The Good Religion - Witches, More Correctly, Wicca

"Everybody loves kittes." This statement, while inane and wishful thinking, is completely false because it is tautology. Yet almost all religious claims are this statement, only the wording changes.

This is one of the the absolute proofs that religion is inherently wrong, an actual "gotcha" point which could be made against any religion. But not religious claims are dangerous, many can be inane or inconsequential, one such example are the Wiccan claims.

For that matter, let's look at the Wiccan claims exclusively for this post just because I need one decent religion mentioned in my blog. Wiccan believe in something like "and it harm none, do what thou wilt."

This phrase, thus one law, is much like the Golden rule, but unlike other religions, this is actually part of every Wiccan teaching and anything that opposes it is never considered true to Wiccan beliefs. Wicca is only one of the many pagan religions, and one that has a pretty solid doctrine.

The difference between a Wiccan saying "that's not Wiccan" and Christians saying "that's not Christian" is that the entire Wiccan doctrine is "and it harm none, do what thou wilt." Christians have a doctrine that contradicts itself and requires interpretation, while the Wiccan doctrine is pretty clear and easy to remember, the wording often changes but it's always clear.

Comparing Wiccan to Islam is no contest, the Quran is just badly written poetry with no inherent meaning other than "kill everyone who opposes this book." Wicca would never kill you for dismissing their claims, or even for opposing them.

There's the rule they live by in action, the modern Wicca have never been recorded doing anything as horrible as any of the other religions, and many of them love science more than us atheists. Most Wicca do not even claim any god as fact or adopt a deistic view of the universe, this makes them pretty damned cool.

A Wicca would never deny reality in place of their fanciful stories and mythology, and they will not get angry when you point out that their stories are mythology. This is because of their mindset, a pretty awesome and empowering idea that our lives are gifts given, and to squander this life or cause harm to others is to invite disaster.

Ironically they are so very close to reality with this idea that no sane person could ever deny it as fact. We pollute our planet and destroy the other animals, Wicca believe we are all connected, even the other animals.

Still more beliefs that fit reality, Wicca believe that our actions impact the entire world, if you deny that this is true then you are a danger to everything. The result is that most Wicca are very Earth friendly, doing everything they can to help everything, even people of other religions who treat Wicca with death and torture.

To forgive is divine, according to one religion that believes in eternal punishment, Wicca actually live by this and often allow slights to go without much more than an apology, often not even that is needed for them for forgive. Their only flaw is that they often forget as well, which invites more abuse, allowing the offender another opportunity to bring them harm.

Now the crux of it, I can safely state with all honesty that no Wicca will oppose anything I have written about them in this article, though some may say that what I wrote about the other religions is bad. This demonstrates why Wicca, and many other pagan religions, are safe from my anti-theistic wrath, they actually want peace on Earth now.

There is a "although" in here, in the past the religions that Wicca used to build their modern doctrine were not so nice, many were warmongering savages just like the Abrahamic religions. The difference is that they removed all that from their doctrine and even adopted a new name for themselves, based on an old word meaning "witch."

It is this drastic change in their beliefs that made them superior to the other religions, and the fact that they don't deny their dark and horrible past. Like scientists, they learned from their mistakes and corrected their behavior, and their doctrine, something the Abrahamic religions fail to do even after 100+ years of atrocities committed because of their doctrine.

So I say this to my atheists, mock the Wiccan doctrine for laughs, know that at they won't be shooting or beheading us for it, most often they will laugh with us as we laugh with them for jokes at our expense. This is what a good delusion looks like, oh wait, the final blow to Abrahamic religions, Wicca are not delusional.

Mocking Religion Is Important

The answer to why we must mock religion is one I have touched on but never really answered directly. The answer is very simple, any ideology elevated above mockery becomes a tyranny.

Though ideology must never be above mockery, nothing is ever truly above mockery. Ridicule is the exception, ideology which is demonstrably harmful should be ridiculed, but other aspects of life should be off limits. Rule of thumb here, if it cannot be chosen then it's off limits unless it is demonstrably harmful.

The reason harmful ideologies must be ridiculed is to make them no longer acceptable, thus making them no longer harmful. Religion, as a whole, has been demonstrably harmful and is chosen. Prayer being an excellent example of the harm it causes to society.

