Vick Finds Jesus

WTF is wrong here? You're old enough to have lived through the civil rights era, aren't you?Surely you can't be ignorant of the fact that "boy" was a racist diminutive used in reference to black men of any age.Particularly by police. Nothing clandestine about it. Then again I guess people have been bending over backwards to forget America's racist past (and present):

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What's indisputable is that our society would rather not remember a lot of its racial past. Who wants to keep reviving the memory of lynchings that gives the noose story its poignancy? Who wants to revisit the way white people degraded black men and women by refusing to call them "mister" or "miss," using "boy" and "girl" instead? Wouldn't it be better if we all just forgot the genocide of the so-called Indian Wars that employed the Buffalo Soldiers?

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Obviously, the past has modern resonance, because the stories keep coming. Racism lives. America hasn't forgotten.

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Page not found - PoynterWhen you use "boy" to refer to a black man, that's a legacy of racism. Did you mean to be racist? Honestly, I have no idea. But for God's sake, NJ, learn to think about what you're saying before you mouth off, ok? Duh. Religion thrives on exploiting people's fears of death and grief for lost loved ones. It doesn't say much for your side when the only people you can seem to convince are the ones who, by definition, aren't thinking clearly.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Oh, I was under the impression you were much older.Anyway I was born in 1980 and even I know that "boy" reflects the treatment of blacks in the racist South. By paying attention to the world around you? Look, I'm a white guy from whiter-than-white rural Minnesota, and even I knew about it. I can't for the life of me imagine how you could live your whole life and not know that.Alright, alright. I can see that you were truly ignorant and that you've apologized. I guess it was just one of those racist-appearing things that white folks like ourselves occasionally blunder into. I apologize for the assumption of bad faith on your part. Well, it wouldn't, but to me when you say "people who actually have a moment with God" you're talking about a sample size of zero.I just got back from my wife's grandfather's funeral, which was last saturday, and since he died slowly, there was plenty of time for God-bother- from the hospice nurse quoting Bible stories to the old-timey religion of his Masonic memorial service. And it really brought home to me what a scam all that stuff is.There was also plenty of time for me to observe the best that human people have to offer - a family who drew strength from their love for one another, a family patriarch whose whole life was the nurturing and development of his family. A man, indeed, who loved his wife especially, and so much that he literally killed himself taking care of her. (He was 96, and she'd had a few strokes and was in a bad way last year. The strain on him as primary caregiver - they were fiercely proud and independent - was responsible for his failed health.)You can tell which I was more interested in. It remains astounding to me that with such strength and love on display, anybody at all would be interested in fairy stories about heaven and Jesus. That maudlin sentiment pales significantly beside the vastness of human love that I observed that week.

Just, that it was abundantly obvious that religion tells people what they want to hear - that their loved ones aren't gone, that we'll all meet again at the Great Cosmic Salad Bar - not anything that is actually known or true.Religion tells us what we want to hear, at a time when we're grieving. It's just a bunch of statements that people say to try to salve the pain of the living. It doesn't have anything to do with what is true about the dead. It's all for us; it doesn't have anything to do with them. I know that you do, and a minister said something along the same lines.But I find that insulting. So insulting. There was nothing divine about the love her family has for each other and for that man; nothing divine in the least about the strength they found in themselves and each other from that love.It was intensely, resolutely human. It was the best that people have to offer each other. There was no need of gods to do it for them; their humanity was abundant and sufficient. To say that it was some kind of distant, imperfect reflection of "god's love" - a reflection through a glass, darkly - to me, insults their humanity.It's as insulting as any other time somebody who did nothing takes credit for someone else's work. There was nothing of God in what happened that week - only those things most human, mortality and love.Where is God in the outrage of death? Nowhere to be found, because there's no such thing. To assign him the credit for what people were doing all on their own, I find insulting.

Aside from the fact that there is nothing divine?Nobody was talking about God except the people who weren't in the family. The hospice nurse quoted the Bible liberally, friends of the family tried to tell his wife that "he was in heaven", etc.But nobody who actually was in the family - who represented the core of strength and support I saw that week - mentioned God at all, to my recollection. They're largely Methodist, my wife and I are the only atheists, but still it was abundantly obvious that the love they felt came from themselves, from the strength of their characters.It was certainly entirely consistent with my previous experience of those individuals, who have welcomed me into their family at every turn. It was abundantly obvious that they had no need of divine help to be loving human beings; their own natures were more than sufficient.

That's what I find so insulting, though.A man is laying there dying of congestive heart failure after the strain of taking care of his ill wife - literally, he loved her to death - and God's involvement is, what, exactly?A family having love for each other? They had that already, in part because of a man who lived a life of putting others ahead of himself and asking for nothing in return.It's not at all clear to me what you think wouldn't have happened if God, in fact, had not been involved. What would have been different?If God wanted to get involved - how about doing something about the whole death and pain of loss? Because even among the people who believed in Jesus dying for our sins and a heaven we'll all eventually arrive in, the pain was acute. For many of the rest of us, there's just not any evidence at all that the Jesus thing is true, so we really can't believe in it.People think I'm angry at God when I talk this way, and I'm not. I can't be angry at something that doesn't even exist. But if there is a God, and this is the best he can do, a lot more of you theists should be angry. That you're not is just part of the whole scam. Believing in God is like being abused by your boyfriend.

I don't know what to tell you. I was there in the room. There was no divine presence, and all talk of God this and Jesus that fell flat.There was just the best of humanity. People doing what people do. And they needed nothing of God to do it. Yeah, it was fun. Oh man, though, but the loading times!