Hi, I’m Wayne Jones, and welcome to re:Christian, a critical and satirical reconsideration of Christianity, the Bible, and God. This is episode 24: “OK, We’ll Start Killing Each Other Again after the Holidays.”
One of the many ridiculousnesses of wars is that it is pretty common for the combatants to agree to take a break because one or other side is celebrating a significant religious holiday. This has always struck me as hilarious, not in the sense of someone slipping on a banana peel, but in the sense of the utter irony and hypocrisy of it all. If one were to summarize so that another species (you know, an intelligent species) on other planets could understand, it would go something like this: Side 1 is dedicated to this set of beliefs, which include love of all other sides and especially faith in and love for God 1. Side 2 is dedicated in this other set of beliefs, which still include love of all other sides and especially faith in and love for God 2. They fight because they claim to love other sides, because that looks great on paper, but they really do not. But appearances have to be kept up at all costs, so if the side we are currently fighting with has a big holiday on their religious calendar, we’ll stop killing each other. And we expect the same from them: no killing us while we’re on holiday.
Right.
The leader of a country that is currently at war with another is able to say this with a straight face and We the Sheepish just look up for a sec and then go back to grazing. Another typical ploy is for neither of the sides to want to be so honest as to admit or accept a plea from the other side for such a break, and so the United Nations or some other putatively sensible body will solemnly issue the plea on the holidaying side’s behalf. Because that side is not just hypocritical, but also lying cowards as well.
I wonder how many wars that humans have fought since we have been humans? I just checked Britannica online and by its (in my opinion) narrow definition, there have been 137 wars in the last 3,300 years. That’s about 4 every 100 years. In passing, here are a few cute names of wars you may have never heard of:
- the Pig War
- the War of the Eight Saints
- the Phony War (no, not kidding)
- the War of the Three Henrys
- and the Hundred Years’ War (which lasted 116 years)
I am not sure why the War on Christmas and the battle I have been having with my condo board are not mentioned. Talk about bias.
In one of the two big wars that are currently going on at the same time, that call for a holiday pause for Ramadan was issued and there was not a WTAF? to be heard anywhere. I presume that people all thought, Sure, that makes sense.
That one, the one in Gaza and Israel, has some delightful additions to it apart from the hypocrisy and the, well, you know, killing. A thousand people were killed by one side in a day, and the other side has retaliated by killing about 33,000 in the last four months. I like the Israeli side not only adding genocide to the mix (let’s wipe them all out! and then have our own holiday!!) but also disallowing food aid (let’s starve them to death!) and then sometimes killing them when they came to the trucks that had food aid (ha, gotcha!).
The concept of religious people fighting wars and killing people should make no sense of course. Partly it’s the utter dumbness of our own mentally challenged species: “Hey, they did something I didn’t like so I am going to start shooting pieces of metal real fast into their soldiers, and lie about it when we also shoot pieces of metal into their civilians.” We atheists, who because of theists and the abyss of meaning, have more cause to be fighting wars, but we don’t band together and do so. Partly it’s because we are assigned only 80 or so years on this planet anyway, so who wants to risk shortening that? Partly it’s because we spend all day either committing disgustingly illegal and immoral acts because we believe in nothing, and partly it’s because we’re at home reading books about rationality and the history of doubt. Oh, and scrolling through YouTube Shorts. (If you haven’t seen Ben and Zara, you’re missing out.)
It’s difficult to live in this world and not be a hypocrite. By being an atheist, I simply have just eliminated one of the channels for it. I try not to be, but I’ve been a hypocrite too, and may be one now as we speak, but I’m virtually certain I’ve never killed anyone nor attempted genocide. Hey, where’s my fucking trophy? Christianity has contributed much to the world’s culture, there is no denying that, but I wonder if on balance it has done more good than it has done bad. Perhaps some mathematical historian has already done that calculation. I’m only left with guessing or speculating. And I always come back to the same basic facts. If you support the thesis that those who call themselves Christian always all the time practice all the tenets of that religion—which of course is not true, but just humour me for a minute—then over 2 billion people believe in some pretty dubious supernatural “facts,” and therefore have either abandoned evidence as the way of forming knowledge about things, or have set a pretty low bar. So that means that if you think a virgin gave birth and a dead man came alive and ascended to the sky, then you may also be prone to believing other things that are on their face obviously impossible (or at least lack evidence).
When I think about it all, which is alas often, in a sense I don’t blame Christians. I see our species, which ludicrously has sapiens in its name (from the Latin for, wait for it, wise), as the main handicap we are working with. We’re not that bright in the aggregate or in the larger proportions. Sure, we’re smarter than most snails and slugs, and a few of us have come up with cellphones and the theory of relativity, but most of us have to be careful that we don’t scratch up our knuckles as we shuffle around from bullshit to bullshit every day. God help us.
And that’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. Check the show notes for a transcript, sources, and contact information. And please join me again on Thursday.