Popular Atheism.

 

 Popular Atheism.

Until about a hundred years ago, people didn’t doubt the existence of God. Every human was born into a nation, a race, and the religion of his or her parents, never questioning why, or if, they could change it. A new world was shaping up. It was ordained by the hand of God, said some, while others had other ideas. They learned all the new ideas about science and concluded that humans have outgrown the idea of God. We were adults now and don’t need stories from desert tribes that existed thousands of years ago.

By the time I started university as a mature student, the world changed. Professors in every subject were poking fun at anyone who was primitive enough to believe in a “sky God”, whose existence could not be proven with scientific tests. Just mentioning God on a test could lower my grades. For thousands of years, God was as real as the ground we walk on and now He was not to be mentioned. People always look for reasons to discriminate against others, and now there was another reason. Those who believed in God were considered backward, uneducated crowds.

Using science as a new religion lasted for a while, but it was persistently challenged by an old idea that is embedded in human nature and can not easily be discarded. Yes, we were discovering how the world works, but most people believe in some sort of duality. There are two parts to a human animal. The physical or material animal part that is finite, and a spiritual invisible aspect that we are sure exists but can’t be measured or proven by physical means. It exists in beliefs and has many expressions under many religious names. There are fundamentalists in each religion.

The fundamentalists like to quote scripture, wear religious symbols and give themselves distinguished titles such as “clergy, prophets, elders,” or numerous other names, yet others seek pure spirituality. That is a belief in a reality based on consciousness. According to them, the physical body undergoes recycling, but the soul or individual attributes are eternal. Although I practice the religion I was born into, I believe in spirituality. It is misunderstood, but the idea resonates with me.

My consciousness was somewhere before I was born. A new life started, and I was given the opportunity to gain knowledge. There is a reality that I am unable to perceive in this physical life, but my brain knows it. Upon my death, the “curtain will be torn” and I will know what now I don’t. If I would have been born to another religion, it would be similar but not the same. In my opinion, the human brain, a chunk of fat with memories and computing power, is like a TV at home. It communicates with something invisible to us and forms a reality that physically is not there. The destruction of my TV set does not affect the station that broadcasts the program.

It’s not cool to talk about God, but people can’t stop doing it. As the years went by, much effort and thought went into brain research and there is a renewed interest in spirituality. People realize, or assume they do, that there is a mind in the universe and it is superior to our individual minds. It is so different that human language doesn’t have the words to explain it properly. We have to go by intuition. One thing that modern philosophers agree on is that God is not an all-powerful ruler, but a concerned creator. The crowd of today approaches the study of faith from many new angles.

Some followers are ready to fight for their idea of God. Others pick and choose what they want their God to be. Many believe that God is making them superior to other human beings and giving them benefits. Some Eastern religions believe they are born into a privileged position in life. There are people who charge others to tell them what they wish to believe. In my opinion, the difference between religions is cultural. The need for spirituality is universal.

I studied modern experts’ opinions. They often talk about the feeling of spirituality from the sub-conscience side. Subconscience is smarter than conscience and does more for us. It guides us on a need-to-know basis, as a parent guides a child. It even seems to know the future if you believe in intuition. I do. Others study dreams, which played a big part in the origins of religions. One philosopher said that each day could be a lifetime, and after death, we may wake up for another day as we always do. It reminds me of the song, One Day at the Time, sweet Jesus. A Muslim scholar said that we are all Muslims, which means servants of God. I agree with the ecumenical principle expressed, but think that God views us as a family more than servants, but perhaps after we mature a little more. We should accept science and go beyond it.

The test of maturity seems to be upon us, if we like it or not. Most people believe we may destroy our home world or make it uninhabitable. We may only destroy billions of poor people. Against that belief is a set of stories designed to prolong the danger for a few people’s personal monetary gain.

The New World we live in.

 

 The New World we live in.

My long-time friend Mario is dead. He worked hard for close to fifty years, never cheating on taxes. Taxes pay for our health care, he used to say. Last year he had a toe infection, couldn’t get in to see his doctor, and ended up in Emergency. The doctor there prescribed a medication that Mario was allergic to and sent him home. My friend called an ambulance that didn’t arrive for hours and when they did, he was gone. Shortly after, his dependent wife died as well. May they rest in peace. I can’t wish peace to the people who broke our health care system. There is blood on their hands.

Both Mario and I were in graduate studies when Calgary opened a school for doctors and nurses. Calgary and southern Alberta were going to have enough doctors. Governments paid for the buildings, both at the university and the Foothills Hospital and we were sure that when we get old, we will have the best medical care. Not so. The province kept slashing the budget, and we ended up training doctors for other countries. The international students paid more. Our rural communities began recruiting outside of Canada, while our doctors moved wherever they could get higher pay. That lasted until our government decided to reduce the benefits and the few doctors we had left en masse a few years ago. They weren’t going to stay and fight for their pay with a Premier who could see no farther than his nose.

The province saved money to reduce corporate taxes and attract business. It didn’t occur to them that businesses consider lower taxes but also need workers. They set up head offices in places with educated people, good services, and infrastructure. It is hard to set up a big operation where there is substandard quality of life. Even if we cover it up by providing private services for some, we still must live with the rest of the local population. Who wants to live in a place where you can’t leave the office without walking over homeless people sleeping on the streets? The hospitals are dilapidated, and schools look as if gangs infested them, to name a few. The Alberta that drew big business was the brainchild of Peter Lougheed, not the Danielle Smith and Jason Kenny version. Today our hospitals and schools are broken. There are not enough trained firefighters and EMS no longer can respond to emergencies in seven minutes as they used to. Hilariously, the people believe it is the Federal government’s fault. A friend came yesterday and told me that Trudeau wasted our healthcare money going on a multi-million dollar vacation. I think he really believes it.

