Pale Blue Dot

[orogenicman]

*THIS* is the sort of thing that makes me identify so much with Lewis Black, who I often quote on his opinion for why someone would use profanity.

"What words do you use?..."

...when say you're presented with someone who is preaching peace and love and goodwill to your fellow man, and yet the religion they're preaching is a bloody, hateful, ignorant, intolerant mass of power struggles that gives people excuses for why they're allowed kill, abuse, demean and conquer?

"Oh...look at that...pussyfeathers."

I need to leave. If I stay on the computer much longer I'll be face with more bullshit like this:

(status update from Jesus loving facebook friend)
It shocks me how much my flesh hates the Cross- and how complacent I can be foolishly hiding from God behind my suit of fig leaves. Wow I need Jesus.

Here's a tip: you can be a good person and not have to flagellate yourself.

I think people cling to God because it's far more comforting to believe in the vastness of a being that still cares about you than contemplate the cold infinity that is space and our tenuous position in it. And for some reason in their minds this demeans the wonder that is the tiny flaring, ultimately ephemeral spark that is our planet.

A light in the dark is still a light in the dark. Is there any need to put something supernatural behind this flaring gem of a planet, so far the only one we know to have life, to make it more special? Do you have to have a deity to make you recognize that we, the only sapient species we know about, are special and should treat each other with basic human respect, without killing each other for having a different view point or skin color or sexual preference?

Without that religion saying it is the path to peace and understanding, humans are left to be responsible by themselves. They have no excuse of devils for their bad actions, and no parental figure peering down from the clouds to make them perform good ones. It displays a fundamental distrust in each other that they think people can't be moral without a god. It's been my observation that people generally don't realize that not everyone thinks to same way they do. So do you really think people can't be moral, or are you only assuming that because you think YOU can't be moral without one?

Yeah, Lew...I know exactly why people use profanity. By the time I'm Min's age, I expect I'll be able to use that word "fuck" with such a nuance you'll get entire paragraphs out of it, if not books.

I read it somewhere, probably here somewhere, that "Primates often have trouble imagining a universe not run by an angry alpha male." The morale of that story is that we must evolve.