The water of life

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Duration: 5 minutes and 57 seconds

Country: United Kingdom

Language: English

License: CC - Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives

Genre: Video Blog

Producer: www.patcondell.net

Director: Pat Condell

Views: 4,626 (125 embedded)

Posted by: patcondell on Dec 23, 2008

Cheers, and a merry Christmas to everyone.

You can download an audio version of this video at http://patcondell.libsyn.com

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Hi, everyone. As some of you may know, I've been away for a while
on a drugs binge. Not only that, it was an atheist drugs binge,
which makes it a thousand times worse. At least I hope it does.
But now that I'm back in some kind of reasonable shape
I just thought I'd make this video, firstly to wish everybody a merry Christmas
whether they like it or not, and also to answer a couple of points
that people have made to me recently.
Somebody said: "You're not going to win the battle of ideas
by insulting people you disagree with."
Which is a fair point. Or it would be if we were engaged in a battle of ideas.
But unfortunately religion doesn't have ideas. It has dogma.
And the purpose of dogma is to get in the way of ideas,
to stamp them out and kill them off before they succeed in changing anything.
Because, as everyone knows, change to religion
is pretty much what kryptonite is to Superman.
It's about as welcome as garlic to a vampire
because it threatens the position of those who control religion
for their own narrow ignorant selfish ends.
And secondly, I don't insult people because I disagree with them;
people who believe in things like spiritualism or astrology,
even though I don't believe in those things myself.
Although I have to say I think the planets do influence our lives
mainly by not crashing into us, which I think is quite considerate of them, really.
But if astrologers were demanding special privileges all the time
and insisting that their beliefs be allowed to dictate the behaviour of others
then I'd probably adopt rather a different tone.
If astrologers enjoyed a tax-exempt status which they routinely abused
to meddle in politics and force their values into other people's lives,
or if they reacted with fury, threatening to kill people
for the slightest criticism of their beliefs,
or if astrologers were allowed to indoctrinate young children
before their minds were fully formed, and if they then
molested many of these children, and protected each other from justice
while insisting that women and homosexuals not be allowed to practise astrology
because they're women and homosexuals, then one or two insults might slip out.
That's how it works. And I don't apologise for that.
Why should I, when religion has the barefaced cheek
to claim moral authority over us, when anyone can see
it doesn't even have any moral awareness.
How can it have, when it's so insulated from self-examination
by its blind obedience to scripture?
It seems like hardly a week goes by these days
that we don't have to listen to some mealy-mouthed clergyman
complaining that secularism is going to lead to moral anarchy
and the breakdown of society.
As if people really are stupid enough to swallow this shallow-minded
self-serving bullshit.
Obviously, nobody wants to live in a moral vacuum.
Well, nobody outside politics and banking.
But, far from filling this vacuum, as it always claims,
religion has actually caused it by using scripture
as a vacuous substitute for genuine morality,
by denying people the chance to formulate their own more substantial
moral bearings in the only place you find anything of real value, and that's within.
If it hasn't come from within it isn't worth a damn,
and you know that in your heart.
You know it's been put on like a cheap Sunday suit
and it's as phoney as a clip-on bowtie.
If you get your morals uncritically from scripture
you're really no better than a dog who's afraid to steal the meat
because he knows he'll be whipped.
He'd love that meat more than anything, but, like you,
his finely tuned moral compass keeps him on the straight and narrow.
What a good dog he is.
Of course, a dog doesn't have a soul, apparently,
so he doesn't have the problem of having to live forever,
but you do, and you know that you'll be whipped forever
if you even think about touching that meat, you bad dog, you miserable sinner.
Now, maybe this doesn't apply to you because you're a happy worshipper.
Maybe you embrace the Lord every day with a joyful heart.
And that's great. But surely you realise that
the moment you change your mind about the Lord and stop embracing him
you're setting yourself up for some terrible eternal torture.
Don't you ever feel as if somebody is shooting at your feet to make you dance?
Because that's how it looks to a neutral observer.
Maybe that's just my ignorance talking,
because that's something else I get accused of quite a lot.
Somebody said recently: 'Clearly you just don't understand
what a person's faith actually means to them."
"For me", she said, "it's like the water of life."
And I thought what a great phrase - the water of life,
without which, of course, there can be no life.
But even the water of life needs to be contained and properly managed
or it can run out of control, get into places where it doesn't belong,
and cause real damage.
For example, if the water of your life gets together with
the water of other people's lives, and they form a deluge,
a rushing torrent of righteous certainty that sweeps all before it,
including reason, then it's not so much the water of life any more, is it?
It's rapidly turning into the water of death,
as everything in its path is crushed; original, thought,
rational enquiry, free speech, and their tattered remnants
are strewn upon the rocks of scripture and blind dogma.
What's needed here, obviously, is a dam
to contain this water of death, convert it back into the water of life,
and give us all a chance to switch on a lightbulb in our minds.
And that's where secularism comes in.
It's everybody's friend - believer and non-believer alike,
which I think makes it the real water of life.
At least almost as much as this stuff here.
Beer. Cheers.
Now that's what I call the water of life.
A merry Christmas to everyone, especially to all you Islamist crackpots
who think that celebrating Christmas is a sin.
Of course it is. That's why it's fun. Peace.

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