Thing is though if you look what it tried, and achieved, for thousands of years was to give people moral values to live by:

• "Thou shall not kill, steal"
• "Thou shall honour thy parents"
• "Thou shall not covet thy neighbour's wife"

Some of these are still law now ... just! Like the law, religion or the laws and values of religion are corrupted by people with their own agendas (priests in religion, lawyers in the law). It's how you interpret it.

Yes, I know some of the wacky ones are designed by evil-minded individuals but the main stream ones have all been hijacked by evil-minded individuals. How many kiddie-fiddling priests? How many suicide bombers? But who would argue that thou shall not kill is a bad thing?

Anyway, we now have a new religion and most of us are firm believers, worshipping most Saturdays and Sundays, or sometimes in the evening after work. It's called consumerism and the name of the game is to consume and purchase as much as you can whilst you are on The Earth. Forget everyone else, it's you that matters and don't forget the more expensive the label the better; the more things you own, the further up the hierarchy you are. The main cathedral in the North West is called The Trafford Centre and you can't get in the car parks at the weekend for the masses trying to pay homage. Even when you are sat at home you read the Holy Argos catalogue or watch the religious broadcasts on the TV:

• "…Blah blah is sponsored by..."
• "You need to buy this; it will make you feel good about yourself and you too will smile"

Indeed, it's quite fitting that Christmas is the biggest religious event on the Consumerism calendar.

There used to be a big pagan festival welcoming the end of the days getting shorter and the way forward into the re birth of spring. This took place near the end of December at The Winter Solstice. There was a big feast eating flesh from animals that were sacrificed for the occasion. The entrails of the animals that were shiny and red, bit like tinsel; were hung on evergreen trees as were the internal organs like kidneys and hearts; that looked like coloured baubles. Evergreen as they were alive even in the winter and it was hoped that the god of the forest who had a long bushy white beard and wore a green cloak (not like the red cloak that coca cola but on father Christmas in the 30's) would smile favourably on the people celebrating the solstice and make the following year favourable for them. The pagan symbols of mistletoe (fertility) and holly (don't cut a holly tree down its really bad luck) also played a part. Does this sound familiar?

Anyway, think about it; you've got a brand-new religion you want to introduce to a load of pagans. So, you say "You can't worship false gods or celebrate the old pagan festivals" ... that's really going to convert people. So, how about, "You can still have the festivals but we will say that they are ours and pretend that there is nothing pagan about them. You keep the festivals we introduce the religion everyone is a winner!"

So, there you go you've hijacked a religion!

Fast forward a couple of thousand years and the new "Cardinals", the CEO of Buy Our Goods Ltd, says "Why don't we hijack the old religious symbols pretend they are our own get people to buy loads of crap and they can still have their festivals. Everyone's a winner."

The only problem is that the morals that were taught from the good book of the old religions have now been replaced by "Me first!"' morals that people get from Small (minded) Brother and soaps like Argumentative Enders and Confrontation Street.

Religion is a load of random bits of ink on a page it isn't evil or wrong. People are evil.

Here endeth today's sermon!