By expunging the last vestiges of faith, progressive mankind has been trying to aid progress in its juggernaut roll for at least two centuries now.
All sorts of progressive methods have been tried, from mockery to mass murder, from brainwashing pupils to boycotting adults, from massive propaganda to confinement in mental institutions.
Yet nothing has worked decisively enough – faith stubbornly holds on. Even in the most progressive, which is to say Western, countries, some people still keep going to churches, and not just on high holidays. Clearly, antediluvian prejudices are so deeply ingrained that progress is in danger of slowing down.
Of all faiths, Christianity is the greatest offender. Judaism used to rank pretty high too but, after progressive German socialists followed Marx’s recommendations and sorted Jews out back in the 1940s, they have been keeping a low enough profile not to be seen as an immediate danger.
Islam is off limits for criticism because of its Third World, multi-culti implications. Regressively colonial Europeans used to abuse progressive Muslim countries by introducing Eurocentric hospitals, schools and administration.
When they were eventually kicked out, Muslims demonstrably flourished all over the Middle East, but the justified resentment remained. Even now, with all paths of progress converging at the summit, some European dinosaurs still claim that protection from Islam is a more urgent task than protection of Islam.
These human reptiles refuse to acknowledge, for example, the just claims of progressive Palestinians driven to despair by Israel, where Jews haven’t yet learned to keep a low profile.
Why, even though PM Dave has explained that Islam is a religion of peace, Muslims are still being provoked to violate their scriptural prescriptions by regularly stabbing dozens of Israelis, some of them to death.
But fossilised Christian (and Judaist) enemies of progress still persist. They point out that most of the world’s flashpoints over the last 20 years have involved Muslims and had nothing to do with Israel.
Specifically they mention the conflicts between Bosnian Muslims and Christians, Côte d’Ivoire Muslims and Christians, Cyprus Muslims and Christians, East Timor Muslims and Christians, Indonesian Muslims and Christians, Kashmir Muslims and Hindus, Kosovo Muslims and Christians, Macedonian Muslims and Christians, Nigerian Muslims and both Christians and Animists, Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims throughout the Islamic world, Muslims and Christians in the Philippines, Chechen Muslims and Russians, Azeri Muslims and Armenian Christians, Sri Lanka Tamils and Buddhists, Thailand’s Muslims and Buddhists, Muslim Bengalis and Buddhists in Bangladesh, Muslims and Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Christians in Kurdistan.
Moreover, they insist that such apparent Muslim bellicosity, rather than being purely coincidental, has something to do with the world’s most peaceful faith.
In some parts of Britain, those that increasingly resemble a progressive Middle Eastern souq, people even perpetrate – unprovoked! – violence on progressive Muslims.
It’s only our progressive government that stands up for the right of Muslims to turn Britain into a progressive Middle Eastern souq. Henceforth, declared PM Dave, hate crimes against Muslims will be recorded separately and, presumably, dealt with more severely than crimes against, say, Christianity, which, despite our prelates’ efforts, isn’t yet quite progressive enough.
In fact, clinging on to that retrograde faith must be treated as a symptom of a severe mental disorder, presenting a mortal danger to progress. But not to worry: the disease is now treatable.
The treatment is called ‘transcranial magnetic stimulation’, TMS for short. Brains zapped with TMS lose the neurons responsible for critical thinking and decision making, which faculties are intolerable obstacles on the way to progress and especially atheism.
Jointly developed by progressive US and UK scientists, TMS was designed to cure patients of both Christianity and the irrational reluctance to see Britain turn into a progressive Muslim souq.
A recently completed placebo-controlled study shows that TMS works admirably. “Belief in God was reduced almost by a third, while participants became 28.5 per cent less bothered by immigration numbers,” says the triumphant report.
This experiment is in line with the underlying progressive certainty that all existential problems are at base medical. A bad mood calls for antidepressants, an iffy marriage for psychiatric counselling, boozing ditto, lamentable addiction to recreational opiates for iatrogenic addiction to therapeutic ones, worrying about the future for tranquilisers.
This is the progressive way to look at it, and our government ought to give serious thought to making TMS compulsory. What could be easier?
A Christian objects to homomarriage on religious grounds? Zap! – and there he is, walking the aisle with his rugby team-mate. Another one says that Britain is a historically Christian country, rather than a progressive Muslim souq? Zap! – he grows a beard, learns how to fire an AK and goes off to Syria to fight for progress.
As to capacity for critical thinking, our comprehensive education does a good job suppressing it already – but hey, every little bit helps. Just think how much easier life would be for graduates of our teacher-training colleges if all their pupils were zapped with TMS.
The opportunities are endless, and isn’t that what progress is all about?