If Haitians were constantly questioning their faith, they would all be atheists. If Haitians were constantly questioning their faith, they would all be atheists…

Sorry, I had to repeat that a few times as I attempt to wrap my head around it.

First, a brief history of Haiti, or “God’s Shitter” as I like to call it. The western half of the island of Hispaniola started as a wealthy French colony, built on the backs and blood of slave laborers from Africa. It was called Saint-Domingue at this time. Under French rule, the black population would remain enslaved for about 100 years, until invaders from Spain and Britain pressured the French into freeing the slaves and allying with them to fight off these external threats. After beheading King Louis, the Jacobins (crazy people who were all about the natural rights of men, but had a fetish for removing heads from necks) took control of France and supported abolition for all French colonies.

So the former slaves kicked out all of the invaders and took control of their country and everything was hunky-dory. Well, until the planter lobby found its way to Napoleon Bonaparte’s ear. Greedy planters, the kissing cousins of modern corporations, were repulsed by the idea of not being super rich, so they convinced Napoleon to send 20,000 troops to Saint-Domingue and reinstitute slavery. There was lots of fighting, and if it hadn’t been for Yellow Fever, the colony might have been retaken by the French. 100,000 black and 24,000 white colonists died, but they beat the invaders and declared full independence from France. The colony was renamed Haiti. I think they chose this name because of God’s hate for them.

From this moment things did not get better. Lots of infighting occurred; the country was divided in half, then recombined; the French tried to take control again and Haiti was forced to pay the French to retain independence; after this the Haitian government was continuously replaced from within in coup after coup after coup.

Eventually the United States sent some Marines to quell some of the chaos, but they ended up killing thousands of Haitians, so, I mean, it sounds like they did a bang-up job.

In the following years some dictators took control, there were DEATH SQUADS, more coups, more chaos, corruption, etc, etc, etc. And amidst all of this throughout the years, the people of Haiti have been poor as fuck. It is the poorest nation in the Americas; people there live on $2 a day. Wikipedia tells me that, even though they fought the French three fucking times to keep from being enslaved, due to abject poverty more than 200,000 children are forced to work as free household servants — or in other words, as slaves.

So now a huge earthquake ravages the country. A precise earthquake, I might add. The vast majority of the population is in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s largest city. The earthquake was centered right on this spot. Right where it could do the most damage. Is that not suspicious? It almost seems like some conscious, omniscient, omnipotent force was aiming at them like a diabolical darts player. I wonder who that could be? Who has the power to do such a thing? Who is known for sending down pestilence and flooding the Earth on occasion?

And yet the Haitians, a deeply religious, Catholic people, are praising God and continuing to attend church services in full force. Well, not in full force; there are the ones who were crushed as their own churches collapsed on them, of course (like Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot).

Their faith is all they have, CNN reports. That’s psychotic. All they have is insanity then. I’m not sure how else to describe it. It’s akin to Stockholm syndrome.

This is faith. God just killed your friends, family and loved ones. Or, if he didn’t, he at least stood by and watched as it happened. Yet you love him and thank him and pray to him. It’s like if I was walking down the street with a gun in my pocket and I saw a woman being raped, but rather than shooting the rapists, just kind of stopped and watched. And then, when it was over, she thanked me profusely for my benevolence.

No, scratch that. That metaphor does not properly convey the absurdly paradoxical nature of God’s supposed greatness and the faith of his followers. In this rape scenario, there would still be some risk to me. Maybe the kidnappers have guns too. Maybe I’m paralyzed by fear. If I shoot I could miss and then they’d shoot me, or worse, I’d shoot and hit the woman.

God doesn’t have that problem. He is all-powerful. He has no fear. He can’t miss. He doesn’t even need to lift a fucking finger. He could have stopped the earthquake with a thought.

But he didn’t. It’s like if I approached the proceeding rape in my bulletproof Popemobile that just so happened to have a top of the line laser attachment with a built-in, military grade targeting system that never misses, yet instead of zapping the rapists, I put it in park, popped a bag of Orville Redenbacher in my Popemicrowave, kicked back and watched the action.

The current official death toll is 72,000. It’s expected to reach 200,000. Maybe God should have read his own fucking Book. I’m thinking specifically of the part about the Good Samaritan. It’s in Luke, God. Try skimming it when you get a second.

I keep hearing about people praying for the Haitians. Okay. I think I need another metaphor. Let’s see, how about this: Praying for God to help the Haitians is like asking 1944 Hitler to help the Jews.

