Outrage and frustration

Empathy, putting yourself into someone else's shoes and understanding how they feel, is the greatest of all human emotions; without it there can be no love or peace.

We god-free humanists are passionate people, we care, we feel things deeply, we have a very strong and deeply felt sense of moral values, we know what is right and what is wrong and we ask our religious friends to use empathy to understand some of the outrage and frustration we feel.

We put people first - here and now - in the one life we share together.

Religious people put their gods and their after-lives first - that's how they can justify committing such hateful acts in the here and now.

Religious people do not have a personal set of moral values that they have worked out for themselves - instead they have to rely on external sources - holy books and scholars. They don't think for themselves - which explains why they can commit hateful acts "because it says so in our holy book."

Why do we feel outrage and frustration?

We know many religious people who are moderate in their views and moderate in their actions.

We know many religious people who do wonderful work in the community in a totally no-strings-attached, non-evangelical way. We believe that they would still be good people, and still do good works, without god and religion. Those who abandon religion do not suddenly lose their moral values or desire to help others!

Unfortunately it is the other things associated with religion, all religions, that cause us to be outraged and frustrated.

Where are religious moral values when it comes to these?

• Over the last 2,000 years millions of people have been killed or maimed in disputes about religion.
• Personal belief has been turned into the power structures of organised religion - the Roman Catholic Church is the worst power structure of the lot.
• Religions attempt to control everything in people's lives: their sex lives, how they dress, who they mix with, what they can/cannot do and how they think.
• Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed as heretics because their views were not the same as those of religious organisations.
• Intellectual thinkers have been tortured and killed because what they had discovered and what they said, disagreed with religious orthodoxy.
• Religious organisations supported slavery, kept slaves themselves and were financially compensated when they were forced to give them up.
• In our newspapers and on the TV news we see continuous violence, murder, torture and war in the name of religion.
• We continue to see great armies opposing one another with one side blessed by priests of one religion and the other by priests of another.
• We see countries ruled by religious law where women are stoned to death for adultery and where people are mutilated for petty crimes.
• We see political leaders of powerful nations turning to their gods for advice before they declare war.
• We see thousands of innocent people killed and maimed in conflicts justified in the name of religion.
• We see those of the same religion splitting into endless sects - many violently opposed to one another.
• We see claims for a single benevolent god yet we see a world torn apart in his name.
• In segregated religious schools we see our tax money being used to instruct children in the beliefs of a single religion - in total ignorance of other religions and with no reference to the possibility of enjoying a good and happy life without god, religion or superstition.
• We see worship and religion forced on children in state schools and we see an RE syllabus that pays lip service to teaching about religion when many really want children to learn from religions - whatever that means.
• We see an RE syllabus where teachers, advisors, SACREs, religious leaders, politicians and government departments are wooly thinkers, afraid to put the basic philosophical and historical issues before children.
• We see Christian and Muslim religious extremists allowed to set up segregated religious school with 100% funding by us as taxpayers.
• We see religious groups discriminating, sometimes violently, sometimes with executions, against people because of their gender or their sexuality.
• We see religious men so insecure in their sexuality and so lacking in control of their lusts that they turn their anger and fear against women and homosexuals.
• We see religions treating women as second class citizens who must pray separately and who can never become religious leaders or equals.
• We see artists, authors and playwrights requiring bodyguards because of threats from bigoted religious groups.
• We see TV programmes and theatre plays cancelled because of threats of violence by bigoted religious groups.
• We see religious groups so afraid of criticism of their ideas that they take things personally and threaten violence against anyone who dares to criticise them
• We see the Church of England, previously the most moderate of all sects, moving to the right as it is torn apart by disputes over homosexuality.
• We see religions denying women the right to control their family size by using contraception.
• We see women denied legal abortions and being forced to turn to back-street abortionists. 200,000 Polish women had illegal abortions in 2006 and hundreds have died in El Salvador and Poland in 2007 as a direct result of the Catholic inspired ban on legal abortion - under any circumstances including rape, incest and sexual abuse (by priests or others.).
• We see the sexual perversion that is celibacy leading to the Catholic church paying billions in compensation for the rape and sodomy of children by its priests.
• We see tens of thousands dying of AIDS because religious pressure groups prevent their governments from providing condoms.
• We see a people in Israel, psychologically damaged for generations by the Nazi holocaust, lashing out against the Palestinian people simply because they happened to own and live on the land that god had promised to someone else. Not the Palestinians' god of course, someone else's god.

We are disgusted and outraged with what was done in the past, and continues to be done today, in the name of religion.

We do not accept that these evil things are a result of faulty interpretation of religious holy books - they are at the very heart of religion, they are the very result of the infinite disputes that arise between one priest and another, one congregation and another, one church and another, one sect and another and one religion and another.

We do not accept the pleading of our religious friends that "this is all down to people who have got it wrong" or "their scholars have misinterpreted the text" or "their religion is wrong, our religion is right."

Those who commit evil in the name of religion read the same holy books, listen to the same holy men and worship in the same places as those of moderate opinion.

And you wonder why we feel outraged and frustrated!

Of course we are outraged and frustrated!

We are god-free humanists, we put people first and foremost, we do not see any justification for threats, violence and murder in the name of any belief. Religions preach one thing but their followers do another - we are surrounded by hypocrites who put the interests of their gods before the interests of humanity.

To us, religion itself is the cause of most of the world's ills. Based on body count alone, religion is a force for evil, not a force for good.

We want a government warning nailed to the door of every chapel, meeting house, church, temple, synagogue, mosque and other place of worship: