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This post is meant to illustrate why it seems so important to most people that an individual has a large freedom of choice. I'll start with demonstrating that that choice is not at all that large. We are very much in control of those around us, we just tend to not realize that - deliberately.

As a human being, there are two important sets of influences that control our lives for a certain part. First of all there is the influence that is all around us and which goes for every living thing, whether you are a single celled organism or a fully functional human individual. It is the influence of nature, influence that is created by a simple logical reaction - not by intention, but by the way things work. For instance, you can't crush a common pebble with your bare hands - and you can't hold your breath for more than a few minutes. Another example would be the way things operate outside you: the tire of your bike will rupture as a sharp piece among the gravel you were cycling on, pierces the rubber - leaving you stranded with a vehicle that is suddenly useless. Or a bird drops litter on your Colbert just before an important meeting. You are not at direct liberty to fix your tire or clean the poop off your jacket. You are free, within the limits and brakes of reality. I am not in power to summon pink unicorns to come rescue me when my car breaks down. Reality is hard to get rid of and it is not absolute freedom.

The second influence is that of creatures among us. A dog which you always kicked for fun will eventually bite you; more intensely: people who you live with (not necessarily in the same house) will execute some power over you - some of which you call upon yourself, some of which they force onto you - or is forced onto you. Society is helpful in many ways, but it is not absolute freedom. There are many norms which you can abide to, you don't have to, but you are practically extorted into abidance. This is also an influence for many social animal species, like the apes with whom we share a common ancestor. Almost all actions and also almost all ideas are largely if not completely engaged by other people. We are eachother's puppets, doing and thinking for a very large part what are told to do or simply do because we can't help it as in automatism or as a syndrom.

A tree has no social issues, it doesn't need to fix tires or call upon pink unicorns. For one it couldn't possibly do any of that, but it has no need to either. Still it is not free. It is dependant on rain, sunshine, soil nutrition, wind force, creatures that abuse him, and for reproduction it will need the help of another tree. Freedom, absolutely cannot exist, that is why the political term to address the need for the feeling for freedom, however false it is, is liberty: being allowed to move within a certain setting.

There are two reasons why it is easier for others to think a person can actually help what he or she or it does and thinks - why it is easier to think individuals are free (animals included).

First of all, it doesn't make God as much of a hypocritical asshole for creating this world and its 'requirements' and specific functioning.

Secondly, it is easier for some people to blame an individual for its apparent flaw, because it eliminates the need for pity. It is much easier to find someone stupid for choosing the wrong thing than to feel compassionate and sorry for a person because of something that cannot be changed or couldn't be avoided.

For example:

If a Christian claims that God didn't make me gay and that homosexuality or at least homosexual conduct involves choice, this reassures himself that God did not make my life harder (or at least making it harder for me to live 'morally straight'), which would make God the hypocritical asshole as mentioned earlier. Beyond that, the Christian can reassure himself that it was all my own fault or the failure on my part by not changing my sexual conduct and ignoring my sexual nature; does not require any pity. Instead the Christian can see a sinner, who deliberately chose sin.

Another example is an old man I came across yesterday (when the conclusion one alinea above came to my mind), whom I had seen several times before; with his head aimed downward, his neck obviously has a malfunction since he can only look sideways while his head is suspended that low. To make matters worse, his hair had all but gone and his face was old and collapsing like a dried tomato. I hope he is unaware of his imperfection, because the temporary pity I felt for him was no pleasant feeling. It got worse when I realized life cannot even remotely be considered good for an incredible amount of people - who's only reason to continue is their incapability to commit suicide because their mind and body harnesses them from doing so. Another restriction of reality: that laid upon us by ourselves.

It would have been much easier on me to think that these people all had it coming because of their own mistakes - but this is certainly not the case. A young homosexual in an oppressive social surrounding doesn't commit suicide. He is murdered by social pressure. He didn't choose to be gay, he didn't choose to be oppressed, he didn't even choose to cut himself - it was just the inevitable chain of events. He was incapable of changing his sexuality, he couldn't change the mindset of those around him, and he wasn't psychologically strong enough to prevent the harsh end of his life. It is easier for people to ignore this reality and turn it into sin, poor judgement and weakness. All to avoid feelings of pity or perhaps regret.

People like to think other people suffer because of their own fault - it is easier, no doubt; and they are not psychologically strong enough to face reality - but it is wrong. People do suffer, largely because they were made to suffer or because it was otherwise inevitable. They deserve pity.

