Children of an Angry God

O lieber gott sei doch nicht so böse.

-P.D.Q. Bach- 

It seems to be that Tamerlan Tsarnaev underwent some sort of epiphany not long ago, after which he became withdrawn, dressed more modestly, began to talk about his deep faith and started assembling bombs.

“Isn’t the takeaway here,” asked Bill Maher, talking about the Boston Marathon bombing, “that there are many bad things that can happen in the world, for many bad reasons, but the winner and still champ is religion?” 

It's an old and often asked question and defenders of belief in the abstract and defenders of specific beliefs all have a well developed defense and a lot of practice using it -- but still.  In my experience it boils down to: it feels good, it comforts people, it offers hope.  So do lies, palliative fictions Ponzi schemes, dating services and of course drugs.  Don't get me wrong, this isn't an attack on religion or religions as tools for making life easier, for promoting good behavior, it's an attack on the human species and its innate ability to lie and rationalize and use most anything as a tool for justifying whatever purpose or desire it needs to defend, no matter how heinous, hideous, horrifying.  Religion is no better and no worse than those who use it, defend it, promote it. It's just a powerful and an unstable tool whether handled by professionals or tried at home.

Perhaps it's true that good people espouse good beliefs, envision good gods who manifest love and compassion and at worst have good reasons for allowing the pain, sorrow, suffering, misery, grief and random horrors of life. It's different for the children of  angry Gods; the gods who drown worlds, advocate the extermination of whole peoples, condone slavery and conquest and oppression and sometimes play games with people's lives for their own amusement. It's different for Gods who promise eternal punishments of unendurable pain simply for disobeying arbitrary rules, having stray thoughts -- unimaginable horrors of destruction for people who simply don't believe impossible, absurd and demonstrably untrue assertions about reality and the universe.

I'm not talking about Kali or Isis, Krishna or Asherach or Enpu or Jesus Christ alone. I'm talking about your god, whether you call him El Shadai or Yaveh, the Holy Trinity or any of the 99 names of Allah, the merciful and compassionate.  He's no better than you are when it comes to what you do in his or her or their names.  Angry people have angry gods and people with angry gods are prone to violence and the mental illnesses found in violent people.

A scientific study published in the April edition of Journal of Religion & Health finds, according to the author, that:

 ". .  for those who think God is angry and preparing punishments for sinners, “ that belief seems to be very much related to these negative symptoms.”   

Symptoms like like social dysfunction, paranoia, obsession and compulsion -- and perhaps I might suggest misogyny, homophobia, bigotry and racism as well as the desire to be God's instrument of punishment on innocent bystanders on a Boston street.  Is it a paradox that the Gods most desirous of  acting our their wrath need the most help from mortals in doing it? Not if you perceive that angry people need angry Gods to justify their angry and injust acts.


Pierre-Joseph Proudhon wrote 150 years ago that

"The first duty of man, on becoming intelligent and free, is to continually hunt the idea of God out of his mind and conscience. For God, if he exists, is essentially hostile to our nature, and we do not depend at all upon his authority. We arrive at knowledge in spite of him, at comfort in spite of him, at society in spite of him; every step we take in advance is a victory in which we crush Divinity."  

The hostility of God, I take to be self-evident, both from the confected selection of  descriptions in artifacts we call the 'Scriptures'  wherein whole populations are exterminated for things that history assures us are no more often punished than random chance would provide for and for the endless unpunished horrors human life has always endured.

Yahveh famously mocks the humble, respectful piety of Job, expressing nothing whatever resembling compassion for the family he murdered just to provoke him. "God is evil" concluded Proudhon and if it weren't that God was a human creation, I would have to agree.  Is there any way to hunt the idea of God the Avenger out of religion without hunting him out entirely?  Gods who punish evil, gods who punish thoughts about sex, gods who punish ham and cheese sandwiches or cotton threads in linen shirts. They outnumber secular teachers like the Guanyin or Shakyamuni the Buddha. The Bible is replete with horrible aspects of  that supposedly loving God. Perhaps we can't handle Gods as much as we love or even need them.

Man is evil. That's what I take from Proudhon, what I take from history.  Nothing else apparent in existence but Man is capable of evil, nor even able to comprehend the meaning.  God is a weapon.  I see this as equally self-evident.  Do we allow anyone to have such weapons without background checks?  Angry, insane, tortured, alienated even sociopathic  people?  We do.  In fact we prescribe it, advocate it even demand it. We can't help it, gods are in our nature and have been since we were able to communicate; able to form words in our heads to attribute to them. Perhaps they will always be there tempting us, threatening us, making us guilty and afraid and unworthy --- unless. . .

