to it. With a question of that importance they wouldn’t want to rush into any hasty judgments and risk making fools of themselves.

  What do I like about Judaism? Well, not a great deal, to be perfectly honest, except for the fact that it doesn
’t preach itself into your face every chance it gets, which I think is a very underrated quality, and one which should be widely imitated.

  Also of course the Jews have got the oldest of the three dogmas, yet they’re the ones who are still waiting for their messiah. And you just know damn well that if he did turn up they’d nail him up for blasphemy again, which is an idea that has always quite amused me, because one thing we should remember is that religion can be a source of great humour, as well as great tragedy, guilt, self-loathing, fear, misery, cruelty, and pain.

  Outside of the Abrahamic triangle of insanity, what I like about Hinduism is that they’re vegetarians, which I think is a very civilised way to be. (I think they go a little overboard with the cows, but that’s their business.) But mainly because Hinduism is not actively trying to take over the world in the way Islam is, and I think that’s a very attractive quality in any religion that’s nine hundred million strong.

  As for Buddhism, well what can I say? A religion with no god. Magnificent. Like a prison with no walls.

  So you see, there are plenty of positive things that you can find to say about religion if you look for them.

  Now you can say to me: “Well, OK, this is all well and good; you’re clearly making an effort to be positive here,but the fact remains that religion is really just a hedge against death. It’s an expensive insurance policy which will disappear in a puff of smoke the moment you try to claim on it.” And yes, you may well be right about that.

  In fact, you might even further argue that anyone who gets their morals unquestioningly from some ancient text might as well get their personality from a microchip. And again I’d find it hard to argue with that point of view.

  Religion, you tell me, doesn’t have any answers because it doesn’t ask any questions; you’ve rejected it time and time again but it won’t take no for an answer, and you don’t want to be nice about it any more. You’re sick to your back teeth of hearing about people’s beliefs and their gods and their scriptures and their precious goddam faith, and you wish that they would take their ridiculous superstitions, and all their cruel and petty stupid little rules and regulations and shove them where the sun doesn’t shine. Some kind of black hole, perhaps, is what you’ve got in mind. And I can certainly relate to that.