Jesus Charlie!

So all this “Je suis Charlie” stuff?  Were Charlie Hebdo right to publish covers depicting images of Mohammed?  The answer to, “Is anyone entitled to kill someone who draws a blasphemous image” is “Fuck No!”, and I don’t need religion to tell me this.

As a passionate atheist I see it like this.  If one of my peers believed in Father Christmas, (and he/she wasn't mental or hadn't recently had a breakdown or summat.  (Never have a go at the mentals, it’s pointless, they really don’t like it, you can’t reason with them and they go even more mental)), I would definitely take the piss.  I’d probably leave it at that though, BUT, if he/she kept ramming it down my throat insisting that FC was real my piss taking would increase and I would probably take to drawing images of him/her and FC, probably doing something that doesn't yet have a name in the Urban Dictionary.  But once he got his gun out to prove a point I think I’d stop taking the piss out of him, and the only reason I wouldn't be taking the piss out of him/her would be out of fear.

We need to take a look at religion and ask ourselves what part it plays in our society now.  I’m definitely not saying all religion is bad, I think a lot of good, mostly good, comes out of religion, but it’s served its purpose now, it needs to be downgraded.  Governments should never show allegiance to religion.  I’m not saying ban religion but at least make a statement to say, ‘the government decides what the law is, not religion, and religion never influences what government decides’. 

The bible was a fantastic story (I’d say the quran was too but I haven’t seen the film), still is, nearly as good as ‘The Green Mile’, but you don’t come away from the Stephen King classic (nominated for 4 Oscars and winner of many more awards)(“Jesus of Nazareth” only got Robert Powell the ‘TV Times’ Best Actor award!) with a whole load of rules about how to live your life, and subsequently instructions to others to punish you if you fail to meet the requirements of those rules, some of those punishment being death!

If you like religion, carry on.  I have friends who love Star Trek and they still get great enjoyment from repeatedly watching repeats of old episodes, particularly after the exit of Tasha Yar in Series 1, I really didn't like her.  “Who was the fittest bird in Star Trek?” I hear you ask.  7 of 9?  T’pol?  None of them!  Leeta the Dabo girl from Deep Space Nine was the fittest by far.  Any road…

Yeah, if you like religion, carry on.  Marvel in the stories; take inspiration from them if you like, but until we can emphatically prove that there is an all ruling creator who gets severely pissed off if people don’t believe in him, or they believe in something else, lets presume that there is nothing but fact, be thankful that you’re here by the most fluky accident, and let’s get on with being great and good.

So in summary, yes Charlie Hebdo were right and brave, and the organisation responsible for the killings are a bunch of pricks.  Hold on a minute!  What was I saying before?  I take that back, the organisation responsible are right, keep up the good work lads, of course he’s real and ace, well done!