Religion and politics

Religion and politics - even Dante goes *facepalm*

I have a copy of Dante's Divine Comedy with the most beautiful illustration. I thought a picture of it would suit my thoughts today - prepare for a longish rant about religion, politics and animal welfare. If you're a big fan of the Christian Democrats and Päivi Räsänen you probably want to skip this.

I talked with a friend of mine (or more of an acquaintance, really) about the coming presidential election. I was so surprised when she said she thought about voting for Sari Essayah I sort of went "You mean the Christian Democrat?!?!". Which I probably shouldn't have. She replied that she's a christian and we ended up talking about the Christian Democrats and about the connection between the state and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Finland.

This got me thinking about my relationship to religion. I remember believing in the christian god when I was a kid, but I stopped believing in it around the time I stopped believing in Santa Claus. I'm definitely an atheist, but not really a "New Atheist". I still think that religion is a personal thing and I know people who get comfort in religion. But I do think that the church and religion should be separated from the state and politics.

The thing is, I don't really understand religion. I can't grasp the consept of believing in a higher power that supposedly looks over us. I find it quite silly, to be honest. And I think it's very disturbing that Finland's Minister of the Interior is a fundamentalist christian, a real bible basher. It's pretty scary that a person like that has that much power.

That ends my hopefully-not-too-disorderly religion/politics related rant. Time for the animal welfare one.

The presidential candidate for the Left Alliance Paavo Arhinmäki, who I used to think was an OK guy, has ordered posters for his campaign from this sick f*ck Teemu Mäki. Mäki is known from when he tortured a cat (bought from an animal welfare association) to death by smashing it with a small, blunt axe, came on top of the corpse, recorded it on video and called it art. If I was a complete psychopath like that guy, I'd probably hack him to pieces with an axe. Starting from the feet.

I wasn't at any point going to vote Arhinmäki, but now I don't even think of him as a decent guy. It's kind of ironic that around the parliamentary elections last year the Left Alliance was called "greener than the Greens"...

If you read this far: thanks and sorry...