29 March 2011 Gingrich 2011 still a loathsome bottom feeder

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/28/gingrich-fears-atheist-country-dominated-by-radical-islamists/?hpt=T2

By Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor

“Hours after declaring Sunday that he expects to be running for president within a month, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said he's worried the United States could be “a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists,” in the foreseeable future, according to Politico.”

Cassi Creek:

The contradictions in that statement are immense and glaring.

A secular nation would not be necessarily atheist in nature. It could, but might simply eliminate all lip service to religion in public matters while offering what the first Amendment promised, a society where there is no state religion to be worried about.

Nor would a secular society, if one uses the accurate meaning of secular, be “dominated by Islamists.” The elimination of one state religion does not immediately bring another into existence.

The operative mechanism in this short but inaccurate display of ignorance is the over-riding need for many Christians to push their faith into a state religion while proclaiming, erroneously, that Islam is not a religion when seeking to deny Muslims civil rights; and that it is a religion when it might somehow contest with Christianity for members and money.

The fear of atheists is irrational at best. Refusal to worship a mythical deity does not mean that one’s actions will lead to the downfall of the body politic or even to the downfall of Christianity. In Europe, where the enlightenment and age of reason began, Christianity is slowly withering from lack of interest as European nations stress math and science in their curricula. In the U.S., the age of reason was somehow derailed by the economic power of robber barons and Wall Street, aided by the Catholic Church, eager to grow fat on the influx of immigrants willing to work for poverty wages. Add the unschooled, the poorly schooled, and the intolerance supported by southern Christian sects, to see a nation governed by superstition and mythology.

I think we can find worse presidential candidates than Gingrich; bottom feeders have to feed on something lower down on the food chain. But truthfully, if Gingrich is elected, if any combination of Huckabee, Palin, Gingrich, Barbour, & Bachman is nominated, we’ll know that the electoral process in this nation needs to be torn down and rebuilt.

Our founders were not infallible, despite the wonderful documents they wrote for us. They made the huge mistake of believing that their successors would be as honorable and as committed to reason and rationality as they were. They believed that the age of reason would work the same great changes on the New World as it would on the Old.