One Nation, Under God, In Whom We Trust
They all claim that they have the truth; they’ll set you free. Just give them money and they’ll set you free—free for a fee.
—Jello
“One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in
—Bill Moyers
“As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Musselmen; and as the said States have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan notion, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
—John Adams
The founding fathers of this country—all of whom are quoted dissenting against religion on many of occasions—taught insistently against churches, papal government, and the very foundation of organized religion itself. Even Thomas Jefferson wrote a book called The Faith and Moral Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Essentially, this book was a new, more positive biblical text that removed all of the bells and whistles of the original—or in the case of Christianity, the magic and fairytales of the initial text. The book only taught the actual teachings of Jesus, without the lore and other stranger things that have been associated with religion. The point behind the book is to edify the teachings of Christ—love peace and harmony—without the magical stories of the resurrection, immaculate conception, virgin birth, and beliefs that Christianity is the only true way to God.
At the time of the book, there were actually less people attending church than there are today. However, the country had already started to be invaded by religious outsiders who felt that
While these faiths invaded, other types of “cults” were starting to form in the
This started to alarm the founding fathers of the country. As the constitution was still relatively new, it was seemingly the best solution to ensure that the religious diversity between the states would be a healthy balance and not turn into a political struggle. James Madison was the first to really see the total solution in front of his eyes, as he constructed the First Amendment to the constitution that would prevent any one of these particular religions from gaining authority over the political realm of their individual governments or over the centralized government as a whole. The concept of the First Amendment would be to ensure that all of these religious institutions would be tolerated to avoid becoming yet another
In the beginning, in
If you were to look at the constitution, you will see no references to God. In fact, all that you’ll see is that religion is mentioned only twice, and those are the reference to religion staying out of politics, and in matters of military affairs and senate meetings. In the declaration of independence, all that you’ll read is that we’re endowed by our “creator” with inherent and inalienable rights. The word creator is used in place of the word God, as a reference that this is a country of freedom of religion and recognition that not everybody believes in God as a Christian concept. The only other reference to God in the declaration is the term “Nature’s God”, in reference to nature itself and the natural laws of the Earth. The exact text reads:
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its power in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.
If you read this, you’ll not only see the lack of the word God that all of today’s conservative right would like to deny. You’ll also notice the second part of this that most of the Right-wing Christians would like to tell you isn’t there and that is the basic belief that revolution is patriotism. Revolution is the highest form of preservation of one’s country. This is a country that was founded on revolution against religious oppression, and it’s the patriotic duty of all people to stand against religious oppression. And in today’s religious oppressive country, those of us—the majority at 16 percent—who stray away from religion, must constantly deal with the religion of others not just shoved into our face, but even to have it forced upon us.
The New Indoctrination
Children in schools are mandated to recite the pledge of allegiance, which in and of itself is un-American because of the nationalistic properties therein; but within the pledge, children are forced to recite the following:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the
As we can see here,
Justice is a word that is thrown around as much in politics today, as the word extreme would be in the vernacular of a professional skateboarding competition. And truthfully, it’s become just as meaningless. After all, where is the justice in the fact that there are stone statues of the ten commandments in front of court houses all over in the south? Is it not bad enough that when testifying in a court of law, you are mandated to place your hand on a book of religious faith? A religious faith that only belongs to about 12% of this country is a mandatory and integral part of American court proceedings. “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—so help me, God,” is what is stated in the beginning of a court testimony, while the testifier has his hand placed in the CHRISTIAN bible. What about this says “religious freedom and diversity”? That’s what I’m trying to figure out. And don’t try bringing this up to any sort of right-winger, because if they don’t just flat out tell you to deal with it, they’ll tell you that this is just the way it’s always been, since the right-wing religious pilgrims founded
This is what I like to call The New Lie. I call it this because it’s not only new, but it’s completely false. The word The is only there as a preposition. This new lie is what claims that it’s always been like this. That those of us who chose a different route from Christianity have always had to have it shoved in our face, only because this has always been a Christian nation. The lie claims that our churches have always used their tax free money to buy up real state as well as stock and presidents. The lie claims that all other faiths are to be called “new age” because they always have been. The lie claims that courtrooms have always made people swear on the bible and use the word God before testifying. It claims the same for school children, in regards to prayer.
