I look forward to a day in which a wholly secular candidate has a chance to run for President. I'm tired of people tiptoeing around religion, trying to play nice.
It would be nice to hear a candidate say "You know what, I appreciate that everyone has personal beliefs, but personal beliefs don't create new jobs or pave roads."
It's about time for someone to speak up for godless heathens like me! We're the one group of voters that's subjected to absolutely no pandering, and I'm feeling left out.
There's been a discussion on a messageboard that I've been following. A question arose regarding Barack Obama's statements that a marriage is between "a man and a woman". How does he reconcile this personal opinion with the strong support for gay marriage in the Democratic party?
My good friend ADR summed things up really well, I think.
"Obama, to date, has not been willing to allow his personal beliefs on the issue influence legislation to govern the rest of us," he wrote.
He went on to argue that supporting anti-gay marriage laws, or presenting only the opportunity for every same-sex couple to get a "civil union" (rather than be "married") or to have no other "equal" status at all (not even a civil union), would be tantamount to imposing personal beliefs upon others. ("Change the law, so EVERYONE has to follow what [you] believe in.") In essence, imposing morality.
Obama, I'm happy to say, has not gone that route, and I applaud him for it.
Here's my stance on religion:
If it gets you through the day, if it's something you feel is important ... hey, I'm not going to disparage it. Whatever floats your boat. Free country, your choice. All that good stuff.
I'm not into it, myself, and I would hope that others who are religious would not think ill of me for my choice, much in the same way that I do not think ill of those who are religious for their choice.
That said, what was written above about legislating morality does tweak the issue significantly in some cases: I do not think ill of those who choose to personally practice religion. I do, however, have problems with those who insist that their own beliefs should somehow be the ones that govern my life and the choices I make.
There are those who go the "God and Country" route and want to force me along for the ride (the talking heads on the right like Sean Hannity, "celebrity" religious figures like Pat Robertson or James Dobson, etc.), and I want none of it. These are the people I have major problems with. I have no problem with the neighborhood priest or the people who want to wake up early on Sunday to go to church. I could not possibly care less about having a temple or mosque in my neighborhood, nor about the worshipers who may attend their functions. They're good people who I'll leave alone and who, I assume, want to leave me alone.
But there are those others who want to extend their beliefs beyond the doors of their own homes or places of worship ... and I really, truly don't appreciate it.
And even then, I don't care that our money has "In God We Trust" on it. It doesn't matter. I don't care if a city or town wants to put up a Christmas Tree (and call it that) on public property. I don't even care if they want to put up religion-specific decorations (a manger scene, a menorah, whatever), so long as there's no outright criticism or slur of another religion in the display. And when I say "Happy Holidays", it's not because I'm against saying "Merry Christmas" - it's because "Happy Holidays" includes New Year's Day, too. I can wish you well for a single day, or I can wish you well for several at a time. Your pick. I'm a generous guy!
So why am I not religious myself? A couple of reasons, I guess.
Primarily, it's because I find it hard to believe that there's an Invisible Man in the sky, as George Carlin put it, who looks down upon us and guides our lives. If there is, I've never met him. I've seen no proof that he exists. The Bible? I could just as easily take "The Odyssey" by Homer as the truth as I could the Bible. Why not? The Bible is filled with all sorts of stories that would fit right in with those in Homer's works, but Homer's poems are deemed "fantasy".
For instance, let's take creationism. God created Adam, and from Adam, he created Eve. (I won't even get into the idea of the talking snake.) Adam and Eve had a couple of kids, and the world became populated from their origins. So, if man is created in "God's image", am I to believe that God is a strong advocate of incest? Because that's the only way we'd all exist today, if we came from the same starting point. Somehow I find this unlikely. As unlikely as when Gepetto was swallowed up by a giant whale. Though that might have been Pinocchio, and not the Bible. Either way. It's kinda silly.
Did Jesus exist? I absolutely believe that there was a man named Jesus who affected the lives of many others in his time, but I believe he was a great philosopher of his time, and not the son of God.
