Why? They don’t give a shit about your well-being. They just want to make money, and when they don’t pay for shit, they still get your money. In fact, it’s their duty to their shareholders to do this. Corporations want to make money, and paying for an expensive life-saving surgery won’t do that. It’s the truth, plain and simple.

As long as there’s money to be made out of this, these corporations are not going to suddenly grow a heart. The only way health care will ever serve the people, and not some rich execs in a midtown corporate office, is if it’s taken into the hands of the government. Universal health care is the way to go.

The government is required to serve the people. They don’t have shareholders. They can’t make shitloads of money off of its own people suffering without sending most of the country into uproar. So, if our taxes paid for health care for every citizen, rich and poor, black and white, young and old, they could not just rip us off. They would have no reason to rip us off.

Even if you are perfectly healthy, you would still pay taxes for this. And I know that some people would be pissed by this. But with universal health care, you can save a homeless person’s life just by paying your taxes on time. The people who require the most treatment would do the same for you if you were in their situation. It’s called social responsibility.

“If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.” – Tony Benn

Anyone?

Well, if you just take some time to read, here is my opinion.

To some extent, religion and politics can mix. However, not too much. The second you start telling me that God hates gay marriage, and therefore it should me illegal, is the second I give you the finger and walk away.

Basically, they can mix, if it’s just a politician evoking God in a speech. Not in a “God wants me to run for senate” way, however. That would be too forceful, and would probably land them in some deep shit with their religion for trying to speak for their God.

What pisses me off is when politicians use God as a way to pressure people into agreement. Especially when it comes to something like gay marriage or abortion.

So you believe same sex marriage is wrong. No matter how right you think you are, forcing everyone to follow your God’s rules would be going against the free will that you believe God gave us.

Same with abortion. It is debatable whether or not life really begins at conception. Personally, I have decided that that is bullshit. But since it can’t be confirmed whether it’s murder or not in the first place, saying “God hates murder.” sounds retarded anyway.

Before I start, I would like to say that if you do not share my view on certain topics, that is okay. I will respect your opinion, but only if you respect mine. If you start yelling shit about how I’m going to hell, that is when I stop taking you seriously. Because guess what? You can’t prove that you’re right, and I can’t prove that you’re wrong.

So, here are a few of my opinions.

First off, I do not believe in God or any “higher power”. I’ve tried the whole religion thing, and it doesn’t work for me. I went to a Lutheran preschool. Not because my parents wanted me to learn religion, or were religious at all. It was just a convenient location. All day, 5 days a week, I would hear teachers talk about “God” all day. God was so incredibly important, and it wasn’t a concept I had been able to wrap my head around. While others blindly accepted all this, I didn’t understand one thing. Not one.

All day we watched Veggie Tales, talked about Jesus (or, as I thought of him, “that guy with long hair who is cool for some reason), and went to church on Fridays. The pastor (is that what you call the Lutheran ones?) seemed like a really nice guy who genuinely wanted to share his faith with these impressionable young kids. But I still didn’t get it.

And I didn’t really give it much thought. I didn’t understand it, but I survived. Religious school isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds to some people.

I didn’t begin thinking about faith or religion until elementary school, when I started science class. Now instead of preaching about God and expecting me to believe every word, real facts with proof were laid out in front of me, just waiting for me to dissect, to immerse myself in. Everything had a real explanation that didn’t assume I would believe something just because it was shoved down my throat.

And I realized something. I do not have enough pure faith to believe in God. I am the type of person who needs facts that are proven, and that just doesn’t mix with a belief in God. That doesn’t mean that God couldn’t possibly, in a million years, exist. He just isn’t real to me. I don’t believe in God.

Science, to me, is great. Everything needs to be proven, to have evidence, to be considered scientific. Otherwise, it’s discarded in the “other” bin. That is exactly how my mind works. If I believed in something with every inch of faith I had, and it couldn’t be proven to be true, it would weigh on my conscience.

Which brings me to my next topic. Evolution.

In my opinion, evolution is the only theory of the origin of humans that belongs in science class. Because scientific facts are proven. Evolution has proof. It has been studied for so many years, and it explains so many things, like the similarities between humans and chimpanzees, monkeys, etc, as well as the fact that all living things are either bacteria, fungi, mammals, reptiles, insects, fish, or birds. We evolved from the same species that the chimpanzees did. If you go back in time long enough, our ancestors are mere bacteria that came about in the ocean a few billion years into Earth’s life.

