Nothing fails like prayer
Swift Current- Sunday, December 30, 2012
by:Edwin Wallace
These statements are in no particular order. I simply wrote them down from time to time as I thought about life, conflicts, killings and of course, a lot of really good things. Some themes here are paraphrased from stuff I've read or heard. I like to imagine an evolved world where few if any of our resources go toward abusing, controlling and killing each other; where exploitation for the sake of profit is considered a criminal act. Wow! What we could do for each other then. 'Pie in the sky'? You bet. But just as well imagined as an all knowing all seeing fantastic notion, the deluded pray to. So, if you will, read on.
Happy New Year, Edwin
Stephen Weinberg, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, said, "with, or without religion, good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things, but for good people to do bad things, that takes religion." No room for doubt here, our history is full of horrors that attest to this fact.
John Stuart Mill summed it up neatly: Given the state of the world and what goes on in it, if there is a god and he is omnipotent, then he is malevolent. If there is a god and he is benevolent, then he is impotent.
We should take ownership of the ills of our society instead of relying, as so many do, on an all-powerful deity. Without god, we would be forced to deal with personal questions of equity, justice, motivation, and mercy. Religion, I believe, is a very cruel trick we play on ourselves. It is a way of putting aside the personal responsibilities of life. We will never address our problems effectively until we get over the idea that it's somebody, or something, else's fix or fault. Let's cut that out - there is no god.
I have tried living as though there were a god and I have tried living as though there is no god. I find the latter to be consistent with reality. We're the grown-ups now. We should start acting like it.
About 2,000 years ago they say god sent his only begotten son to save the souls of a few thousand people living in the general vicinity of Jerusalem. The globe's population today in in excess of 7 billion people. Hey god, you got a daughter? Send her.
Over several years I have become an atheist. I owe a good bit of thanks for becoming an atheist to the constant media articles informing me of the nature of this world. I now sincerely believe and understand that there's no undercurrent of good operating behind the scenes. The truth is what good that exists in the world comes from some of us. In the absence of us, it's all chaos and often cruelty. So we should pull this heavy, critical, frustrating and often rewarding load ourselves while drawing solace from our friends, neighbours and like minded people. There is no God. Nothing fails like prayer.
The great brains among us will continue to hypothesize how the universe came into being and continues to attain it's full extent. From what we now know, it is likely that it was not some omniscient God who created everything. The origins of such a God would be harder to explain than the universe.
Life isn't "designed" at all - as per the intelligent design/creationist crowd. It is the product of self-replicating molecules that appeared on this planet about 3.5 billion years ago and evolved, since then, via natural selection, which produces specialisation and either survival (of the fittest mutation) or extinction. We are increasingly capable of understanding this process of evolution and are doing so.
Amazing, how some of our sharpest minds become blunted when it comes to religion. The answer to "why" is clear: there is no "why," only "how." As far as theology is concerned, it might be completely simplified if the purveyors would only exclaim as do those of us living out reality, "I don't know!"
OK, I'm not a rabid atheist, I can acknowledge and recognize that faith and religious belief, properly expressed and executed, can do good.
But humanity does not need God, or faith, or religion to act with compassion. It just needs to believe in its own humanity and altruism (the belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others). Altruism is a part of our long evolutionary development.
No God is needed to appreciate that there are good people and bad people in the world. There is also good luck and bad luck. I think that life is precious and I resent and regret when it is squandered and taken senselessly.
