Beyond Our Differences: I was absorbed yet again by Bill Moyers Journal. Beyond Our Differences presented a ray of hope in an otherwise bleak religious scene. Just when I thought there was some hope I checked the news in the morning, as I always do, only to see that Gaza was in flames again. This time Israel struck in significant fashion. So far nearly 200 Palestinians are dead and 400 wounded. There are Israeli dead too. Hamas has been striking Israel consistently breaking the cease fire time after time after time. They must know the Israelis will not sit back and take an onslaught. So the beat goes on. Tit for tat again and again and again people’s bodies are dismembered and death reigns supreme. Nothing gets resolved except the willingness of each side to inflict more death and more destruction on each other ad infinitum until, I suppose, the end of time if necessary.

The hopeful aura of Bill Moyers Journal of “Beyond our Differences” showing the commonality of the religions of man to me this morning was rescinded as reality spoke otherwise. I know the voices of peace are out there. I know it because I am one and am no less a Jew than many who are more militant. Our voices though soften with the reality of the tears we shed, and by the incredulity and powerlessness we feel. How many more, for what and for whom? Is a life worth land, dirt, stone, pebbles, a 5000 year old text or a less than 2000 year old text? What is a life worth and who says so? Who wrote these edicts? Did a sky god come down from on high? Each group claims that He did and claims He did for that particular group and no other.

The criticism I have of this episode of The Journal is that for every sentence of peace in the Torah, the New Testament or the Koran one can find an equal and opposite sentence of violence. Those sentences of violence serve as justification for the never-ending mayhem inflicted by religionists. The Journal in its effort to seek common ground fails to state the very elements of those texts which are NOT non-violent and from which fundamentalism gets its fuel.
One of the statements on this part of the Journal said that 95% of humans on this planet believe in a Creator of our universe. 95% is very high. I must be among the five lonely percent who does not believe in a Creator who personifies himself and takes one side of man over the other. I am sure in the Middle Ages one could say 95% of all men thought the earth was the center of the galaxy and the sun revolved around it. They were consummately wrong. So what does 95% mean? As an agnostic I labor about the question of the first cause and as Bill Maher says in his wonderful film “Religulous” I don’t know. I just don’t know what the first cause for the creation of the universe was.

What I do know is one can pray until infinity and no god is going to answer your particular prayer. Why would He answer your prayer and not the other fellow’s? Why would he save one five year old from Israel and not another from Gaza? Could there have been some all powerful something that began our universe? I suppose there could have been but is that all powerful something going to reserve particular plots of land for certain people and not for others? Most emphatically NO He, She or It will not. That, man will have to do either by taking the land or blowing someone’s head apart for it and he does that very well, indeed, on his very own.