The truth is, as I’ve clearly demonstrated so far, is that this country was not founded on religion, nor was it founded by religious people. And only when it started adopting these overt religious practices, did the violence, turmoil and moral decay of this country begin. Now we’ve become a neo-fascist religious empire, based on the same type of theocracy as
Proof of this is what I like to call the happening of 2004. A Jr. high school in
The teachers taught the children about the eastern religions and their lore around this time of the year. They taught the children about Islam, Judaism as well as many of the Nordic and Pagan beliefs, and their lore behind their holidays at this time of the year. Over all, it was a good idea and if done properly, could have been an eye opening experience and would have led the children to be more tolerant of other cultures and religions.
The problem started when the kids all drew pictures. They were all given the choice of one of the religions that were discussed during the week long education, and given an assignment to draw a picture with an accompanying story that averaged about one-hundred words a piece. Again, not that bad of an idea. That is, until the parent teacher conferences when a woman by the name of Valerie Sheldon entered the halls of the school and saw something that her eyes just could not believe. She saw not only a picture drawn by a child of a Star of David, but she also saw a picture of a snowy night with a pentacle in the sky, that represented the pagan celebration of the Winter Solstice.
She immediately started to scream and search around for a teacher. When she found the teacher responsible for the course, she interrupted her conference with another child’s parent and immediately started calling the teacher foul names in front of children and threatened to sue her for teaching the children this kind of “blasphemy”. What struck me was when I found out that she headed up a parent organization that had only two years prior, fought to keep a Christian Christmas play in the schools holiday-time proceedings.
The story is that parents of the children who attend this school, were parents of a very progressive part of
Valerie fired back in outrage claiming that Christianity is hand and hand with history and Jesus is a part of history too, which may or may not be true, more heavily in the maybe not category. Valerie just couldn’t understand that others don’t believe in the same things she does, and attested that they should and that this play would be a good way to educate. The end result came when Valerie threatened to sue the school, and the other parent group did not, and made clear their intention not to bring this into the courtroom. The school sided with the side that threatened to sue, because they knew she would. They left the play in the school, where it remained for a few years, before the music/drama teacher retired and a new one was hired that refused to do a Christian based play.
Now, this same woman who thought it would be wrong to pull Christianity out of school, is throwing a fit because other religions are being discussed in school as well. Now, I’m all for getting religion completely out of school, but this is a woman who fought to keep religion in school in more than one other case. Therefore, purely out of poetic justice, I’m glad that Valerie suddenly knew how it felt. However, the story doesn’t have that happy of an ending. In fact, the three teachers who were involved in the study were fired because the school wanted to avoid another lawsuit, as Valerie had again threatened to sue. Valerie is still a leading fighter of keeping Christianity in school but all other religions out, and even today is involved in a lawsuit against a school in
Okay, that last part was a joke, but I could see it being true. After all, I would think she’d be all about going back in time and getting in on some of that sweet Scope’s Trial action. But in truth, this tale illustrates the very core of what the religious right is all about. They’re all for separation of church and state so long as it involves any other religion but Christianity. They just don’t want their children learning about other religions, because then they might have to answer some actual questions about their faith. And if there’s one thing that I’ve learned in the writing of this book, it’s that people don’t like to have their faith questioned, and they will go pretty far out of their way, even to the length of violence, to keep questions away from their faith. I guess that’s because if other people ask them questions about it, they just might have to question it themselves to answer those queries. After all, nothing brings defensiveness to the front lines in a person than to ask them a question to which they don’t know the answer.