Oh wait, that metaphor fails too. Hitler felt threatened by the Jews. I mean, they had influence in German cinema, science, banking, etc. Not the same with God. No one on Earth is threatened by the Haitians, let alone our all-encompassing, all-powerful Creator. It’s like he saw how much fun everyone was having shitting all over Haiti and he got jealous and said, “Look what I can do!” like fucking Stuart from MADtv.

Today there was actually a second earthquake in Haiti. An aftershock, but it was pretty big – 6.1 on the Richter scale. Talk about kicking a man when he’s down. Shit, actually, God’s not even doing that – the Haitians were already down. He kicked them with the first quake. Now he’s just pissing on them as they lay bloody and broken.

In the first CNN link, at the end of the video, they mention how the church leader is grateful for all of the miracles God has granted in the form of quake survivors, but he can’t explain why the quake itself – why all of the death and destruction on such a grand scale – happened.

I have an explanation. Apparently most of Earth’s population can’t handle it, but I do have an explanation.

This is it: We live in an indifferent, uncaring, apathetic universe. There is only the natural world. There is no supernatural. There are no spirits. There are no gods. There is not one God. Everything in this natural world happens because it happens; there are reasons, but they aren’t meaningful – at least, not in the way that primitive belief systems see meaning. 4.6 billion years ago the Earth coalesced from the dust and particles of the solar nebula into a ball of molten rock through entirely natural, unconscious, amoral processes. The Earth’s crust hardened and is now composed of plates floating on a semi-solid mantle. The plates move about and bump into each other. We know how earthquakes work. Our methodology and body of knowledge that explains this natural world of ours is called Science. More precisely, Geology.

God did not cause the earthquake and he couldn’t stop it. Not because he’s an asshole, as I suggested above, but because he doesn’t exist. He doesn’t EXIST. The people who survived didn’t because of miracles handed out by a magical guy in the sky; they were just lucky; in the right spot at the right time. 200,000 others weren’t so lucky. It wasn’t that they weren’t religious enough; not that they didn’t pray enough; not that they led immoral lives; not that their ancestors made a pact with Lucifer 200 years ago. It was plain dumb luck.

I liken this to rappers and Kevin Smith thanking God for all their blessings. God is so choosey. I have to wonder: what am I to him? Tuna noodle casserole? Well, okay, I’m an atheist, so God hates me. But what are all of my Christian friends who aren’t blessed with wealth and fame? What are inner city high school teachers? What are nurses? What are the 911 victims? What are the tsunami victims? What are the Katrina victims? What are the 200,000 dead Haitians? Haiti’s population is something like 80% Catholic. Did they just pick the wrong denomination?

No. You weren’t chosen. Don’t be so conceited. It’s just luck. You’re lucky enough to have been born with the right genetics or the right family or the right peers or some combination of those. Millions and millions of others were NOT so blessed. Similarly, the earthquake survivors weren’t chosen. When the roof came crashing down, some jumped left and some jumped right. This is the way the universe works.

Our sun gives us life. We’re made of elements born in its core; every day we’re bathed in its essential energy. But some day our sun is going to get really big and consume this entire planet, turning it into a horrible firey inferno and ultimately obliterating it. And the callous universe won’t give a damn. Happens all the time, just like ant hills flattened under the feet of jovial little boys.

Point is, everything that can be attributed to God or Brahman or Izanagi or Quetzalcoatl or Zeus or Anu or The Spirit of the Buffalo, can be explained better – more concisely and with less ambiguity – by modern science. The Haitians shouldn’t be praising Him. They should be cursing Him. They should be questioning their faith. They should be atheists. They should be casting Him out of their country once and for all. Because, really, what has He done for them other than Shit on them? Without their faith will they be left with nothing? Perhaps. But maybe they can replace it with something new. Maybe instead of faith in God, they can have faith in the people of all the other nations that are coming to their aid right now; people of The United States, Canada, Britain, Denmark, Australia, India, China, and even France; people of the secular Red Cross, people of the secular UNICEF organization.

When the aid runs out maybe they can have faith in each other. As corny as it sounds, at least it’s real. More real than God anyway. And if that doesn’t work, well, they can always put their faith in Anderson Cooper.

To all of the other people of Faith in this world: It’s 2010; it’s the fucking future. Embrace it. It’s time to end these ancient mind games.