THE GULLIBILITY OF THE HUMAN RACE

We can declare ourselves an intelligent species only because there is no other species to dispute us.

 Exceptional savants produce art and music and architecture that we consider evidence of higher-level thinking skills.   Our scientists have taken us into new frontiers, and we are living in a world of advanced technology, as compared to only fifty tears ago.

   

But then we can tune into a Trump rally, or see white supremacist marching with tiki-torches, or the glazed look of people attending televangelist mega-churches and we must conclude that, on the whole, we are a pretty mediocre species and prone to the highest level of gullibility.

Without any proof or logical analyses, people choose to believe in gods and angles and devils and heaven and hell and ghost and vampires and werewolves and fairies and sprites and witches and shapeshifters and alien abductions  ….

There are those who have historically taken advantage of our gullibility.    P.T. Barnum said ‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’   He also said, you can never make a mistake by underestimating the intelligence of the human race.

The human race is not special.  We are here only by the dice-roll of evolution.   What we believe doesn’t matter, because we don’t matter.  Had our mother gotten up to pee and delayed our father’s ejaculation by a few minutes, a different sperm would have fertilized her egg and someone else would be here – or if she had finished with a blow job…

So, enjoy yourself.  Believe what you want to believe.   But the intelligence of the human race can be summed up in one simple statement:

Here - Hold my beer.

the Ol’Buzzard

DEATH AND ETERNITY

A BITE OF REALITY

I am past my sell-by-date.   I am of the age that the reality is I will die within the next ten years – and I will be dead a long time.  

Two days ago, I hit an ice patch with my car and slid into an ice bank, resulting in a tear in the front plastic cowling and a dent in the back door of my RAV-4.  

My wife wasn’t happy, but I refuse to be upset about some damage to the car that is repairable.  Shit happens.  

The snow scene up here in Maine is beautiful.  I have a nice home and a great wife, books to read and cats to keep me company.   This accident will cost me a deductible that I can ill-afford, but in the scheme of things: no big deal.

As far as eternity, that is the con of religions.   Religions promise a get-out-of-death-free card that doesn’t exist:   I will pay you tomorrow  for a hamburger today.

It would be great to think that when I die a biker club of big breasted Valkyrie women would roar down to earth to transport me to  Valhalla; where I could pick out my ride, where there is an open bar with Irish Whiskey and good English beer and bowels of ganja for the sampling, where all the women are beautiful and horny, where all the great bands eventually preform: the Stones, Dr Hook, Bob Seger, The Band…

But there is the same chance of that happening as sitting in some celestial heaven with the man-god Jesus. 

You walk through the cemeteries here in New England and find old tombstones with epitaphs and names like Constance Toothacher and Endeavor Bean; people who lived in Maine over four hundred years ago.   They are not sitting ‘up there in heaven’ or ‘down there in hell.’ They are forgotten and their bones are rotting in the ground like everyone who ever lived before them and everyone who has lived after.  Their dogs died, their cats died, their horse died, their cow died, their children died, they died.  There is life and there is death – full stop. 

We are here for a short while and then we are gone.  I can deal with that.

 If it were true that your life passes in front of your face when you die – mine would be a double feature.   It has been an interesting run.  And every day I have left I intend to live to the fullest.

the Ol’Buzzard 

ATHEISM IS A RELIGIOUS TERM

It is understandable if a person wants to identify themself by their belief in a religion, a church, a political party, an ethnicity…; but it absolutely makes no sense that you would feel the need to identify yourself by what you do not believe.

I do not believe in vampires, werewolves, zombies, big foot, fairies, alien autopsies, ghost or things that go bump in the night.

I do not believe that the world is flat or that the sun rotes around the earth.

I do not believe that dinosaurs and humans existed at the same time

I do not believe that a snake whispered to a woman who ate an apple which brought sin into the world.

I do not believe that a six-hundred-year-old man and his hundred-year-old sons built a boat and sailed on a flood that mixed salt water and fresh water, carrying two of every animal on earth, and that upon landing a kangaroo hopped twelve thousand miles across three continents to go home to Australia.

I do not believe that a child was born to a virgin.

I do not believe that statues bleed. 

I do not believe in devils and demons and angles and gods, or in a physical heaven or hell.

I do not believe a man god walked on water, or that a brutal human sacrifice was performed to ‘take away the sins of the world.’

The name Atheist is a religious term that supposes the legitimizing of religious beliefs and proposes to delegitimize anyone that doesn’t accept the fairy tale. 

If you feel the need to attach a name to me to identify what I don’t believe in, me you might just call me sane – I can live with that.

the Ol’Buzzard

HEAVEN WITHOUT CATS?

fuck-um.  Another reason not to buy into religion.

the Ol'Buzzard