By Nasir Hashir.

I live in a small town in California. I was born here and my parents have been here since the 1960’s. Because my older brother was a hot rod enthusiast, my childhood sports heroes were low-budget independent drag racers, and not football, baseball or basketball players.

So from an early age, when my school friends did the shouting, cheering, high-fiveing sport-fan things, I smiled and nodded and remained quiet and calm. I enjoyed being on the outside of it.

When made to play games with balls and teams at school, I did not object, but I would get into mild trouble when I would fail to notice a passing ball that I was supposed to catch, chase or run with, because I was looking at a weed in the grass, or a car parked nearby, or the female teachers that I had crushes on.

And so I adopted a life devoid of sport. I even turned my attention away from car racing by the time I reached 12.

And that’s when I first noticed that the more people like sport, the more violent, angry, competitive and generally unpleasant they become. Whereas, the less people like sport, the more reasonable, intelligent, objective and charitable they become.

There are of course many exceptions, many sports players or fans who are very nice indeed, but I can can sum it up thus:

Sport causes violence.

My parents were non-religious, and from an early age I saw the common sense in that. I simply cannot understand why anyone anywhere would for one second believe that the God myth is true. Since I am lucky enough to be an American, and I don’t live in Iran or Afghanistan or in certain areas of Dallas, I can freely and openly declare my non-belief and only get beaten up by religious people once every few years.

And from this outside, objective, point of view, I can observe the religious and clearly see that they are more likely to hate people who are different from them. Some Moslems hate Christians and Jews, some Hindus hate Moslems, some Protestants hate Catholics, etc. etc. and throughout the modern history era, this attitude has been taken to the ultimate level, war and murder.

There are of course many exceptions, many people of religion who are among the nicest people in the world, but I can sum it up thus:

Religion causes killing.

So there you have it, sport causes violence and religion causes killing. You may sit there and read this and say, but I like baseball and bowling and I never hit anyone. Or you may say, I go to church and I oppose all war. But as I said, there are exceptions and if you are a nice person and still like sport and religion, you are using your power of reason to go against the flow to a certain extent.

There are exceptions on both sides. Some people may not like sport or religion and yet still be killers. There are exceptions to any rule and trend. But I stand behind my observations and say again, sport and religion are bad for society.

Nasir Hashir is a baker in a small town in California, but does not eat cakes himself.