Year Ten

Scattered thoughts on the tenth anniversary:

• How can people say "god bless America" today?  I asked a believer how they can rationalize that statement and they told me that "he" works in mysterious ways. Somehow, and as much as I try to be respectful, I have to, deep down inside, call bullshit on that.  How can one justify such atrocities by labeling it with the benign "mysterious ways" excuse.  "Mysterious ways", at least to me, involve a man in a black cape pulling a rabbit out of a hat, or making a woman disappear in a "magic" box, not the complete annihilation of 3000 innocent people, some of them meeting their end in the most horrific and prolonged ways imaginable.
• And why is god blessing us today?  Why not wonder where the fuck he was in 2001 on this day.  Was he out to lunch?  Was he having a business meeting with Lucifer?  Was he simply hedging his bets on Al Qaeda and radical Islam?  After all, Mohammed Atta and company committed these acts FOR GOD.  The same god Christians worship, the same god Jews worship, the same god not-crazy Muslims pray to five times a day.  Sure, he's Allah in the Qu'ran, but guess what?  Same god. So how can people "thank god" or "god bless" anything when he's the very same god that didn't snatch those planes out of the sky on that Tuesday and say, "No, no, children. Play nice."
• If the acts of 9/11/01 don't make anyone realize that there is no god, then I don't know what else could.  Oh, wait, how about the Holocaust, Dharfur, Somalia, Andre Brevik, Rwanda, Bosnia, Palestine, AIDS, children born with cancer, children dying of starvation, people that shoot up IHOP restaurants for no reason, Michelle Bachmann, amputees (if there is a god, why won't he heal them?), war, famine, stillborn babies (bullshit that "god needed an angel in heaven"), rape, murder, pedophiles (priests, especially), and all those wonderful other things that this supposed benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent being "allows" to happen because of his "mysterious ways".
• And before you accuse me of being an Atheist because of all the bad things listed above, I will stop you there.  Sure, the horrific things that humans do to eachother are one of the reasons why I cannot logically believe in a god, but the wonders of the Universe and of our planet trump the idiocies of humanity.  How egotistical of us wee humans to think that the sun rises and sets for us.  That it was somehow "created" for our benefit.  We are a speck of a planet, on a speck of an arm of a galaxy that is a speck in the corner of an endless universe of which we are just learning about.  Our visible Universe, as detected by the Hubble telescope, shows millions, if not billions, of other galaxies, with other star systems, and presumably other planets that contain life.  We are here for a minute in the grand spectrum of things and then we are gone.  Yet people perpetuate this Bronze Age notion that we were "created" in a god's image and have this huge purpose.  We don't.  And that's ok. 

• As I said on my Facebook page, today should be a day where we remember what happened, but focus our energies on making this world a better place for our children.  How do we do that?  Well, for me, it means to stop fundamentalism in all aspects.  The United States is on the verge, if not already, of becoming a theocracy.  We are, in no way, a Christian nation as clearly outlined in both the Constitution and the Treaty of Tripoli, yet zealots and fundamentalists continue to push the notion that we are.  We must insist on a complete separation of church and state in both public lives and government.  The Michelle Bachmans, the Rick Perrys, the Mitt Romneys, the Falwells, the Robertsons, all must be removed from positions of influence. We must focus on teaching our children that EVERYONE is entitled to rights in this country: the right to love, the right to marry, the right to be a parent.  No one should be singled out or condemned simply because an ancient book, written by primitive goat herders says so.   
• Evolution is Science. Creationism is Myth.  One of them belongs in a Science class, the other in a Theology/World Relgions class. Not doing so is a disservice to the education of our children, or do we want all of them to sound like idiots?

• Let us not forget that horrific tragedies that befell sacred American soil (cough, cough, cough, sarcasm, cough) ten years ago are par for the course in not-so-lucky countries all over the world.  Children and raped and sold into slavery on a daily basis in certain African countries.  People are hacked to death with machetes for being gay, not following the same religion (oh, look religion and violence again!), going against the status quo, and other stupid reasons.  Buildings are detonated, families are destroyed, sons and daughters are lost every day in other countries and nobody blinks an eye.  Yet, when it comes knocking on our front door step, America all of a sudden, comes together and listens. 
• Well, America, you should be listening every day, to every person in every country who is victim or witness to their horrors.  We're not better than them, we're not special, and now, we're just like every other war torn country.  We're being taken over by theocrats who want to rule from the pulpit, who believe violence is the only way to conquer "the enemy", who believe "the enemy" is someone who isn't like them, and who wish to marginalize and demonize anyone and anything that threatens their "morality" and "values". 
• Sorry, but my godless Atheist morals and values never told me to hate gays and lesbians. 
• In conclusion, if I can get to one, today absolutely sucks.  And I dread the day when I will have to explain to my children why I just burst out crying for no reason on Sept. 11.  Or why the TV stays off or on cartoons all day.  Or why I hide the newspaper.  Or why, in my hope chest, there is a box with pictures in it of two towers.  Were that we were all children and didn't know about the cruelty of man.