Praying

THE PENTECOSTAL COMMUNITY is most likely praying for an end to Covid-19, and the reelection of Donald Trump, or for the viral extermination of humanity, with the exception of the saved, themselves, who will be raptured into heaven. One can only guess. Either way, these devout fundamentalist Christians are traitors and cowards. Traitors, for supporting a traitorous, criminal, sexual predator president, rather than resisting him and holding him accountable. Cowards, for begging for help from a mythological being rather than joining the rest of us in fighting their own battles for survival in a natural world which does not always assist in our survival. How very arrogant, for anyone to pray to a deity to solve their problems, by assuming that we tiny creatures could ever influence the supreme creator of the universe. The infinitely superior spirit which created all existence gave humanity the tools with which to survive; as Goethe said: God gave us the acorns, but he will not crack them for us. Modern humanity is the beneficiary of thousands of years of intellectual struggle and seeking to gain knowledge and understanding, which enables us to give ourselves a wonderful life, assuming we have the intelligence to take advantage of what our ancestors and our science has bestowed upon us. We have the means with which to help ourselves. Anyone primitive enough intellectually to believe that the various maladies which afflict life on Earth are some sort of retribution from an angry, unappeased anthropomorphic deity is dismissing the benefits of knowledge to which anyone in our modern world can easily access. The primitive forms of religion which still lie like a shadow upon human culture should by now have been replaced by more advanced forms of philosophy; a simply reverence for nature, for the universe, and the inscrutable intelligence which designed it would be sufficient. We need not concern ourselves with barbaric notions about divine retribution or damnation, or salvation or any such nonsense. We need only use our God given intelligence to amend our behavior, to use the tools at our disposal to solve our problems, and to create for ourselves and our descendants the kind of world worth living in, and giving thanks for. As Goethe said: we ought to pray for two things; a pure hearts and great thoughts.