Something is in the air, today. Did Bill Moyers' interview with Reason Magazine's editor Nick Gillespie fire up the Kossacks? MathGuyNTulsaalerts us to the Missouri Legislature's latest assault on the classroom, and BenGoshi gives us some of the contradictions in an "inerrant" text.
But I have another drum to bang.
I want some justification for the demand that I be forced to accept the warped and unscientific demands of the Christian Right codified into laws, and enacted so the rest of us are forced to live by their personal religious beliefs.
Let's start with anything that enshrines the "soul"; abortion, stem cell research, or the right to die, to name a few. I do not believe in the concept of a soul. I think the entire notion is a superstitious, primitive outgrowth of Anamism with no demonstrable reality. Why do those who chose to accept such foolishness have the authority to make laws enforcing their religious beliefs on me?
Let's continue with question raised in the NYT, today, Tax dollars diverted for religious use. When did the Government of the United States decide that religious institutions could receive tax support for their pet projects? And when did the Federal Government get the authority to decide what religious groups could qualify for support?
And, finally, let's consider the now well known use of religious tests to vet political appointments in the Federal Government. I don't have to detail that - we've been there for the past 6 years, repeatedly.
These are Constitutional violations that the Founders would never have anticipated!
I don't really trust publically religious people. I have a deep seated suspicion that they are not evolved sufficiently to hold high political office.
I am firmly conviced that religion, in all of its manifestations, is a socially fostered hold-over from a time when there was no formal science, and explainations were found by imagining one, or many, dieties who controlled those things we could not understand. Certainly the Roman Church went to great lengths, for centuries, to maintain its control by supressing science - just as the current crop of religious leaders on the right are attempting do with their laws enshrining their Bible.
I think that modern right-wing Christians are control freaks, who do not know enough to explain that which confounds them and are desparately trying to protect their children from the explainations that they do not have. This drive to "protect the children" (from truth, fact, and reason) is nothing but an attempt to maintain parental control for as long as possible. The fact that their children will be cut off from modern society if they do not receive a through education underlies the push to give ligitimacy to Biblical inerrancy, and pass laws enshrinimg obsolete and unscientific premises.
As an amature scholar of religions, archeology, and one who has extensive training in Psychology, I have discovered that these people know nothing about the histography of the scriptures, the political and policy decisions made to determine the course of their "faith", or the extensive writings, widely known to contempories of the writers of the Gospels, that were drawn on to represent a complex set of ideas that could be more easily communicated by drawing on myth and legend.
It pains me no end to see an otherwise "sane" culture, wrangling about a 2,000 year old set of regionally determined (and possibly reasonable at the time) political and social mores, and forced to fight those who wish to enforce this inappropriate and outdated code on the 21st century.
If this is "Christian Nation" why are the very people prancing around in Self Righteous Godliness taking us to war, refusing to aid the poor, failing to intervene in Darfur, and generally fucking things up to a fare-thee-well?
And why do they think I give a damned what their "scriptures" say about the code of conduct that I, and my contempories, should be governed by? The Constitution denied them this authority. How have they appropriated it, and how are they to be stopped?
Many more questions than answers.
If this diary offends you, close it and move on, please. I will not debate your religious convictions. You would not change your mind and I would just get very irritated.