As I write this chapter, I’m reading a book called Religious Literacy, by Stephen Prothero, who calls into question the misunderstanding of religion, and blames it on the fact that public schools don’t teach enough about it. I guess what he’s arguing is that public schools should have comparative religion courses, with which I whole heartedly agree. We need remember though, that a comparative religion course is mainly a course on philosophy with small strains of history attached. This should never be taught along side biology or science, as even a
However, if the fact that Christianity, as he argues, is only carried out in the manner in which it is because of the lack of education among those who practice it, why is it that parents irrationally flip out whenever the school proposes a comparative religion course? I know that these people are mostly pretty egocentric, but I would think this would solve the problem. Although, they wouldn’t want their children learning that there are many other faiths out there from which to choose, now would they? This might breed a new generation of people who aren’t devout and fanatically obsessed as they are. It brings the defenses up, and nothing can do that like religious discussion.
If you have a problem believing in the defensiveness of religious people whenever a questioning of their beliefs comes to mind, consider the
The Unholy Vote
If the rise of American theocracy isn’t apparent in the previously noted passages, then let this be a literation of the dangerous rise of religion. In 2004, the amount of people who, according to a CNN exit poll, voted for George Bush solely based upon his faith and religious beliefs was an astonishing 24%. What this means is that 24% of the people that voted for the Bush Cheney ticket, did so not because of individual idealism—I’m willing to guess that at least 15 of the 24% would have no idea what Bush’s idealism is, beyond that of his faith—but because of his religious beliefs. This was 10% higher than in 2000, where only 14% of the people who refrained from voting for experienced politicians and went the Bush route, because of his personal faith. In the same election, everyone who said they voted with the lead reason being most of the actual pressing issues in the country at the time—economy, terrorism, war, et cetera—voted for the Kerry Edwards ticket. The fact of the matter is that George Bush won the 2004 elections, and I use the word won very loosely, because of his faith. And boy did his personal faith shine through. After all, George W. Bush was a man who openly claimed that Jesus told him to be president, proclaimed that
Keep in mind that George W. Bush banned stem-cell research because of a promise he had made to the evangelical right during the primaries of 1999 and 2000. He appointed yet another pro-life and heavily right wing conservative to the supreme court due to the same promise. He was the man who attempted to federally banned homosexual marriage, because of his own, and that of the right’s, religious induced homophobia. You must remember that evangelical Christians are people who believe that the violence between Hezbollah and
Just after the 2004 election, former 2000 presidential candidate and known Christian activist, Gary Bower wrote this on the fervency of the religious vote this. Probably the most irresponsible piece, and most irreverently written run on sentence in history:
After twenty four years of active political involvement starting with Ronald Reagan in 1980, are America’s political, cultural and media elites really this much in the dark about their fellow Americans who were in church on Sunday, at work on Monday, and at the voting booths on November second? The answer to who we are is, of course, that we are your next-door neighbor, your kid’s teacher and the clerk at the local drug-store.
I decided to do a little research of my own about his statement, and it wasn’t all that pretty. In fact, I found that this was pretty much just hijack journalism from a man who’s trying to sell again, The New Lie. He quoted that the majority of Americans were at church on Sunday, at work on Monday and at the booths on November 2nd. I’ll pick at this three piece lie just one piece at a time. Were most Americans at church on Sunday? No, in fact the percentage of people who were admitted and avid church goers in 2004 was only slightly less than it is now, at a whopping eleven percent of the country. This does not mean that there aren’t more people who practice religion, it just means that eleven percent claim to be ritual church goers. And of the eleven percent, I have yet to find a statistic that states how many were actually Christians who attend church on Sunday. As we know, members of other faiths attend church or temple or mosque or palace on different days of the week. A general statement, so I won’t pick it apart too much. His second claim was that the majority of Americans were at work on Monday. Well, although the economy was then, what looks like heaven to us now, most Americans had second and sometimes third jobs. As the unemployment rate was still at the time, at an all time high at nine percent nation wide, he was right in saying that most Americans were at work on Monday. Although, a very thin most, and many of them were at work that night too trying to stuff as much overtime in as possible to help pay their mortgage. His third claim was the extraordinary levels of voting that year. Actually, 2004 had the lowest voter turnout in over one-hundred years. And while the stats still show that 24% were there to vote because of George Bush’s religion, of the majority of