It is easy for me to cry out about all our problems, some of which are killing us. We made mistakes and we are paying a heavy price. The reality now demands that we do something right and start climbing up after the fall. Unfortunately, to do that we must say some unpopular things, which politicians can’t do, and stay in power. At the same time, we all know the truth. If we do the wrong things again and again, nothing will change.

We, Canadians, need many more people here for us to move forward. Our country and economy are built around it. We can forget about northern Europeans with perfect Canadian English coming here. They have it better in their countries of origin. For over fifty years we have been playing the game of “bait and switch” emigration system. We enticed educated people from abroad to come here just to find out that we don’t recognize their foreign credentials and expect them to work driving taxis and cleaning senior’s care homes. Most of us whose parents spoke with accents pull rank over newcomers, saying that we can’t understand them. Often, we can’t understand people with darker skin colors the most. If we keep it up, we will soon have no people to do all that needs to be done and collect much less tax revenue. People from majority non-white countries do not have inferior intellect as right-wing Liberal politicians like to believe.

Canada’s future has a secret sauce for success called immigration, and it can go sour quickly if not treated carefully. Things have changed since the middle of the last century. China, Japan, and India are successfully competing with the West in many respects. They don’t respect the fact that we have a king with a purple crown wearing a white ermine fur cape and they have more and better weapons than we do.

Not long ago, we were on top of the world and developed an elitist attitude. Those days are over and the future belongs to those who compromise, share, and negotiate. If we always compete to get more than the rest for ourselves, we will lose our advantage as we clearly see happening right now. If we choose not to believe it, we are risking a rude awakening. Superheroes are toy action figures only. In the real world of humans, we either care about all of our kind, or at best, manage to destroy all that we achieved and, if we are lucky, try to start again. There are no guarantees that we will be able to.

For the time being, let’s put the fires out and elect smart people to govern us.

Defacing Election Signs.

 

Defacing Election Signs.

The official campaign for the provincial elections is on and on the first day, I see a sign at the entrance to town. Would be great if people voted for the issues, but signs and advertisements influence many. I went home and looked at my social media account, and here it is. A person wrote complaining that the NDP has a sign at the entrance to their town. He or she said that we are a coal town and we will not tolerate people who are supporting “rich ranchers” who are against coal mining. The whole long letter looked like an invitation for “someone” to vandalize the sign, which to my knowledge is against the law. We are in Canada, not in China. It is a democratic country here and obviously, one political party was ready for the campaign on time with signs ready to go.

I am not the best authority to ask, but to my understanding, this whole hype about coal is really not about prosperity for the Pass. The coal is not in our municipality. People considered the workers will reside here but we are full as far as I know. The hills around us house many people also, and businesses are doing well. If we want more people to pay taxes, we will have to build, but I don’t see much effort toward building condos so far. Looking at the political campaigns so far is a lesson in itself. One side is promising improvements to things I care about. Health care is my number one concern. The other day my young grandchild in Calgary had an appendicitis attack. The Children’s Hospital had a fourteen-hour waiting period at emergency. My daughter took him to the Rocky View, where waiting was only four and a half hours and they misdiagnosed him. Going back soon after he was diagnosed correctly and sent to the Children’s. Finally, he is being treated, but they can’t do the simple surgery until all the fluid is gone. It may be weeks or more. The waiting time endangered him, caused much pain, lost work for the parents, and will be much more expensive to fix.

I am disappointed. I worked since I was seventeen and paid to have a reasonable level of health care in our province and look where we are. We were warned in meetings with the doctors a few years ago, but didn’t act. Now the government is talking about placing some of our extra money into a saving account while Albertans are facing death for lack of medical attention. Show me a corporation that will move here if we don’t have good health care, education, and the rest of what people care about.

My next concern is increasing taxes. That can push me out of my home, which I worked all my life to have. The provincial government is talking against increasing taxes, leaving more money in our pockets, they say. Yet I see them deciding to remove government assistance from important services such as policing education and more. They forced the municipalities to pick up the slack or people end up with additional out-of-pocket expenses. I know seniors on government pensions who had to cut going for coffee with friends once a week to pay the increase in taxes. They live hand to mouth in the richest province of Canada. Some chose between lettuce and Tylenol. They built our towns by working underground, but now they are impoverished.

The pension funds are also under threat. If the government takes them over and invests in oil sands instead of things with high returns, those seniors may be on the streets. We fought all of our lives and now we face losing the pensions we paid for with our blood, sweat and tears.

A friend was arguing against transfer payments. He believes Quebec is stealing our money and their citizens live better than we do. I pointed out that the French province has done more for its people. For example, they built hydroelectric power stations while we will have to catch up, which is very expensive but now is necessary. He answered we can build them if we have more time. I pointed out that Alberta’s forests are burning while we produce more pollution, which causes many fires. He left me and went to listen to some “news” by a news outlet that I think even the Federal Conservatives quit calling news. Now they say that the fires are being set up by “environmentalists.” I highly recommend that people should keep in mind that any goof can publish fake news on the net.

We went around and viewed a well-attended opening of an art show in the gallery in Frank. Wow, our towns are becoming an art hub. On the way back, entering Blairmore, I noticed another NDP sign. A big black X defaced it, sprayed across it. To me, it signified that some people are desperate. They know they can’t win the elections fair and square, so they get a can of spray paint. It is against the law. Living in a democracy means a lot to me. At least every four years we can fix our mistakes.  I want a good government watched over by capable media.