|
Viewing 1 - 2 out of 2 Blogs.
Religion and Politics
Current mood: irritated
I was reading in Newsweek a short time ago a story on religion in politics...people seem not to realize that our founding fathers were largely atheists. Huckabee recently used a John Adams quote: "freedom needs religion just as religion needs freedom, " and went on to say that this is because of morals. Huckabee, like many others, equate religion with people of outstanding moral standing. This couldn't be farther from the truth. There are more "christians" in US prisons than any other religion...a statistic that is often conveniently forgotten. Many of the people that I have in my life are atheists or agnostics...people that I volunteer with, that join me at fund and toy raisers for needy children and victims of disease, famine and disasters....but because I am an "atheist," I MUST be an amoral person. Freedom for religion in this country INCLUDES the freedom to be non-religious. I keep reading how 80-90% of AMericans polled say they would never vote for an atheist...just like that...and why? "Because our leader needs to be a moral person." As Hawkins likes to say..."RELIGION POISONS EVERYTHING." Seems to me that everytime we get a religious zealot in office, things get bad....may I just START with Bush's current Crusade? And this nonesense that atheists are all communists has got to stop...I love freedom just as much as all the other bikers out there...wouldn't change it for the world! If people want to keep the Christ in Christmas...go ahead...I don't care...I'll celebrate the Solstice instead...but we DO need to keep religion OUT of politics....I wouldn't expect you to live under my rules....why should I live under yours?
OK...so let me get this straight...some guy takes his family (READ PUTTING SMALL CHILDREN AT RISK) up a mountain and into the wild to cut down a tree for their holiday (presumably so they can save a few bucks....c'mon, they aren't that expensive, and it IS illegal to cut down trees in a National Forest, but I digress). They do this COMPLETELY UNPREPARED. No food. No water. No extra clothing. No compass. No matches or lighters, no light source or signaling device. What do they have? A saw....and the only reason they have that is so they can illegally kill a tree for two weeks worth of vain pleasure in the name of their religion. They put the people in the search parties and the pilots looking for them at risk. Tens of thousands of dollars wasted on finding and saving someone that is just going to contaminate the gene pool. This guy (and through him...his family) should have been appearing on the Darwin Awards list. Instead, he gets media attention, called a HERO and touts his faith in a god for him and his family being saved. How about thanking the pilot? How about paying back all those people that put their lives at risk to try and find them? I'm sorry to report that a more appropriate ending to this story would have been that 3 well fed mountain lions were seen cavorting happily in the snow after a fortuitous meal. Really people. Why do we tolerate and even REWARD this kind of stupidity in our world?
|
