Death, Part II

Even as a young child I heard this same ol' line in church: "If you were to die right now, are you sure you are going to heaven?"

I mean, crap, I was just a little kid and some preacher, Sunday after Sunday, was rambling on about death. When this continued into my 30s, I realized that church was a death cult.

The great irony is that church leaders WANT you to be scared because fear motivates people to comply. And even though you are promised with a wonderful afterlife in Heaven they keep you frightened week after week.

So, there I was, just a confused little kid, thinking, "Well, I think I'm saved. I'm sure I'm saved, but maybe I should ask Jesus to save me again, just in case. You know, insurance."

Afterlife

The cavemen had a lot of time to think at night, after all there was no reality TV. The afterlife sounded like a cool idea. For thousands of years the idea kept evolving until people actually believed it.

No one knows if there's an afterlife or not, but probably not. It defies logic, physics, and technology. When we're dead, we're dead. We will all be a cooked goose.

Coming Out

The saying "there's no atheist in a foxhole" keeps popping up in the news lately, and more and more soldiers are "coming out" and saying they are nonbelievers.

As for me, I'm only capable of believing the best available evidence. That's all the faith I have, sorry. So, I really don't know what happens after death, and I really don't care. After being indoctrinated all my life on Heaven and Hell, it took several years to adjust to the idea of "nothingness." But, now I like the idea, I really do.

Freedom

So, when your spiritual leaders intimidate you with the death scare, just stick your thumb on your nose and wiggle your fingers, and say, "Poo poo." For, one day all of us will become space dust, floating peacefully in space. And in the billions of planets and billions of years of the cosmos, this little place called Earth will be forgotten. You won't have to listen to crappy harp music for a trillion years — thank God. And you won't have to swim for billions of years in a fire lake with Ted Bundy. Sorry, cavemen, I'm not falling for your story.

I am alive here and now, and that's all that matters. It is this little, very, sacred moment that I'm alive and have a consciousness. I'm part of an absolutely incredible cosmic miracle, which only goes to prove that when you mix all the right gases at all the right temperatures, well, you create people who have gas. And here we are, little, amazing, freaking carbon-based, fragile people.

And then we die, and eventually we all die, and eventually the Earth dies, the Sun dies, and the Universe dies. And there's no one to even care. And that, my friend, is life.

So, to the preachers who make their living from scaring the shit out of people, I say that you can have your death religion. For, tonight, at least, and for this day, I have life.

The 6,000 Year Lie

As another record hot summer ends I've decided to, well, to no longer be pissed at climate change deniers.

See, a lot of climate change deniers are the same Christian fundamentalists who believe the Earth is 6,000 years old. They calculate this figure based on a series of scripture in the Old Testament.

Now, this figure is totally insane to me. At 6,000 years, the Earth wasn't even a ball of gas yet, it was just a cloud.

But if someone is going to believe the Earth is 6,000 years old I'm not surprised at all that they'd easily ignore 1,000 scientists and say that global warming is a hoax.

And this is the greatest danger of religion — it makes people downright delusional.

When Christians, Mormons, or Jehovah's Witnesses try to save my decrepit and condemned soul, I will no longer argue with them. And when some Scientologist tells me about little freaking aliens, I'm not going to care. I've realized that millions of people are totally brain fried, and cannot discern reality from ancient campfire stories.

What's really bad is a lot of stuff in the Bible was MEANT to be allegorical, but someone in the recent past decided it all has to be taken LITERAL. After all, if you decide one part of the Bible is an allegory, oh, my gosh, the whole damn thing could be, ahhh, a freakin' fable! So, it's just better to accept it all verbatim. And while were at it, let's agree that the King James translation is the only REAL translation endorsed by God. It makes things easier.

So, as we cook, and as the Polynesians slowly drown, and as we continue to pack the planet with humanity, let's not worry. We humans may be fantastic at making tools and gadgets, but parts of our brains are still primitive. Right now our technology has outrun our rational brain development. Will we mature in time to keep us from nuking ourselves in some religious war? Well, if you study the story of Easter Island, you will see that we are screwed.

And Hey, You.....

