Religious Sensitivity

I understand the need for religious sensitivity. In Singapore, the rhetoric on the need to maintain religious and ethnic harmony is so resounding its almost deafening. Walk on the wrong line and you just might be charged with committing a seditious act and promoting feelings of ill-will and hostility between races (or religion) in Singapore. Ok I get it. But all I can say is, I’m agnostic, so why isn’t anyone sensitive to my religious feelings?


I was talking about the Gospel of Judas and the Da Vinci Code in my office the other day and aside from getting the usual “the Da Vinci code/Gospel of Judas is blasphemous, I will not read/watch it” from the Christian religious fanatics, I get emails the next day on why the Gospel of Judas/Da Vinci code is dead wrong and reading between the lines, you would have figured that it was basically saying anyone who reads/watches/believes it is going straight to hell. Gees… religious sensitivity? I think not. Imagine if the reverse was happening. If I was sending out emails on how the Bible is dead wrong ya da ya da ya da… its probably not going to be a pretty sight. Thing is, religious fanatics who send out these things to agnostics like me, and trust me, I’ve made it quite known that I am agnostic, aren’t being very religiously sensitive to MY beliefs. Then there are those cutesy religious powerpoint emails, yes I know you know what I’m talking about. What’s up with that? Please, for god’s sake, have some religious sensitivity. IT IS RELIGIOUSLY INSENSITIVE TOO! I have beliefs of my own, they may not correspond to yours or the religious institution’s conception of it, but they are my own, so shove off. I was nice to my colleague. I only told her not to send me such things because they clash with my viewpoint and that she wasn’t being very religiously sensitive to ME. This of course came as a shock to her because these people could never imagine religious sensitivity being relevant to anyone but themselves. Part of me just really wants to stuff the Da Vinci Code up her arse, but then again, that would be a real waste of a good book.