Prayer has nothing to do with helping and everything to do with ego. People who pray are saying they are happy not actually doing anything but want everyone to think they are, so they announce that they are praying for someone who is suffering to draw attention to themselves, distracting from the person who is truly suffering.

We see this effect in medical doctors as well, the ideology has been acceptable for so long even the atheist doctors are willing to say platitudes in place of actually helping the patient, Virginia Mason and Harborview in Seattle do this quite a lot. Often prayer is used in place of real help resulting in the death of an innocent person, while the ones praying are allowed to continue to draw attention to themselves instead of being punished for their crimes.

Another event this problem often arises is when it takes very little to help, like say retweeting something on Twitter. Instead of tapping the retweet like they should, they just have to say "my prayers are with them." This makes it all about them and distracts from the actual problem. Some tweeps have actually gotten angry when I would point out how selfish they are being for saying such things.

To protect society from this selfishness and complacency, we mock prayer and religion, and ridicule the stupidity religion forces it's followers to embrace. Once it is no longer acceptable to harm others, or allow injustices to happen, because of religion, we will stop ridiculing and move on.

Now, before you get angry with any atheist who ridicules your religious nonsense, know this, we were once as stupid as you, and when we stopped being willfully ignorant we were ridiculed for wanting to learn, often abused for not accepting your myths, and distrusted for being more honest than any religious person has ever been. If you think silly pictures of your myths with phrases that show the idiotic ideas you believe are hurtful, at least we don't usually mock individuals until they display their stupidity.

We aren't attacking you, we are just telling the truth now.

Humans Are Animals

So I am working on blogging more about my adopted cat, Pepper, right now, and I still keep seeing people deny that humans are animals. I find this troubling, not because they deny this very basic and well known fact, but their reasons.

Every time someone denies that humans are animals it's either "god dunnit" or "aliens dunnit." The problem is that neither of these would change this very basic fact even if true. Humans are animals by definition, life is broken up into kingdoms for scientific categorizing and we are categorized as animals because of our physiological traits.

Now for the psychoanalysis of this cognitive dissonance. The primary reason people want to deny that we're animals is not because they want to feel superior, but because they want to reason away their guilt. This means that they have, at some point in their life, needlessly harmed another animal.

This notion is more frightening for us who do not harm without a valid justification, because since we are animals, those same people are just as capable of harming another human. It does not take much to see that we are animals, and the denial is only a thin barrier, so once that barrier is pierced they become a danger to others of their own species if they do not feel guilt after realizing they were wrong.

For us friends of nonhuman animals, it's also worrisome in many other ways. These particular humans can use their "we aren't animals" excuse to hurt our best friends and the other animals we cherish, and many do. To make it clear, I am not against harming when there is a need, so long as it is as humanely as possible, I am speaking about all needless harm and torture of other animals.

One day our technology will advance enough that we will need to harm not other organisms, even plants, to survive. The problem is that most of the harm we do is unnecessary for our survival, and many times this harm endangers the entire species. To make matters worse, many of the people who do these things are proud of it.

Let's look at trophy hunting, the horrible act of cowardly shooting an animal that is trapped, from a distance. There is no courage in these people, no skill, no strength of any kind. They are cowards, weaklings, and generally useless even for humans. Being a boxer takes courage, even staged wrestling takes courage, but to fire a gun at an unarmed animal from hundreds of yards away does not take courage.

Karate takes skill, fencing takes skill, soccer takes skill, but using a high powered rifle with long range scope to fire at an imprisoned animal does not take any skill. This is actually a sign of how little skill you have, the scope does all the work now. Video gamers have way more skill than that, and most have never killed a fly ... too busy to swat one.

An iPhone user carrying an iPad and wearing an iWatch is wealthy. Someone driving a new, completely electric, fine tuned sports car is wealthy. Someone who climbs Mount Everest every summer is wealthy. But a trophy hunt is not a sign of wealthy, it's a sign of arrogance compared to the others.

Bill Gates donates large amounts of his money to charity, we know he's wealthy and we praise him for his deeds. Try doing something good with your money if you can't at least be trendy with it, instead of showing us how much of a coward you are.