11.22.05
The religious sector always has a field-day when natural- or manmade-disaster kills off a chunk of the population. The terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 have been particularly ripe fodder for the Christian right; Jerry Falwell stated publicly that "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians..., the ACLU, People for the American Way —— all of them who have tried to secularize America —— I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen'."
Unfortunately, this sentiment is so singularly stupid that it serves only to reveal the depths of Mr. Falwell's devastating ignorance. The idea that anyone other than the circle of conspirators including the 19 hijackers and their financial backers was responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center is so ridiculous that one wonders how someone like Mr. Falwell could retain any shred of public integrity after claiming such a preposterous notion out loud in front of people who could hear him.
If we follow this zealot's twisted logic, then we are allowing the erosion of a person's responsibility for his own actions; a husband could shoot his wife and claim that he had been instructed by God to do so. The grieving widow of a man killed in the World Trade Center shot could even shoot and kill Jerry Falwell for his ignorant remarks, and then claim that she had been instructed by God to do so. The fact of the matter remains that blaming humans for "angering God" is an easy and unjustafiable way to exploit the deaths of thousands of people in an attempt to further a prejudiced and completely unfounded agenda. The people who "helped [Nine-Eleven] happen" were, quite simply, those who planned, payed for, and carried out the terrorist acts of that day.
In 1991, Mr. Falwell used the AIDS epidemic as a springboard for more of his nonsensical rhetoric when he claimed that "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals." Topeka cult-leader Fred Waldron Phelps Sr. goes even further on his cult's website by claiming that "God hates fags." Because there is no real tangible God, however, it becomes evident that Phelps and Falwell are simply using the manmade notion of a God to justify their prejudiced and wholly baseless personal opinions.
The truth of the matter is that homosexuality, heterosexuality and bisexuality are the results of environmental shaping and biological proclivity. After all, a man who is in love with another man in a nonsexual relationship is no different from a man who is in love with a woman in a sexual relationship; a lesbian who has sex with a man simply to satisfy the social motion that she should be heterosexual is no less a lesbian. These are simply lifestyle options, no matter how admanently the religious right would try to persaude us otherwise.
Self-righteous social-parasite Pat Robertson has actually claimed credit for "steering" the course of hurricanes, including Gloria in 1985 -- which caused $1.6 billion in damages and killed eight people -- and Felix in 1995 -- which caused $9.251 billion in damages and killed 115 people. Robertson demostrates clear symptoms of insanity: the inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy coupled with arrogantly grandiose megalomania. And yet because he exhibits these symptoms in the name of a deity, his mental disability is excused. Robertson did not steer hurricanes, nor did he appeal to God to do so; he simply constructed an elaborate fantasy world in which such things were possible, and was unable to differentiate between that fabricated world and the reality in which the rest of us participate. And if he wants to take credit for those events -- for Hurricane Gloria and Hurricane Felix -- then we can certainly accomodate him by treating him like the terrorist he is, responsible for almost eleven-billion dollars in damages and the deaths of 123 people.
When Hurricane Katrina throttled the Gulf of Mexico in August of 2005 and killed almost 1,500 people, I heard Christians claiming that "God sent that hurricane to kill those devil-worshipping Sodomites." I'm sorry to introduce scientific reality into this delightfully supersititious theory, but the hurricane grew from a meteorological area of low pressure that built -- fueled by water that is slowly being heated by our own neglectful treatment of the planet -- until it reached windspeeds of 170 miles-an-hour and slammed into a city built ten feet below sea-level between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain.
Add to that some of the worst disaster planning and emergency response in this country's sordid history, and it's easy to see how more than a thousand people died. Hurricane Katrina was so powerful because the human race has decimated millions upon millions of square miles of plant life; less plants means less photosynthesis, which in turn means that less carbon-dioxide is being filtered and processed. This excess CO2 is therefore left in the atmosphere to contribute to the mounting greenhouse effect which is slowing heating the planet's oceans, thus spawning superstorms like Hurricane Katrina.
This reckless attitude toward the resources of the planet is directly linked to the Christian idea of Man's superiority over the rest of nature. Christians read Bible passages like chapter eight of Psalms, wherein they are told that they "have dominion over the works of [God's] hands," i.e. the Earth, and that God has "put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen...and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea" -- and they believe that they have the right to abuse the planet and its resources however they see fit. Unfortunately, it has been abundantly proven that the Bible is complete and utter nonsense, so anything it purports is immediately and highly suspect.
In nature, most species of plants and animals develop defense mechanisms as a measure of self-preservation. Skunks secrete a foul-smelling sticky fluid to warn off assailants; Porcupines wear a coat of sharp spines to protect them from predators; Armadillos sport a bony armor shell to defend against attack. Poison-Ivy produces urushiol to protect itself from being eaten; Rosary Pea and Castor Bean seeds are so poisonous that one seed can kill a human; berries from Daphne, Red Sage, Jasmine and Yew plants are poisonous enough to kill a human.
The human body itself has one of the most intricately-developed immune systems imagineable; T-cells destroy virus-infected cells by releasing granzymes that trigger infected cells to become apoptotic, thus killing that cell and any virii that it is in the process of creating. As such, one might even imagine the Earth as a sort of living organism with its own immune system, which has been tipped to the widespread infection of human beings; similarly, one might imagine the kind of reactions that an organism the size of the Earth might have, such as tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, or AIDS.
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