 " For God is stupidity and cowardice; God is hypocrisy and falsehood; God is tyranny and misery; God is evil"  says Proudhon.  

There is no God but God in man, I answer

Et Tu MSNBC?

I had MSNBC on most of yesterday.  I can't stand the sight of Wolf the Weasel and what other choice is possible?

I'm disappointed. When the evening network news came on I began to learn facts the cable guys never mentioned, That the FBI had investigated these boys, for instance and they managed to give us the facts without the constant theme of "you can see that it's been worth it to give up our privacy."  Cowards!  Is this what it means to be a Liberal today?  Sacrificing freedom for some imagined and miniscule increase in safety? 

Needless to say, I don't think so.  I don't think this gruesome incident is anywhere near the calamity it's being made out to be. It's no worse than a good part of the world has to put up with all the time and that it's being made out to be something on the order of WW III it's only because giving up our privacy is only a taste of what some would have us give up.  The Right, predictably, is growling about Miranda rights because we can't go around thinking that this crime is a crime and a US citizen is entitled to civil rights if he's motivated by some sick religious doctrine that isn't Christian. Is this pathetic teenage loser an "enemy combatant" while Tim McVeigh, David Koresh and Jim Jones weren't?

It has to be a WAR because then all's fair therein including making a mockery of our Bill of Rights. It has to be a war so that they can find yet another reason to attack Obama as a weakling, or perhaps a clandestine Muslim for trying to fulfill his oath to preserve and defend the same Constitution the Republicans have seen as a stumbling block for years.

Of course the NBC reporter who told us last night that we'd just witnessed "the greatest manhunt in American history" needs to go back to school if indeed he's ever attended or at least read up on Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, Jesse James and of course John Wilkes Booth, but such idiocy is all part of the effort to make everything seem like a catastrophe and every crime an apocalypse. 

I have to be impressed however with Boston and Massachusetts law enforcement, both for their efficiency and their restraint. Supporters of the "government can't do anything right"  battle cry should take this opportunity to shut the hell up.

Silent running

The weeping and wailing industry is almost as quick to react to certain events as the paramedics are, and this morning's paper has a local runner's group holding a silent run in the attempt to feel relevant or perhaps to express ire that anyone would interfere with one of America's sacred sports.  Yes, I'm sounding cynical here, but it's not because I'm callous with regard to the loss of life and all the injuries, it's just that in recent decades, the public reaction to high profile death has been so orchestrated and so formulaic that it cheapens the moment and distracts us from seeing such things in context. I'm not interested in crying, I don't subscribe to self-pity and I don't need closure or healing. I'm interested in being able to keep the kind of things that have plagued us all at least since Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament from happening, as much as is possible in a free country.

Judging from other events, we'll soon be seeing piles of Teddy Bears on Boston streets and other silent runnings slowly turning our anger and willingness to learn from this event into a  declining series of maudlin and sentimental exhibitions of self-pity and the lachrymose quest for 'healing.'  One might forget just how rare such occurrences are in our country.  One will forget what must be done to keep things that way.  Our record, at least since the Oklahoma City bombing and the events of 2001, to thwart bombing attempts has been pretty good and  the mawkish  mourning and stuffed animal social club hasn't played much of a part.

According to a CNN.com editorial, only one successful bombing in America has been carried out since 9/11/01 -- by a White Supremacist. In the decade before that there were many, not the least of which were the killing of 168 in Oklahoma City, the 1998 Olympic bombing in Atlanta and the 1993 World Trade garage bomb which killed 6.  I don't include the horror of the 'Branch Davidian' holocaust, where David Koresh and his devout men of valor as he called them burned his followers to death.

What can we learn from the recent past?  That such events are pretty rare in America and getting more so as compared with Europe -- that our domestic politics of anger and violence is costly, for another. 380 people have been indicted on terrorism-related charges in the United States between September 11, 2001 and December 31 2012 and of those 207 have been so-called 'jihadists' or Muslim extremists, but non-Muslim perpetrators, 80% of whom have been American "conservatives"  have killed 29 versus 17 by Muslims.  All this and more from a Syracuse University study.  

But we've obviously gotten better.  We're catching nearly all the bombers and poisoners before they can act.  We'll never achieve perfect safety, not even if we achieve a perfect police state, but we'll come closer if we pay more attention to our own potential terrorists all across the political and religious  spectrum and spend less time wallowing in stylized and choreographed sorrow.

Is it time to notice just how much of our grossly exaggerated fear of  mad bombers should be directed  toward the American Right?    How much is fueled by Rush and Fox and Coulter and Bachmann and yes, the holy hellfire Christian Conservatives?