Then, there's the hypocrisy of some evangelical leaders - the "celebrities", like Jerry Falwell, or the hucksters like Jim Baker and those who followed in his footsteps,stealing from and tricking convincing the gullible that God wants them to give them all their money as donations to build super-churches for their TV shows. It's a sham and scam. And I know that not all religious leaders are like this. But the ones who are leave such a bad taste in my mouth, it's hard not to associate behavior that I'm sure God (if there was one) wouldn't approve of with "religion" in general. Is that unfair stereotyping? Yeah, probably. But it's how I feel.
Finally, personal experience:
I used to go to CCD (or whatever you call it) on Monday afternoons after school throughout my grammar school years. At this point, the routine in my family (well, my mom, my brother and me - my dad usually skipped it, as I remember) was to go to church at least every other week (which eventually devolved in the Easter/Christmas masses schedule only). My dad would drive my brother and me to CCD, though, and pick us up afterward. He was a carpenter by trade, and did some work in the rectory on occasion, though I don't know if this was voluntary or paid. I don't recall, and my dad died in '95, so it's kinda hard to ask him ... But unlike his mother, my bingo-playing/church-going grandmother who has a picture of Jesus in her room, I don't remember him being particularly religious. Ever, really.
One year, I mysteriously got sick every Monday afternoon in a row for about two months. Go figure. Crazy stuff, illness. Hmm. Anyway, I went back for the final week of classes before summer recess, and the priest in the rectory stopped my dad and me on the way out. He'd noticed that I was absent for quite a while, and he wanted me to repeat the "course" when CCD re-opened in the fall. My father (my actual father - my birth father, not my "Father" Father) must have heard my heart sink (or seen my shoulders slump), because he turned to me - right in front of the Priest - and asked "Do you want to do that?" I told him I didn't know. "Do you want to come back in the fall at all?" No, I told him. Not really. This was before Confirmation, and I didn't have a lot of "authority figures" in my life, so saying this to a priest was a pretty brave move for me at the time.
My dad calmly turned to the priest and said, "We're going to go home and talk about this, and I'll give you a call with his decision."
We went home and talked a bit with my mom, who said she would really like me to get confirmed when the time came, but if I promised to get confirmed, she'd be OK with letting me skip CCD.
I don't know if my dad ever called him back, but I know this: I never went back to CCD, I never got confirmed, and I've only been to church once ever since.
That one time was the clincher, really.
That one time was for my father's funeral service.
My dad died very suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack during my senior year at BU (which messed me up pretty bad mentally in a lot of ways at the time).
The service was led by a priest I didn't know - he'd joined the church my family used to attend after I'd stopped going. He only introduced himself to my brother and me very briefly before the mass, and I have no idea what my mother and/or (religious) grandmother may have had conversations with him about.
He went on to tell a story about how my father's death was a loss to him personally, because he'd see my father "regularly" at the rectory, even when he wasn't doing carpentry work, because my father liked to share his "great faith" with the church community.
He told another story about how my father was so proud of his sons for also sharing that faith, and that we were carrying on in his fine tradition of service to the church.
At this point, my brother and I hadn't been to church in years. My father gave us the green light to stop going to CCD. My dad was an avid dart player and spent a lot of his free time in a league or hanging out in the local townie bar with his friends - even on Sundays. He definitely wasn't hanging out in the rectory.
To top it all off, the priest mispronounced my family's last name - repeatedly.
We didn't know this priest, and he didn't know us.
At my own father's funeral mass, the priest was lying about my father and my family's relation to the church.
I know he was doing it because he was trying to provide "comfort" to my relatives (and to me, I guess), but ... man. You know? A priest who didn't know how to pronounce my last name is standing there, telling everyone about how much "faith" we had, when we all knew he was full of it?
So yeah ... I'm not a religious person.