From my perspective, there are three major things wrong in this world, interpersonally. Somehow I always come up with that number, I guess it is something cultural... Anyway, here goes, in no particular order:

Theism. Essentially there is nothing wrong with speculating about possibilities, it is something I have enjoyed doing since forever. However, it is a sad realization made that some people are careless about what is true or most likely to be true and disregard respect of reality to actually engage in something that is only a theory or a fiction. Fictions and theories can pose tempting possibilities, however those possibilities are still only hypothesises, they are not real.
The most prevalent and successful fruits of these straying thoughts are the world's religions. They are all essentially too absurd to consider, they are all belittling of everything that this world actually is and they all try to control people's conduct. Yet people sway themselves into them. Religion has been of great cultural significance, but that is all it has ever done for mankind that can be considered positive. It has been a greater burden in the past than it has been a gift; and now that we have the answers and the theories extrapolated from those answers, we can present ourselves with reality as the truth for our deepest questions. Religion has a very ugly side, there is no need to back that statement up because everyone knows this to be true. The fact that religion has become pointless makes it nothing more than a terrible cancer. It keeps poisoning us, it keeps crippling and killing us - but we don't need it, so why aren't we getting rid of it yet? Religion will be the darkest mark on our future history. It will take a lot of time for religion to vanish, but it eventually will. Much like Lobotomy is the eternal disgrace of the field of psychology, we will always remain ashamed of our wanderings into the preposterous and most terrible fault we are in now.

Capitalism.Perhaps the wrong word for it, since I intend to condemn every action that is not aimed at interpersonal gain. This is the depth of my dislike of capitalism and my motivation for alternative economies (if economy is even the right word for it). People steal, lie, shout and do everything they do that hurts others because they have the wrong purpose in mind. An individual's purpose is not to gain, it is to give. The purpose we should ascribe to our lives is to be a positive factor in the world, to be a force in the progressive motion of Mankind and to add in the beauty of our species and all the rest of our world. Our desire for food, sex and laughter is only primal, I'm not saying we don't need this, quite the contrary; but it is not the goal. Same as money should never be the objective, since it is only a tool. A guitar is worthless when not played on, so money is of no value when it is not used. We are stuck in a backward motion grown by the idea that gaining wealth is a primary target in life. It is not a primary target, it is a tool.
Our goal should be to better ourselves and our surroundings, all else is only a tool to achieve that. This doesn't mean we should all build factories in which we can work for as long as we can and try to achieve maximum efficiency or uphold the largest possible population. More is not better. I have an eye for beauty, I have taste - this is individualism - it is art. We should seek a righteous middle way to both gain beauty and all else that is necessary to make our trip toward greater beauty sustainable and pleasurable.
If everyone would be aware of this greater purpose, there would still be crime, be it very limited. This is crime because there is something wrong with the person doing the crime, not the world around him or her. Crime usually, outside individual defects, is created by injustice through greed. If we get passed that primal urge to get as much as we can get, than we will erase more than half of the world's problems.

Conservatism.Aside Theistic wanderings, there is much backwardness in the world. People think what their ancestors thought. This opposes progress to a better world. There is no need to change that which is already good, unless that good can become a perfect. Lack of education is a main player in the field of conservatism, if people would take the time to actually investigate, there would be no need to bicker on established theories, like Abiogenesis, Physical Cosmology and for crying out loud: Nature Physics. If people actually investigated in Homosexuality, proposition 8 would not have passed in California. Uneducated minds can only be lead by the common thoughts of their social surroundings. This is why people still hate other people for reasons those other people can't help, that they were born with. Xenophobic behaviour is only there because we are uneducated in natural diversity. While it is diversity that makes this world so beautiful. We certainly are a sorry bunch, we have no merit as a species - but the few individuals that actually care for it.

A small outlining of why it is completely okay to be gay.

First of all, the reality-based arguments. Homosexuality is obviously some sort of anomaly compared to heterosexuality in a species. Homosexuals cannot reproduce along the regular lines; even though they do have the natural urge to do so. Homosexuality is in various intensities present in, most probably, all social animal species.This is genuine homosexuality, because it involves two males or two females who are in an exclusive relationship, who attempt mating with each other, and sometimes pretend to, or actually do, breed, birth and raise offspring. This shows that homosexuality is not a threat to family values and would be a reasonable enough excuse for homosexuals to raise a child, through adoption or by stealing an egg from other penguins. The fact that homosexuality is present in the animal kingdom also erases claims that homosexuality is a mental disorder, because animals know a far lesser level of experiencing emotions than us humans do. Animals are in no significant way influenced by "an overbearing mother or an absent father", to name one popular theory.

