Last night I spent a good two hours on and off arguing with some opinionated and slightly crazy people on Twitter. It started with a tweet from a Texan woman saying she celebrated Earth Day by thanking “God” for it. This irritated me somewhat: another topic being hijacked by religion. So I read her feed and she was telling someone that they believed the lies they were taught. So I commented that I thought she was the one believing in lies and that there was no God. What I received back was some abuse and name calling: nothing unusual. She was angry that I had commented but I pointed out that if she didn’t want anyone commenting, she should not put things on a public, thought sharing site.

After that another three or four people jumped on the bandwagon, also using name calling and quite pathetic arguments, if you can call them that. It doesn’t bother me, it happens all the time. I must admit I did snap and say a few harsh words too. Eventually I left it when the conversation deteriorated in to slating the UK (from one man) and me trying not to do likewise to USA, as somehow we ended up talking about health care.

After I shut down my computer I wondered what I had achieved and realised, sadly, nothing. All I had managed to do was get angry and get dragged in to a bit of a slanging match. As I thought more about it I realised that this happens quite often and sometimes it’s quite fun and entertaining, other times it just makes me more angry. I guess that’s the thing with Twitter: you can always find someone who has a different view to you and argue or converse with them.

The more I think about it the more I realise what a waste of time it was because these people will never listen and never change their ideas. Their beliefs are so ingrained in them through family and society that they will never be able to even attempt to hear another person out or see a different viewpoint. They will never accept science and coincidence has brought us in to existence because they don’t want to. Those two hours would have been better spent trying to do something much more useful and productive like campaigning for more secular policies within our government and society, writing letters to my MP or other MPs to stop the Pope’s visit, to increase and encourage better education not based around traditional religious practices and beliefs, to abolish the idea of faith schools or fight for the punishment of the hundreds of Priests involved in the many cases of abuse within the Catholic Church.

I don’t exactly have a goal, I don’t want to abolish religion because I don’t think that will ever happen, but I do think that thousands of young children are at risk of being suckered in to religion by their family and our still biased education system, and so if I do have a goal, it would be to change the way children are educated. If given a real choice I think most young people would be clever enough to see the irrationality of all religions and the logic behind science and facts. I also think that we should continue to keep religion and state/government separate and address the issue that religion is some untouchable force that cannot be questioned or must be consulted in the case of a major story, political or otherwise.

Sometimes people say things so ridiculous and offensive that they need to be addressed but most of the time there is little to gain from even entertaining these morons. Simply out there are many more things I could do with my time than argue with badly educated, stubborn, ignorant people on social networking sites and in a way I’m thankful for those idiots last night because they have made me realise where my time would be better spent.