http://www.tehachapinews.com/home/Blog/samheath/7436 In the &ldquo;Wizard of Id,&rdquo; the king is observing a group of peasants marching outside the castle carrying placards reading &ldquo;Give us liberty or give us death.&rdquo; The king says to himself: &ldquo;Some problems are easier to solve than others.&rdquo; The State is a &ldquo;trick&rdquo; as Emerson pointed out, but how much more so humankind itself from which the State evolves. If the State is a trick, it is one people play on themselves where elected leaders like Bush trick Americans into war: How phony letter drove Iraq war. Intelligence failures surrounded inquiry on Iraq-Niger uranium claim. By Peter Eisner, The Washington Post, April 3, 2007. It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous&mdash;later retracted -- 16 words: &ldquo;The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.&rdquo; Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush&rsquo;s remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa?... I hope you will read the WP account in full, but how about this for a &ldquo;trick.&rdquo; A weeping Iraqi widow is shown on TV, her husband killed by &ldquo;insurgents&rdquo; leaving her alone to care for eight children. Iraq has no welfare system; she drew the bad card of not being born in America, or coming here as an illegal alien where welfare, American taxpayers, would be extorted to pay for her and the children. Even worse for the Iraqi widow, like most she is uneducated and has no job prospects. Islam punishes women, teaching they are inferior to men. But there are no prospects of changing this inferior status for women in Muslim nations. Though &ldquo;human weeds&rdquo; abound throughout the world, only in Muslim nations are women so treated as &ldquo;weeds.&rdquo; Many have questioned the doctrine of the &ldquo;divine spark&rdquo; for good reason. It is all too obvious this fire of life we carry about in our bodies does not burn with the same intensity of brightness in all. The dull-witted visitor Thoreau mentioned that claimed though he was &ldquo;deficient in intellect&rdquo; supposed the lord cared about him as much as any other may not have been correct. In fact, it becomes increasingly difficult for me to attribute anything like a divine spark in most of humankind. And if in fact there is any such thing I would expect it to show itself in those who follow the &ldquo;Golden Rule,&rdquo; which by itself would eliminate most. For me, the most poignant scene in &ldquo;Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada&rdquo; is when the old blind man left alone to fend for himself asks to be shot. He tells Tommy Lee Jones he would shoot himself, but explains &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to offend God.&rdquo; But Tommy Lee Jones refuses, replying he does not want to offend God either. It is quite a moral dilemma for both men. The obvious kindness of ending the old blind man&rsquo;s suffering is denied by the possibility of offending God, leaving him to die miserably from thirst and hunger blind and alone. It is at this point the question leaped to my mind once more as it has many times why more people do not openly confess their thought it may be God who is offending us by being the cause of so much inequity and suffering in the world? The creature questioning the creator? You bet I do! Was it not for this instinct to believe, I would happily join myself to atheists rather than continuing an intellectual struggle trying to make sense of the kind of moral dilemmas posed in the film. But unlike so many religious people I don&rsquo;t fear questioning God, I don&rsquo;t fear holding him to account for what I see is the many seeming insanities of life that results in so much suffering and inequities, especially those monsters in human guise that prey on women and children. Nor do I forgive those like Hawthorne and Melville for pretending they recognized evil but unable to put a face to the evil they wrote about for fear of offending God. A theistic dualism that would make God responsible for all Creation but would excuse him for evil simply will not do. A far more rational explanation would be the composite picture of God in the Bible, of war in the heavens brought to earth, of deities in conflict resulting in the suffering of humankind. But any so-called &ldquo;systematic theology&rdquo; that on the one hand calls God &ldquo;Almighty&rdquo; but exempts him from responsibility for evil begs the larger questions arising from the facts of reality. Not a few of us have taken off on God like Robert Duval in &ldquo;The Apostle,&rdquo; ranting and raving over the enormity of cruelty and injustice we poor mortals are born into and live with, and I&rsquo;m not as charitable of Deity as Job who would excuse God on the basis of accepting the good without blaming him for the bad. The rain falling on just and unjust alike does not do it for me; and I think Job&rsquo;s wife has been the victim of bad press, her advice to &ldquo;curse God and die&rdquo; being the more rational and humane course given the circumstances. But for those that do not find themselves railing against God, perhaps there is a &ldquo;fear of God&rdquo; parasite resident in their brains, much like a virus or bug might infect a computer: Human brain parasite alters fear. Scientists say discovery could shed light on how fear is generated, by Charles Q. Choi. LiveScience, April 2, 2007. Rats usually have an innate fear of cat urine. The fear extends to rodents that have never seen a feline and those generations removed from ever meeting a cat. After they get infected with