Category: Sparrow Chat

Have you ever stopped to consider the question: what is religion? I don’t mean is it Christianity, or Judaism, or, Buddhism, or even New Age spiritualism. Those usually form part of another question: which is the true religion? But what exactly is ‘religion’ itself when you strip away its many forms.

Collins defines ‘religion’ as “…a particular system of belief in a god or gods and the activities that are connected with this system.” The Cambridge English, “… the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or any such system of belief and worship.” Merriam-Webster, “… the belief in and worship of God or gods.”

So is it possible to ‘have a religion’ without a belief in a god or gods? There again, what is belief? Where does it come from? And where exactly does ‘faith’ come into this equation? After all, virtually all religions demand a degree of faith. It’s the mortar that holds those bricks of belief together, preventing them from crumbling away. Priests and clergy, mullahs and rabbis, are like religious bricklayers repairing the mortar and making it strong again.

Why do we have a belief system, and do we really need it? So far as we know we’re the only living creature aware of our eventual earthly demise. Is our belief system merely there to comfort the dread of our mortality? Probably not, though it can certainly help in that direction.

Of course, it can be argued that belief is not just about religion. In fact, our beliefs are often extremely malleable. How many young men through the ages have marched off into battle because they’ve been glibly persuaded by some emperor, king, or politician, that they’d be ‘serving their country’, ‘fighting evil’, or, ‘doing the will of God’, when in reality they’re simply serving the purposes of their political leadership.

Belief systems support whatever or whoever we want them to, from the team of our local football club to the next President of the United States of America. Amazingly, once that belief is established in the human mind it can be very difficult to shift. Even the most hardened of atheists may be caught out praying if caught in a life-threatening situation.

Another noticeable example of late has been the vast and solid support by those struggling, financially-crippled Americans, for a president they voted into office on the promise of restoring their livelihoods and well-being, only for him to direct wealth away from them and into the coffers of the already rich and powerful. Yet still their adoration knows no bounds.

Political belief systems today are well supported . No priest or rabbis here, but cleverly disguised political propaganda blown around by the winds of media like so many dandelion seedlings on a spring breeze. A TV channel for every belief system, repairing the mortar and sticking those political belief bricks back in place.

But a belief system, of whatever persuasion, is more than just mental bricks and mortar. It needs leading, promoting; like-minded believers to make you feel you’re in a supportive club, and someone, or something, to admire and look up to. It may be the quarterback of your local team, or a politician promising a brighter future – or, what better than an invisible super being welcoming you to an eternal heavenly existence? And, the rougher your life on earth, the better you’ll be be once you’ve shuffled off this earthly plane.

It’s hard to see harm in being a devotee of your local football team. Politicians, however, are (and always have been) some of the finest snake oil salesmen (and women) ever. Their job is to convince your belief system they’re better for you than the opposition. But what of God? Have the churches been the super snake oil salesmen of all time?

Before answering that question it’s first necessary to ascertain whether ‘God’ (or, indeed, gods) actually exist. If ‘He’ doesn’t, or ‘They’ don’t, then we’re looking at the finest, the most unscrupulous yet magnificent, marketing ploy of all time. Given that we’re dealing with something invisible and any communication with it is almost certainly only a product of human imagination, it’s impossible to state with any certainty whether there is any divine being ‘out there’, or not.

Invent an invisible, omniscient, super being with the power to create a wondrous spiritual paradise for us when we die. Make Him a benevolent, gentle, being, but also judge, jury, and possibly executioner if you don’t toe-the-line while on earth. Make access to this paradise easier the harder your life is on earth. Just accept all sufferings, the beatings, the starvation, the disease, the hardships inflicted on you by your earthly masters so they can live in luxury. You’ll get your reward in Heaven. But only if those who drew the lines you have to toe, and inflicted the hardships, beatings, starvation and disease you have to bear, aren’t the ones who invented the whole thing in the first place. Otherwise, you’ve been conned into putting up with all that abuse and at the end of it you’re dead. Period.

So what is religion? A glorious, eternal, afterlife full of ill-defined goodies? Or the greatest confidence trick there’s ever been?

I’ll leave it up to you. Or you can, of course, just sit back and let your belief system decide for you.

It’s somewhat alarming to click on your own website, only to have a sinister-looking statement stare you in the face stating the site could be dangerous, insecure, porn-laden, and poised to make off with all your personal data, credit cards, bank details, etc., etc., etc..

But that’s just what happened to Sparrow Chat a fortnight ago, as some of you who visited here may have noticed.

On January 2nd this year, while still enduring the New Year hangover, I was notified by email that my webhost, ‘ixwebhosting’, was being wound up and taken over by another hosting site, ‘Site5’. We were to be forcibly migrated.

Nothing happened until a couple of weeks ago when the site’s SSL certificate (that’s the thing that turns http:// into https://) was due for renewal. The extortionate sum required for said certificate was duly paid, and verification obtained. At that moment the anticipated “migration” from ‘ixwebhosting’ to ‘Site5’ took place. Unfortunately, each host assumed the other had updated Sparrow Chat’s SSL certificate. Consequently neither did, and overnight Sparrow Chat became a potential porn site, to be avoided at all costs.

Thankfully, the site doesn’t make any money. Well, I did get a few royalty cheques for eighty or so cents at some point last year, but it wouldn’t pay for a holiday in Barbados, or even a day out in Paris. Even so, it was very frustrating, and I was in no mood for chit-chat when I eventually made contact with someone on ‘Site5’ who knew what they were about.

Fortunately, he sorted everything out within a few minutes so we’re now back online, squeaky clean and not a bare bosom or buttock in sight…

…Oh, now hey! Who put that there?????