Evangelists Still Run the Show
However, the problem has not gone away. Many people think that because we have a democratic president again, the religious rule in this country is over. Well, in truth, Barack Obama proved before the primaries even ended that he stood with the religious right, in pandering for the evangelical vote by voting yes on a bill that was a clear violation of the separation of church and state. This bill was one that would fund churches with government money. Well, how exactly can we have a separation of church and state in this country, even so far as the non-taxation of churches, when the government is funding religious institutions? Now, this vote was solely to secure a higher evangelical vote both in the primary and general elections. I guess we’ll see in the future if President Obama continues on the same path as our former president who was nothing more than a slave to the evangelical right. However, that in and of itself is a tribute to the religious influence in this country. That power being the religious vote and the power of religious lobby groups in this country. A country in which almost every religion out there has their own lobby group, even though none of their percentage numbers exceed that of the 16% of the non-religious or atheist population, yet there is no atheist lobbying arm. Why is that? I’ll tell you why. It’s because this is a country in which an open atheist or agnostic has never actually been allowed in an official electoral debate. There has never been an atheist presidential candidate on either leading tickets. There actually have only been two atheist senators in
During the Bush administration, we saw the greatest fabricated public outcry of the last millennia. What we saw fabricated was the public outcry against not just gay marriage, but against gays living in civil unions receiving the same tax breaks as straight people who were married legally. This may have just been the most deplorable scene since
How is it possible that even the religious backwaters of
I think, in truth, it all comes down to power. Even though
This plainly happened because the
Amendment the First
Now that we’ve wrapped back around from where we came, let’s look at the other problem with legislating religion-based morality. This problem lies within a certain document that I’ve quoted many of times already in this book, although it seems to be one that the
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
When we read this passage we see that congress cannot make a law for, OR AGAINST, an establishment of religion. There are over one-hundred federally recognized religions in the
There are religions in the world that condone murder. Therefore, are we to grant them that right to murder innocent people just because it’s part of the free exercise of religion?[i]
The ironic thing about this is that this is from a letter written to me by a member of the Christian Coalition in 2006, and it seems like he’s talking about his own religion. After all, the only religions that are practiced widely in the
Stripped From the Shelves
The overt religion in the
This ordeal scared me to death. As I was at a tender age and was still working on erasing the religious brainwashing damage that my grandfather had perpetrated upon me. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about religion in its organized form. I had been forced to grow up pretty quickly, but I really hadn’t taken a trek into that field of politics. Now I was, however, old enough to know that most of the things the religious right had protested in my life have been things that I had enjoyed for various reasons. So, I knew that I wanted to read this book and find out what all of the chaos was over. That weekend I got my grandmother to take me to a nearby mall close to
This was starting to get scarier. Was this the time of the Roman Inquisitions where the inquisitors were walking around with a copy of the Index Prohibitorum? Was this the times of the Catholic church burning book sellers for carrying copies of books they felt were blasphemous? Was this
The end was not near for censorship. In fact, we see it more and more today. There are more things that you cannot say and do on television today than there were in 1970. Every year, the MPAA along with the FCC—both of which, heavily influenced by religious falsehood—find more and more things that are offensive to a couple of people in the United States, therefore should not be allowed in television and movies. And every year, less and less people watch television and go to the movies. Most people like to blame this on prices, but I really don’t think that’s the case. I firmly believe that more people everyday are watching shows on the internet, not only because of the reduced price and greater variety, but also because of the lack of FCC control. In internet is a paid feature, therefore the FCC cannot, constitutionally, have any authority over the internet. And there are more people not going to movies since in invention of DVD, because DVD gave birth to unrated versions and director’s cuts. Why would you want to go to the movies and pay your hard earned money to see something that barely resembles what the film makers originally intended, because it’s so spliced and torn after the MPAA gets done telling them all of the things that God doesn’t want in movies?
