September 11, 2008

9-11. The Day Religion Became Evil for Me

I hate this day. The events of 9/11/2001 will haunt me and everybody in this country for ever. And we have religion to thank for that. I was a Christian at the time and used my religion to find peace and understanding. But now that I'm an atheist, 9-11has come to represent  for me just how much religion poisons everything. It is a serious delusion that poisons the minds of its followers. I am hopeful that in my lifetime that I will see the measurable decline of all religions. I hope to go to my grave knowing that rational thought and logic will ultimately win out over superstition and ignorance.

In related 9-11 news, Marie Cocco wrote a great piece over at TruthDig about McCain and Obama exploiting the events of 9-11 for political gain.

Yet their decision to visit the site where the Twin Towers once stood is distasteful stagecraft, the sort that a city still striving to recover can probably do without. The Obama campaign says the joint visit was set when the Democratic candidate phoned McCain to congratulate him on his speech to the Republican National Convention, and said that "since they'd be in NYC together that they should go to Ground Zero together," an Obama campaign aide said. "McCain immediately agreed." The two candidates are scheduled to speak on Thursday night at the ServiceNation Summit in New York, an event organized to promote national service as an appropriate response to the events of 9/11.

That, in a word, is the issue. What is appropriate for two political candidates, neither of whom represents New York or the metropolitan area that suffered so much, in a city that grieves so openly on this day?

I totally agree. They have no business being there. The media circus surrounding their visit will be entirely inappropriate for the somberness of the occasions. I'm sure their hearts are in the right places, but McCain and Obama need use their brains and think about the bigger picture rather than their campaigns. Great. Now I have another reason to hate today.


1 comment:

hoosier reborn said...

I agree with most of what you say about religion-I think for a lot of people 9/11 was the tipping point. I'm not an atheist-I think a lot of fundamentalist are killing the real image of God. But I can tell you're committed to your cause-maybe at some point you'll run into the real deal-not the god hyprocrites on tv want you to believe in.

best of