IS ATHEISM JUST ANOTHER RELIGION?
THE HUMAN RACE
WHO ARE WE? WHY CAN’T HUMANITY GET ALONG?
Whether you’re a Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Muslim, Islamist or devout Atheist, despite our differences, we are here! Together. Sharing the planet we are wrecking. Why can’t we get along?
Why are we trying to devour one another for philosophic, spiritual, political or self-indulgent reasons? Do we have to blow each other up, shoot or stab somebody, or scorn one another to prove that we are superior; that we are playing on the right team?
I know an Atheist who’s dead certain that there is no God. He is a cynical man who’s angry with the world in which he thrives. He’s pissed at corruption, racial prejudice, the power of religion, politics, the suppression of womens’ rights, and aggressively condemns overpopulation.
Me too!
He’s never been married; has no children. He is college educated. Bright. Knows Shakespeare like I know Marmaduke. And seems comfortable when isolated from a society he often rejects. Once he told me that “there has never been a day when I didn’t experience the pain of loneliness.” More than once he had confessed that his parents failed to give him love.
Yet here is this intellectual with no God to lean on; not even a slim hope that there might be someone or something out there in the ionosphere waiting to embrace him.
Of course, it could be one of the three Gorgon sisters with snakes for hair. They are supposed to be absolutely beautiful. But one look and you turn to stone.
Years ago, I think I met one of them, a sultry-voiced Medusa. It was at Lane’s bar, a watering hole on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. The sign out front read: Featuring Nightly: Bill Lane at the Cash Register. Lucky for me, it was so dark in that dive that I never did get a good look at that mythical babe. But at two in the morning, she sounded great.
I don’t know what happened to Bill. Since he adored women, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had become a stone-cold tourist attraction standing rigidly on the sidewalk outside Lane’s pointing at his sign.
Back to my old Atheist-actor friend: He played the game of life like a chameleon. He could change colors depending on the audition or social environment he found himself in. I can only appreciate the knowledge of playwriting and acting he passed on to me.
He touched me with his art. I might envy his knowledge of theater, his curious intellect, and a mind that has absorbed such wisdom studying the thought provoking words in myriad books.
Yet, the two of us are just as hypocritical as any guy or gal you’d care to name. Like many Earthlings, we’re still breathing. But Death is winking and beckoning.
I’m convinced that my long-time Godless pal is no wiser about the existence of a Supreme Being than I. In other words, we have a God-given or evolutionary gift that’s locked in the depth of our individuality.
Our brains, our uniqueness, provide us with the right to theorize about life, death and the hereafter. For a couple of old coots, truth is just around the corner.
— Boots LeBaron —
(The final edit of Boots’ book, THE HUMAN RACE, is
now available on Kindle, in audio, and on Amazon
paperback. It contains philosophic, inspirational
and humorous essays, light poetry and interviews
with a fascinating cross section of humanity)
Boots LeBaron's World 