The FCC is almost a more powerful source of anti-freedom sentiment than religion itself. Although, religion and the FCC are basically one in the same in the sense that the decisions made by the FCC always have a moral background that somehow involves religious teachings. Since the Telecommunications act of ’96, the FCC has had all of the power in the world to regulate as they see fit. They have no oversight committee and also have no rules. This means that there are no caps to the dollar values of their fines, and there are also no regulations as to what constitutes a finable offense. The FCC could fine any program on any station for any reason, anytime they want to do it, and that is a “right” that they are not afraid to exercise. For more information on the FCC, see my short entitled “Everybody Fucks ‘An Open Letter to the FCC’”.
The thing that most stands to question here, other than organizations such as the FCC being completely detrimental and antithetic to personal freedom, is why the FCC is allowed to operate in the first place. The FCC in and of itself is a violation of separation of church and state. This was put best in the book I mentioned before having been taken off the shelves of my local library when I was eleven. Freedom under Siege states:
The FCC has even awarded licenses to religious organizations. In 1965 I received from the National Religious Broadcasters their list of stations owned and operated by churches and other religious institutions. There were ninety-four of them, in every state of the union. This raises a vital constitutional question: If the FCC is an instrument for regulating the public airways and one that is set up by an act of congress, can it assign radio wavelengths or television channels—which are public domain—to religious organizations? The first amendment of the constitution states specifically that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Yet a radio or television station owned by a religious organization and using the public airwaves surely represents an “establishment of religion.”
In this passage, the question is raised of just how the federal government could justify the congressionally instituted Federal Communications Commission not just awarding licenses to religious groups, but also having mandated that stations in the 1950s to have a certain amount of religious programs on their stations. There is another concern here as well. This is the concern of the FCC’s rules about broadcast television, not just when it comes to the morality of religion, but also to religion itself. The National Association of Broadcasters’ radio code, section F is as follows:
1. Religious programs shall be presented by responsible individuals, groups and organizations.
2. Radio broadcasting, which reaches men of all creeds simultaneously, shall avoid attacks on religious faiths.
3. Religious programs shall be presented respectfully and without prejudice or ridicule.
4. Religious programs shall place emphasis on religious doctrines of faith and worship.
The FCC, the NAB and individual broadcasting stations, by the way, have held that stations are in no way obligated to give Atheists or other non-religionists any airtime, either free or paid.
This is another clear case of the lack of the separation of church and state in politics. Whereas, the FCC is a federal group with federal power, how exactly can it have the power to institute religious rules over public airwaves without violating the first amendment of this country? How is it that the FCC can mandate that religious programs be offered? At that extent, how is it that one can say that religion must be broadcasted respectfully? This again illustrates that any kind of challenge to a person’s religious belief, even if protected under the first amendment, is completely out of the question. After all, you don’t want to make people think. What’s more is that it seems like any kind of scrutiny of religion is completely out of the question. Some of these rules have changes since they were inducted, but the fight continues any time a person would want to make any reference to religion that is anything but a respectful hailing of God and all of his religious accoutrements. Another order of the FCC is their view on sex.
The fact of the matter is that the most repressed cultures are always the most violent. Look at the middle-east again for an example. Children are often separated from the opposite sex at birth and not allowed to even interact with them. Can you imagine why the thought of forty virgins in heaven after flying an airplane into a building might sound like an attractive thought? I certainly can. Sexual repression leads to angry people. Bill Maher once said, “If you can show me one suicide bomber, who after death, his friends said, ‘All that man did was fuck, fuck, fuck, and now this,’ then I’ll shut up about sex.”
