Posts Tagged ‘god’


In Case You’re Wondering, Too

September 1st, 2005 by Oskar Kennedy

  An old friend/former colleague sent me an email asking what I thought.

  I think about a lot of things. I’m reminded of the Chinese parable about the man whose son breaks his leg falling off the horse. I don’t remember it word for word, but the point is that life is unpredictable, and that things which seem like a blessing may be a curse, and vice versa.

  Everybody was so quick to point out how New Orleans was spared the worst of the storm, and some people were still talking about it while the levees were crumbling and water was flowing into the city. I can’t think of a clearer warning against rushing to judgment than that.

  I feel a sense of guilt, because I’m getting on with my life while millions of people try to absorb the fact that they’re now homeless. I fight a morbid fascination, and try not to start spewing my fears about chaos and social breakdown.

  I think about small things. I recently opened my home to a dog for the first time in my life. I’m very fond of him and our cats, and I feel a measure of grief for the thousands if not millions of pets whose owners left them at home, thinking they’d be gone for only a day or two.

  I think about big things. I think about the stupidity of building an entire city below sea level, between a lake and a river. Except that’s a mental cop-out. Nobody ever said “hey, let’s build a big city here!” Like most cities, it just sort of grew up around natural resources. By the time it was big enough for people to start worrying about a major catastrophe, it was already too large to move.

  I think about how we treat the Earth like it’s ours to do with as we wish. We cut down forests, we pump tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Everybody is screaming about the high price of gasoline. Do they realize that oil drilling operations in the Gulf Of Mexico directly contribute to the destruction of coastal wetlands, which could have helped to absorb the tide and diminish the storm surge that eventually overwhelmed the man-made barriers?

  So many people believe that this entire complex ecosystem was designed just for us. They cling to this belief so fiercely that, when nature does something dangerous, they attribute the destruction to the wrath of the designer. I guess it’s easier, in a way, to believe that God is smiting the wicked than to take collective responsibility for our wanton and wasteful ways.

  Actually, I think the hardest thing for most people to accept is that life is by and large a craps shoot. Sure, you can nudge the odds in your favor. Don’t smoke, buy a car with airbags, don’t juggle chainsaws while drinking gin. Still, at the end of the day, there’s a lot of Universe out there, and not a lot of you. If something good happens to you, cherish it. If something bad happens, be upset and angry. You deserve it. Just stop trying to explain it as divine fury. Gays and prostitutes and anti-war protestors don’t cause hurricanes, and thinking pure thoughts won’t keep you from getting hit by a car. Life happens. Welcome to the world.

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Are You There God? It’s Me, Marguerite

February 27th, 2006 by Oskar Kennedy

  Marguerite Perrin, the self proclaimed “God Warrior” who earned a peculiar kind of notoriety with her deranged evangelical ranting on Fox’s Trading Spouses, has just released a rap CD.
  None of the four horsemen would comment on the record, but sources close to the quartet confirm that they have, in fact, been saddled up and ready to go for some time, and are merely awaiting “the call.”

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I love my country, but my countrymen make me sad.

March 9th, 2006 by Oskar Kennedy

  A new Gallup poll shows that more than half of Americans reject evolution. 31% believe that man evolved and God guided it, and only 12% believe that evolution just happened without anyone at the wheel.

  A big shout out to the 12%.

  In fact, I think that needs to be a t-shirt. A big “12%,” maybe with a subtitle about being proud of evolution. Would anyone else wear that?

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For The Love Of Astronauts…

July 12th, 2007 by Oskar Kennedy

  I’ve decided that, in situations where a believer would invoke an omnipresent deity, I’m going to start swearing to astronauts.* After all, astronauts are the only beings that I know for sure have been smiling down on us from above the clouds.

*For purposes of this exercise, “astronauts” will include Russian cosmonauts, Chinese taikonauts, and any whatever-nauts from future manned space programs. My admiration for those who’ve flown in space is not bound by anything so silly as nationality.

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In Case You’re New Here

September 11th, 2007 by Oskar Kennedy

  You should know that I have a lot of problems with deism/religion. There is the usual complaint about the exclusiveness inherent in any belief system that purports to reveal the one true path to the divine. But when deists look to their patron spirit(s) as the driving force behind natural events, I start foaming at the mouth and gnawing on chair legs.

  The world is, almost completely at random, a stunningly beautiful and unfathomably horrible place. Invoking a supernatural explanation for unpredictable events is a double-edged sword. Also, both edges are coated in battery acid, and they’re aiming for your exposed throat at the same time.

  At best, ascribing events like these to the influence of magical sky beings fosters the belief that natural events occur because of the everyday behavior of the persons affected. (At its logical extreme, of course, is the delusion that these events can be influenced or even controlled by good behavior, dietary restriction, virgin sacrifice, etc.) At worst, a default deistic explanation makes us less safe, by acting as a disincentive to actual productive inquiry.

  Our only hope for minimizing the damage from pandemic illness and natural disasters lies with objective scientific investigation. Better prediction of geological and meteorological events. Structures built from modern materials and designed to survive extreme stresses. Efficient, workable evacuation plans. Vaccines to prevent communicable diseases. These things don’t just happen, no matter how humbly we petition or how hard we pray. They happen as the result of brain work and perseverance, and the underlying assumption that events that kill a lot of people should and can be prevented.

  If we call it the will of god(s) and trust in the power of prayer to save us, we’re leaving it to chance. Without the will to make our own way in the Universe, and the scientific diligence to learn how it all works, we’re signing on as the future test subjects in an experiment testing the power of fervent prayer to alter the trajectory of a civilization-killing asteroid. In that scenario, my money’s on the giant rock.

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