Live for Today but Not like an Asshole

The main problem in this world isn't just religion, it's that people do things in the name of an afterlife that has yet to be proven actually exists.- XMASTIME

This incredibly brilliant quote by me popped up yesterday in my Timehop app, but it prompted me into remembering another quote from a chap much more beloved and trusted than me, Mr. Atticus Finch:

"Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of another ... There are just some kind of men who -- who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results."

Aaaaaaand I'll tie that all up nicely with my superslice, British National Treasure Stephen Fry:

The most important philosophy I think is that even if it isn’t true you must absolutely assume there is no afterlife. You cannot for one second I think, abbragate the responsibility of believing that this is it because if you think you’re going to have an eternity in which you can talk to Mozart and Chopin and Schopenhauer on a cloud and learn stuff and you know really get to grips with knowledge and understanding and so you won’t bother now. I think it’s a terrible, a terrible mistake. It may be that there is an afterlife and I’ll look incredibly stupid, but at least I will have had a crammed pre-afterlife...… I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe there is a God. If I were to believe in a god l would believe in gods. And I love how when people watch I don’t know, David Attenborough or Discovery Planet type thing you know where you see the absolute phenomenal majesty and complexity and bewildering beauty of nature and you stare at it and then… and somebody next to you goes, “And how can you say there is no God?” “Look at that.” And then five minutes later you’re looking at the lifecycle of a parasitic worm whose job is to bury itself in the eyeball of a little lamb and eat the eyeball from inside while the lamb dies in horrible agony and then you turn to them and say, “Yeah, where is your God now?” You know I mean you got… You can’t just say there is a God because well, the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children. You have to account for the fact that almost all animals in the wild live under stress with not enough to eat and will die violent and bloody deaths. There is not any way that you can just choose the nice bits and say that means there is a God and ignore the true fact of what nature is. The wonder of nature must be taken in its totality and it is a wonderful thing."

Amen.