Empty grave day

OK, if we're all done navel gazing for a while, how does the holiest day in Christendom look to an atheist? Like one of the really sour ones I mean.

So I'm a militant atheist, driving around town just before Easter. I'm all white knuckled on the steering wheel, which is not unusual cause I'm always mad about something. "Look at those idiots and their fairy tales. Don't they know how much blood has been shed over centuries for such nonsense? Don't they see the world would be a better place without religion?" Maybe Mr. militant atheist would be thinking that.

Yeah, John Lennon song. I really liked it before I understood what it meant. The old standby, that religion is to blame for all the world's ills. Must be comforting to those who have little else. While the existence of God can't be empirically proved or disproved, this garbage about religion causing violence won't stand a few glances at recorded history.

Who was Alexander trying to convert? The answer is nobody. He wanted to kill people and take their stuff. Humans don't require any theology at all to pillage a village. Oh sure, trot 'em out now. Crusades, the Inquisition and the Salem witch trials. Even if one swallows that an atheist world would have no interest in conquest and opression of others, these historical events represent only a tiny fraction of organized murder throughout history. Granted that'd be little comfort to a person being burned alive of course. But if we throw militant atheism a bone and allow that Crusades, Inquisition and witch trials wouldn't have occured in an atheist world, it prevents far less than one percent of all organized murder.

It's curious that militant atheism continues to point to stuff like the Inquisition as a means of damning all organized religion, and they never get the punch line to their own joke. Well, they're generally a fairly humorless lot I guess. See, if there is no God, what does it matter if humans get slaughtered? We have no intrinsic value, we're just complex organisms so who cares?

Oh they see the underlying illogic, some of them are pretty sharp cookies. Their protestations about sectarian carnage are an attempt to invalidate faith as a force in the lives of others. Something compels them to attempt to steal from other hearts a thing which they themselves can't use.

Well keep it up lads, if it gives you some semblance of comfort in your joyless existences. The whole Roman Empire couldn't destroy Christianity, it's all gone and the grave is still empty.