He’s right. This kind of sexual repression does lead to violence. If you withhold the one thing that all of us share, and that all of us urge for, then you get buildings collapsing and bodies strewn about the streets. And we have that here as well. After all, it’s just now starting to be alright to even have two men or women kiss one another on television. If I were to run down all of the shows that lost most of their sponsors in the “tolerant” nineties, I would account for every show on television that had anything even eluding to a gay couple. Once again, the primitive idealism of one small part of the culture is trying to control the rest of the culture, and force them to swallow their beliefs and morality. Yet I’m being called a hypocrite for writing this book. Well, I do think that you should all keep your opinions to your damn selves. I’m writing a book that you have a choice to read. You can choose to put it down. If I want to choose not to have your beliefs shoved down my throat, I have to apply for citizenship in another county, because
I quoted
The Motion Picture Ablution of
One cannot discuss the negative ramifications of the FCC without mentioning its movie counterpart, the MPAA. The Motion Picture Association of America was forged by the religious right as well. This one organization is maybe the worst of the fascist organizations invented by the right, and by those who are seemingly so afraid of their bodies that they don’t want others to enjoy their own or others’. In one year, the MPAA is responsible for the livelihood of thousands of people, and is responsible for much of the sexual repression in this country that has led to much of the violence in our land. Remember, cultures that are the most repressed are most often the most violent. Let’s remember that all of the terrorists in the 9/11 attack were the results of sexual repression. They were all separated from women at birth and told that all women are evil. Then after a life of sexual repression, the promise of 72 virgins in Heaven seems pretty tempting. That’s just one example of how sexual repression ruins our society.
The MPAA does this in a far less direct way. Producers, directors and writers live with the threat throughout the writing and filming process, of their work either not being allowed to be released, thus bankrupting them, or of their work having two letters and two numbers put in front of the title of their movie that will discourage any and all theatres from playing the work—livelihood lost. The organization can also send out the names of theaters that play work they discourage to organize people to protest them—livelihoods lost. More and more people every year, including myself, don’t see movies in theaters because they don’t want to see the MPAA edited version of both the director’s vision, and/or the writer’s initial vision. They want to see the movie unrated and unedited, therefore they wait for the unrated DVD to come out—livelihoods lost. More and more movies are being made every year that are outside the
I’m not against the concept of warning people of the content of a product before they pay money to purchase it. What I’m against is an organization that’s just supposed to do that, wielding the power of dictating what people can and cannot place in their movies, how they can advertise them or even what they can call their movies. This is not freedom of speech. The Supreme Court ruled that radio and television were not protected by the First Amendment, which was bad enough, but their exact words were, “Radio and Television are the only things in
The MPAA, like the FCC is attributing to the downfall of the American economy and nobody seems to care. Yes, if there’s sex and gratuitous nudity in a movie, let people know, that way they don’t take their children to see it. However, rating movies and assuming that parents dong’ have the right to raise their children the way they see fit—which is a whole other conversation for another book—is fascism, and so is ordering theaters, indirectly, not to play movies with certain ratings. The organization was put in place to inform people of the content of movies, and that is all it should have legal authority to do. It should not hold a monopoly over the movie industry.
The purification of
The Word, Word
There is yet another nuisance out there in the world trying to form a religious history where there was never one. The New Lie can expose many people and their hidden agendas, but what about the people who define the word Agenda? Webster’s seems to fall right in line with both trying to rewrite history in their encyclopedias as well as improperly define words in their own dictionaries. I’ll give you a few examples of this:
PAGAN n. a heathen; a. heathenish idolatrous, -ish a. –ize v.t. to render pagan. –ism n. [L. paganus, a peasant].
We can easily see that Webster’s has taken the word Pagan and changed it to another meaning. A pagan would be a person who practices a pagan religion, whether stemming from the middle-east, Celtic routes or even Nordic. However, Webster’s tries to demonize the meaning of the word and place a negative connotation upon it. Is this any way for a respected and notarized dictionary to behave? Is this in any way, responsible behavior for a trusted source of definition? We can see the New Lie and it’s motivations even more apparent in the Webster’s Encyclopedia. There is a section dedicated to great quotes throughout history, and what is it that you suppose we see when we check the more religious ones. In fact, what we see is flurries of positive quotes regarding religion and not a single negative from any of the famous anti-religious free-thinkers in history. When we check the encyclopedia for quotes regarding atheism, we see even more disturbing quotes. As you may guess, there weren’t a whole lot of quotes in this book from the founding fathers of our country.
