Slide1Some of the most gullible people in the world are found in the antiabortion subculture. They demonstrate their gullibility, for example, when the make signs that read “Trust God” or offer public statements like “Don’ abort your baby because God will provide.” All any rational person need do is look at the poverty, crime, homelessness and illness in the world to realize that God does not provide for all. Fools pray for relief from their poverty, for a shelter for their children, for a job to feed their family or for war to end in their country. But their prayers are not answered. It’s not that they don’t pray hard enough or that these poor souls are unworthy. Not at all. The majority of the ills of the world are caused by human actions, a confluence of unfortunate consequences, bad decisions, personal greed, colonialism, ignorance, magical thinking and hegemony. While I am not in any way discounting the existence of a higher power, a universal voice or an entity that many call God, I am arguing that God will not provide in the simplistic way that the antis claim.  God will not provide jobs, good health, a comfortable home, a congenial family life. God will not make bad circumstances in women’s lives good again. Hell, even the ‘family values’ GOP doesn’t make that happen. In fact, those who stand on the family values platform also stand on the necks of women, suffocating them with their self-righteousness and draconian legislation. But, I digress. It suffices to say I argue that God will not make this world a rosy place through our prayer and supplication. We must individually work to the best of our given and learned abilities and collectively for the greater good of our human community to be all that it can be. But stuff happens.

The sentimental notions that God is omniscient and omnipresent, notions embraced by the clueless, are  saccharine sentimentality. From a scientific or archeological perspective, the Christian bible stories provide a Slide1lens through which to understand the gullibility of these anti abortion types (and others). Obviously, God did not create the world in 6 days 6,000 years ago. There was never a worldwide flood that covered Mt. Everest. Jonah did not live inside a fish’s stomach for three days. God did not create Adam from a handful of dust or woman from Adam’s rib. Let’s face the realities. God does not dole out paychecks, provide keys to homes, gas for our cars, food for all the starving children, or brains for all the ignorance in this world. So we need to think more critically.
MondaksCrossThe warning “When fascism comes to America it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross” seems appropriate for so many of the anti abortion folks, as well as their GOP family-values troglodytes.

Let’s be perfectly clear. Antiabortion protesters don’t trust God. It’s “do as I say” and not “do as I do.” They don’t trust that God can or will guide young women with unplanned pregnancies to carry to term. It seems to me that if they really trusted God, they would leave things to God. But they don’t. They want things to happen their way and on their schedule. Their actions are evidence that they do not trust their God. A prominent Catholic nun, Sister Kathy Sherman of LaGrange Illinois, states that hope, peace and love are all names for God. But for the protesters, who offer no real hope, no peace and no love toward women clients, who invoke the name of God or Jesus, they become nothing more than noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. Every day they lurk on sidewalks or right-of-ways outside abortion clinics, they announce to the world their own superiority to God. They’re outside abortion clinics because they don’t trust the very God that they’re asking others to trust.

Screen Shot 2012-12-05 at 5.55.33 PM

All the bible-clutching, Hell-fire breathing evangelists and the rosary bead-kissing Catholics demonstrate they don’t trust in God. Their rationales are numerous, humorous and ludicrous. They fabricate excuses and rationalizations about why God doesn’t answer prayers, about why God doesn’t stop wars, or about why all their assumed horrors of abortion continue. They might say the words “God is in control” but their actions say otherwise. They make every effort to interrupt a woman’s path to an abortion clinic including posting unethical images that disrespect humanity, endorsing their religion on the unwilling and revealing their misinformation about reproductive medical science. The reality is that most of those folks lurking outside abortion clinics from Allen Texas to Hebron North Carolina and from North Aurora Illinois to Allentown PA don’t trust their God. For them to ask strangers to trust God, and by implication to trust them, is creepy because they are as transparent, dare I say Godless, as the zygotes that they so desperately wish to save.