Homosexuality in itself is not harmful to the individual itself or its direct surroundings. Homosexuality certainly didn't create HIV, it certainly didn't create paedophilia, it certainly didn't create divorces and it certainly didn't create anything really. Nor can it be blamed for the screw ups of heterosexual marriages, or the spreading of sexual diseases; which are both the fault of the individuals involved, not homosexuality - certainly not as a collective. The only negative thing that can be said for homosexuality is the already mentioned problem with reproduction. However, this would not be problematic in herds, because with less offspring, the current offspring has a higher chance of survival. Not to mention that for us human beings, we are already overpopulating ourselves. Besides, there are plenty of heterosexuals who don't have children.

Second and also last, non reality-based arguments. Of course there is no question about whether homosexuality is natural or not, or what is wrong with it in nature. If we only stuck to the reality-based arguments, there wouldn't be a quarrel to begin with. But there are some less-rational or irrational belief systems which include homophobia. I don't know all of these systems, but where I live, the most important is the Christian cult, or should I say cults? Their "Holy" book confesses that men who have sex with other men, are condemned to a place of eternal suffering after they die. Lesbians will probably be even worse off, because this particular book also tends to be very sexist. Now there are some arguments which would provide an affirming viewpoint on homosexuality, the most useful being that in the time of the Bible, little knowledge was available or even present about homosexuality, so they couldn't write about it. Hence: it could be assumed that in all passages the Deity was referring to heterosexuals committing a lustful sin by deviating from normality. The other is my personal favourite, the story of David and Jonathan. David, the little guy who defeated Goliath, and Jonathan, experience what could easily be interpreted as love at first sight, rejection from the outside world, sexual desire and true love. The story is told in bits and pieces throughout the first book of Samuel, in the Old Testament of the Bible.

The fact that this is the realm of surreality, should make it inferior in all debates of human rights, politics and social justice to what arguments there are founded in reality. Religion however, enforces irrational beliefs and instils fear, guilt and prejudice in individuals. This makes it dangerous and for a quick comparison: far more destructive than homosexuality. "Dangerous" because it systematically forces a person deeper into believing something which is not true, demotivates rational thinking and most importantly, actively promotes prejudice and hatred in the form of bigotry. For modern-day religious people homosexuality is very important. In the more humane, civilized world, women, coloured people and less-valid people are no longer discriminated against for religion. The Christian culture is deteriorating with every prejudiced stance that falls at the sight of reason. That is why Christians, and all religious people who are "against homosexuality", are so desperate to stick to their preposterous ideas. And don't give me that "I'm not against homosexuality, I just don't support it" bull: if you were neutral toward us, you wouldn't be discriminative of homosexuality. God of the gaps, is running out of gaps. Homosexuality is one of the last remaining ties to reality, which religious people can identify with and where they can be actively non-supporting of.

Homosexuality is completely normal, completely harmless and as good as heterosexuality. What bugs me is that some people can not accept this reality. How is it that we have to defend something completely natural, which is absolutely harmless? Especially since we are defending it opposing arguments based on religion. God is not real, so it can't be a valid argument in reality.

Gays are completely sane individuals, gays do not harm anything, gays have natural desires same as heterosexuals which simply differ on the plain of sexuality. There is no real reason to be negative toward gays, only a surreal one. No one is asking you to embrace homosexuality, because no homosexual would willingly embrace heterosexuality. What is asked is that you accept this natural phenomena and look beyond what is gay, to the individual. Individual gays are as diverse as individual heterosexuals, they can be very good people and very bad people. But what is important is that gays are part of our animal species, part of our herd (read: "society") and as a social animal species, it would be natural to embrace these persons. You don't have to marry them or have sex with them, you just have to acknowledge their membership of this world.

Keep your religion to yourself - or find help to get rid of it. You don't need it; and if you think you do you are intelligent enough to find a meaning and purpose in reality, without side-effects. It is plainly criminal to attack others in any way for no actual reason, which a religious reason definitely is.