the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii, however, rats become attracted to cat pee, increasing the chance they&rsquo;ll become cat food. This much researchers knew. But a new study shows the parasite, which also infects more than half the world&rsquo;s human population, seems to target a rat&rsquo;s fear of cat urine with almost surgical precision, leaving other kinds of fear alone. This discovery could shed light &ldquo;on how fear is generated in the first place&rdquo; and how people can potentially better manage phobias, researcher Ajai Vyas, a Stanford University neuroscientist, told LiveScience... Wouldn&rsquo;t it be the ultimate trick, a parasite in the brain that has caused so many to believe in the various superstitions of religion throughout human history, especially in the followers of Islam where women are treated as a sub-human species and murder is applauded for the glory of Allah. Could such a parasite explain the history of humankind being one of insane violence and wars, Stalin and Hitler, could it explain those like Bush and Iran&rsquo;s mad mullah, both of whom claim God speaks to them and they in turn speak for God? Well, though I certainly don&rsquo;t know whether a parasite is involved with my instinct to believe, I don&rsquo;t think there is anything wrong in my getting angry with God, in asking God to take responsibility for the situation we poor mortals find ourselves in. It doesn&rsquo;t fit into any religious framework but suppose enough of us expressed our anger with God, might things change for the better as in our Founding Fathers confronting King George? Jesus told the story of the unjust judge that feared neither God nor man, but gave the widow justice just to get her off his back. Here is a suggestion, how about starting a religion that would have the believers demanding God take responsibility for this mess on earth, one in which the believers held God accountable for all the cruelty and suffering of humankind? Alas, I don&rsquo;t think that would be any more successful than suffering humankind attempting to hold our human leaders accountable. One thing I know, unlike the children of Israel we don&rsquo;t have 400 years to be delivered from bondage. But is there a fear factor involved that on the other hand we might provoke the King of Id&rsquo;s &ldquo;solution&rdquo; to the problem? Seems we are headed in that direction whether or not. In the &ldquo;Wizard of Id,&rdquo; the king is observing a group of peasants marching outside the castle carrying placards reading &ldquo;Give us liberty or give us death.&rdquo; The king says to himself: &ldquo;Some problems are easier to solve than others.&rdquo; The State is a &ldquo;trick&rdquo; as Emerson pointed out, but how much more so humankind itself from which the State evolves. If the State is a trick, it is one people play on themselves where elected leaders like Bush trick Americans into war: How phony letter drove Iraq war. Intelligence failures surrounded inquiry on Iraq-Niger uranium claim. By Peter Eisner, The Washington Post, April 3, 2007. It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous&mdash;later retracted -- 16 words: &ldquo;The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.&rdquo; Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush&rsquo;s remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa?... I hope you will read the WP account in full, but how about this for a &ldquo;trick.&rdquo; A weeping Iraqi widow is shown on TV, her husband killed by &ldquo;insurgents&rdquo; leaving her alone to care for eight children. Iraq has no welfare system; she drew the bad card of not being born in America, or coming here as an illegal alien where welfare, American taxpayers, would be extorted to pay for her and the children. Even worse for the Iraqi widow, like most she is uneducated and has no job prospects. Islam punishes women, teaching they are inferior to men. But there are no prospects of changing this inferior status for women in Muslim nations. Though &ldquo;human weeds&rdquo; abound throughout the world, only in Muslim nations are women so treated as &ldquo;weeds.&rdquo; Many have questioned the doctrine of the &ldquo;divine spark&rdquo; for good reason. It is all too obvious this fire of life we carry about in our bodies does not burn with the same intensity of brightness in all. The dull-witted visitor Thoreau mentioned that claimed though he was &ldquo;deficient in intellect&rdquo; supposed the lord cared about him as much as any other may not have been correct. In fact, it becomes increasingly difficult for me to attribute anything like a divine spark in most of humankind. And if in fact there is any such thing I would expect it to show itself in those who follow the &ldquo;Golden Rule,&rdquo; which by itself would eliminate most. For me, the most poignant scene in &ldquo;Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada&rdquo; is when the old blind man left alone to fend for himself asks to be shot. He tells Tommy Lee Jones he would shoot himself, but explains &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to offend God.