He hates athiests and loves hair dye
Archbishop Anthony Fisher today decided to let the world know that he’s rather stupid. He used his inaugural Easter message to blame atheism for the ills of the 20th century, namely Nazism, Stalinism and Pol-Pottery.
What a dull cookie – particularly owing to the fact that he belongs to a church that is currently headed by someone who belonged to he Hitler youth and may have protected child molesters.
The reference to Nazism is regrettable, but it gets worse. He’s been so absorbed in his faith for so long he doesn’t realise: People don’t believe in Christianity because logic seems to indicate that a creator set up an intricate set of rules and laws that govern the natural universe and then occasionally breaks them for us if we ask him; they believe because that makes them feel good.
I was at the police station this afternoon complaining about bureaucracy to Khan, my friend and mechanic. Khan had found my motorbike at the police station, it’d been stolen a few months earlier – and we were trying to get it back. I was having difficulty proving that it was my bike, and the police were having difficulty explaining why they had it in the first place.
When I was done whining, Khan had a go: His hands had developed arthritis which was making it very difficult for him to twist spanners and all that jazz, so I suggested he eat more fish. He said he couldn’t cook it nor afford it because his wife’s recent cesarean section had put her out of action (so no cooking and no job), which meant he had to cook for her with his bung wrists. I asked why his wife’s mum didn’t cook (she lives with them) and he told me she’d recently fallen and was now paralyzed from the neck down, probably for the rest of her life. He had to look after her too.
Khan hadn’t slept properly in two months, because his two month old C-section son was very ill and crying and needed constant monitoring. I suggested he take a few days off from his workshop to look after his family, but he explained that he’d lose customers, and without the income from his workshop, there wouldn’t be enough money for the various medical expenses he had to pay for his wrists, his wife’s antibiotics and dressing, his son’s medicine, and his mother-in-law’s everything. Plus, they’d all go hungry – those four, and his nephew (who he looks after since his brother died), his older son and his daughter. He now looks after all eight of them (I’ve forgotten one, probably another niece) single-handedly; they live in a room that measures about four by four metres in a shitty part of Mumbai. I’ve visited him there – it’s dank, smelly and cramped.
‘Uppar wale ka hath mein hai’ he said to put me at ease when I’d run out of helpful suggestions and had resorted to apologising like it was all my fault. It means ‘It’s all in God’s hands’ or more specifically ‘the upstairs guy’.
That’s why he has faith – because it gives him strength to keep going in the face of incredible odds. Were he an atheist, he’d be inclined to believe that he’s in a rather unwinnable situation – with his ability to earn diminishing, and a brand new expensive son to add to his already huge burden, he’s kinda fucked. Belief in intercessory power (a god that intervenes) is all that gives him hope.
I’m an atheist of luxury – I don’t need god to solve my problems, because my problems involve trying to figure out who I’ll need to bribe at the impound so I can get back my fancy, shiny, noisy, penis on wheels. I’m an asshole.
So I wonder – even if it is a fantasy, perhaps his fantasy is helping him more than I am.
Perhaps you could offer Khan a seat?
But then I have a lurking suspicion that faith put him in his helpless situation, that if we chose to live as equals without irrational beliefs there would not be such incredible inequality; that if he could wear condoms he wouldn’t have had yet another child; that the poor, the uneducated and the downtrodden like him are used as fodder for the power-hungry elite like Fisher; and that if the Catholic Church really gave two shits about anyone at all they’d stop being such money-hungry child-molesting festering puss-filled weeping wounds on the backside of humanity.
Christians who wear the bracelets and chant the mantra “What would Jesus do?” Listen up: He’d come here and kick ass. What did he do? He was a wonderful man who tried his hardest to destroy a harmful religion because he saw it sucking the life out of humanity. He was worldly, educated, and brought a lot of Hinduism into Christianity.
He only got angry when he went to temples because they were money hungry, he hated the exclusivity of Judaism so he opened it up for the Gentiles, he hated the idea of eternal suffering so he offered the hope of salvation, and he thought bacon tasted nice. He stood against everything that Judaism stands for, if you ask me.
If he came back he’d be Luke Skywalker, and he’d light-saber this evil Senator Palpatine, Hitler Youth prick who’s spreading aids in Africa, and he’d love Khan even though Khan’s a Muslim, because Khan is nice and cares about people and he looks after my bike.
A video of me and my penis on wheels:
nice article as usual mate keep them coming…and feel free to visit me in SIngapore anytime!
Q