Yesterday was June the 6th 2006, which can be written as 6.6.6. The "Book of Revelation", the last part of the Bible, names this sequence of digits as "The Number of the Beast", that means it represents the devil. Some peopole see in this much more than just a number - they think it is a true symbol, i.e. writing down or mentioning it would automatically evoke evil.

First of all: I like legends and symbols, there is usually a lot of inspiration coming from them. Just think of the Greek gods and their adventures. 666 was used in the 20th century on several occasions to provoke the superstitious and conservative parts of society, to indicate the departure of more liberal-minded elements from traditional values.

What happend yesterday? The news were filled with two things: Satanists spilling blood over their body and dancing naked in the woods to celebrate their lord of evil - and Christians praying to avoid the worst and to save the world just once again by kneeling down and folding hands. My thanks and blessings go to both camps. Mankind made it to the next day and nothing has changed - so their efforts were successful. I don't want to know what would have happend if they would not have cared so much for all of us.

In the South-Eastern part of Germany nevertheless they took an extra effort to rescue the last remains of moral and fear of God. Mr. Stoiber, the great leader of the Christian Socialist Union (CSU) and adored prime minister of the Republic of Bavaria invited other great minds - the leaders of religious groups in Germany - to a summit on how to protect religious views and symbols from being laughed at. Two reasons for the summit that were officially mentioned were the Muhammed cartoons and the TV-series Popetown, which both brought up understandable rage among many believers. Stoiber's goal is to change German criminal law in order to put criticism and humour in the right place: behind bars.

The Western World is one of the worst places to live in. Everybody can freely utter their opinion. Women are allowed to vote and some of them have even been seen in parliament. Scientists can research things that make the existence of a higher being less and less necessary. Children grow up without reading the Bible. Some people seem to even have sexual intercourse before they marry. What a misery we have created here.

Therefore I want to also thank those who participated yesterday in Stoiber's summit. I understand now that we have to protect and take special care of people who belive in numerology, Satan and the CSU.

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Protect the pope! Danger is brewing from Germany, his own home country. I am here in Finland and don't know any other way to help him than to raise my weak voice in this article. It is cruel and of course the root of the problem is again the Island: the Great British nation. There it is where they make fun about gods representative on Earth and all his fellow believers.

I talk about "Popetown", a British cartoon series that German MTV plans to show from May 3rd on. The series was produced by BBC, but the British broadcasting company did not dare to put it on air. Wikipedia writes the following: Popetown is a controversial animated sitcom following the life of Father Nicholas, who lives in a Vatican City parody referred to as "Popetown". The series was originally commissioned by the BBC in the UK, but was dropped from scheduling without a screening in the wake of protests from Roman Catholics.

Britain in the last minute prevented itself from what we all need to be afraid of: hurting the feelings of the Roman Catholics.

Yesterday the online version of German magazine "Der Spiegel" collected reactions from German officials on popetown:

• Secretary General of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), Markus Söder, a person that I admire in a very special way, stated: "German TV is no place for such a series. [...] It is about time to protect religious symbols by law.". Söders party is part of Germanys current government.
• The spokeswoman for human rights(!) and humanity(!) of the Christian coalition in German parliament, Erika Steinbach, was not happy that the series depicts Jesus Christ and the pope in denigrating ways. Airing the program would be a unbearable insult towards all Christians.
• The German commission for youth media protection (Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz - KJM) wrote an open letter to MTV, in which it proposed to check after the airing of the first issue of Popetown. What exactly they want to check is not clearly said in the article, but it seems the item of discussion is whether there should ever be a second issue of popetown on German TV.

I share a deep understanding, that a humorous TV series is one of the biggest threats towards an organization that is completely and seriously committed to teaching the only evident truth, as it it revealed in a several thousand years old book.

Soon it is not necessary anymore to envy the US-Americans for their progress on intelligent design, the religious influence on politics and the election of a god-fearing president. We start to slowly walk along the same path by selling TV censorship under the headline of youth protection and humanity. Naturally avoiding the question who protects youth from enforced church service by their parents or from compulsory religious education in German schools.

Jello Biafra once sang "MTV get off the air" and nowadays should be surprised to hear the religious right in Europe joining in his chanting. I always liked that song, but for the moment I hope MTV stays on the air and keeps a strict line towards providing a religiously disturbing program.

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On September 30th, 2005 the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published several cartoons that depicted the islamic prophet Muhammed and made fun of extreme islamic views. These cartoons caused demonstrations of so-called fundamentalist muslims in many Arab but also European countries. Some of these demonstrations caused riots and other forms of brutality. In Europe we had nothing better to do than the question the right for freedom of speech.