So in the end there really is no reason to say; be of the opinion that; or even silently consider homosexuals lesser than heterosexuals, apart from the fact that they can't naturally reproduce. As for the latter, my explanation in the "reality-based part" of this post should show that nothing should, or reasonably can, be derived from that. The only reasons that some people are still non-supportive or aggressive toward homosexuality, is a social one. It's not the problem of the homosexual, same as it is not the problem of the broccoli or the Brussels sprout that people don't like its taste. Religion is to blame, but that is just another form of social control. It is in some cultures uncommon to be accepting of homosexuality (among which religious cults), that is a problem in a (sub)culture that needs to be taken care of. In general, homosexuals are as normal as the other fellow, very caring to friends and society as a whole and are certainly not a negative factor compared to the heterosexual population - if not a more positive. As a homosexual, you submit to the beautiful diversity of life on earth. Care not for people that tell you that your sexual preference is wrong in any way, because they don't know what they're talking about and are victims of bad social control. When it comes to God, remember that the many religions are all equally wrong and that in the end, only you can define God for yourself. If you wish to.

It is a popular thought that ignorance is something you'd better not catch yourself with. It's a bad thing, we like to believe. Of course there is some truth in it; if some people had been a bit more ignorant, we'd have lost some scientific breakthroughs; like discovering that the sun is the centre of our system of celestial bodies (don't tangle up your tongue there), instead of the earth. Also, if people were more ignorant in common, life would be a lot shittier; because there would be very few people in the social care sector, there would be no Red Cross, or any other charity that seeks to help people. If I was more ignorant, I wouldn't go through the minor trouble of being a blood donor, I wouldn't give wealth to the WSPA or Amnesty International. And I certainly wouldn't be spending my regular Wednesday afternoon trying to help a man from Congo understand the Dutch language with Humanitas. In general, ignorance is very bad indeed.

But I can't help being positively ignorant on a few things. What I described above were all positive things that wouldn't be here if we simply were too ignorant toward it. But like I said in my previous post, I am an Existentialist, and an Existentialist is really a Nihilist that fools himself into believing he is something else. It takes ignorance from my side, to stay away from Nihilism. It's true that I know that Nihilism would destroy my life, I would no longer give it any value because the conclusion of every thought that goes this deep, is that life simply is that: nothing. There is no meaning, or purpose, or value. And I would dislike my life to fall apart like that, because even though I know there is nothing, I want to create something I can believe in, ergo: the Existentialist.

I am ignorant, consciously, of the absolute of Nihilism. I simply avoid going there. Plus: I try keeping up a charade of values, much like the ten commandments. I want to make other people happy, I want justice, and I want to make things better (growth). These values I cannot defend, because I know that they are just as meaningless as everything else in the world. However, I must say that there are two worlds in my life.

One is what I would like to call the slow world - the real world where I go to college, eat, drink and simply do what I do. The other is, as I call it, the ultimate world, where things are either instant or approaching immediacy. The latter is the world which is dominant in this blog. It is the world of philosophy and absolute realities. Things that are not of physical influence in the slow world, but are to my mind. Things like "there is no God", "there is no meaning or purpose", "people are not basically good" happen here. These are not contemporary thoughts like I would have in the slow world, these are thoughts in an ongoing process of laying out my view of the world, which is open for change and consequently does that. The ultimate world is completely useless to the slow world, same as the slow world is hardly connected to the ultimate world.

The big difference is that the slow world hangs by contemporary ideals, ideas and hope. All of them as meaningless as the other. The ultimate world is the world of truth, where contemporary thought is done away and where the actual down-to-business philosophizing and concluding enters. I keep these two worlds separate, for obvious reasons (I would either become too ignorant for my own liking if I left the ultimate world for the slow world; and become a sort of hermit would I leave reality for the ultimate world). The current balance is sustainable with a good dose of ignorance, when I am out in the real world, I am ignorant of what I know of the ultimate world about 99% of the time.

Besides the unfortunate truths I try to stay away from when walking around in the slow world, I am ignorant of some of the bad habits of people and of some of the sorrow they produce. I am aware that I can't help every human being in the world, and frankly, I have no desire to. Most people are quite annoying at times. "Annoying" being a broad term because I think Christians are annoying with their stupendous cult, same as I think people who have no manners at dinner are annoying, same as I think people like Palin and Hitler are/were annoying. I generally refer to annoying people as "bad people". With the world being so full of those, practically everyone has something rather unfortunate about them, it takes some ignorance to blind yourself from those eternal imperfections. You can't help them all, is what is at the core of this; and it goes for all people. If you loose that obvious truth out of sight, and let your ultimate world collide with the slow world, you get things like the Third Reich, the Soviet Union and Religion.

