Growing up in small town Canada, was growing up sheltered from race. There were no black families in our town. It wasn’t until we went to Europe when I was 11 that I saw black people in a Wimpys burger joint in London and I was enthralled by the accents and the beautiful skin tones. I’ll never forget the boys, in their school uniforms, looking so smart, laughing with each other, being kids. I really wanted to talk with them, to find out about them, but I was with my family and about then, Scottish soccer hooligans burst through the door and dad rushed us out.
It was 12 years after the movie was released in 1967,that I saw Guess who’s coming coming to dinner? I was a rebellious 14 year old. A typical angst ridden teen, desperate for independence.
When Sidney Poitier came onto the screen, my heart jumped, and my mind was taken back to that day in London. Here’s this beautiful man, with a lovely speaking voice, perfect posture, as smooth as silk personality. And I was enticed. Then came THE SCENE. The scene that stole my heart and captivated my mind for years. The scene where he says to his father, “I owe you nothing ” Sidney Poitier spoke my truth in that scene and I will always love him for that.
He holds the distinction of being the first black actor to win the academy award and of being my second longest crush.
Thank you, Sidney Poitier for your intelligence, your activism, your authentic and truly beautiful self.
Just when I was beginning to think my sense of humour was getting to be a wee bit too morbid, I came across other, like minded, individuals who see death as a way to get the last laugh.
I’m going to start with my three favourite celebrity epitaphs.
Billy Wilder, who directed Some Like it Hot, a movie with, arguably the best last line ever.
TV Icon Merv Griffin
The voice of Warner Brothers animation, Mel Blanc
Then there are some regular folks with a not so regular sense of funny.
For those that love to say I told you so.
For the realist.
For the Scrabble lover.
For the philandering husband.
I just love the fact that his wife outlived him… ah poetic justice.
For the man who loves women.
For the man who loved too many women
For the glass half full type
For the beloved family pet.
Even one for the atheist.
Pretty sure this one isn’t real… but it’s real funny.
That last grave marker is one I would seriously consider getting if I was going to be buried. But, as I am an atheist, I’m donating as much of my body as science will take, then the rest of me (if there is anything left over) is going into the ocean to become part of the food chain.
I will leave you with one of my favourite moments from the TV show Absolutely Fabulous with Patsy and Edina talking about their grave markers.
Each day on Twitter, I post my quote of the day tweet. The other day, the quote I posted was, “Gods don’t kill people. People with Gods kill people.” – David Viaene. One of the responses I got to this quote was, “people without Gods hold it down in the killing dept just as well. It’s a human problem.”
While I take no issue with the fact that there have been many killings done at the hands of people without Gods, the problem I have with the above statement is with the phrase, “just as well”. I decided to do a little research on the subject and here is what I came up with.
While there is really no way to tally the amount of individual murders committed by individual atheists, there are some numbers to be found when one looks at State Atheism, for instance in Mexico, under President Plutarco Elias Calles, there were at least 40 priests killed between the years 1926 and 1934. In the Soviet Union, Marxism-Leninism ideology sought to eliminate religion from the state entirely. In the period between 1922 and 1926, 28 Russian Orthodox Bishops and more than 1200 priests were killed. In Cambodia, under the Khmer Rouge, the estimated death toll is between 740,000 and 3 million. In the Mongolian People’s Republic, the Soviets launched a full-scale attack on Buddhism in 1936 where between 30,000 and 35,000 lives were lost. In North Korea, in the late 1940’s 166 priests and religious were killed or kidnapped. Using the high estimates, the total adds up to 3,036,434 deaths. Which, is a very substantial number.
On the side of people with Gods, I am only including the tally of one mass killing. The Holocaust, which took place between 1938 and 1945. Christians like to tell you that Hitler was an atheist, but, by all accounts, Hitler was a Catholic raised, Christian who espoused his belief in Jesus Christ (albeit an Aryan Jesus Christ), which makes him a man with a God. “As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.”- Aldof Hitler There were 5.9 million Jews, between 2 and 3 million Soviet POWs, 1.8 to 2 million Poles, between 220,000 and 1.5 million Romani, 200,000 to 250,000 disabled people, 80,000 Freemasons, between 20,000 and 25,000 Slovenes, 5,000 to 15,000 homosexuals, and between 2,500 and 5,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses killed in the Holocaust. Even using the low estimates, the death toll is 10,227,500 or more than 3.3 times the number killed by Atheist States in 5 different instances.
The reason to only include the Holocaust on the side of men with Gods was because, all of the Atheist State examples I used were from the 20th century and I didn’t want anyone crying unfair if I used examples like the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Thirty years War or the French Wars of Religion, which all took place in different eras, when people were not as enlightened as they were in the last century.
I do agree that killing is part of human nature, and I am positive that, even without a belief in any sort of deity, people would find something to fight about on a mass scale. My point here is that belief in a god seems to be a pretty popular reason to kill people. Here’s a question to think on… is God the reason, or the excuse?
