The Ganges river, Jerusalem, Mount Olympus.
The notion of a holy land or a sacred place is altogether normal to human religions.
People wage war over it.
People die for it, because it has never occurred to them, or perhaps they're unable to grasp
the idea that location is an illusion.
What makes a place that place.
Surely it's not the space it takes up in outer space, because earth is rotating at roughly
1000 miles an hour while soaring around the sun at 67,000 miles/hr and blazing through
outer space at well...
That depends on your reference point, because velocity is relative.
Galaxies blaze through the universe, and collide into each other.
New stars and planets form daily and old ones are engulfed by their home stars.
All this in a universe that is itself expanding.
Relative to other locations on earth, cities move.
The very tectonic plates they rest on are shifting, shuffling the continents around,
albeit incredibly gradually, creating mountains and islands where there were once oceans.
Shore lines erode.
Rivers carve out canyons.
Entire towns are buried by volcanoes and mudslides.
Winds blow away topsoil and bury ancient ruins in dust.
Trees die and erode while new foliage grows to replace it nourished by water from clouds
formed half way across the planet.
Every molecule on earth is being stirred around like a planetary bowl of porridge.
Entire cities are abandoned or leveled by war.
Houses are remodeled brick by brick.
New buildings, made from internationally imported materials, rise up to replace old ones.
From a human perspective, in this moment, this snapshot in time, each location feels
fixed.
It feels constant.
But revisit a booming city 80 years later, and you'll barely recognize it.
Imagine an omnipresent, omniscient, eternal entity exists.
Knowing all this, the thought that it would label something so dynamic as a Holy Land
is laughable.
And if you think otherwise, then your god is too small.
Too human in its delusions.
Holy land...?
Holy dirt?
Holy trees?
Holy buildings?
What part of a constantly changing land is holy?
And where is it?
This video was sponsored by The Palomar Unitarian Universalists Fellowship in Vista, California.
You’re probably wondering why a church wanted to sponsor a YouTube atheist.
And I was too until I looked up their website.
The Unitarian Universalists are a creedless group that unites on purely humanistic principles.
They welcome people of all faiths, doubts, and non-belief.
A lot of the UU Congregationalists are actually atheists who attend services for the community
connections that we need without the religiosity that we don’t.
I got an email from a fan at The Palomar Unitarian Universalists Fellowship, and the church was
offering to sponsor some of my videos even after I told them I wasn’t going to stop
brutally criticizing religious dogma.
And the UU church here in Tulsa was the only place that allowed us to hold our first atheist
convention in the state of Oklahoma, after we were turned down by a number of public
and private venues.
I’ll put a link in the video description that you can use to find a local fellowship.
Thanks.
And as always, dare to be curious, but don’t drink the Koolaid!