&rdquo; But Tommy Lee Jones refuses, replying he does not want to offend God either. It is quite a moral dilemma for both men. The obvious kindness of ending the old blind man&rsquo;s suffering is denied by the possibility of offending God, leaving him to die miserably from thirst and hunger blind and alone. It is at this point the question leaped to my mind once more as it has many times why more people do not openly confess their thought it may be God who is offending us by being the cause of so much inequity and suffering in the world? The creature questioning the creator? You bet I do! Was it not for this instinct to believe, I would happily join myself to atheists rather than continuing an intellectual struggle trying to make sense of the kind of moral dilemmas posed in the film. But unlike so many religious people I don&rsquo;t fear questioning God, I don&rsquo;t fear holding him to account for what I see is the many seeming insanities of life that results in so much suffering and inequities, especially those monsters in human guise that prey on women and children. Nor do I forgive those like Hawthorne and Melville for pretending they recognized evil but unable to put a face to the evil they wrote about for fear of offending God. A theistic dualism that would make God responsible for all Creation but would excuse him for evil simply will not do. A far more rational explanation would be the composite picture of God in the Bible, of war in the heavens brought to earth, of deities in conflict resulting in the suffering of humankind. But any so-called &ldquo;systematic theology&rdquo; that on the one hand calls God &ldquo;Almighty&rdquo; but exempts him from responsibility for evil begs the larger questions arising from the facts of reality. Not a few of us have taken off on God like Robert Duval in &ldquo;The Apostle,&rdquo; ranting and raving over the enormity of cruelty and injustice we poor mortals are born into and live with, and I&rsquo;m not as charitable of Deity as Job who would excuse God on the basis of accepting the good without blaming him for the bad. The rain falling on just and unjust alike does not do it for me; and I think Job&rsquo;s wife has been the victim of bad press, her advice to &ldquo;curse God and die&rdquo; being the more rational and humane course given the circumstances. But for those that do not find themselves railing against God, perhaps there is a &ldquo;fear of God&rdquo; parasite resident in their brains, much like a virus or bug might infect a computer: Human brain parasite alters fear. Scientists say discovery could shed light on how fear is generated, by Charles Q. Choi. LiveScience, April 2, 2007. Rats usually have an innate fear of cat urine. The fear extends to rodents that have never seen a feline and those generations removed from ever meeting a cat. After they get infected with the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii, however, rats become attracted to cat pee, increasing the chance they&rsquo;ll become cat food. This much researchers knew. But a new study shows the parasite, which also infects more than half the world&rsquo;s human population, seems to target a rat&rsquo;s fear of cat urine with almost surgical precision, leaving other kinds of fear alone. This discovery could shed light &ldquo;on how fear is generated in the first place&rdquo; and how people can potentially better manage phobias, researcher Ajai Vyas, a Stanford University neuroscientist, told LiveScience... Wouldn&rsquo;t it be the ultimate trick, a parasite in the brain that has caused so many to believe in the various superstitions of religion throughout human history, especially in the followers of Islam where women are treated as a sub-human species and murder is applauded for the glory of Allah. Could such a parasite explain the history of humankind being one of insane violence and wars, Stalin and Hitler, could it explain those like Bush and Iran&rsquo;s mad mullah, both of whom claim God speaks to them and they in turn speak for God? Well, though I certainly don&rsquo;t know whether a parasite is involved with my instinct to believe, I don&rsquo;t think there is anything wrong in my getting angry with God, in asking God to take responsibility for the situation we poor mortals find ourselves in. It doesn&rsquo;t fit into any religious framework but suppose enough of us expressed our anger with God, might things change for the better as in our Founding Fathers confronting King George? Jesus told the story of the unjust judge that feared neither God nor man, but gave the widow justice just to get her off his back. Here is a suggestion, how about starting a religion that would have the believers demanding God take responsibility for this mess on earth, one in which the believers held God accountable for all the cruelty and suffering of humankind? Alas, I don&rsquo;t think that would be any more successful than suffering humankind attempting to hold our human leaders accountable. One thing I know, unlike the children of Israel we don&rsquo;t have 400 years to be delivered from bondage. But is there a fear factor involved that on the other hand we might provoke the King of Id&rsquo;s &ldquo;solution&rdquo; to the problem? Seems we are headed in that direction whether or not. en-us I found the comment on holding God accountable interesting. For one thing NOT holding God accountable is giving Him less responsibility than we give the owner of a house. If my sidewalk has ice and someone is injured, then I can be sued. If someone goes to a restaurant and you get sick then the restaurant has to compensate you for the time lost from work, and again restaurants can be sued for people being sick. If a doctor&nbsp; misdiagnoses you and treats you incorrectly his damages can go into hundreds of thousands of dollars and he can lose his job. In the world, most responsibility rises with one's rank and importance, the damage a failure to be responsible can do your life rises with your rank as a rule. So why is God so off the hook?