In God We… Not Havin’ It
I was inspired by the recent inauguration to revisit something that has bothered me since I was a child. After DJ’s speech, there followed three ministers because… because… why? I’m sorry — and I know my views on this will piss off a goodly (or should I say godly?) number of people but religion has no business anywhere near government. None.
And it wasn’t there in the beginning of this country; it got added in by some folks who thought they knew better. Granted, change is often a good thing; many things need to be changed. But sandwiching god/religion and politics is a bad idea on accounta all you folks who believe in a god have a different idea of what/who this god wants and with some frequency these ethereal god-beings seem to entertain some pretty profound differences depending on who’s channeling them. Wars have been fought… hell, wars are being fought.
I have exactly zero problem with people believing that a god exists; believe what you want… but don’t make me salute him (because it’s pretty much always a ‘him’ isn’t it?); don’t put his name on my money; don’t add him in to nationalistic pledges because he has no business there. What goes on between you and your god is private stuff and should stay that way because there’s just as much of a shot that there really isn’t any god as there is that one exists.
I’m all in favor of mystical experiences; I’ve had a few myself (and, no, I was not high; I neither drink nor do drugs, never did). But the ‘information’ one receives in a mystical experience can be counted on to work for exactly one person: the person that had the experience. Considering the kind of range you folks credit your god with, it seems to me that he could figure out a way to tell everybody if he wanted everybody to have the same information. He’s god after all, right? But everybody doesn’t have the same information… and please don’t feed me that BS about only certain people being worthy to be a channel for this big news; it doesn’t seem logical to me that god plays favorites. In fact, unless I’ve got this wrong, I understood that all humanity was pretty much equal in the eyes of god… no?
Y’all need to keep this stuff to yourself. What goes on between you and your god should stay between you and your god… and it should have zip to do with running a country, any country and the US is fast becoming one of the best examples why this is so.
