Okay, so maybe this topic isn't integral to the success of humanity, but I just need to get a few things off of my chest.

This week I was watching the finale to the SpikeTV series The Ultimate Fighter, and I heard (once again) a winner attribute his success to "his Lord Jesus Christ." Now, every now and then I can deal with this, but in a society that is supposedly drifting toward humanist idealism, why are these rantings so prolific?

It's everywhere: the Grammys, the Oscars, sports tournaments, game shows, etc. Now, not being a Christian, maybe I'm biased, but this seems a little fishy to me.

What these people need to get through their head is that Jesus doesn't give a shit whether they win a stupid sports tournament or music award. Maybe they should invent a religion in which followers worship their ego as the supreme God of the universe. Because I'm sure that as Jesus was being crucified on the cross his main objective was to help rappers and athletes get money to drench themselves in greed and living beyond their means.

And yes, I'm sure that Jesus is up there in heaven right now saying, "Now I have the power to end wars and famine and prejudice, but instead I think I'll help this egoistic fool win the Super Bowl."

By ignoring our own part in our successes in life, and attributing them to a being which, quite frankly, is a superstitious photocopy of our most pathetic traits, we are also sacrificing responsibility for the things that go wrong in our lives. I know I hate it when people say, "God has a plan and we don't always understand it," or "Jesus will come down and save us before things get that bad."

Number one: Everything does happen for a reason, but that reason isn't engineered by some God-being and the reasons aren't always pretty.

Number two: There is nothing preventing us from understanding the way our universe works and functions.

Number three: Jesus isn't waiting in the clouds to save us. If he is, he sure as hell could have come a lot earlier. Anyway, we can't risk our very existence on a false hope that a two-thousand-year-old man will return to escort the righteous to heaven.

So I guess I was wrong: humanist thought is essential to the continuation of our existence. It does nurture our spirit to know that we have a hand in our glorious destiny. After all, we as humans have the potential to be gods. And humanism allows us to say, "Hey, we screwed up; so lets use our unlimited potential to clean up this mess we've made."