Not to say that creationism/intelligent design/whatever the new thing to call it is can’t be taught to kids. Just don’t teach it to me in science class. Why not save it for parents to pass on to their kids, or for religion class in religious schools? Most public school students I know don’t take creationism seriously, and never would. So why bother?

In order to prove that creationism is correct, one must first prove the existence of God. That can’t be proven either, so don’t bother trying to make it look “scientific”.

If you want your kids to be taught your beliefs, home school them.

This concept of people having the beliefs of extremists rammed downed my throat is my next and final topic for this topic.

I have heard loads of people tell me I’m going to hell for not believing in God. I don’t think these people understand that if I became Christian, I would not really have it in my heart. Even if I went to heaven for forcing myself into Christianity, it would be based on a lie. I would rather fry for all eternity that lie to myself.

I am not sacrificing what is in my heart for something that means nothing to me. Never.

Willie Randolph should not have been fired from my personal favorite team, the New York Mets. It happened for two main reasons: PR and covering Omar Minaya’s ass.

Willie Randolph turned The Mets around after the disastrous Art Howe years, and it disappoints me that he has been run out of town like the two managers before him. In my opinion, he couldn’t have done much to prevent the 2007 season collapse. Same thing for this season.

It’s not Willie Randolph that was screwing shit up, it was the actual players, who have the talent to win the World Series, they just haven’t been playing to their full potential. A manager cant just force his players to do a good job out their. You can lead a horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink.

If The Mets don’t turn around their season soon, Omar Minaya will be the next to get fired.

And before anyone starts screaming at me about where I was before this happened, I would like to mention that I was against him being fired from the start.

This is the worst decision Fred Wilpon has ever made.

That being said, good luck, Jerry Manuel. While I would have preferred Willie Randolph to stay, at least for the remainder of the season, I am certain you will be an excellent manager. I hope we can make it to the World Series with you in the future. Though maybe not this season, someday.

Let’s take New York back from The Yankees like we did in the ’80s!

Recommended songs:

House Of Wolves – My Chemical Romance

12:51 – The Strokes

Salute Your Solution – The Raconteurs

My Doorbell – The White Stripes

Fences – Paramore

You’re My Best Friend – Queen

Cruci-Fiction In Space – Marilyn Manson

Evening Wear – Mindless Self Indulgence

EMI – Sex Pistols

Dude, Where’s My Skin? – Schoolyard Heroes

Nth Degree – Morningwood

I know loads more songs and bands than that, of course. Any recommendations you have for me?

Not everyone who opposes same sex marriage is a homophobe. But even if you think that gays can have a similar ceremony with a different name, it still encourages inequality, because it says “You’re different. You can’t have what we have. A man can have a wife, but if he wants to spend his life with another man, they’re not husbands.” Even if inequality isn’t your goal, it still is the outcome.

Think of it this way: if the laws of “separate but equal” racial segregation separated blacks and whites, but really did give them the same quality schools, bathrooms, and theater seats, it still wouldn’t be true equality. Because what made “separate but equal” unequal was not only that blacks got the bad things that whites didn’t want. It’s the “separate” part that also encouraged inequality. When people are separated based on something that is not a choice, it creates inequality.

Being gay is not a choice. So why should they be separated from straight people in anything, including their right to marry?

Some may say that marriage is between a man and a woman by definition. Bullshit. Definitions change, smart one. And while not all “traditional” things are bad, I think inequality is a tradition we should end, don’t you think?

Now, on to my next category of same sex marriage-opposers: religious right-wing nuts. I’m not going to get into a Bible study session with this. I am atheist and nonreligious, and have no reason to so much as open a Bible, so I can’t say it would be my place to criticize your beliefs, or prove your interpretations of the Bible wrong. Believe what you want.

But honestly, do you really think you’re doing any good by forcing your personal beliefs on anyone? Can’t the likelihood of gays going to heaven be an individual’s decision, and not yours, in the form of federal law? If you keep your religion out of our country’s laws, I will keep my nasty opinions of you to myself.

Sound good?