RELIGION
Religion is the best armor a man can have but it is the worse cloak.
–Bunyon
I’ve lived long enough to know what I did not at one time believe—that no society can be upheld in happiness and honor without the sentiment of religion.
–La Place
These are just a couple of examples of what lies in the book regarding religion. And what lies in the book regarding atheism. There are only five, and here they are:
Atheism is the result of ignorance and pride; of strong sense and feeble reasoning; of good eating and ill-living. It is the plague of society, the corrupter of manners and the underminer of property.
–Jeremy Collier
There is no being eloquent for atheism. In that exhausted receiver the mind cannot use its wings—the clearest proof that it is out of its element.
–Hare
Atheism is rather in the life than in the heart of man.
–Bacon
No atheist, as such, can be a true friend, an affectionate relation, or a loyal subject.
–Bentley
By night, an atheist half believes in God.
–Young
Now, these are all pretty strong statements, especially the one by Dr. Bentley. Now I wonder why the good people at Webster’s decided not to put any quotes in here regarding atheism that might look positively upon an atheist. You know, from people like H.D. Thoreau, or Isaac Newton, Freud, Neitchzke, Ginsberg, Adams, Jefferson, Rogers, Cummings, Verne,
I’m just looking for a little objectiveness here. What is the world to do when we can’t even trust our own dictionaries to be objective and truthful? What are we to do when the New Lie is being perpetrated even by the most trusted name in dictionaries? What are we to do when our history books and encyclopedias start resembling the Holy Bible more and more every year? I would think there would be some public rage or outcry, but nobody seems to care. Again, the effects of the Theo-glitch and the New Lie are prevalent. Here, people are just believing whatever they’re reading, thusly, they seem to think this is normal. They seem to think that Webster’s is still a trusted source of information, when it’s clearly not. In this book, there are many quotes from very prominent people in our history regarding religion and atheism, and wouldn’t you know that the reality again seems to conflict with the reality presented by those involved in the grand scheme to falsify our religious history. This is a blatant attempt to falsify information, as well as provide only one perspective of the truth, thus relieving any sense of objectivity.
Final Summation:
If only the founding fathers of
These are legitimate questions. No matter how many outward justifications that are given for the theocratic decisions that have been made over the last forty years or so, the truth remains: just because a decision is covered by a veil of shallow logic, does not mean that there isn’t religion underneath it. Whether or not a fetus has a soul is a matter of theological discussion, and has no place in federal courtrooms or in Congress. Whether or not the bible is clear on marriage only being between a man and a woman, is a matter for late night restaurant discussion, not the House of Representatives. Whether or not And the next time we have media coverage of another Bosnia crisis, or a crisis anywhere near the Balkans, how about we don’t use euphemisms like “Croat” and “Serb” while only mentioning religion when it pertains to Muslims; and actually confess that the violence is being caused by Catholic extremists and Orthodox Christians. What would happen then? What would happen if the veil of media quarantine were to be lifted from the United States, and people actually had to question why people of their own faiths in other countries were committing the same violence that they had been throughout the 2,000 year history of the faiths that they probably have no concept of? Oh no, people might have to question their faith, and namely its place in politics, because there is no greater example in our contemporary times of what happens when religion pokes its head into politics, let alone, becomes open theocracy, than the Middle East. One can argue this by saying that their faith is better than that one and would create a better world. Well, you’re not considering that the West’s three major faiths (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) are all descendent of a common literary ancestor, and that is the old testament, and the only actual differences in the faiths are the stories (or sides of the stories) they tell regarding kings, queens wars and prophets, and the names they use. There is not a one of them that does not condone the kind of radicalism that we see in the
There is no place for religion in politics unless we want to become just like those “evil” Middle Eastern countries that we all allegedly hate. Well, one must really look deep into the history of the
No more religion in politics or no more religion at all. I refuse to live under the Taliban, and that’s where we’re headed if the people in Chapter Two have their way. The words of John Lennon must be called upon again, “Imagine…and no religion too.”
[i] From the Christian Coalition of
