November 2008 | Vol 1 | Issue 47
Religious leaders worried that opiates, not religion, are opiate of the masses
ROME. Religious leaders say that opiates, not religion, are becoming the opiate of the masses, and are meeting in Rome to discuss the crisis. According to a spokesman for the conference, the availability of cheap drugs such as crack, crystal meth and Britney Spears is the major challenge facing all faiths as they try to "modernize and grow sustainably in anticipation of the Apocalypse".
Speaking to journalists in the Piazza Sanctus Con Excrucio Diabolico, spokesman Juan Baptista said that drugs were increasingly luring young people away from normal adolescent experimentation with religious substances.
"It used to be cool to dabble in religion," said Baptista.
"You and a mate would get together after detention behind the bicycle shed and read a few verses from the Bible or the Koran or whichever holy text gave you that buzz.
"You didn't know what you were doing, and you had no idea of the etiquette, like passing the book back and forth instead of reading a whole page yourself, but you persevered because it was just so thrilling and clandestine."
He explained that teenage experimentation had produced a steady supply of habitual religion-users, who in turn became priests, imams and rabbis and would keep the cycle of supply and demand in balance.
Baptista conceded that religious addiction remained a danger, but said that these cases were rare.
"We do see some lost souls, monks or nuns who have become enslaved by the good stuff, but they usually respond well to a programme of rehabilitation."
He said this programme included "short jolts of Richard Dawkins" and regular meetings with an Anglican Archbishop, "to show users that, like many Anglicans, you can be very religious while not believing in God".
He said the rehab programme had only failed once.
"Some nuns dropped off Father Imam Rabbi X outside our emergency room in 2003, and he was in a very bad way, doing anything he could get his hands on. The Bible, the Koran, the Torah, pamphlets from the Mormons, even Paulo Coelho novels.
"We did everything we could for him, but there's not much you can do once they get stuck into the hard-core Coelho."
He said that Father Imam Rabbi X had died three days later of Coelho-induced pretentiousness and a largely liquefied brain.
According to Baptista the primary aim of the conference would be to persuade the masses to switch opiates.
"We want the masses to know that if they're after a feeling of well-being, a sense of one-ness and the safety of conformity, then religion is by far the superior option.
"Please kids, try faith before you try drugs. It's cheaper, healthier, and if you hear voices telling you to do things, they tend to be benign: build an ark, blow your trumpets outside the walls of Jericho, turn the other cheek."
He asked the masses to "consider the carnage" if Noah had been on crystal meth.
"There just isn't a good outcome there," he said. "Even if a few animals got out of the inferno, he'd probably have wasted them with a crossbow."
Baptista conceded that the conference had started acrimoniously, with Christian and Muslim groups blaming "the Jews" for the drug problem, Jewish delegates blaming Islamist insurgents, and Buddhists not wanting to get involved.
However he said that the Hindus were remaining calm as they had "seen it all before".
"The good thing is that we are all in agreement that we don't want people to get stoned any more," he said, before hastily adding that this was a criticism of drugs and not of the Saudi and Iranian judicial systems.
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