I haven't done a good rant lately. I've had a lot of things going on in my life lately that I haven't had time to get angry at much of anything. Excepting idiot programmers, but that's been ongoing since I started my coding career.

However, there have been two recurring topics in the past few years that have eroded my patience to the point where I have to say something. And I have a lot to say. So much so that I am dividing this rant into two, and have titled it appropriately:

The Two Worst Things in the World.

Today, I will discuss what has become my least favorite thing. Ever.

Religion.

First, some background. I grew up pretty hardcore Roman Catholic in the small town of Eden, NY. For the longest time, my family attended church, and me and my siblings attended Sunday school and some vacation bible schools on some summers. I was an alter boy when I was young, and I even went as far to receive Confirmation, choosing the name of Mark in doing so. The problem was I never got the point of church. To be honest, I got more out of the whole Sunday school thing than I did sitting in Church. Priests droning on about something I didn't understand made no sense to me, so the bulk of what I learned about Christianity happened in the classroom, not the chapel.

This is where my confusion began. I had one school telling me that the universe was formed billions of years ago, and another telling me it was created by God. Certainly one had to be right and the other wrong, but I had no basis with which to make my decision. So, throughout school, I did not make one. I largely went through the motions, learning everything I could without making a decision.

It wasn't until after high school that I really received exposure to other religions. My boss at one of my early data entry jobs was a Muslim, and she didn't hide it from anyone. She wore some kind of exotic head dress that clearly identified her as being "some other religion". The biggest thing I remember is that it mattered to no one. There was no religious discrimination going on, no one upset that some Muslim was running the place. Of course, this was 1995, but still, the point here is that my first experience with people of other religions was that in the real world, it didn't matter what religion you were. Religion was a personal, private choice.

I quickly realized that there are many religions out there. Wikipedia lists 25 major religious groups with more than 30,000 people. Many of these religions conflict with one another, so everyone can't be right. Assuming one of these major religions is right, that gives each of them a 4% chance of being correct. More likely is, given the fact that humans are creative and have big imaginations, none of them are right. The problem is nobody knows a damn thing about the truth, but so many people claim to know that what they believe is the truth. And this is not counting all of the minor religions out there. Hell, a high school friend of mine INVENTED a religion.

Now, let's take the fact that we have these 25 major religions that conflict with one another. History is littered with so much religious violence that Wikipedia can't contain it all in one article. It's no surprise that the bigger the religion, the more space it gets in the article, not to mention that many of them have their own article to boot.

This is not saying that all religions are violent. In fact, Jainism is anything but.

However, think about this for a second. People KILL other people over this shit.

Religion makes good people do bad things.

Fast forward to today, and nothing is private anymore. With the advent of mobile devices and social media, things that once were private are now common knowledge. Unfortunately, this extends to religion. I can't tell you how many of my Facebook friends tout their religion on Facebook, when ten years ago I probably wouldn't have been wiser. Now that all of our beliefs are out there and public, well, guess what. 25 major religions that conflict with one another are at it again (still?), albeit on a much smaller scale. And with human nature the way it is, you have those that have to lecture, those that rebel, and those that just don't give a damn.

Well, put myself solidly in the third group. I've sworn off religion years ago because I've just seen it cause more harm than good. I've seen it wreck friendships and divide households. I've seen it blow up buildings. Sure, religion has done some amazing things, and I could spend hours citing them. However, in order to belong to a religion, 1) I'd have to believe something I probably don't believe, and 2) I'd be contributing to the animosity that happens when different people believe different things.

Life is too short for that. There are far more important things out there than having to worry about if I should believe there is a God or not, or what is morally right or wrong according to some scripture.

If there is a God (or Gods), hopefully He or She (or They) can judge me based on what I do with my life, and not on how many priests I've listened to drone on. And if not, well, I'll be glad that I decided not to waste my time.