Blue Moon Aurora

So yesterday the Jehovah Witnesses swung through the neighborhood again, and as usual, I politely listened to their pitch and took the magazines they offered.  However, for the first time the two women I was dealing with were rather, well, snarky.  Usually the Jehovah Witnesses are pretty nice and amiable, but these last two annoyed me.  

I mentioned I was Buddhist and that we shared many of the same concerns about declining morality and the like and wished them well.  Usually this gets me off the hook and they move on, but this couple decided to rip into Buddhism and really tried to pitch the whole ‘you need God’ thing as the End Times were coming up quick.  Apparently this group must be using the Mayan Calendar or have been taking the recent rash of apocalyptic movies too much to heart.  

Or it might have been the older white woman who said she had lived in our neighborhood for 40 years and that lately it had gotten a lot worse –in suburban speak this is translated as “minorities are moving into the neighborhood”.  We had the same thing in Gainesville when the old timers freaked out as a middle class black family moved into the neighborhood.  O the terror!  Interestingly, when minorities move into an all white neighborhood it actually raises property values, this is a complicated process and is fed indirectly by racism but it is well documented.  Still we get some snarky racist comment from most of our white neighbors almost every time we talk to them.  Interestingly, at school events I mostly deal with the minorities as they are the younger generation with kids in the neighborhood.  Nice people.  Just like everyone else they are just trying to make a living and give their kids opportunities.  

Anyway back to the Jehovah Witnesses.  They begin by going into the fact that the Buddha was just a man and not a god.  As if I didn’t know that, but I guess the analogy was that as Buddha was just human and as Jesus was the half-God adopted son of Joseph then clearly Jesus had to be superior.  It felt like I was trapped in one of those ‘Whose Better Captain Kirk or Captain Picard?’ discussions (obviously, Picard) – of course religion was the first fandom.  I’ll give you that Jesus was pretty cool.  He could walk on water, conjure up food, heal people, bring people back from the dead, even brought himself back from the dead, gave some great sermons, and kicked some moneylender ass.  But come on.  The Buddha would lay the smack down on the Virgin-Spawn…or probably not as they were both pacifists.  Most likely they would just sigh and complain to each other about their idiot followers, starting with Ananda and Peter and then moving right down to their most wacky sects today.  There would be some laughs, some tears, but definitely no smack down.  Personally, I’m a fan of both of them, I’m just not too keen on some of their followers, but I’m pretty confident they would agree with me on that point.  

Anyway, back to the Jehovah Witnesses, they then go into this malarkey about how we need the Creator, i.e. God to take us up to Heaven when the End Times come.  What the hell? Literally, I guess.  So they did ask me a question – who created everything if not God?  Apparently, this is one of the retorts they must be taught to deal with us wacky Buddhists; we’re like atheists but with cooler stories.  So I responded with ‘why do you need to have a beginning?’  They kind of ignored my point and I didn’t really want to push it, but it is the question – why do we need a beginning or really an end?  

Humans are very linear creatures we have this need for beginnings and ends, but as Yoda would say “All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was”. The Jehovah Witnesses seem to believe the End is coming and they are trying to get everyone to the lifeboats.  In a way, it’s a noble concept.  It’s far better than the right wing nutjobs in this country who are stockpiling weapons and getting ready for the revolution, because a black guy was elected President.  I’ll come out and say it – 75% of the opposition to President Obama is fueled by racism.  It’s all the same thing.  They all believe End Times are coming; maybe the end of the world, maybe the end of America, but the end is coming.  Both groups are the same – instead of focusing on the here and now they just want things to end so they can have a new beginning.  I’ll be blunt – they are all morons!

Beginnings and ends are states of mind.  If you have a problem with society then try to change it, make today your new beginning, but if you are waiting for God to come take you up to Heaven to escape all the problems in the world then in the words of Malcolm Reynolds, “that's a long wait for a train don't come.”  

I’ve never been a believer in God, probably since middle school, maybe earlier; it just didn’t make any sense why some omnipotent being would give a rat’s ass about a group of humans just because they worshipped him.  Maybe there is a God, I don’t know, it’s possible, but it’s not possible that his standard for promotion is simply belief.  Humans will believe anything.  No, I think the truth is that if there is a God he only helps those who help themselves, because that’s the person with vision.  

Take this joke told by a Russian space scientist to an American space scientist:

What is the difference between a realist and a dreamer?

The realist thinks that someday a UFO will come down and hover over the UN building, and that the aliens will come out of the UFO and offer to share their technology and solve all our world's problems.

The dreamer thinks maybe we can get our act together and do it ourselves.