We need ourselves to be ignorant to a certain degree to remain efficient in the slow world (the real world) and to remain happy at the same time. All placebos an Existentialist, same as a Theist ascribes to life are derived essentially from that; being efficient and happy in a meaningless world. Where a Theist is less free and has more pathetic and usually negative placebos instead of the Existentialist which is aware of his ignorance (big difference) and who therefore is immune to assigning himself to stupid fairy tales - the Existentialist only creates fairy tales useful in the real world, to achieve what he wants to.

We have to be comfortably numb, all of us, to remain happy and productive. We need to close off our senses to some of the misery, some of the imperfection and some of the meaninglessness of the ultimate and real world. Comfortably Numb, by Pink Floyd; perhaps my favourite easy rock song.

That's all.

[Reply to the NG BBS post "Don't Hate Islam" from 7/24/08]
No matter what is said before me, Islam is still a religion, and is therefore still bad. Christianity may have had a stirred past, but why should we identify with Christianity? And certainly: the violent history of one religion doesn't give a right for violence to the other.

Islam, Christendom and Judaism; the Abrahamic religions; are all hate-filled backward sectarian institutions which deserve no respect. They hold on to ancient morals and ethics, which should have no place in today's society.

It is a sheer accident of history that these plainly idiotic beliefs are still so very much alive today. It is sad, because religion stands in the way of progression - in many fields. From social acceptance of natural minorities, to abortion and stem cell research (& manipulation). Worst of all; and this I share with great author dr. Richard Dawkins; is that these sects indoctrinate the young children, who are too dependant on adults to have an opinion of their own.

You can't expect children to have formed an opinion about God, let alone that they know anything about religions. If we protect children from the more difficult choices of life; things involving sex, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, pornography, violence and politics; shouldn't the life-changing effect of religion be on that list?

I don't care if religious people think I'll go to hell for being gay (or turn to God for forgiveness and heterosexuality), I'm an adult and can recognize such claims as the folly they are. But children are naive, vulnerable and lack the experience and reason to defend themselves. They should be left free so they'll eventually make a decision of their own.

Don't hate Islam. Hate religion.

The life of a human being revolves around choices, and simply consists of choices. Some choices are apparent and we are completely in control, like when choosing whether you want a chocolate cake or a fruit cake. Choices go much deeper than that though, we all know that subconsciously our brain keeps making choices. Like deciding where to put my fingers on the keyboard. Making a choice is the process of weighing the available options and deciding which you want to pick to attain your goal. These options are usually quite black and white, both will eventually make you reach your target, but there is a significant difference in their proposed method.

The choice of these methods is based on personality. Of course not in all choices in life, but certainly in 99,99% of all choices in a social setting. Eventually, all choices come down to, or are at least connected to the choice between right and wrong. We call these choices ethics, ethics, is defining what is right and what is wrong. In this modern world we are all individuals; we are quite probably born into some sort of culture, we are born into some setting with ethics already present; but ultimately, we shall create our own set of ethical values as we grow older. Existentialism teaches us that every person is responsible for the creation of this mindset, after all, we choose to be influenced, and we choose what influence we will accept and which we will not accept. The Information Age creates a lot of new possibilities, and it tears down social structures on smaller scales. The community in which you were born is no longer your only influence, it is the entire world which presents herself as your tutor.

Personality is essentially the way you decide to behave. It is the result of the choices you have made before: deciding what influence you will accept, the available choices you have been confronted with and also the experience you have had with previously picked choices. We are given options with which we create the world around us, with which we create our personality. This might seem like freedom, but it's not. The choices are always limited, and practically, that is not free. We are bound to the rules of the world around us, the greatest being nature, and in some occasions a violent or at least extreme social environment.

Evil is choosing the path which brings along evil. In almost all choices we make there are ways to achieve the pictured goal by means which use something we deem evil. To make a simple example: Imagine being at the bakery, wanting to buy a cake for your mothers' birthday. She gave you ten dollars and you have the choice over chocolate and strawberry; both in a 10 dollar and a 9 dollar version. Now the options of choice are immense, not only is there a choice between the flavour of the cake, there is the choice of cost, and when we look beyond those basic choices, there are a lot more choices to achieve a goal. You could rob the bakery for instance, getting a cake AND 350 dollars extra from the counter. There are three primary influences in these choices: your personal ethics, physical considerations and the probable end result (achieving your goal).

