Thanks to Whom?

Ah, Thanksgiving.  Our officially recognized day to celebrate gluttony in a land full of obesity.  Go figure.

But it is also a day we are to stop and give thanks for what we have.  But this year I wonder to whom I should give such thanks?  I have always given thanks to God for my many blessings, until it occurs to me that so many others were denied these blessings.  Why is that?

I was born a white male, speaking English, in the USA, to two educated parents.  I never worried about having food to eat or clothes to wear.  I was provided a great education.  There were no doors closed to me based on my birth characteristics.  For the most part, it appears I was born to be a conservative Republican.

But my circumstances are so rare.  Billions are born into poverty with no food, terrible shelter, one set of clothes, no clean water, no chance of escape from their circumstance because they are in a poverty zone, or a class system zone, or a racial discrimination zone.  How do I explain the millions who were born as I was born to the billions who were not?

Should I simply be grateful for the laws of chance, for the random event that determined that I was very, very lucky?  Should I thank God?  Then I must ask if God loves us all, why does He apparently punish most of us at birth?  Is this part of His plan?  If so, why such a cruel plan?  I could build a better case for a God who hates us and wants to punish us and make us miserable and sick than I can build a case for a loving, forgiving, personal God.  The data is pretty clear.

Most amazing to me is that God tolerates those who are born into such wealth who take the stand that they somehow deserve their wealth and comfort and are justified in politically defending such wealth.  Conservatives fight to end entitlements for the poor and needy.  And that is in this country.  Talk about spending some of our wealth elsewhere on the globe to help the starving and the sick and conservatives will rise up and quash any such humanitarian notion.  If there is a God and a devil it has always appeared to me that conservatives do the devil’s work while liberals attempt to do God’s work. 

Shall I be grateful to a god who designed us to live on a planet where only 15% is habitable by humans?  Why would a loving creator place his creation in such a place?  Shall I be grateful to a god who seems to reward the attributes of birth rather than the attributes of performance?  Shall I be grateful to a god that provides our nation with enough food that we can all grow fat while allowing about 20,000 children to die of starvation each and every day?  Shall I be grateful to a god who allows random chance to secure our fate?  If so, what is the purpose of prayer and worship?

Nope, this year for Thanksgiving I shall simply be grateful for the random chance that placed me where I am.  If God did this for me I must assume he did the opposite for all the other miserable, starving, sick, homeless people on the planet.  If that is true, then God is considerably meaner to humans than he is wonderful.  I could not worship such a god.

The Miracle Myth

There is a 7 year old Illinois girl battling a rare form of leukemia who has posted a request for prayers on Facebook.  After modern medical science has taken its best shot at removing the disease, what do you think will happen?  I think she is going to die of her leukemia.  I think no matter how many prayer warriors and prayer lists and individuals on their knees begging God for succor, she is going to die.  Soon.

And that is very sad.  More so because she has been given hope of divine intervention in her diseased state, a hope that is not grounded in reality.  Yes, there are people who pray to be cured who are, and pray to survive who do so.  There are many more who pray for the same thing and die.  If God chooses to save some and not others, what kind of God is that?  So, it seems to me it must be random.  Some survive, some don’t.  Some claim miracles, others die.  And if God is not as trustworthy as gravity in that he works everywhere, all the time, with everyone on the planet, then how can we trust in the Lord?  When this little girl dies praying to be cured she has been subjected to one of the great myths of religion:  God hears our prayers and acts on those prayers.  If that is true, God has a lot, I mean a lot, of explaining to do regarding those prayers he has chosen to ignore.  And if it is God’s plan that this girl dies, what kind of God is that?

If this little girl were my daughter and I had infinite power I would cure her.  And we are told we are all God’s children.  But could we expect such a cure from a God who sent his son to die?  Supposedly, Jesus cured folks prior to his death.  If I could cure, I would.  Am I a better person than God?  Why didn’t Jesus cure everyone while he was here?  Why didn’t he simply eliminate cancer, especially childhood cancer?  And Alzheimer’s and ALS and MS and on and on.  Nope.  We die of various maladies begging God for help.  And then we die.  

Miracles are those events that cannot be explained by the science at our disposal.  It is no miracle that so many die of so many maladies.  We understand that.  The so called miracles are so random that they cannot be the result of prayer.  If they are, God sure needs to tell us how he decides who to listen to and who to ignore.  Otherwise he is just mean, or miracles are a myth

The Problem with Catholics

You may have seen that in several recent Catholic newsletters it was announced that a vote for a Democrat would secure a permanent place in hell.  Oh wow. Where do I start?

So, invading the new world and causing genocide among the indigenous people wasn’t enough, the Crusades weren’t enough, the Inquisition wasn’t enough, and the child sex abuse scandals weren’t enough now they damn Democratic voters.  Really?  The unmitigated gall of any group with so much blood on its hands and so much interference in both the legal system and now the voting system is beyond belief.  Rather than beg for forgiveness for their past sins, they are proclaiming that others are going to hell?

I propose we turn this around.  For all the harm the Catholic Church has done to fellow human beings in the past 2000 years it should be clear that members of this church are going to hell.  It should also be obvious that their interference in the progress of women’s reproductive rights that they should all go to jail.  But that is not all.

For promoting false advertising and fraud, the members of the church should all go to jail for bilking their parishioners of billions of dollars by performing fraudulent magical acts including ringing a bell to turn wine and crackers to flesh and blood.  If they insist their magic is real, then they should all go to jail for practicing cannibalism.  For interfering in the operations of the state, the Catholic Church should lose its tax exempt status.  For requiring unhealthy lifestyles for all their clergy they should suffer the categorization of a cult. 

The only real defense the Catholics could offer is that this is all in jest, it is just mythology.  There really is no hell, so threatening to send someone there is a joke.  In fact anyone who would take seriously the notion that the mother of a deity is also a deity is obviously confused about the transitive property and genetics.  And the notion that a mortal is capable of granting forgiveness on behalf of an immortal is absurd.  If any of these myths are true they should be required to present evidence of the existence of hell by its location, they should submit the cracker and wine to analysis after the bell has rung and evidence that there is a deity, their clergy can talk with such a deity and lay people cannot talk to such a deity.  There would be no evidence of truth in these myths thus announcing once and for all that Catholicism is a mythology much like the Roman pantheon of gods.

And, while we are at it, let’s start collecting tax dollars from the church.  Let’s start arresting them for fraud.  Let’s start arresting them for cannibalism, and let’s start arresting them for interfering with women’s rights.  If they want to damn me to hell and have it scare me, they are going to have to convince me there is such a place and that a so-called loving god would send anyone there.  Permanent time-out is not a notion that fits with the “our father in heaven” model.

And finally, it appears to me that the totally uncharitable Republican Party platform is more like hell than anything the Democrats have proposed.  If one could be arrested for being selfish and stupid this would qualify as well.