Subject: a great story
True or not, I liked this. You just gotta' smile.
A United States Marine was attending some college courses between assignments. He had completed missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the courses had a professor who was a vowed atheist and a member of the ACLU. One day the professor shocked the class when he came in. He looked to the ceiling and flatly stated, "God, if you are real, then I want you to knock me off this platform. I'll give you exactly 15 minutes."
The lecture room fell silent. You could hear a pin drop. Ten minutes went by and the professor proclaimed, "Here I am God, I'm still waiting."
It got down to the last couple of minutes when the Marine got out of his chair, went up to the professor, and cold-cocked him; knocking him off the platform. The professor was out cold. The Marine went back to his seat and sat there, silently. The other students were shocked and stunned and sat there looking on in silence.
The professor eventually came to, noticeably shaken, looked at the Marine and asked, "What is the matter with you? Why did you do that?"
The Marine calmly replied, "God was too busy today protecting America's soldiers who are protecting your right to say stupid stuff and act like an idiot, so He sent me."
No, I don't need to smile at a bigoted, moronic story like that. In fact a story like that just goes to show how small minded, self righteous and out right stupidly smug some religious people can be.
Really, what's great about that story? Is it great that it advocates violence? Is it great that it reinforces a stereotype that those who serve in the military are all believers? A stereotype that is not true, by the way.
So, god's busy protecting America's soldiers in Iraq? Well, I guess god's a bit of a slacker because 3,800 U.S. soldiers have completely escaped his protection and have died in Iraq and another 19,469 have only been partially protected by god as they have been wounded. And, I guess the 73,000 to 650,000 Iraqi civilians who have died as a result of this war (depending on whose accounting you believe) were also not worthy of god's protection.
Also, then there's the question of whether the soldiers in Iraq are fighting to protect the rights of U.S. citizens? Many smart people from both Republicans to Democrats, conservatives to liberals, believers to non-believers have questioned the motives for invading Iraq. When conservative, Republican, recently resigned Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan is willing to go on record saying that we invaded Iraq in order to have a controlling interest their oil, I think it's there's a very real possibility that we may not be fighting there to 'protect your right to say stupid stuff and act like an idiot.' I'm only saddened that Mr. Greenspan didn't have the moral conviction to voice this opinion while he still served in public office.
One final note. In theory, religions are supposed to teach their followers to be humble, kind, charitable, long suffering, forgiving, etc. A story like the one below is just one more piece of evidence that reinforces what a lot of us non-believers have been saying for years- that religion actually has the opposite of its intended effects. Namely, it generally serves to make people more self righteous, intolerant, violent, and (unfortunately) stupid. It's a 'by their fruits you will know them' kind of a thing.
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