Because God.

Creative Strategy #89: Try telling the truth.

I am an atheist.

When you chant your magical words to your invisible god

I understand. I really do. I used to, too!

I’m told you don’t believe me.

Like I wasn’t really a member of the club if I ever left.

Oh, but I was.

Let me tell you secret.

We atheists are everywhere.

We are even in your houses of worship. All of them.

Some of us are your leaders. Your elders. Your pastors.

Your teachers. Your doctors. Your dentists. Your Staff.

We pretend to believe your nonsense the way we silently pretend to respect it.

We don’t though.

We enjoy the anonymity and the social and job connections

and we will never tell you what we are thinking.

But I will. That’s my specialty.

I was the little kid who raised his hand in class and said Tommy stole the Milky Way.

That’s what good boys do. Tell on people.

You know how many times I’ve been beat up?

You think you scare me with your MAGA bullshit?

Every day I drive by your houses of worship.

You think nothing of displaying a torture device as a symbol of your faith.

You hang it outside your churches for everyone to see.

You think your kids don’t see that?

You think they don’t get the lesson that they are so bad, and naughty

somebody innocent had to suffer agony for their sins?

But they do. (We did.)

Clearly they are so worthless only a hero could love & save them.

They get it loud and clear.

That’s what a cross is.

Something many people were tortured on.

And you hold it up like a noose at a rally.

They are everywhere.

And we have to drive by them every day.

I don’t think wow what a strange brand. Even I am inured to it.

You are a blood magic cult. Blood. Magic. Cult.

You believe humans are so depraved they deserve infinite torture.

That’s Hell. You believe that the smartest way to handle reality was to have a firepit

at one end and then tilting the flat earth on its side and

all the bad people swoop down into the pit like vegetables in a soup.

Forever?

Don’t they just die once? What a sick idea.

Creator of the universe and that’s the best he could do?

You think someone’s pain redeems us?

How has that ever worked?

Did it work when you butchered animals on sacrificial altars?

Did it work when countless virgins were killed to quell His anger?

Did it work when the Catholic Church launched multiple crusades against Muslims?

Blood rituals must be so deep in our DNA

that we re-enact them mindlessly, like instincts.

Why so much blood? Why cannibalism?

And how many centuries of Blood Magic must we endure before someone finally says:

BLOOD MAGIC DOES NOT WORK, IDIOTS!

IT NEVER WORKS.

IT IS A RITUAL THAT REENACTS OUR DEVOTION TO ANYONE IN POWER.

That’s all. That’s it.

Think about it.

If blood magic doesn’t work,

then why did Christ even have to die on the cross?

What a sad dumb idea. Stacked on Wall-E sized tottering towers of presumption.

Hell. Sacrifice. Sin. Indulgences.

Today my daughters and granddaughters have no control over their own bodies in some states.

Because God.

I can’t even sneeze without being reflexively doused with your magic words.

It is not humility to submit yourself to an invisible god.

It is an abdication of your self. What are you so proud of?

It is wishful thinking. And that is no way to run a brain.

So I listened to our politicians play the god game

and attend the prayer breakfasts

tweet their thoughts and prayers

for the next batch of schoolchildren

and receive the blessings of the long con which is religion in a nutshell.

But then 45 and Covid came.

In one disastrous tsunami of destruction we got 10 thousand lies,

a Russian-owned Executive branch, an abandonment of public health,

a newly untaxed wealthy class,

incompetent cronies appointed to wreck our most precious programs

like ACA and the post office, and the justice system,

666 children ripped from their parents forever,

a depression,

one million Covid deaths and counting,

an insurgency by white supremacists

No masks, no vaccines, all guns all the time

and oh by the way

Stop fucking. Stop using contraception. Stop having abortions.

Stop talking about sex and slaves!

Stop talking.

I am so done with you.

You gorge on vile lies and propaganda that literally kills people

and we’re all supposed sit back

and let you throw your toddler tantrums of entitlement.

You are broken. Get fixed.

Your guns and god will not save you from life.

But they may continue to make life a misery

for all the rest of us.

—Patrick O’Leary

10/4/22