Manifesto of the Pope Billzebub I

Gather around, all you clowns. I have something to say.

I’ve been watching the state of your world, and I am not happy. No, I am not happy at all.

Accordingly, I have chosen to assume control. As of this moment, I am in charge.

From this day henceforth, therefore, you will no longer call me Bill the Butcher. Instead, you will all address me by the title of His Holeyness Pope Billzebub I. And Pope Billzebub I has these things for you to hear:

First, your church, temple, or other place of worship or contemplation is right where you are now, and does not require any physical structure or construction. Indeed, in case you believe in an omnipresent and/or omniscient deity (the two terms are actually mutually exclusive, but let’s not go into that now), a physical place of worship is an insult to the very concept.

Secondly, that this church, temple or other place of contemplation being housed in your own mind, and lacking any kind of physical infrastructure, you do not have to make any monetary or other material donations of any kind to its upkeep. You do not have to pay for prayers to be said.

Thirdly, there are no prayers to be said. In fact, if you choose to believe in a supreme deity, prayers are blasphemous, because they posit that human demands for favours should be given priority over said deity’s master plan. And if said deity has no master plan, it is no deity at all.   

Fourth, since prayers are blasphemous and/or ineffective, the purpose of the place of contemplation in your mind is the pursuit of truth, such as it can be defined, and the shedding of illusions. There is no higher purpose than that, nor can there ever be.

The only known Ultimate Truth is this: The Universe shall burn out and die; all accomplishments, all endeavour, shall ultimately perish in the cold of eternal night.

As a logical consequence, then, all religious and political disagreements are futile and useless; and all discrimination against anyone, be it on racial or sexual or any other grounds whatsoever, is to be shunned forevermore (which term, of course, means “till the end of time and space”).

 The planet has been here since long, long before humans, who are, in essence, no more than ambulatory specks of protoplasm equipped with the means to manipulate the environment; and the planet will be here long, long after humans are gone. Therefore, there is nothing at all special about humans, or any reason to believe that they have the right to “own” the planet. This means that harming or destroying other species in the name of human welfare, or out of casual cruelty, is not just contrary to any ethical moral code but has no logical spiritual sanction whatever.

This also means that there’s nothing special about any country or nation, and no reason for any country to claim hegemony over others; and any country exists, compared to the scale of human history alone, for only a blink of time. Therefore, any country which claims that it is the “greatest” or “tallest” or the “indispensable nation” is merely ridiculous, and worthy of nothing but abysmal contempt.  

Then, you do not require belief in any deity or other spiritual being to be a good person. Indeed, to be a good person all you require is a sense of right and wrong, and exercising that sense in the absence of belief in a higher being is a greater mark of goodness than exercising it in the fear of divine punishment. Therefore, hatred for atheists or agnostics is illogical.

Since you do not require belief in a deity to be good, you do not require to take it on faith that it exists. Indeed, faith is not the basis of thought. Faith negates thought. Faith is the enemy of your status as a reasoning animal. Throw away faith. Learn to think.

And last but not least: rich or poor, black or white, fat or thin, healthy or diseased, we all have one thing in common: we will die. So, use the time you have productively, for there’s too little to waste on hate and vengeance, let alone on squabbling over whose flag is spanglier or whose testicles larger.

The Pope Billzebub I has spoken.