We do the work, that Ass gets the credit.

I am posting this on behalf of Lono, who apparently doesn't remember how to work his computer...either that, or God is SO mad at him, that he has permanently fucked up his computer. It's probably the second reason.

Anyhow, here is his excellent tirade:

Well, after over two months stuck some 700 meters underground, miners in Chile are finally being pulled out of a hole drilled into the mine to rescue them. The miners ride up the shaft in a specially designed rescue pod, just barely smaller than the dimensions of the hole. Thus far, they emerge seemingly in good health and spirits, and are being shuttled to the surface at a somewhat faster pace than initially expected.

Seventeen days after the mine collapse, the miners were discovered to be alive and rescue operations launched. Engineers, geologists and other experts began to meticulously hammer out a plan to retrieve the miners as quickly as possible. This entailed drilling three different rescue shafts, using three different drilling rigs. Psychologists and NASA experts were called in to determine how best to keep the miners mentally fit and functional for the months it would take to finally reach them. Medical professionals were on hand to ensure that the miners would be physically able to endure both the time underground and the no doubt claustrophobic ride to the surface. Food, medicine, video links, entertainment were all lowered down smaller shafts so that the miners’ needs would be taken care of. In the end, it appears that all has gone according to plan and that the miners are going to emerge safe and with a hell of a story to tell.

Now, who gets the credit? Well, fuck, God of course! Almost every comment I have read or heard coming from the miners, their relatives and supporters thank the Almighty for His help in rescuing these men. It boggles the mind. First of all, and most importantly, this kind of nonsense is an insult to every person who worked for hours on end, day after day, diligently planning and digging and otherwise working their asses off to orchestrate the rescue. To suddenly ascribe it all to an invisible God is, frankly, a slap in the face for all those involved. Secondly, where the fuck was God in the first place. He seems to have a penchant for skiving off and having a cold one when there is work to do. Couldn’t he just *poof* them out of the hole and be done with it? Now that would have been impressive and would also have converted and humbled legions of non-believers while allowing the Pope and his ilk a snarky ‘told you so’. Why did the Big Guy let this happen in the first place? What an asshole.

I know that Chile is a very religious country, having if memory serves, been overrun by Catholic nutters who arrived in fleets of ships and proceeded to rape and slaughter almost all the indigenous peoples and then taking all the gold for themselves, all in the name of goo ol’ Buddy Christ. Consequently, after centuries of having Christianity literally beaten into them, the masses cling to their patently ridiculous mythology, to the exclusion of rational thought and giving credit where credit is fucking due. I personally do not believe any God or Gods exist, having never been presented with even a shred of evidence to support this supposition. Barring Jesus appearing on a grilled cheese sandwich, or a miracles that can more likely be attributed to spontaneous remission or medical intervention (in the case of illnesses), coincidence or plain dumb luck. Now I don’t suspect it will happen, nor do I hope it does, but if the shaft suddenly collapsed and trapped the remainder underground until further notice, perhaps crushing some poor bastard in the capsule while en route to the surface, would these ninnies still attribute it to God? More likely, it would be seen as the work of the devil, or some unfathomable link in God’s great plan. This kind of fuzzy-brained thinking puzzles and annoys the shit out of me.

Be that as it may, I don’t expect anything to change anytime soon. People will continue to praise God for his mercy and beneficence. He will continue to be thanked for from pulling a few hapless souls out of plane crashes while happily allowing incineration of the rest of the passengers. He will be acknowledged on bent knee for the work of antibiotics rather than the scientists or physicians who developed and prescribed them. He will be kowtowed to for his brilliance in not flooding all of some tropical island hit by a hurricane. He will even win football games for those who pray just hard enough. While we humans work fucking hard over generations to overcome the brutal reality of existence, to eke out a living on this mostly inhospitable ball of dirt in an uncaring and immense universe that gives not one shit about us, the faithful will take our toil and hand the kudos over to imaginary friends. It all comes down to thinking critically...but thinking is so darned hard! Should God exist, and should this God be the omnipotent, omniscient being of the Bible, He is a c#nt. He is a lazy, vindictive, insecure and wholly psychotic ass who can’t be bothered to reveal himself to us in any unambiguous manner. Yet his flock of boneheads (I am not much for cultural relativism) continue to minimize the actual physical labour of those who cumulatively SAVED THEIR LOVED ONE’S LIVES and who DESERVE PRAISE AND THANKS AND RESPECT and hand it over, lock, stock and barrel to their impotent imaginary fairy. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.