Saturday, July 18, 2009

It's okay to choose to help people instead of a god

I submitted the following text to my local paper to try to get it published in the editorial. Truthfully, I'll be surprised if it gets in the paper since I'm in a very conservative place. Anyways, enjoy:

In Richard Carlson's article titled "Hold onto the kite of freedom, our mooring to the Word of God" he referenced a young girl who had be on drugs. Because of her drug use, she'd found herself unable to tell what was real and not.

Ironically I had nearly the exact opposite thought when I first read of this girl. Where Richard thought it could be a metaphor to being confused by a voice besides God's, I found it could be drawn as comparable to choosing religion over reality. Daily people choose creationism over evolution and prayer over medicine.

It is mind numbing to believe that, according to a Gallup poll, only 39% of Americans believe in evolution. It's almost as if people aren't willing to accept the reality they can see with their own eyes when it contradicts their belief in a god. The facts that back up the relationship between reality and science are hard to deny. The only way to really prove them wrong is to ignore them.

The fact is that slavery was always wrong. Even if in the Bible it says it is okay and it was legal in the United States until the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, it was never okay.

For the Mormons, polygamy was a fine for bolstering their numbers until they decided, or should I say their god decided, it was a good idea to stop so Utah could become a state.

More often then not religion has changed the "unchanging Word of God."

In reality, the truths of morality that have always been correct and will always be correct are as follow: If it hurts someone else, it is evil. If it aids someone else, it is good.

The world isn't getting any worse. When Richard said, "When we were children, who would have though of sending powder, poison powder in an envelope with the hopes of ending the lives of others?" did he consider the evils we once did that are unacceptable now?

If today, two nuclear bombs were dropped on a foreign nation, would we not be mortified? Are we not now above treating people as second class citizens because of their race or sex? When Richard was a kid, that wasn't a crazy idea. Luckily, today, we are no longer in a society that supports sexism and racism.

In reality some evils fade and new ones appear to replace them but, even without a god to worship, we will fight for good. Don't waste your time reading a book from 2000 years ago to try to find the truths for today. Slavery, racism, degradation of women, genocide, and infanticide are all in the Bible and they're all completely utterly evil.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

>If today, two nuclear bombs were dropped on a foreign nation, would we not be mortified?

Your paragraph would be better off without this sentence. This lead sentence, one presumes, leads into “...second class citizens because of their race....” Yet Japan and the US were in an all out war. The huge display of power ended the war with Japan. It likely saved more Japanese and US lives than were destroyed in those explosions.

Was that destruction racially motivated? Or was it an act of war that all hope will never be repeated? I vote for the latter (as if I get to vote on history.)

Christopher Miller said...

Hey, thank you for the feedback. I admit that, if I were putting that on this blog as a normal post I wouldn't have added that. It is only that I know, in that newspaper, I'm speaking to a, let's say, 'stupider' crowd of people that I used that comparison.

Baconsbud said...

I don't see that the Emancipation Proclamation is that good of reference. As I understand it, it was only meant to free the slaves in the southern states. There were two states in the union that had slavery until the end of the war. I think that this little factor is one that is so often ignored and brushed over. If you look into Pres. Lincolns words he didn't free the slaves because he felt they deserved to be freed but that it was to the advantage of the USA politically. The part of the proclamation you are talking about actually didn't got into effect until Jan 63. The one in 62 was basically a warning to the southern states that unless they returned to the union the slaves there would be consider free men in the USA. What many don't understand is that the proclamation actually freed no one. Legally the southern states no longer belonged to the USA, so nothing that Pres. Lincoln said had no binding power in the southern states.