Without even examining the words of the title, we first must ask the obvious question: What does, “In God we trust”, mean?
Does it mean at a personal level or at a national level? Accepting either or both of those two, does it mean a trust in God to prevent harm from coming to us, or that we may be able to survive with some comfort.
Do we trust that our nation will prosper, whilst others perish?
Or is it the biggy, a trust that God even exists?
If the answer is some or all of the above, then it has to be asked how is that “trust” in God so deserved, when the Creator relentlessly abuses it.
Many of the *6000 dead and the 1500 injured had a “trust in their God”, whilst the perpetrators, moments before impact, no doubt cried out that their “God is great!” with a trust that they would enter a paradise of temporal delights immediately?
Will those not escaping the coming carnage of retribution and revenge disguised as “Infinite Justice”, a name firstly coined for this so called war on terrorism but subsequently altered to “Enduring Freedom” because of religious sensibilities, have their “trust in God” also nullified by a sacred decree beyond all rational understanding?
It is more than interesting as to how this saying is bandied around in times of insecurity, and as though it means something good and efficacious. It is a last ditch effort to stem the fears of consequence of action that is about to happen. In formulating a plan to place our resolve into motion, with its murder and mayhem, we are in need of justifying why counter-humanitarian ideals are followed. We know we are wrong so we throw all the guilt onto God – in whom we trust.
Our enemy is also “trusting in her/his God”, for likewise reasons.
The scene is set for horror upon horror to happen.
The way the earth is broken up into many religions with two notable ones with a billion followers each is a formula for total civilisation break down. Fundamentalism on both sides takes consolation from an Armageddon mentality, the final battle, and this very idea exists in the minds of all religious people.
The idea exists and so do the nuclear and biological weapons of mass destruction that can bring it about. Even with our leaders having knowledge of this, and being careful because of it, it will take only one mistake of judgement to create a non-stoppable and ever widening crevice between the religions of Islam and Christianity.
Our representatives in political power, President George W. Bush of the United States of America, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, a conglomerate of Arab States, many Muslim States and other European ones, have their sights set on Osama bin Laden who is supported by the Taliban of Afghanistan.
Even though Osama is a highly “suspect” character, no proof of his involvement with the Twin Towers etc. bombing by hijacked passenger airliners, has been established for the eyes of the public, East or West. Whether such evidence exists or not will need the future to determine.
Our cock-sure leaders are using language carefully so as not to link religion with the “anti-terrorist” coalition. You can be sure that millions of people in Islamic countries are seeing it as a very black and white Muslim V’s Christian/Jewish conflict. They see it that way because their perspective is not blurred by being members of rich and prosperous nations who take it for more than granted that the Christian God is the correct one.
How many more millions upon millions of people are to be killed, maimed or be forced to suffer in unimaginable ways before we wake up to the problem that humanity is facing. It is not Christianity, Islam or any other religion causing the trouble, but the small word in the title of these thoughts. Yes, it is the word “God.”
Throughout the ages, one “God” or another has wreaked havoc on humanity. Brutal Crusades, devilish punishment, torture and death metered out to mainly women in the days of Witches by the papal initiated Inquisition, treating women as vehicles of the Devil in general, the slaughter of entire peoples, the condoning of slavery, the Conquistadors and many other Imperialistic endeavours where our self-righteous might was unquestionable and extremely arrogant and cruel to boot.
We have committed all these abominable acts and continue to do so, not because of our lack of “Godliness”, but because of our excess of it.
“Trust in which God?”
The, by far biggest numerical ism, is religionism. All other religions are wrong, is a taken for granted cultural “truth”. Words are mumbled about “it really is the same God”, but no one believes that in reality. You might as well be a communist, Satanist, unbeliever, infidel, Atheist or a heretic as belong to another religion. That is how wrong you are if you do.
With Islam and Christianity there is also a race difference and we can add racism to religionism to make a very potent mix for allowing unjustified atrocities to be the norm and not the unusual.
That the Twin-Towers World Trade Center in New York and the Washington Pentagon were so horrendously assaulted by so called terrorist acts is an example of how “God” takes the guilt for unconscionable conduct by humans. Only a human with a defective way of thinking could commit such acts on themselves and others. If the response is justified with the same kind of defective thinking, justice will not be the result, but rapid escalation of hostilities will be.
By selecting words from the “last prophet of Allah”, Muhammad, and the “Son of God”, Jesus, and using at whim, the words from the Islamic Qur’an (Koran) and the Christian Bible, (Old & New Testaments) as well as the Torah of the Jews, societies have been able to justify any abomination for many centuries.