Stop gloating, oil companies. Your religious minions have served you well. They have and will continue to sink any global warming legislation. In all their gay bashing and gun toting, and other Christian activities, I wonder if they ever thanked God for putting all the oil in the ground. After all, it made you oil barons filthy, rotten rich. And that's the way our Holy Father wanted it, I'm sure.

Change, Baby, Change

As I now enter my 13th year as an activist, I remain perplexed at how to get humanity to avoid self-destruction.

In the old days I was pathetically idealistic. If there was a problem, I thought we could just all work together to solve it, and if there were differences we could work out compromises.

But even in my 20s I found this impossible because first, one side dislikes the other side so much they won't even TALK to them. As this dislike festers, the two sides create myths about one another. As each side gets angrier, the chance for meaningful communication lessens.

For instance, in my mind I feel that half of this country is so indoctrinated by Rush Limbaugh and company that there is no hope for them. These are people who enjoy being bitter reactionaries, and secretly they are angry at people of color who are munching away at the government trough.

As an environmentalist, there is no hope that these people will listen to me because it's been drilled in their minds that I'm an eco-terrorist. They are likely to believe that I've been swimming around the gulf blowing up oil platforms. So, if I suggest that they recycle their Coke cans or only flush their toilet once a day, they are going to be suspicious.

The partisan rancor in this land keeps everyone divided and angry. While all of us Americans want the same basic things, there is vast disagreement on how to reach our common goals. For instance, one side wants to keep handouts from babies (you know, the ones they said you shouldn't abort), while the other side wants to stop giving the military blank checks. But at least both sides want to lower the deficit.

Bigger Picture

There was a time, during the Clinton years, when this country WAS focused on doing good things, but then came 9/11 and now the Second Great Depression, and everyone is now more focused on their safety and survival. The Tea Party reactionaries, under the leadership of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, are on the march, but where they are heading is unknown. Beck and Palin don't really bring anything new to the table — they just know how to make money by making the angry white mobs angrier.

Common Sense

So, how about if I say, "Let's all sit down and address global warming." The first problem is that about half of the public denies it. Even though over 1,000 climate researchers support that climate change is human-caused, many people will STILL deny it. These are typically the same people who say that the Gospels are 100% factual, even though only ONE historian, Josephus, corroborates it in a short passage. And the authenticity of this passage is in dispute, yet the Gospels are completely real, and global climate change is a hoax (another victory for the PR staff at ExxonMobil).

At the Fork

Now, I'm at the fork in the road. I really don't know the next step. Over the years I've given many PowerPoint presentations for the Sierra Club on sprawl and population. These presentations always have a "call to action," which is usually to contact a representative or senator about some bill. Maybe a few will do it. If the senator or rep is GOP, they will promptly ignore it because issues like international family planning are perceived as being aligned with ABORTION, and gosh, the "A" word terrifies every Republican.

When I give my population programs, I'm typically just speaking to the choir. My audiences are usually past reproductive age or they are young urban professional women, who have an extremely low fertility rate. And even if I do persuade a young woman to have fewer children, the reduced impact will be offset by the millions of legal and illegal immigrants that flood the U.S.

So, really, I can't decide how I can address the world's serious problems, like overpopulation, overconsumption, global warming, and peak oil. As an individual, there is nothing that I can think of that will make a difference. I HAVE marched in parades for environmental issues. I HAVE organized forums, I HAVE tabled at events, I HAVE given presentations, I HAVE spoken at schools, I HAVE DONE IT ALL. Yet, I feel I've made only a minuscule impact on the serious problems facing our world.

If you tell me to just do nothing, that's fine with me. And while you're at it, please give me the "okay" to be jaded and cynical because it feels good in a weird sort of way. Let me know that it's okay to stay depressed, angry, and bitter. Let me know that it's okay to have my own brand of self-righteousness. Let me laugh to myself and say, "Haha, I'm right. All these dumb people will just have to learn the hard way."

Let conservative America believe they have a right to kill their children in endless wars and drive thousands of animal species into the grounds. See, there I go being a cynical rat again.

And, finally, to end my rant I'll say: Yeah, I did it. I swam out into the Gulf of Mexico and blew up those oil rigs. I'm trying to force our nation to adopt clean energy. It's how I roll...