I am offended by many things in this world. I’m afraid as my eyes are opened wider, and my intellect expanded, and my world-weary experience grown exponentially, I find myself offended by more and more of the injustice, ignorance and arrogance around me.
A particular offense which most people willfully ignore is when a religious person, who succeeds in something, or enjoys some good fortune at the expense of others, thanks and praises their monotheist, their God.
What arrogance must these people have to assume that an omnipotent and omniscient deity would choose to bestow upon them a meaningless award or a lucky bet at the horses or a profitable deal at work instead of paying a single bit of notice to the millions dying of AIDS in Africa, for example.
That they really believe God is so free of time and energy that he would choose them and their greedy success, superficial reward or financial fortune over the millions of innocent lives being destroyed by disease, war, violence, and poverty, is disgustingly offensive to me.
And it should be offensive to everyone else too.
Instead of turning the other cheek and accepting those with the power of influence to continue to propagate this ridiculous act, such as Hollywood actors at the Oscars or a sports superstar pointing to the heavens after making his team win, the world should expand its knowledge of what is happening outside their front door and realize the ugliness of their religious arrogance.
Ignorance and arrogance combine to produce the greatest ills in our world today. All religious superiority comes from those two traits combined. So does political superiority. Wars are started because of these two traits. Poverty is allowed to continue because of these two traits. Borders and division, separation and rejection of the other all exist because of ignorance and arrogance.
What is the alternative?
Equal education for all. A true, non-agenda-serving education. An honest education.
A meritocracy, where people are given more power based on their proven ability to lead in certain areas, rather than leaving the running of our countries to the privileged who care not for the common person at the bottom of the pyramid. But for now, all the power is wielded by those designed to wield it, not those who have demonstrated the correct responsibility and aptitude.
George W. Bush was shooed in to the Presidency of the United States not because he was supremely intelligent, not because he had proven an immense care and passion for guiding people to a better life for all and certainly not because he could be trusted beyond doubt with the responsibility over people’s lives and livelihoods. He became the President because his father has been the President.
Did he feel sick as he snapped up all the rewards and adulation that his privileged life had brought him, at the expense of countless more people struggling through poverty in his own country? Did he vomit his own greed and illusion of superiority, while the New Orleans victims cried over the lost of their loved ones as well as their homes and belongings? Did he rip his own heart out in anger at the injustice of his sweet, sweet position, while he sent dumb, easily led soldiers, with the countries manipulated backing, into a meaningless war full of lies and misdirection?
No. He played golf.
And it fits, that Mr Bush is a devout Christian who no doubt thanks God everyday of his life for ‘choosing’ him.
I do not believe in a monotheist, nor in any of the three Abrahamic religions that dominate the west, but even if I did I wouldn’t be able to bring myself from cringing at the shame of a person thanking God, actually believing a deity would treat them so much better than another who may have also prayed to him/her/it.
That would then mean that God was a spiteful, mean old critter, ruining lives and allowing people to die while picking the few he liked to help. A miserly, sadistic entity, with an omnipotent control over the earth but sitting and just watching as the vast majority live in pain and poverty, subject to disease and violence and injustice. If I was a religious man, I could not believe that God was this way and still worship him. But yet, the privileged do. Ignorance and arrogance.
Opium Virus 