Tim Barrus, New York Times

holy water/

Religion is hypocrisy. Why does someone else need to be concerned by what I believe. It’s like this fervent power has seized them, and they must go forth and make everyone believe what they believe. Why. Religion has always been dangerous. War after war after war. People have been boiled in oil because they refused to embrace it. It’s about power. That less and less people are bowing and scraping to religion is a very hopeful sign. Not a bad one. There is no god. There was no Muhammad. There was no Buddha, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, or other silly prophets who can tell us how to live, how to form governments, how to validate ourselves, what hymns to sing, what wars to wage, and what tie to wear to church. If men do not believe the same nonsense, there will be trouble in the universe. Life is mean, violent, cruel, intolerant, impoverished, and ignorant. Existence itself translates to We Are The Worker Bees Who Are Here To Make The Rich Richer. Period. That is all she wrote. Life is a vacuum of nothing. We can’t accept the fact that our species is meaningless. We create mythologies. We would still boil people in oil if we thought we could get away with it. There is not a twinkle of evidence (such as a piece of petrified wood supposedly from a cross) that, beyond the need for Homo sapiens to deal with the reality that each and every one of us is going to die, we are afraid. I ride my bike to a desert where I buy peyote from a drug dealer and then find a sunset. I do not see god.