I see Ian Fraser, who developed the vaccine against cervical cancer, is now working on one for a form of skin cancer. What next I wondered.
Remember the fuss about the cervical cancer vaccine? The religious fundamentalists were outraged that a scientist was attempting to remove one bit of the "wages of sin is death" mentality. So they were refusing to let their daughters be vaccinated because then they (the daughters) might be tempted to engage in S.E.X. without realising that if they did they would die, horribly. God intended them to die horribly, I guess, by creating cervical cancer in the first place.
Wonder what they will say about a skin cancer vaccine? Refuse to allow their children to have it because god intended that if they went in the sun too much they should die horribly? Can't have scientists playing god of course, that is the job of religious fundamentalists.
I think someone should work on an anti-religion vaccine.
See I think that, just as no one realised that some cancers were caused by infectious agents, no one has properly understood that religion is not just a metaphorical disease, but an actual one. I think that a few thousand years ago the Earth happened to pass through a cloud containing a particularly virulent and infectious organism. The dust rained down on the planet (which explains why all religions have a belief in some kind of "heaven" "up there" in the sky) and the plague began. Passed on from parents and community elders to children. Doesn't take much, especially if the child can be infected at a very young age, but usually much harder in adults who have developed some immunity.
Shouldn't be too hard to develop a vaccine. Religion, like influenza, does come in a few different varieties, but they share a lot of common features, and finding the common core of the virus and producing general immunity all over the world should be relatively straightforward.
Once everyone was immunised then scientists could get back to developing vaccines and cures for other nasty diseases which have evolved in humans, knowing that they would no longer be rejected by sufferers of religiosity, their brains scrambled by irrational beliefs.
And the side effects of a world immune to religion would be not inconsiderable. One of those win-win solutions. I think I might volunteer to do some work to help the development. I'm sure some of you will join me.
I know many fundamentalists like to frighten themselves by peeping into the atheist world, rather in the way others might watch a horror movie, or take a scary ride in a fun park. All are welcome to have a peep at the terrifying atheism of The Watermelon Blog.