January 20, 2010, Volume 17 Nr. 5, Issue 256
    
I Know You Don't Believe But...
Haiti - God Intervenes Again

In the devastation that is Haiti as a result of the earthquakes of January 2010 the mother of a child survivor rescued after being buried too many days under the rubble was asked how the child survived?  She answered by saying that, "It was God".  I can see the heads billions around the world nodding in agreement and many believers in the United States of America chiming in with, "Praise the Lord!"  A far better response might be: Why did God slaughter one of the poorest people on earth and reduce their heretofore feeble existence to chaos, starvation, thirst, injury, pain, disease, despair and death?  

The obvious answer is no answer at all: he didn't.  There is no God.  

 

A family member recently called and expressed horror of the events in Haiti.  A believer they had this to say, "I know you don't believe in God but after what happened in Haiti why would anyone believe?"  Indeed, why would anyone believe?

 

In the book, "Why Would Anyone Believe in God", by Justin L. Barrett, the author writes, "Avoiding religious people altogether so that you do not hear their stories would avoid troublesome 'evidence' that seems to support God."  Barret implies correctly that the mythology of God is perpetuated by those whose personal accounts of apparently miraculous outcomes contribute to a powerful feedback loop that self-creates "evidence" fostering the delusion of divine existence and intervention.  Combining this God delusion feedback loop with mistakenly juxtaposing cause-and-effect for causation and one "sees" God's hand everywhere.  The earthquake disaster, after all, was an "act of God".  Was it not?  Of course it wasn't. 

 

If the rescued buried Haitian survived as a result of an act of God and the earthquake itself was an "act of God" then God is a mass executioner, a murderer and a sadist who maims, kills, and selectively issues reprieves from "his" wrath.  What nonsense?  And yet, billions of people around the planet believe in this monstrous Santa-Claus-for-adults entity called God.  Worse, they are willing by the mega-millions throughout history to kill and be killed in God's name.  Often, they kill others in God's name who want to kill them in God's name. If any belief deserves scorn it is this one - that God exists.  And yet, humanity en masse gives this dictator and butcher in-celestia - amnesty.  

Iikka Pyysiainen in the book, "Supernatural Agents: Why We believe in Souls, Gods, and Budhas" proffers that supernatural beliefs are natural to human beings in that humans have a tendency to attribute desires and beliefs to others along with the inherent automatic and intuitive proclivity of accepting the supernatural as interested in human activity and events. The proclivity to believe in such supernatural agents is natural being reinforced by generations telling themselves the same absurd explanations for things they have no explanations for.  But, human beings have progressed well beyond accepting fairytales as fact.  We have jettisoned  the make-believe pretend world of supernatural explanations.  Evidently, most of us have not.

Consider this theater of the absurd.  The "reverend", Pat Roberston, of The Christian Broadcasting Networks' "700 Club" blamed the earthquake and its devastation in Haiti on a pact that the Haitians had made with the devil. Robertson points to the legend about the Haitian revolutionary, Jacques Dessalines.  Dessalines purportedly led a revolt against the occupying French Army. To defeat the French Dessalines enters into a pact with the devil who presents himself as a voodoo deity.  This "unholy" alliance supposedly consummates on August 14, 1791 at Bois-caiman near Cap-Haitien where Satan promises a victory over the French (which takes place in 1803). Pat Roberston contends that as a result God places a curse on the country.  Wonderful.  Millions of Haitian people since that time have suffered and continue to suffer in Haiti as a result of this vindictive thug in the sky that Pat Robertson believes in - the thug that Roberston talks to.  They make good bed fellows, don't they?  Pat and God.  

 

Pat Robertson, the pathetic "reverend" and multi-million dollar business man peddling faith (and diamonds through his tax exempt diamond mining operations in Zaire) is proof positive that religion is a disease of the mind and those that profess it are diseased in their thinking, or worse, lying criminals.  

 

While Dr. Robertson's organization does provide humanitarian relief in Haiti it's main impetus in that endeavor is fostering his brand of religion and, perhaps, steering the Haitian people away from their Roman Catholicism which he considers to be the world's biggest false religion.  So according to Pat Robertson, Haiti is (at least) twice cursed: first by making a pact with Satan and then, for being (eighty-percent) Roman Catholic. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church also claims to be the "one true" religion.  These two mentally deficient (but there are hundreds more) institutions suffer from the self-inflicted delusions of self-aggrandizement.  And, billions of people kneel and pray at their altars and houses of whoreship - to the exploitation of human gullibility.  

Religion is a culture industry and God sells just as sex sells.  At least for the latter, there is a realistic expectation of realizing satisfaction. With religion one has to die to achieve release. Religion operates with its business model standardizing the God product in the mass marketplace.  Pandering God in churches is the sociological equivalent of extolling rock-and-rock in a rock concert.  Today's mega churches pander to their attending fans just as mega concerts bring to the audience performances they come to expect.  Instead of raising lit lighters in the air there are hands and crucifixes raised and swaying to the rhythm of salvation. To the religion industry the "religious" faithful are nothing more than consumers sucking up a product cleverly marketed.  God and salvation are packaged, advertised, sold, consumed and regurgitated over and over and again.  And getting enough is never enough.  That promise comes later, you know, when you're dead and given your "just" reward after bending at the heel of the boots of the Lord.  Smells like deofascism.  Looks like deofascism.  It is deofascism.

Those in the religio-hierarchy, you know them, they are the invited to the White House.  They live in mansions, or in a city-state recognized as a separate country.  They attain power and influence not by virtue of their relationship to God.  Rather, they attain power by virtue of their relationship to the money they abscond with from gullible and mesmerized consumers of hockey-puck.  The religio-hierarchichists insultingly refer to the gullible as their flock.  And this flock of sheep are easily herded for harvesting as willing subjects fleeced for their fiduciary wool and milk of allegiance.

Belief in God is easy to understand.  It is an element common to all societies whereby traditions (and the status quo) are enforced (and maintained) as part of the operating societal structures for the purpose of controlling people and having them part with their money, wealth and freedom.  Religion is the institutionalization of this control.  And that  which threatens this control is (of course) branded Satanic.  There is nothing that is as Satanic as another religion. Oh wait. Yes. There is. It is the atheist!  

 

Competing religions are Satanic in that they threaten by presenting a competing religious paradigm that menaces to take away power and market share (followers).  Atheism, however, is far more Satanic in that it threatens to expose The Big Cheese. Mega-religio-business is not going to let The Big Cheese be exposed for the fraud that it is as down goes the entire business model. 

And so, here we are at the cusp of the 2nd decade of the 21st century still putting our faith in the fairytales of our ignorant and naive ancestors.  As long as we do, we will continue to have God causing earthquakes and natural disasters and the suffering that comes along with it.  We will continue to have wars and pestilence for God know what's best for us and we, mere pukes in his deo-schema for the universe like it that way.

© 2010 Jozef Hand-Boniakowski

Jozef Hand-Boniakowski is co-editor and co-publisher of Metaphoria along with his life partner and wife, JeanneE. He is 30-year veteran retired teacher and a member of Veterans For Peace. His writings have appeared in Metaphoria, Dissident Voice, After Downing Street, Buzzflash, Counterpunch, Thomas Paine's Corner, Omni Center, Rutland Herald, Times Argus, and others. 

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