Now robbing the bakery might seem a bit extraordinary, but another way of getting profit beyond achieving your goal is to buy the 9 dollar cake saving 1 dollar for yourself. Yet another way is leaving the bakery and buying goods at the supermarket to make your own cake being off much cheaper, but then you'd have to strongly consider the third influence: the result. Now this wish for profit is natural, but ethically it is evil. Much like ethics stop me from killing my neo-nazi brother because of this primal urge which sometimes boils up inside me, ethics stop you from cheating on your mother with a cheaper cake. Another option standing in the bakery, is getting a cake which is more expensive, we would consider that ethically good. Initially all we deem as good, is based on abandoning that natural urge for profit at all cost, and trading it for positive attention. All in all, a good person would be no more than a person who values his natural urge for positive social attention higher than material wealth. Of course we all need both, we need possession as much as we need positive social attention. Both can be achieved by good people as well as bad people.

Good people achieve material and social wealth by living by the rules of the society. Criminals create their own society, while leaching on others. It all comes down to the personality again. Good people decide to achieve their goals through means that are considered good in their ethics, but would bad people consciously choose evil means? This choice for evil is made by their personality, which is made up of the available choices and their previous experience with their choices. But foremost, and at the core, the first issue is paramount: the choice of what influence is accepted. We are made by this world, but we have power and choice over the influences of this world.

Much like us, homosexuals, criminals are not nurtured or nature. They are both. We homosexuals are born homosexual because there is no other reasonable explanation; and the bad people's choice for the wrong influence is also unexplainable. In an empty world homosexuals would all come out of the closet as soon as their bodies began giving the familiar hints. Perhaps there wouldn't even be a closet, just a realization. But would bad people still be bad in a world without influences? No. We are different from evil people, because our sexuality is not solely dependant on the presence of other homosexuals in this world. We may choose never to reveal our true self, but we cannot hide from ourselves. We know, even if the world doesn't know because our full sexuality is present from birth. Evil people start with the bad choice of influences they allow into their personality. Without these bad influences, there would be no bad people.

Much (but as I explained: not entirely) like the classic "Nature or Nurture?" question, there is no clear answer. Homosexuals are in nature homosexual, but they have choice over accepting it, however hard that may be. Criminals, bad people, are not born evil, they just allow the wrong influences, which make them into their conclusion: bad people. The big difference is that this conclusion is hardly influenced by post-natal elements when it comes to homosexuality; but concerning bad people, it is mandatory.

This is about religion, not about the question whether there is a God or not, because I simply can't answer that. Though from this post one could weigh the two options (God / No God) and draw a conclusion.

Religion has been an opulent provider of war and misery from the beginning of time, perhaps even before that. That is not questionable, because it is a fact. It is a fact that religions fight each other and it is a fact that within almost all religions scapegoats exist whose life is far from pleasant. To people inside a religion, the terror of that religion seems completely justified. It is not their fault that their scapegoats "chose to be" scapegoats, is it?

Because I'm gay (also happy), I'll take a homosexual for example; that's easier for me, but it might as well be any other kind of scapegoat, like a woman, a Jew, a Muslim, a Negro, whatever.

The gay man is seen as a sinner by several religions, because he simply doesn't marry women and instead would rather live his life with another man. From the religion's point of view, this man is condemned to hell, and probably should be punished on earth too. After all, he "chose" to be homosexual, didn't he?

The non-religious, scientific world sees homosexuality as a completely natural phenomena, any man can see that if he's not been blindfolded by some religion. A few FACTS:
-Many animal species have homosexuality.
-Homosexuality itself is not dangerous.
-Homosexual men do not necessarily worship Satan, sexuality has nothing to do with Satanism.
-There is no homosexual agenda, there is just a struggle for freedom where it is oppressed.
-Earthquakes are cause by volcano's or the earth's core plates moving around.

Of course the religious will try to fight this, after all, they still don't believe in evolution, let alone basic geography (gays cause earthquakes...); though I'd say evolution and geography are things much more acceptable by logic than any Deity, wouldn't you think so? To go a little further there: look at all the things religious people deny, which we (as Atheists or at least Agnostics) deem plain logic. And then take a look at what fantastic (literally) things the religious believe in, which we deem complete idiocy. What is so attractive in religion that so many people make such great sacrifices for it? What is it that makes religion look better than anything which is logic, anything which is reasonable?

