The Parable of Doubting Thomas

I just noticed that despite my blog's title, there are no rants on it. Just a long boring account of my failure by fiat to create a universal philosophy. Therefore, I figured I'd post a rant on a topic that's close to my heart, and thus by it's sheer stupidity occasionally gives me heartburn.

I speak of the story of Doubting Thomas.

To make a long and mostly nonsensical story (the story of the crucifixion of Christ) short, Christ goes up on the cross, dies because God is too much of an evil bastard to stop his suffering, and a few days later wakes up again with holes in his hands and feet. After appearing to Mary Magdalene and most of the disciples, except for Thomas:

²⁴Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. ²⁵So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!"
But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."

²⁶A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" ²⁷Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."

²⁸Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"

²⁹Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

(from http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+20&version=NIV)

It's that last sentence that really does it for me, that brings my piss to a boil, that has skull-fucked the world for the last 2000-odd years. It might seem a natural thing for a religion to say - it is. But it's totally, completely, unspeakably evil. Let me paraphrase: that last sentence essentially says "'Tis a virtue to hold beliefs in total contradiction to any and all evidence encountered before - especially the beliefs I tell you to believe". Sound cultish? It is this attitude towards evidence-gathering and rational thought that has fostered the scientific decay of the Dark Ages, caused the most vile and cruel regimes to thrive (think of the treatment of the "science" of Marxism in the supposedly atheist USSR; they share more with God than they'd like to think) and in general has destroyed millions by the sword and billions by the delay of technical progress (think Galileo or Darwin). Now explain to me again why Christianity (or any other religion, for that matter, especially Hinduism, which disgusts me even more than Christianity - Christianity was at least theoretically egalitarian, while Hinduism is based upon discrimination and callousness towards the lower castes, especially the 'untouchables' who suffer to this day) has been a net positive towards humanity? It certainly didn't save or improve lives, given things like religious conquests and the hindering of scientific progress; it's debatable that religion caused the great artistic achievements, since most people in history lived in a religious context and thus produced religiously-influenced works - and anyway, it's a horribly elitist and callous idea that lives are worth sacrificing for the sake of 'high art' to appease the more 'civilized' people. So, for this one line, and for this whole attitude on rational thought (which a religion is by definition opposed to), I condemn Christianity and all other religions (including Marxism, though Marx himself is probably innocent; he worked with his own data and never insisted on belief without evidence) for the most inconceivably evil crime ever committed against the human species.

Blessed be Doubting Thomas, who insisted on proof and submitted to the evidence. His attitude would much improve the world, and we should all remember his example. That is the true moral of the parable of Doubting Thomas.