Somehow our race has put up with the inequities of religions in our climb-from-the-slime but now because of our numbers and our technology, this unproven and unprovable fantasy is well capable of setting us on the path of extinguishment from the universe.
Arguments of, “But look at the good religion does” can no longer be given special status, especially as we see, even in our own “superior” culture, that “God” is failing to keep up with the ethical standards of mere humans.
“Trust Betrayed!”
The wowseristic religious approach to the recreational use of drugs, such as Marihuana, Heroin, Ecstasy and the like, is powering mafias, crime syndicates, wars and corruption on a global level. People are being imprisoned and “legally” and illegally killed, their rightful freedom denied and or their lives compromised for coming up against law enforcement agencies and other thugs.
Our numbers are greater than the planet can support but still abortion and fertility control are religious, instead of rational issues. The “every sperm is sacred” phenomena sees women die at the rate of one every five minutes, from botched illegal abortions. Religious terrorism and the threat of death (and death) is a risk that medical staff involved in this area of necessary medical practice have to forever endure to larger or lesser degrees.
Women also play second fiddle in all religions right down to being only chattels in some. It is still a commonly widespread practise in Muslim nations to sew up the vagina of young girls to keep them “pure”. This makes for the penetration of an erect male penis, a painful affair. It can be accompanied by a clitorectomy, which is the removal of the sensitive head of the clitoris or even its total ridding.
Prostitution law reform, although often proposed, is seldom implemented to guard the rights of the females thus employed. The lovely “Ladies of the Night” are seen as the “Daughters of Satan,” whilst their customers enjoy only a slight social and legal rebuke.
Human sexuality has become a victim of church control whose infinite wisdom has attempted to limit sexual activity to procreation only. That we do not properly celebrate the human body with its sensuous skin covered curves, erogenous zones and orgasmic pleasures, is a fault directly attributable to those promoting sexual guilt.
Gay and Lesbian persons are not recognised as having any rights in many nations and even in the more educated ones they are still persecuted for living as they are. Many highly religious countries will not even recognise their existence. History shows that the sexual and mental health of societies that do not allow for consenting adults of any gender, number or combination to do what pleases them, suffers as a result, with damaging aberrations and perversions a greater problem than the innocent ones railed so hard against.
Men are repressed sexually by their own inventions of rules about virginity and the dirtiness of sex. This simmering testosteronic aggression fuels the fires of personal and nationalistic hatreds against others. Consenting erotica is named derogatorily as pornography, with suggestions that sexual violence is an outcome, whereas the sexual and real violence in societies is a result of an overall useless sexual prohibition by the sanctimonious.
Anal intercourse and masturbation are off the agenda as topics that need to be discussed, even though in doing so, actual lives could be saved and happiness would prevail in many groups and individuals. HIV/AIDS is ravaging the planet but condoms are still a point of contention to the religious.
Voluntary euthanasia is denied to those that require it.
This is all self-made religious madness and the talked of “good of religion” hides in the generationally taught insecurities of its robotic-like dogma. Their similarities in having no qualms in indoctrinating, by well-known brainwashing methods, the defenceless minds of children, should be a matter of human disgust and concern, instead of praise.
Even the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights fails the world’s children: Article 18 – “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; The exception is children, who are the least able to mentally defend themselves against adult authority and have no option but to take on the religion of their culture as though it were truth. The greatest human error of judgement with the largest repercussions, is accepted without any critical examination of the material so induced.
Instead of young minds being filled with the taken-for-granted “truths” of parents, those minds should be exposed to all philosophies with emphasis on none.
Instead of missionary “work” being seen as a quest with any merit, it has to become recognised as the planting of the seeds of future individual and collective pain, unhappiness and strife.
We stand at the threshold of a new way of looking at the world, one without child-like supernatural support. One without “God”.
This conflict may or may not escalate and send us all to “heaven or hell”, but we are gambling to the extreme if we do not take into account and understand the seriousness of the “God” problem. There will be a next time and a next, until one of them eventually gets us in the end.
If humanity is really as noble as its poetry and smart as its capacity to reason suggests, it will recognise the mammoth mistake it has made and is making with the unquestioning belief in its gods. These newly educated nations of the world will then have to find ways to re-educate those that have not yet come to the very obvious conclusion, that as of now and forever more:
“We can no longer trust in God.”
*Approx. number estimated at the time of the Twin Tower tragedy.
Revised figure about 3750.
Footnote: A criticism of this article was sent to me and I have responded. See below links.
By David Nicholls