The question is, whether we should further restrict our personal freedom in order to not make other people angry. The people who get angry about jokes is the usual fanatic crowd: believers in a super-natural entity that created the world and nowadays obviously cares shit about it. I thought we had enough people in the European past who shut up just to not get killed (for example this guy) - and others who opend their mouth one time too many and were then used as fire wood (as it happend to this person).

I see no reason why I should be tolerant towards a person who believes in something that cannot be proven and who derives actions from this believe. If these people would at least talk with a common voice, but they all have different values and ideas about the perfect world and its maker.

And my dear Christians, this is also true for you. I am sure that your nearly 2000 year old political organization ("the church") will use any weakness of modern society to gain power again and feed people with thoughts of guilt and fear. I do not make any difference here between catholic, orthodox, protestant or whatsoever churches - please note that explicitly. Any believe that teaches about something that cannot be noticed by our senses and that can only be explained by contradicting nearly everything that science found out during the last several thousand years, is either totally crazy or used to keep people stupid. The momentary problem of the church is, that it has a hard time to establish a society as e.g. in Iran or Syria.

Yes, Christianity is all about love and kindness. That sounds good, but actually I do not remember that human rights were derived from the Bible or from any Christian organizations publication. As far as I remember our ancestors had to fight for any of their freedoms and later on some pope or bishop said that they agree to the new liberty and that it is (somehow) in-line with god, the bible and the church.

But still, what I write here has no base in todays reality. It is clear that we are here in the free world, uninfluenced by strange believes, and some countries in the middle- and far-east are under the dictatorship of religous fanatics. Is it so? Read the newspapers!

Today I had to read that Tony Stupid Blair said, that it was Gods decision to send British troops to Iraq. Oh sorry Tony, I missed that part of modern history. Maybe the creator just visited your flat when no camera was present. Maybe he let a fart and you mis-interpreted it. Maybe you were drunk. Whatever the reason was - you should have been wise enough to keep your mouth shut about it.

We already know that ex-alcoholic George W. Bush believes, that his mission in Iraq (and Afgahnisatan) is in-line with the will of the holy trinity, that nobody can understand and therefore you just have to believe in.

Wow! We are again in an age of religious wars. I do not doubt a second that George and Tony are true believers and that at least part of their statements are true. They believe in god and at least as much in their mission. Isn't that cool? We most likely never left the age of crusades.

Welcome back to the dark ages! If you saw some light during the last years, it was just a moral irritation.

And then again: I am doubtful by how this all teaches me that I am not as tolerant that I have thought. During this last month somebody stepped on the accelerator and lots of others were willing to speed up as well. Maybe we run towards a conflict, I don't know, I don't want to make any stupid prophecy. But I am concerned that it is so easy to take a clear position in this dispute - and how hard it is to understand the other side. I am surprised how strong I believe that our society is better to live in than any other currently existing or that ever existed before. I would like to doubt myself, but it does not work, the moment I hear something from any religous camp I can at best just shake my head.

In the end it is about belief. There is no right and wrong without belief. Some people say, they feel that there is a higher order in this world, there must be a meaning behind all this. I do not think so. I think, whoever searches for a bigger meaning is taking him- or herself too important. We are not important. All that is here was caused by chance and accident and we are just one product of a long serious of meaningless happenings. Our problem is, that we look up in the sky and want to explain what we see. That's how we came up with flash-throwing gods that transform into animals and make love to innocent princesses. But more and more we find out, that we can explain the mysteries by scientific means and that we find no reason why the things are as they are. We find constants, numbers, formulas, but no guidance how to live our lifes. And if you ask 100 people what is right, you will get at least 150 opinions.

A religion is a man made system that tries to give guidance. But we are walking faster than religion can adjust its rules. We are asking questions to which ancient books cannot give answers. We experience daily that there is no right or wrong, that there are only possiblities and taking them or leaving them will change our future. That's why I think religion is wrong - because it prentends to have answers, that do not exist. Because it takes away one of the true wonders that humans can experience: the doubt over something that they are able to do.

And that is finally why I think we should not be too friendly and too tolerant towards any kind of religous outburst either here or somewhere else. It is important to stay grounded on the few facts we have about our existence and not to start flying into metaphysical spheres. It is not that we have to teach others our view of the world, but we have to protect our freedom. That might sound militant or aggressive to some. It is not. Look again who started the violence and point out the one person, that did not have a religious background.

Todays issue (Wednesday, February 22, 2006) of the International Herald Tribune has a very good summary of some of the currently ongoing events on page two. If you have the chance read Roger Cohens "From Islam to Irving: A perfect moral storm" you should definitly do that.

Unfortunately the International Herald Tribune does not publish this article for free on the web. So, they do not deserve a linke from here (I am sure, that makes them re-think their policy :) ).

Edited Monday, 3rd of April 2006: Finally I found this article online. It is available here.

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