^{Image credit: mronline.org}

You may have noticed there’s not much going on at Sparrow Chat lately. It’s not that I’ve died, been bereaved, or suffered any other major life catastrophe, it’s just that I find the world situation so utterly dire that I can’t be bothered to write about it anymore.

Take that power-crazed, insensitive, narcissist, Americans elected to the White House in 2016. (Oh, if only someone WOULD take him – preferably to a hot, dirty, guano-ridden, uninhabited island far out in the ocean). It’s painfully obvious to all but the most brain-dead of our sad species that Trump is out to achieve what the last Republican president, George W Bush, tried and failed to do, namely, to take out Iran.

Bush failed because the shysters in his ‘team’ grossly underestimated how a nation reacts when another invades. They blithely assumed the Iraqis would bow down and gratefully kiss American jackboots, thus allowing the American military to use Iraq as a staging post into Iran. It didn’t happen. We’ve since learned, of course, that all the televised high-jinks – Iraqis beating Saddam’s statue with their shoes, etc., were carefully stage-managed by the Americans solely for the benefit of the press contingent, and the participants well paid.

The propagandized demolition of Iran has been underway in the West for a long time. America has never forgiven the late Ayatollah for making them look foolish over the ‘hostage crisis’ during the Carter administration. The poor old Ayatollah knew nothing about the hostage taking until after the event. It was wholly the act of a number of fanatical students, who happily jumped up and down outside the U.S. Embassy shouting, “Death to America,” whenever western journalists asked them to. The event would never have occurred if the CIA had not colluded with Iranian generals to reinstate their puppet Shah in 1953, his authoritarianism eventually leading to revolution and his ousting in 1979. Now, it seems, Trump may be looking to bring back the Shah, in the form of ‘Son of Shah’, Reza Pahlavi…

…who has spent most of his life in exile in the U.S..

According to the U.S. government-financed propaganda radio broadcaster, Voice of America:

Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah to rule before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, has seen his profile rise in recent months following the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, who promises a harder line against the Shi’ite power.

Pahlavi’s calls for replacing clerical rule with a parliamentary monarchy, enshrining human rights and modernizing its state-run economy could prove palatable to both the West and Iran’s Sunni Gulf neighbors, who remain suspicious of Iran’s intentions amid its involvement in the wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen…

“My focus right now is on liberating Iran, and I will find any means that I can, without compromising the national interests and independence, with anyone who is willing to give us a hand, whether it is the U.S. or the Saudis or the Israelis or whomever it is,” he [Pahlavi] said. ^[1]

Whether the Iranian people would welcome him, and his American/Israeli/Saudi backers is open to conjecture, but it seems unlikely.

_{Iranians carry a banner showing a caricature of U.S. President Donald Trump during an annual rally commemorating the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution, which toppled the late pro-U.S. Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. ~ Tehran, Feb. 10, 2017.}

A deal between the Saudis and Israel is already on the cards (who’d have thought that possible just a couple of years ago?). Kushner, the sly-faced son-in-law charged by Daddy Trump with bringing peace to the Middle East, has become really matey with Saudi’s power behind the throne, Mohammad bin Salman. Apparently, they regularly sit on bin Salman’s expansive balcony sipping pina coladas and chatting about how they’ll run the Middle East once Iran and Syria are finally disposed of. It’s a neat philosophy guaranteed to appeal to the Israelis, who with U.S. backing will have both the will and the fire power to attack these Shi’ite nations. Something they’ve longed to do since 1948.

Meanwhile, the Democrats in the U.S. Congress have gone on permanent vacation, leaving cardboard cutouts of themselves in their seats. It’s a ploy they’ve used many times before when Republicans held sway over them – deaf and dumb to a man (and woman). The situation is little better in Europe. The BBC informs us today that next Tuesday European leaders will huddle together and try to decide how best to handle the situation Trump has created. So far, the only politician to vent his anger publicly has been the French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire:

“Do we want to be vassals deferring with a curtsy and a bow to decisions made by the US?” he asked.
Mr Le Maire called on the European Commission to look into possible retaliatory measures. ^[2]

Monsieur Le Maire is quite correct. Trump is now attempting to blackmail the E.U. into complying with his wishes. If European companies refuse to pull out of Iran, they will be denied the right to trade in the United States. There is only one way to deal with blackmail. Whether European leaders have the balls to do the right thing is debatable. No doubt we will find out in due course.

The world is drifting into pseudo-fascism, led by the most militarily powerful nation on the planet. While U.S. propaganda sources, now centred in the White House, continue to affirm the danger to us all of non-democratic states like Iran, Russia, and Syria (notably NOT Saudi Arabia, or other Sunni Arab kingdoms) while presenting not one iota of evidence to back their claims, few have ventured the fact that by far the most dangerous nation on the planet today – one led by a madman and his power-crazed, hawkish, cohorts – is the United States of America.

This once benign country, admired by much of the world for its creed, “Government of the People, For the People, By the People,” is no more. It has become a potential source for evil such as the world has never known. Empires have come and gone, but none has had the ability, even if their leaders held the desire, to destroy the planet and everything on it if nations didn’t bow to its will.

I began by stating the world situation was so dire that I couldn’t be bothered to write about it anymore. That is certainly true. But, like any train wreck, it’s often impossible to look the other way. Sparrow Chat will continue for now, but posting may well prove less frequent. Unless, of course, the ‘God’ that these morons pretend to believe in were to annihilate the White House with a lightening bolt while everyone was at home.

Now that would truly be something worth penning a line or two.

^{[1] “Iran’s Long-exiled Prince Wants a Revolution in Age of Trump” VOA, April 10th 2017}

^{[2] “Iran nuclear deal: Europe strives to keep agreement” BBC, 11th May 2018}