<br /> Islam by the way isn't as bad as you think it is. At one time Christianity was actually much more oppressive of women, can we all say 'chastity belt'? Christian women could not inherit, or have custody of their children if they were widowed or later on, when divorce became available, divorced. Islam permitted women to inherit, and allowed for mothers at least to have custody of younger children at a time when Christianity did not allow it. All religions require some level of physical modesty for both men and women, Christianity included only most Christians have forgotten that detail. Wearing a veil on the face probably did not originate with Muslims but with the Pharisees, and was spread into Syria and what now is Saudi Arabia by Christians, and in the Heathen world, Athenian women veiled and were not allowed out. The Greek men only slept with their wives in order to procreate, their real love was for adolescent boys and women had no real rights at all. We forget those little details.<br /> I would have to say that a lot of Christians fail to observe any of their religion so maybe they are afraid of God for that reason! <br /> But seriously, I think if God is real, if God is the All Powerful, and the Most High, then He DEFINATELY is accountable.<br /> I did think of a worldly example that may be of use in this discussion though, you can't sue the government without permission.<br /> I also remember a story written by Simon Wiesenthal. He wrote about his experience in Auschwitz, that one day there were three rabbis in his barracks and they said 'Yes it is time to start the trial.' 'What trial?' the other rabbi asked 'The trial of the Lord' So they held their trial at night in the barracks, and returned a 'Guilty' verdict. After the verdict, one of the rabbis said 'Come on my friends, it is time to pray.'<br /> So the tradition of holding God accountable does exist, it's&nbsp; just very rarely discussed. You are right that it should be discussed more. http://www.tehachapinews.com/home/Blog/samheath/7436/#c_77926 http://www.tehachapinews.com/home/Blog/samheath/7436/#c_77926 I found the comment on holding God accountable interesting. For one thing NOT holding God accountable is giving Him less responsibility than we give the owner of a house. If my sidewalk has ice and someone is injured, then I can be sued. If someone goes to a restaurant and you get sick then the restaurant has to compensate you for the time lost from work, and again restaurants can be sued for people being sick. If a doctor&nbsp; misdiagnoses you and treats you incorrectly his damages can go into hundreds of thousands of dollars and he can lose his job. In the world, most responsibility rises with one's rank and importance, the damage a failure to be responsible can do your life rises with your rank as a rule. So why is God so off the hook?<br /> Islam by the way isn't as bad as you think it is. At one time Christianity was actually much more oppressive of women, can we all say 'chastity belt'? Christian women could not inherit, or have custody of their children if they were widowed or later on, when divorce became available, divorced. Islam permitted women to inherit, and allowed for mothers at least to have custody of younger children at a time when Christianity did not allow it. All religions require some level of physical modesty for both men and women, Christianity included only most Christians have forgotten that detail. Wearing a veil on the face probably did not originate with Muslims but with the Pharisees, and was spread into Syria and what now is Saudi Arabia by Christians, and in the Heathen world, Athenian women veiled and were not allowed out. The Greek men only slept with their wives in order to procreate, their real love was for adolescent boys and women had no real rights at all. We forget those little details.<br /> I would have to say that a lot of Christians fail to observe any of their religion so maybe they are afraid of God for that reason! <br /> But seriously, I think if God is real, if God is the All Powerful, and the Most High, then He DEFINATELY is accountable.<br /> I did think of a worldly example that may be of use in this discussion though, you can't sue the government without permission.<br /> I also remember a story written by Simon Wiesenthal. He wrote about his experience in Auschwitz, that one day there were three rabbis in his barracks and they said 'Yes it is time to start the trial.' 'What trial?' the other rabbi asked 'The trial of the Lord' So they held their trial at night in the barracks, and returned a 'Guilty' verdict. After the verdict, one of the rabbis said 'Come on my friends, it is time to pray.'<br /> So the tradition of holding God accountable does exist, it's&nbsp; just very rarely discussed. You are right that it should be discussed more. Thank you for taking the time to respond. Whatever one's beliefs, the buck has to stop somewhere. http://www.tehachapinews.com/home/Blog/samheath/7436/#c_77929 http://www.tehachapinews.com/home/Blog/samheath/7436/#c_77929 Thank you for taking the time to respond. Whatever one's beliefs, the buck has to stop somewhere. I agree! :) The buck has to stop somewhere, and I do think holding God accountable may in fact be a higher form of faith. http://www.tehachapinews.com/home/Blog/samheath/7436/#c_78718 http://www.tehachapinews.com/home/Blog/samheath/7436/#c_78718 I agree! :) The buck has to stop somewhere, and I do think holding God accountable may in fact be a higher form of faith. You may very well be correct Katja. I don't know of course, but it seems reasonable to me. http://www.tehachapinews.com/home/Blog/samheath/7436/#c_78770 http://www.tehachapinews.com/home/Blog/samheath/7436/#c_78770 You may very well be correct Katja. I don't know of course, but it seems reasonable to me.