Calling it a sickness to this world, members of the formless 'hacktivist' group of computer programmers known as Anonymous declared war on religion on Friday, March 2, hacking the websites of three Christian organizations all based in and around Charlotte, North Carolina. The homepages for Bethel Outreach International Church, Charlotte International Church, and Crossfire Ministries were all replaced with the 30-minute long YouTube video, Richard Dawkins: An Atheist's Call to Arms, and an informal declaration of war, with the title, religion sucks lol [laugh out loud].

The attack was announced by Twitter account @AnonymousIRC to its 276,783 followers. IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is one of the several online social platforms that Anonymous uses to congregate and make plans, along with Facebook and Twitter. The first tweet, sent out at around 10 am EST read, http://www.betheloic.org HACKED Reason:religious idiocy and foh dah lulz #Anonymous #AntiSec #OWS #ROOTED #DAWKINS. WRITER'S TRANSLATION: The website www.betheloic.org has been hacked. The reason being the idociy of religion and because attacking them makes us laugh. Two tweets followed moments later with the same message, except for the name of the website that Anonymous had hacked, most likely with a proxy DDoS spam attack.

The video that Anonymous posted on each hacked site is a 31-minute speech by famous atheist Richard Dawkins, in which he told his fellow atheists not to hide their beliefs, and to fight against the incursion of religion into politics and education.

This Friday's attacks are a continuation of Anonymous hacktivist's plan to launch online attacks against their perceived enemies once a week. Last Friday, Anonymous hackers took down several FBI affiliated website, including the Dayton, Ohio branch of InfraGard.

Anonymous also declared war on America in a YouTube video earlier this week, calling on US citizens to rise up against their government, although nothing much has come of this hyperbole so far.

The full text (some expletive words have been censored) that Anonymous posted reads:

Greetings fellow pirates, hey there religionf-gs! Guess what? U dun goofed! We rm'd you and your gods and saints neither't protected you nor casted some awesome thunderbolt onto us.

Let us be clear from the start: any kind of religion is a sickness to this world. A sickness that creates hate and intolerance, a sickness that brings people to wage war on their fellow people, a sickness that has come to this world long time ago, when mankind wasn't educated, a sickness that brought false hope and suppression to those who believed and often even more terror and suppression to those who dared not to believe. Religions are authoritarian hierarchies, designed to dominate your free will. Religions are mind control. They're power structures that aim to convince you to give away your power for the benefit of those who enjoy dominating people. When you subscribe to a religion, you enroll in a mindless minion training program. Religions don't market themselves as such, but this is essentially how they operate. In case you ever wondered why religious teachings are invariably mysterious, confusing, and incongruent? This is no accident - it's intentional.

We see religion pretty much the same way as we see many governments. Fear mongering and making lots of money, so a small group of ppl will become insanely rich, while the believing masses can eat dirt .As long as they are afraid that omgomg god will come and strike great vengeance upon me all is good.

To quote Encyclopedia Dramatica (bringing you answers to life, the universe and everything since last Thursday) on this issue:

»Religion is a severe mental illness created over 9000 years ago, at the same time as the Earth. Since then, religion has been one of the biggest sources of drama, f----try, and unwarranted self-importance in the world today, secondary only to the internet. It is responsible for such insanity as Christf-gs believing that beating someone half to death with a 2,000 year old book will heal them and Muslims believing that if they blow themselves up they will get 72 virgins. Even atheists are not immune to the psychotomimetic effects of religion; the mere mention of religion is enough to send any atheist into hours of butthurt sh-tfits.«

So people of the world, don't let religion control your life. Don't fight against each other for contrary beliefs. This world and our life can be a wonderful adventure, where you have the unique chance to help mankind and your fellow citizens. Where we can all work together to make this earth a better place for ourselves, our children and all those generations who will come after us. ^(;,;)^