...This is how I look at it:

A mule. I like to compare the religious with mules, beasts of burden (I love that song!). The mule is pulling a cart, in front of him is a carrot hanging from a line which keeps him going because he longs for the carrot. After all, it is a carrot so big and juicy any sane mule would love to have it. Behind him, is a whip, threatening to hit him when he'd stop pulling the cart. The cart is heavy.

Do you have a picture of this mule in your head now? Good. Hold on to that image.

The Carrot, hanging in front of the mule, symbolizes the promise which every religion has. Usually eternal life, either in a better place (heaven) or through reincarnation. Furthermore God is usually a nice guy to people that pull his cart, so your life will be a lot happier too, or so goes the promise: the carrot is the promise of a nice thing to come.

The Whip, hanging behind the mule, is the threat which every religion also has. It's not going to the nice place of the promise, and often punishment in all sorts of other nasty ways. From a new promise that you'll go to a nasty place (hell) to punishment in real life, from being beaten up to being killed: the whip, is the threat to all scapegoats and other sinners.

That Cart, pulled by the mule, symbolizes the culture which every religion brings. Culture is a series of rules for things spreading from interaction to intercourse. Religion comes with a lot of rules, ways to behave. If you do not live by the rules, you are a sinner. Sinners get the whip (figuratively and sometimes also literally). The Cart is not only the burden of rules; which commonly seem quite stupid to outsiders; it is also the burden of obeying them. The rules may be easy for some to follow, but imagine you were a gay man inside a Christian society. That'd suck, and you'd have to hide your true self from everyone. In one way or another, everyone has to hide certain aspects of themselves inside a religion, to get the Carrot, and to not get the Whip.

Now, this all seems pretty logic, if I were a mule, I'd keep on pushing the Cart. You would probably do so too. But we're not mules. We tend to think a little further than what we see right in front of us. What would make me stop pushing the Cart, is that all of it, is based on belief. The mule believes the whip will strike him if he stops, he believes he'll eventually get the carrot, and through those two beliefs he keeps on pulling that heavy cart.

This whole scheme is supposedly operated by the Deity, the Deity provides the cart, as well as the carrot, as well as the whip. But what if this invisible thing; which only exists if one believes in it; isn't really there?

What if this whip, which you believed in, isn't going to be operated by the Deity? Or much worse, what if the carrot isn't for real? The only thing that is real, is that load you have been carrying, that Cart you kept pulling for the promise of the whip and the carrot. And well, frankly, pulling a cart for a promise of punishment and reward by something which is invisible and only exists on 2.000+ year-old paper and faith, isn't good enough for me. Especially not when that cart tells me to stop being gay and start being straight. The rules of the Cart are usually complete madness, they clearly represent the moral and ethical values of the beginning of that religion. Which is quite a while back, when it was still normal to kill your wife when she slept with another. Or stone children when they have been disobedient. Sure children can be annoying, but if you'd stone them, what would that say of you? (Oh, the same goes for the adulteress.)

The thing is: once you're in a religion, you won't be getting out easily. It takes a lot of courage and sacrifice, after all, all of your "friends" are probably in the same religion, because you've deemed everyone else a sinner. To me, religion is ridiculous. It is a way to fool yourself, that eventually it'll be all right. Life isn't that simple, there is no one invisible looking after you, there is no life after this one. After all, everything that is born, eventually dies. It's the circle of life. Evolution is survival of the fittest, we see it all around us, denying it is an act of the greatest folly. Same as denying basic biology, geography, and everything scientific, everything logic which contradicts the religion. You deny yourself the most basic of logic, for the promise of religion. That is plainly a most stupid thing to do. It is hiding yourself from the truth and agony of real life, behind the shroud of religion. That is shallow.

There may be, or may not be a God. Philosophers throughout the ages have condemned this question, as it is impossible to answer something based on faith. What I see as something completely logic, is that there is no such thing as a good religion. It is childish to believe in things, like Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny. And no, God isn't much different from them; God is the Santa Claus for adults. Religion is a nice relief to the real world, but it is, and will always be, nothing more than just a pleasant fiction. And it hurts me, it really does, to see that so many perfectly sane, healthy, kind human beings; sell their souls to a Deity. Trading all their sanity for a false promise and answers to "the great questions in life."

We need a new Messiah, to redeem all faithful from their ridiculousness. Save the poor souls...