Prayer is NOT the answer

(written a couple of days after the VT shootings...I know it's dated now)

Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme.

But, in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, the bible-thumpers have been out in force. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to be force-fed religion in the face of a national tragedy.

I know a lot of people look to religion for comfort in times of duress. I know there are people out there who believe that religion is the thing to cure all ills. I know a lot of people find all the answers that they’re looking for in their religious texts. I am not one of those people.

I’m the kind of person who asks questions like, “Why isn’t there an alternative option to women,” or “Can my voice get stuck like that if I inhale too much helium?” I haven’t read either the Bible or the Koran in their entirety, but it’s a safe bet that they haven’t addressed those topics yet. Nope, not even in the back. And if your answer is ever “Because it is the will of God,” I’m telling you flat out, your answer isn’t good enough.

So I’m sure you can see why I might get a slight bit annoyed when this lady called into the Steve Harvey show the other day and said that this happened because we don’t have prayer in schools. This led to a discussion about how Billy Graham’s daughter said something that Steve Harvey and Co. found to be extremely profound. After Hurricane Katrina, this lady got on TV or radio or something (I don’t know, because I don’t listen to the relatives of crackpots too much), and said something to the effect of, “if you ask God to get out of your schools and government and etc, etc, you can’t get mad at him when stuff like this happens.”

So to someone like me, I wonder, how is this helping? Aren’t you supposed to be comforting, say….someone? I don’t think that the destruction of an entire coastal area is the time to remind us all that you believe that your God is an omnipotent child who says, “I’ll show you.”

Steve Harvey and crew, being the religious type, bought into that mess. Me, I think she’s full of it.

Pat Robertson had comments like this in the wake of September 11, basically blaming America for what happened, by saying being nice to gay people caused 19 loons pretend that they were in a real life Jerry Bruckheimer movie. Not only do I think Pat Robertson is crazy, I also think that comments like that are irresponsible and anyone who takes him seriously shouldn’t be allowed to procreate. Again, how is that helping the situation? Weren’t you watching the same newscast as I was? You had to be, because it was literally on every channel.

So listening to this lady on Steve Harvey’s show blather on about how we need prayer in schools and not to take “In God We Trust” off of the money and to essentially ignore the separation of church and state, and to have Steve and Tommy agree with her, needless to say, I was ready to call into the show myself and curse at all of them.

Let’s be adults here. If a guy decides that he needs to shoot up 32 people to feel better about his life, then kill himself, having prayer in schools and God’s name on our money isn’t really gonna help too much. Clearly, the guy was unstable, and according to reports that I’ve seen, had a problem dealing with rejection. The solution to THAT is good parenting and in extreme cases, counseling. All having prayer in schools is gonna do is piss some people off. Like, roughly half the country.

As far as “In God We Trust” is concerned, I don’t believe that was even always on the money. I don’t know for certain, but I do know that the Founding Fathers of this country weren’t necessarily Christians. They were agnostic, at best and in some cases, flat out atheists. There was a reason for the separation of church and state. I know that we didn’t start adding God’s name to the pledge of allegiance until the 40s and that was a political move, to contrast ourselves against the atheistic Communists. So don’t act like government moving away from religion is the root of all of our problems. If anything, we’re doing things more like we were supposed to, to begin with.

It just bothers me that people will take this situation as an opportunity to try to convert people or the take shots at the rest of us for not drinking the Kool-Aid that they’re serving. I think it’s uncalled for and really, it stinks of childishness. You might as well be making faces at us with your thumbs in your ears, going “neener, neener, neener.” Either way, you’re being about as sensitive to the feelings of others.

You want to do something helpful? Just say a prayer for those who lost their lives and their families. Try being an example for the positive things that your religion could bring if you weren’t busy being so damn negative. Maybe if you did that, your religion wouldn’t be cast in such a negative light so much.

Go pray on that.