So the "Millenium Approaches," as Kushner's play title says. Here we are in the age of skyscrapers, space shuttles, instant email across the globe, a commuter tunnel built right under the very ocean, even a cloned sheep named Dolly.

We are surrounded by the fruits of human creation, from the grand to the grotesque, in every field of endeavor. Yet the majority of humans still feel the inexplicable need to look outward or "upward" to worship the old totem creation gods of their semi-conscious, barely-walking-upright ancestors. The ancestors had an excuse. They didn't have the benefit of accumulated centuries of experience and knowledge to explain their world and they did need to devise some sort of explanation. Thus they invented "god." Fine and good, and I cannot blame them. Each time they rubbed two sticks together, it was indeed a miracle when fire appeared, until they could learn the cause for the effect.

What is the excuse for the modern man who chooses ignorant faith over trying to learn the truth?? Frequently we are reminded by pundits that our "technological" knowledge has exceeded our "moral" wisdom. It's usually implied that we used to have a firmer grip on the "moral." When people say that technology has progressed faster than morality, what they ultimately seem to be calling for is a retreat, not an advance.

Every day at work I watch dozens of planes roar up the runways on their ascent to the sky. It is such an unremarkable event that only occasionally do we look up and watch the jet trails across the clouds. The technological achievement is so obvious we take it for granted. The moral achievement is right there in the jet trail, but it is deliberately ignored... Hundreds of thousands of people fly every day. Despite some famous aviation tragedies which do show that we're not infallible, most of us consider it generally safe to fly, and it is. Who in her right mind would board a plane if the pilot told her, "To hell with my flight training and the instruments and the judgment of the air-traffic controllers and the engineers who designed the jets and wings! Allah is going to fly this baby to LaGuardia tonight!!" Who expects the FAA to find that "Yahweh was angry and knocked Flight 800 out of the sky in His wrath..."?

It sounds so ludicrous that you can handily accuse Reardenmetal of setting up her straw man for argument. Right? Right.

But a recent survey showed at least 70% of Americans today believe in "God." Even more believe in some undefined "higher power." So I didn't set up your straw man, honey. You did. You don't really believe that Yahweh knocked Flight 800 into the waters off Long Island, but you believe you OUGHT to believe it---and that's really far worse.

The primitive desert nomads who created your Yahweh and your Allah didn't fly out of Egypt on 747's and they didn't lie to themselves. They just didn't know what else to think but that an angry god had cast them into their harsh lot. They just didn't have the benefit of all the years to come and all the things learned since. WE DO. To cast aside what we have learned just because we don't know everything is absolutely crazy. To live at the end of the 20th century and hold the same beliefs that were held in the centuries B.C.E., is to be insane. The pundits are right but not in the way they think. We have advanced technologically more than morally. We know how to put planes into the air and then we spiritually knock them out of the sky by pretending that totems animate the wings.

The Chunnel is open for traffic. We're about to send an astronaut back into space a second time in his lifetime. Dr. Seed is anxious to begin his wacky work. In China they're going to dam the mighty Yangtze and bury whole mountains under the flood. Right or wrong we are playing god every day and we are doing it on a spectacular scale. The false humility of pretending we don't know who our creation god really is, is not moral at all. It's disingenuous. And dangerous.

In the wealthiest, supposedly "freest" nation on earth, the Christian Coalition and other religious nuts still have an appalling stranglehold on the political process. In the name of public "morality," the exchange of ideas on TV, the Net, magazines, in libraries and schools (and heaven forbid that people freely discuss ideas in the libraries and schools!!) is being choked.

In Serbia, Algeria, the West Bank --there the totem gods rule more completely. And what lovely destinations they are. What? You don't want to move there? But maybe someday you'd like to visit the "Holy Land."

Jerusalem. The city of the centuries, of dark lies and blood, it eats life and belches superstition into the night. This is the unholiest city on earth, the black hole of the world. I'll be the first to admit that this is probably somewhat unfair, that aside from its shameful religious history Jerusalem probably has its own legitimate cultural assets and its own strange beauty, and I'm dismissing it out of hand. I'm sure that some reasonably nice and intelligent people may live there (WHY, I don't know, but they might.) But---hey, that's too bad, I'm making a point here. Work with me. How many people have been murdered in the name of Jersusalem and her gods since the beginning of remembered human history?

New York. That's the holy city on earth. Just as the name Jersusalem is spoken in the reverential whisper of the faithful, New York is spoken in a loud cheerful honk. New York is the anti-Jerusalem. New York bristles with brain and muscle , never asking to be taken on faith. It is made in the image of the one true god, the millions of little gods who populate its vast high streets. That's where people go to create and to observe creation.

What does it say about us that one city is the object of reverence and called "the Holy City," and the other is derided as evil "Gotham" and made the butt of every yokel's jokes? It says god doesn't believe in himself very much. Too bad. I believe. But because what I believe in is possible , and what others ignore is what's real, I'm the one who's the "unbeliever." Crazy. The gods must be crazy.

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