18 February 2010 to continue in the same vain

18 February 2010 to continue in the same vain


Misspelling intentional.

Yesterday’s post dealt with idiots behind the wheel of vehicles.

Today’s post continues in the same vein, dealing with those people who seem blissfully unaware of weather, of history, and of many other things their mothers and putative fathers should have drummed into their skulls.

From the Washington Post 18 Feb 2010

“Posting God's laws on government property

By David Waters

Five Republicans who govern the Judeo-Christian part of Arizona voted Tuesday to require that the Ten Commandments be posted in front of the old state Capitol in Phoenix. Three Democrats who govern the secular and pluralistic part of Arizona voted against it.

"True religious liberty means freedom from having the government impose the religion of the majority on all of the citizens," Democratic state Sen. Rebecca Rios said, as reported by the Arizona Daily Star. To which Republican state Sen. Sylvia Allen replied: "People need to be tolerant of the majority's beliefs." “

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2010/02/posting_gods_laws_on_government_property.html?hpid=talkbox1

What is of concern to me is that we, as a nation, seem to be reaching toward a theocracy, complete with state religion. This is quite frightening. The religious right’s fundamentalists along with their evangelical brethren want to return us to those days before this nation was ripped from the British Empire. They fail to recall that those immigrants who did leave England for reasons related to religion were members of minority sects and therefore not under the blessings of the Church of England. Those minority sects wanted a place where the official religion, the one practiced by the majority of people in Britain, did not have any say in their daily lives or impact upon their lifestyles. In short, they wanted to tell the majority’s religious leaders to bugger off. They did not want to constantly involved in Church of England rituals or to be told “no” with regard to any Church of England Policy.

Fast forward several centuries and the minority sects which left England rather than be controlled by the practitioners of a faith they did not follow or support are now in the majority when we count up who prays where and how. Rather than recall how their predecessors felt when they were the minority, they’ve collectively decided that they now have the “one true faith” and that they have every right to inflict said faith on everyone else.

“People need to be tolerant of the majority’s beliefs!” I think not. I owe nothing but contempt to anyone who believes he or she has the right to demand that I allow them to inject their particular cult into the public sphere. I will not accept their right to proselytize or to demand that this nation’s laws be subject to the approval of their religious councils or practitioners. While they may believe their sacred book gives them the right to convert the world, I believe that our Constitution’s 1st Amendment provides me the right to slam the door in their faces and prevent their attempts to create a state religion by means of hijacking our civil and civic functions.

No public meeting needs to be opened with prayers unless we include prayers from every faith present in the nation. While that might require enough time in itself to prevent some takeovers, it is not appropriate to have any prayers at all. Nor should a group of religious fundamentalists control our laws, our schools, and our private lives. If these fundamentalists want a theocracy, they can migrate to Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Iran and enjoy the full benefits of a theocracy along with the joys of a society where science takes a back seat to mythology, where women are once again property, and where people are put to death for blasphemy.

We had the full benefits of a nation based upon the principles of the Enlightenment, with freedom from religion rather than the repressive church-based monarchies of Europe and the oligarchies of the Central and South American states. But we seem all too willing to let a bunch of fundamentalists and evangelicals no different in total from the Taliban of Afghanistan take over American culture and laws.

The Christian majority all too frequently complains that it is being persecuted. By definition, a minority cannot persecute a majority. That in itself warns of an education tainted by propaganda and ignoring facts in order to rabble rouse. There seems to be a growing number of people who do not want their lives controlled by today’s analogs of witch hunters and the Inquisitions. I’m in their corner. The U.S. needs to be a secular nation in order to fulfill its design potential. Despite the strident shrieks from the religious right, there is no “war on Christianity.” Nor do I want to see such a war take place. But if America’s own Taliban continue in their current path, there will be; and it will be justified.