9/11—NEVER FORGET THAT FAITH KILLS

As the years pass, we have grown accustomed to the annual ghost shafts that gleam skywards from the grounds upon which the World Trade Center towers once stood. Do they summon forth fury aroused by the injustice of that atrocity, or are many people just wistfully recollecting the times before that day shattered their perceptions? I consider it worthwhile on this anniversary to recall the violence, sparked by a toxic theism, that murdered so many innocent folk who had a myriad of beliefs supporting them that as they sought to live and prosper.

Sadly, the forms of religion which thrive on hatred of those who do not share or bow to their anti-human convictions have been thriving, particularly in the petri-dish of the partisan political landscape now claiming our planet. Terrorism has not ended, and we find that those who cling to outmoded faiths are pushing for their rights to discriminate against others on the basis of their “sincerely held beliefs.” These debilitating human tendencies remain virulent.

It is ever more important that secularists and humanists from a wide spectrum continue their vigilant opposition to those who would curtail not just the rights, but the lives of those who, in the pursuit of their own forms of happiness, have not embraced deity-acceptance as necessary to their lives.

This past essay of mine offers relevant observations:

The Murderous Madness of Theism

May reason triumph and religious barbarism be vanquished. Then the world’s societies might actively evolve towards sanity, equity and liberty, at last bringing vital existence as the shared standard for a global human culture.

—Magus Peter H. Gilmore