Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Cryin' won’t help you/Prayin' won’t do you no good
I recently came across an old Noam Chomsky reference to a comparative study of religious attitudes: nearly 75 percent of Americans literally believe in religious “miracles” and the “devil”; only 9 percent of Americans accepted Darwinian evolution while about half the population believed in divine-guided evolution; and 40 percent thought the earth was created about 6000 years ago.
Where else in the “industrial” world could you find such “faith”?
Indoctrinated to leave governing to the people we’re told can actually “handle” it, we’ve almost given up demanding results from our leaders. Instead, we take State Department press releases and New York Times editorials at face value and end up directing our pleas for help to the heavens instead of to the humans who are actually doing all the fucking up. But that is the penultimate function of religion, isn’t it? It supplies a carved-in-stone set of laws to save us from the hardship of thinking for ourselves. Instead we look to media-created stars like the Pope or Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama to confirm our self-doubt.
The followers of any religion are pacified not by having their abject circumstances changed, but by being taught ways to tolerate the intolerable. Organized religion—fueled by all our doubts, fears, and repressed desires—gives some meaning to all this mostly avoidable suffering. So, in the name of endless suffering, here are some important questions for the next bible-thumper you encounter:
*If your god is all knowing, why do you need to pray in order to let him know what you want? For that matter, if he already knows what’s going to happen, what good is prayer anyway?
*If your god sent his son to earth to save it, and there’s life on other planets, did he send the same son to those other planets or does he have other kids?
*By the way, why did he pick Galilee in the first place? This choice made the spread of Christianity a rather laborious project, wouldn’t you say? And why did he wait so long? Did your god not care about the generations that came before Jesus? Then, when Jesus supposedly came back from the grave, he still didn’t announce it far and wide. Hey, if your god is so omnipotent, why did he hatch such a hare-brained scheme to begin with?
*Finally, here’s a favorite: Who would win in a fight, Jesus Christ or Godzilla?
My guess is that the giant lizard would blast JC with the atomic breath, not realizing that the son of god would rise again three days later. This pattern would repeat itself a few times until JC looked skyward and turned the Pacific Ocean into wine. Godzilla would partake in a sip or two and upon seeing his opponent strolling atop the water, check into reptile wing of the Betty Ford Clinic.
TKO: Jesus.
Copyright © 2005-2007 Mickey Z.
