Ok, here's a hypothetical situation. Let's say you're waiting at a very busy roundabout waiting to turn when suddenly your phone rings. Bearing in mind that answering your phone while driving is illegal where you are (UK), do you:
Guess which one I encountered yesterday morning, which added an extra 20 minutes to my journey. Oh yes, it's C. Some woman decided she would stop exactly where she was in the middle of the road, right next to the roundabout, so neither could anyone see what was coming nor could they get past. She just sat there and talked away for a good half an hour or so while people beeped at her and tried to squeeze round her. But nooo, we all had to wait til her oh-so-important call had finished. Sure enough, as soon as she had finished, she drove off again, completely erasing any illusions anyone might have had about her having broken down.
I mean, seriously. What about that phone call was so important that she had to stop there for 20 minutes and block everyone else off?! URGH. Some people really need a good slap. I was hoping someone would have called the police or something but then I'm not sure they would have been able to get through the blocked up traffic even if they had been called, grrr.
In other news, it appears to be Christmas next week. ... I want the person who let that happen to explain exactly what they have done with all my time.
Now before I get started, be warned that this post may offend. You are reminded that this is my opinion and that I do not claim any of my beliefs as fact or correct or the right way to go about things or anything. You believe what you want to believe; I will do the same.
I dislike religion. I am not singling out any particular religion here, I dislike the entire concept of religion. I don't mind those who believe in a God, but when they make it a matter of life and death I think it's taking it a bit far. Part of me thinks that God and everything to do with religion is made up; because there are things we as humans cannot explain, we have used our imaginations. We aren't certain how the Earth was created - God made it. We aren't certain how we came to be on this Earth - God made us.
I cannot stand preaching. People who tell me that God will save me if I submit myself to Him or whatever can get lost. I will not have anyone tell me how to live my life or what to believe, especially when there is no proof that living such a life is better than any other.
I am fine with those who want to use Jesus/Mohammed/[insert other deity here]'s life or the Bible/Torah/Qu'ran etc. as a guide, but following it word for word is just wrong. Would these people really have wanted you to follow their life 100% accurately? I don't think so. They would have liked you to make your own decisions and when you aren't sure about something, refer to their writings or whatever.
Because quite frankly, these people who live their lives 100% like the Bible says are no more than little bleating sheep with no mind of their own. Ask them a question and they'll have to refer to the Big Book of Rules (aka Bible) to see what they can say in answer. Despite personal feelings regarding marriage/homosexuality, I know a lot of religious people who suppress natural feelings because they "aren't allowed to feel such things". Yeah ok, whatever.
I don't think that's quite what religion is about. It's not a set of rules to live your life by, it's meant to be a guideline. Not a you-must-do-this-and-you-must-not-do-that type thing, because although some people like to be told exactly what to think and do every day, that is not my idea of fun.
By all means refer to the Bible when/if you have difficulty with something and you want to see how Jesus dealt with it or whatever, but don't consult the thing every time someone asks you a question.
But, I hear you say, "It's a choice!!1" ... Yeah, well it's not a choice I would personally make and it's not a choice that I want people to constantly remind me that they have made. I know quite a few people who, as they put it, had no direction in life before Christ. They are happy to follow every word of the Bible, but they also love to remind me of that. I accept that they have chosen their path, and I would like it if they accepted my choice not to choose their path. I never tell them how stupid they are for being religious or whatever (only jokingly, heh), because as I said, it's their choice.
Fundamentally, I believe life is for making your own discoveries and your own mistakes. I think a lot of people are brought up in a religious background where religion is not a choice, it is the way. A friend of my family's is a pastor yet he is bringing his children up completely free of religion so that they are free to make their own choices later. That is the sort of thing I want to see more of, not people who force their own choice upon others, like parents who have made a religious choice and force their children into it as well.
I don't think God would be sending people to hell if they didn't go to church 29374089732985 times a day or whatever or whether they have sex outside of marriage and all that. I think all He wants is for us, who may or may not be His creation, to live in peace with each other.
I think religion just shows how dependent people are on knowing the whys, hows, whats, wheres, etc. I know that it's difficult for some people to just deal with things as they are (and I'm one of these people - I have to know everything about everything), but I don't understand why these same people will turn to religion as the answer since there is hardly any proof to support its theories, just like the big bang and other such things. We can't know the answers to life, the universe and everything (and no it isn't 42) because we weren't there when it started. We will never have 100% proof of any theory.
How do we know that the Bible wasn't just a story told by a parent to their questioning children all those thousands of years ago? The children told other children, those who could write wrote bits down, it got passed along the generations, etc. etc. etc.
Madness, I tell you.
I've seen a few of these sort of posts around lately, and because I can't think of anything original to blog about disagree with them all, I am going to list my own top 5 extensions you absolutely must have. Because I said so.
I know, I know. It "robs innocent webmasters of their income" or whatever but I never, ever click ads. I don't read them, I don't like them, I disagree with them. I don't mind a text link or something but big banners full of "ZOMG CLICK HERE!!1!1" flashing images = big no. I won't block a text ad, but I will and do block images and Flash ads. If you want me to click things, make them unobtrusive instead of blinding me with flashings from all directions.
I am far too lazy to copy and paste URLs that aren't clickable into my address bar, so this handy extension does it for me. There is a better one but as yet I've not tried it and I'm happy with the one I've got, so I don't know if I'll use it.
Because I simply must know whether your site is valid or not. No, really... The most useful thing about this extension is that when you view the source of a page you're working on, it highlights the errors in the source and tells you what's wrong. It'll even tidy the whole thing up for you with one click if you want it to (yes, that's where the extension's library gets its name from - HTML Tidy - because it tidies things up for you. Get it? :P ).
This one is probably not as essential if you don't need to do screenshots or anything like that, but basically it will take a screenshot of the entire page, not just the bit that's currently on your screen. I like it since I can screenshot a full page of content (useful for people like me whose printer doesn't work and who want to save the current page they're on - yes, you can do "save page as" or print it to a file, but I think this method is quicker and easier, so that's why I use it).
Tamper Data stopped working for me when I upgraded to Firefox 2, but it's a great extension meant for detecting vulnerabilities in scripts. It's got SQL injection and XSS stuff built in and ready to go to test your scripts to the limit. Of course, if you don't write or use scripts or anything then this extension is a bit useless to you.
Of course, there are the other extensions everyone recommends, like the Web Developer Toolbar, NoScript, IE Tab, etc., etc., which are very useful and which I have, but like I said, everyone recommends those so I thought I'd mention some of the lesser-known ones.
Regarding the last entry, yes, I had written an entry about how my house seemed to have accumulated some bedbugs. That entry decided to disappear off the face of the earth and I have no idea why. Anyway, upon closer inspection it appeared the bugs weren't bedbugs, but carpet beetles and pest control won't deal with those without charging us some hugely expensive fee so I've just gone mad with insecticide and we'll see how that turns out. Urgh.