CALLING LE DIEU 424

I don't have much time for any religion, as it just leads people to kill each other over who has the best invisible friend. Religion was a superb idea to subjugate the weak and poor. They have poo lives, let's give them a reason to believe their next life will be better so they don't get too rowdy in this one.

Just been round the Louvre in Paris. Fantastic. All that Italian religous stuff. But I couldn't help thinking their subjects would have been a bit more diverse and a damn sight more interesting if the bloody church hadn't given them all these bloody saints and martys to waste their time on.

Not

James Shapiro's 1599 is excellent on all this. He's taken a year in the life of Shakespeare and explores his possible catholicism along with all the intrigue between the two religions, the Spanish etc and Elizabeth dealing with 'the Irish problem'. I can't reccomend it enough. I seem to have two copies so I could bung one in with your Dan Brown.

All religions. Anything that asks you to believe in something that palpably doesn't exist just to give you false hope. Anything that stops you living life to the full. Anything that stops poor people wanting to better their lives. Anything that promotes bigotry. Anything that promotes causes to kill and die for. Anything that causes disaffected young men to go and crash planes into buildings in the belief that they will have 17 virgins and a slap-up feed waiting for them in paradise. (Boy, would I have liked to see their faces about two minutes after the planes hit the towers). Anything that makes you help that little old lady over the road in case god is watching instead of doing it just for the sake of it.

Football is the only true religion.

Why should they? Who said? What good does it do?

If he spend all that time and skill creating the world, he'd have to be a bit of an egotistical wanker to make us spend all our time thanking him for it. Surely he'd just want us to get on with it.

A. Dieu.