God doesn't care about us, so we might as well care for each other. I don't mean this in a bitter way, I mean it in a very matter of fact way. If God cared about the gazelle, why would he have created the lion? If God cared about children why would he kill so many of them with senseless diseases, ailments and calamities? If God cared about people in Louisiana why would he keep sending hurricanes to ruin their lives?
God is indifferent to the fate of the lamb and the lion. How do I know? It's plain as day. It happens all the time. The lion shreds the lamb to pieces. Then on another day he starves to death. There is an endless cycle of savagery and death on the planet. It is the way it's structured.
There is also an endless cycle of life. But the cycle didn't have to depend on life forms ripping each other to shreds and dying cruel deaths before life is reborn. Nonetheless, the Creator -- if you believe in one -- chose to set life up this way anyway. Is He a sadist?
Of course, as always we put our own human characteristics on God. In our religious texts he is a petty jealous God who gets angry if you worship anything else. I have to confess to finding this the most comical aspect of the mythology of the colloquial God. Sometimes He gets so angry that you have cheated on Him with other gods that he tortures you forever, in a place called Hell. Absurd.
It's easy to see how that belief is preposterous, but how about the belief that God is empathetic like humans? That he would care what happened to human beings? That he couldn't care less if the lions rips apart the gazelle, but would care deeply if he rips apart a human? It seems inconceivable that God would care about our fate more than the fate of other animals on this planet, if He cared at all. After all, caring is yet another human characteristic we have ascribed to God.
What if God's characteristics weren't the same as ours, but the same as another animal's? For example, what if God were a praying mantis and what pleased Her most was when women ripped the heads off their mates after sex? That's why she was so frustrated by humans -- why won't the little buggers ever rip each other's heads off?! I'll show them, I'll send another hurricane their way and see if that straightens them out.
What if God were a lion? He slept 20 hours a day, got his female goddesses to kill other creatures for Him to feed him the four hours he was awake. He often killed the young of his female cohorts and ate them, so that he could have sex with his goddesses again.
It seems comical that God would be modeled after a lion or a praying mantis, doesn't it? Then, why isn't it equally comical that He be modeled after homo sapiens?
It is the height of arrogance to believe that the Creator of the universe has the same nature as this lowly life form on one of the nine planets from one the suns in the galaxy called the Milky Way. Really, out of all the life forms in all the planets, we were the cosmic winners God decided to model Himself after? That's an awfully questionable decision.
I know it's hard to accept this -- that we are not the center of the universe, that we are not some holy creatures that determine the outcome of all of existence, that we are not God's special pets. That instead we are a simple animal on a simple planet.
It means coming to terms with the idea that the cavalry is not coming. That your prayers will not be answered. That there is no universal Santa Claus who is going to grant you your wishes in this life or the next. That God does not care about you.
Here's the great irony in all this -- God doesn't care, but we do! For whatever reason, we were built to care about each other (mainly because it helps us to survive). So, let's stop waiting on God to come riding to the rescue. And let's start depending on each other, because in reality that's all we have -- one another.