Free Godless And Free by Pat Condell Page B

inspirational text it was doubtless meant to be, you can access a world of subtlety and wisdom.
    But you have to actually want to do it, and unfortunately too many people prefer dogma to enlightenment. They’d rather use their holy books to reinforce their own narrow prejudices and then try to impose them on everybody else. Like cavemen using a flashlight as a hammer, they’ve missed the point completely. And for me this is the most depressing thing about the holy scriptures.
    But, since we are using them to lay down rules of behaviour for other people, it’s clear to me from the New Testament that anyone who goes to church on Sunday is a blasphemer, because Jesus specifically said don’t pray in public, keep your religion to yourself, didn’t he? In the Sermon on the Mount, I think it was, Matthew 6, verses 5 and 6.
    Don’t be like the hypocrites, he said, who pray in the synagogues and on street corners where they can be seen. No no, not you. You go into your closet and shut the door, and pray to God in secret, and God will hear you in secret and reward you openly.
    That’s what he said. Keep your religion to yourself. It’s right there in black and white in the Queen’s English in the Holy Gospel. How much more true could it possibly be?
    Clearly, therefore, every Christian church is nothing but a halfway house on the road to hell.
    And don’t blame me. I didn’t say it. The Bible did.
    Peace, and all that jazz.

23.
Video Response to Osama
    September 11, 2007
    Well, this week we’ve heard from the Antichrist in waiting, Osama bin Laden, who wants everyone in the West to convert to Islam to stop the war in Iraq. Well, that sounds very realistic, doesn’t it? I’m glad to see he hasn’t lost his mind sitting up there in his little cave.
    Osama, if you’re watching, thanks for the offer, but no thanks. There’s no way that I could ever convert to Islam, for a number of reasons. Firstly, I like beer. Now I know that sounds very hedonistic and shallow, but, as you know, it’s part of my culture to be hedonistic and shallow. Also, in my culture right now it’s become very fashionable to respect everyone’s cultural values, no matter how crude or barbaric or downright ridiculous they might be, and this is something which you and your Islamist friends have capitalised on with great success in recent years.
    And yet you still don’t seem to approve, and I find that disappointing. To you, western society, or the Zionist Crusader Alliance (let’s give it its official title) is still an abomination which must be destroyed. It’s decadent and immoral; there’s too much sex, too much music, too much laughter, there’s just too much fun, isn’t there, Osama? And you want to put a stop to i before you have a brain haemorrhage.
    To you, western women are whores, because they show far too much flesh for your liking, and I bet that brings you out in a hot flush just thinking about it all the time.
    In fact, that’s another reason that I couldn’t possibly convert to Islam. Anyone who seriously expects me to stand by while the women in my life are compelled to dress or behave in a way they consider inappropriate is, frankly, living in a fantasy world. But then we already knew that, didn’t we?
    As for Iraq, you know as well as I do that virtually everybody on the planet wants the troops out of Iraq now, except for the idiot in the White House, the same one that you helped get re-elected, by the way, the last time you popped up on our screens, remember, you interfering son of a bitch?
    Because the truth is you wanted the war to continue every bit as much as he did. You wanted Muslims slaughtered and at each others’ throats, purely to embarrass the Americans, which is all you really care about, isn’t it, you hypocrite?
    You know, Osama, there are over a billion Muslims living on this planet, and I think every single one of them should be cursing you for what you’ve done to their religion, because you’ve