In the name of God

The world will be a healthier, happier place to live when we overcome our desire to find superstitious answers to life’s difficult questions. Horrible news from Paris as masked gunmen stormed the offices of the satirical paper Charlie Hebdo and murdered twelve people, reportedly for satirizing the prophet Muhammad in the past. Predictably, there will be much wailing from Christian fundamentalists about the violent nature of Islam with no reflection on Christianity’s long history of barbaric behavior.

And Muslims have no monopoly on religious lunacy. In another headline from today’s news, we are treated to this: “City officials declare God ‘owner’ of their Alabama town.” The town of Winfield’s mayor hopes the designation will help residents become more religious. We can laugh or shake our head in wonder, but the mayor’s belief system is shared by a large number of Americans.

Many argue that we should look at the good that religion has done, but this isn’t a very compelling argument for me. Believers want to focus on the ‘good works’ of their faith, such as helping feed the poor, without including the broader discussion of why we have a system that allows people to go hungry in the first place. And “belief” is so damn pliable it can be used to justify almost anything, from obscene wealth to war to government-sponsored murder to the denial of scientific facts.

My opinion is that religion is a phase in human development, in the same way that believing in Santa Claus or imaginary friends is a stage of individual development. As we mature, we are slowly (and painfully) setting aside superstitious explanations of the universe in favor of scientific ones, and there will come a day when religion will be a quant memory…if we don’t destroy ourselves in the name of God first.

Ignorance, nationalism and greed have broken America

Sometimes it’s hard to take reality seriously. We live in the computer age where just about anything you might want to know is only a few keystrokes away.  We’ve harnessed human knowledge and wisdom in a small machine and you can tap into it any time you want. Despite this, despite having all of the information we need to make informed decisions, we still have people governing us who live in the Dark Ages when science was black magic and it was believed God controlled people like pieces on a chess board.

Instead of honoring and elevating intelligence, our current crop of leaders shun it, deny it and run from it to hide in the warm buxom of their corporate masters. How can any country last when its leaders celebrate superstition and rule under the illusion that their magic is more powerful than science? They think God has blessed them and their ambition, when in reality these true believers are merely useful idiots for the elites who are willing to buy them a seat in Congress as long as they toe the company line.

Their faith doesn’t inform their lives. It’s just the opposite. They’ve cobbled together a set of beliefs that justify lying, cheating and stealing under the guise of doing God’s work.  They don’t answer to God or the American people. They answer to the Fortune 500 CEOs and greed-blinded billionaires who have become so twisted and perverted by money they are willing to leave their children a poisoned, dying planet. The only thing our leaders are highly skillful at is spewing platitudes and code words that draw ignorant, angry white voters to the polls like flies to dog crap every two years.

We will fall as a country under the weight of our willful ignorance, blinding nationalism and tolerance of greed. History tells us over and over again that any country that extols superstition over science, that allows its wealthiest citizens to control the government, that believes perpetual war is the optimal state, cannot survive. Our empire is already crumbling and, without real change, collapse is immanent.