God, you wanker. You fucking idiot. You twat. You've fucked up the whole world with your stupid, stupid fucking religion. If nobody believed in you we'd all be happily going along thinking, "This is all there is so we'd better make the most of it," and, "Fuck me, we've got one planet and if we don't look after it we're in deep shit." But no. No. You had to be there didn't you. Or make that 'you had to make people think you're there'. Even though you're not there, but if you were... well, how fucked up does it have to get for you to just shout down and say to us all, "Look, you little human bastards, this is how I want to be worshipped," and then send down a list of all the things we have to do to make you happy, so that we all know what the crack is, we all have the same religion and we're not all fighting with the ones who believe in different ways.

Because it's like this isn't it: there's this book, and apparently you put it into people's heads, so they wrote it down and we're all supposed to believe it. Nope. No can do. For one thing it's too fucking long, for another it's too fucking weird, and for a third thing it's so out of date it would be illegal to sell it if it was food and it would probably poison everyone. Which, by sheer coincidence (not) is exactly what the book does. No fucker understands it. No, let's be more specific. Everyone who reads it understands it in a different way from everyone else. So what's the point? Are you proud of that, God? Are you proud of writing a book which isn't even intelligible to the people who want to believe it?

Let's do a comparison: the people who write the manuals for putting together a Boeing 747 are pretty specific. If they missed something out or they were a bit vague, or worse still if something could be interpreted in two or more ways, the whole flying hunk of metal would probably come crashing down or maybe never even get up in the air in the first place. There are some seriously accurate specifications in the tech manuals for a commercial airliner. Fuck, even Ikea do instruction manuals well enough so that most people can put up their weird hippy bedroom furniture without turning it into a pile of sticks and an amateur modern art project. But the Bible? Vague. Fucking vague. Jeebus even admits that he wants to be vague by talking in parables so that most people are confused and haven't got a fucking clue what he's jabbering on about. Why? Who knows?

If there was no Bible we'd be cool. We'd all be pagans again, believing in all the gods all the time, a bit like the Hindus, maybe a bit like the Greeks and Romans and whoever - before the intolerant monotheist motherfuckers came along the Romans were cool. "Hey, whatever religion you want, whatever gods you have, that's okay, so long as you respect everyone else's gods we'll respect yours." That's what it was like, but the Christians weren't having any of it. Not a bit of it. Fuck that say the Jesus freaks, it's the one God and nobody else's and we're not respecting your religion because that's what we're like - intolerant tossers who just want it our way and can't stand seeing you have a good time.

And you wonder why the Christians were persecuted? Not for them the 'live and let live', and where the fuck is 'turn the other cheek' when it comes to letting other people have their own set of beliefs? "Sorry, when we get into power you're all fucked," say the Christians (except they probably didn't use the bad words, and it was probably all in Latin, or maybe Greek). Soon as they're in, pagan religions get persecuted and wiped out. Bastards.

So God, back to you. You sent down this book, apparently, and not just one book, there were 66 of em, and they all got smushed together and now people think it's the word of God. The confusing word of God. If it was supposed to be a manual so that people could live better lives, why does it need thousands and thousands of preachers and philosophers to make sense of it all? Shouldn't it be easy? Shouldn't we just be able to open it and work out what to do without someone else interpreting it for us?

"I'm a bit anxious, what do I do, God." Ooo, let's turn to Psalm 46 (says my Gideon Bible stolen from a hotel). I've literally picked this out at random - see the footnote which indicates my current mental state, so this is probably typical of the 'help' you'll find elsewhere. Now you'd think that Psalm 46 would give me some advice about my anxiety. Sort of like Dr Phil, but much more emphasis on the white beard, flowing robes and ability to create/destroy universes at will. So what do we get? Here it is, God's everlasting wisdom (aka the usual Bible bollocks):

1. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
2. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
3. Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.
4. There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.
5. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early.
6. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted.
7. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
8. Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth.
9. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.
10. Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
11. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.

WHAT. THE. FUCK?

Look, God, I'm fucking anxious. I have some serious debts and the credit crunch means I'm about to lose my house. What am I going to do? Bible says: "There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High." Wah?! What use is that? What use to me is any of this crap, at all, ever?

Worse than that is the fact that the same book means different things to different people, purely because it means nothing. Literally nothing. So we're all arguing, we're all disagreeing, we're all responding and reacting in different ways, because the book, which is supposed to be inspired by God, is saying fuck all so that the people reading it have to make up some shit and get a handle on their own lives. Which of course they could just as easily do if they didn't even have the Bible in the first place.

It's not even the only book. Fuck me, God, you gave a different book to a different set of people! Dodgy. Very dodgy. Well okay, this book has some detail, I'll give you that. The Qur'an and and hadith even explain which hand to wipe your arse with after a shit, and tell you all about spooky spirits called genies (I'll add links when the drink wears off... not, but for now, trust me, Islam really does have rules for all that). So you'd think that all these detailed instructions would be so easy to follow that everyone would say, "Hmm, okay, well that's God's word then, we'll all do it." Are you fucking crazy? Who in their right minds is going to follow that bullshit when it's so strict, so controlling, and so totally alien to the way of life you could have if you followed (however loosely) the stuff in the Bible? I mean, no drink? No bacon? No thanks! And those are just small things.

If God was up there, you'd seriously think he would sort this one out. Not all of these different ways of living can be the right ones, surely. It's impossible - they are to a lesser or greater extent mutually exclusive. Of course they can't all be right, but they can all be wrong, which means one of two things:

1. There is no God.

2. God exists but he's loving the trouble he's caused by not making it all any clearer. God is a wanker.

I'll go for option one any day, but if you believe in God (you idiot) you have to see the sense in option two. Any God who sets up a system like this just wants it to fail, wants to see people running around killing each other because they believe different things, because they can't agree on what the true religion is and what everyone should do. They all think they know, but they can't all be right, so they kick seven shades of shit, blood and bile out of each other, among other things.

They're all wrong. And if they're not, then I'm telling him straight: God, you're a wanker. So fuck off and leave us alone. At least until you decide to sort things out. And this time... no watery, flood-based genocides please, okay?

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Footnote:
Written under the influence of massive quantities of neat whisky (not the good stuff, either), which is all the more impressive because I managed to put in the HTML codes manually and upload it to the right place with my FTP software. I am the dog's bollocks of all atheist web designers, I kid you not :o) And now I have the munchies...