My stance is not malicious. It's certainly not intended to be, at least, and when I make jokes about religion, that's all they are to me - jokes. Because I don't take them seriously. Because, in all true seriousness, I find it incredibly difficult to take religion seriously.
To so many people, it causes so many more problems than it resolves. Look at the wars we're fighting now, for instance - both globally, and politically in our own country.
And it's another terrific reason for me to endorse Obama's candidacy for President over that of a ticket that features someone like Sarah Palin, who would use her religious beliefs to govern the lives of others.
There you go. Hope nobody out there is offended.
It would be nice to hear a candidate say "You know what, I appreciate that everyone has personal beliefs, but personal beliefs don't create new jobs or pave roads."
It's about time for someone to speak up for godless heathens like me! We're the one group of voters that's subjected to absolutely no pandering, and I'm feeling left out.
There's been a discussion on a messageboard that I've been following. A question arose regarding Barack Obama's statements that a marriage is between "a man and a woman". How does he reconcile this personal opinion with the strong support for gay marriage in the Democratic party?
My good friend ADR summed things up really well, I think.
"Obama, to date, has not been willing to allow his personal beliefs on the issue influence legislation to govern the rest of us," he wrote.
He went on to argue that supporting anti-gay marriage laws, or presenting only the opportunity for every same-sex couple to get a "civil union" (rather than be "married") or to have no other "equal" status at all (not even a civil union), would be tantamount to imposing personal beliefs upon others. ("Change the law, so EVERYONE has to follow what [you] believe in.") In essence, imposing morality.
Obama, I'm happy to say, has not gone that route, and I applaud him for it.
Here's my stance on religion:
If it gets you through the day, if it's something you feel is important ... hey, I'm not going to disparage it. Whatever floats your boat. Free country, your choice. All that good stuff.
I'm not into it, myself, and I would hope that others who are religious would not think ill of me for my choice, much in the same way that I do not think ill of those who are religious for their choice.
That said, what was written above about legislating morality does tweak the issue significantly in some cases: I do not think ill of those who choose to personally practice religion. I do, however, have problems with those who insist that their own beliefs should somehow be the ones that govern my life and the choices I make.
There are those who go the "God and Country" route and want to force me along for the ride (the talking heads on the right like Sean Hannity, "celebrity" religious figures like Pat Robertson or James Dobson, etc.), and I want none of it. These are the people I have major problems with. I have no problem with the neighborhood priest or the people who want to wake up early on Sunday to go to church. I could not possibly care less about having a temple or mosque in my neighborhood, nor about the worshipers who may attend their functions. They're good people who I'll leave alone and who, I assume, want to leave me alone.
But there are those others who want to extend their beliefs beyond the doors of their own homes or places of worship ... and I really, truly don't appreciate it.
And even then, I don't care that our money has "In God We Trust" on it. It doesn't matter. I don't care if a city or town wants to put up a Christmas Tree (and call it that) on public property. I don't even care if they want to put up religion-specific decorations (a manger scene, a menorah, whatever), so long as there's no outright criticism or slur of another religion in the display. And when I say "Happy Holidays", it's not because I'm against saying "Merry Christmas" - it's because "Happy Holidays" includes New Year's Day, too. I can wish you well for a single day, or I can wish you well for several at a time. Your pick. I'm a generous guy!
So why am I not religious myself? A couple of reasons, I guess.
Primarily, it's because I find it hard to believe that there's an Invisible Man in the sky, as George Carlin put it, who looks down upon us and guides our lives. If there is, I've never met him. I've seen no proof that he exists. The Bible? I could just as easily take "The Odyssey" by Homer as the truth as I could the Bible. Why not? The Bible is filled with all sorts of stories that would fit right in with those in Homer's works, but Homer's poems are deemed "fantasy".
For instance, let's take creationism. God created Adam, and from Adam, he created Eve. (I won't even get into the idea of the talking snake.) Adam and Eve had a couple of kids, and the world became populated from their origins. So, if man is created in "God's image", am I to believe that God is a strong advocate of incest? Because that's the only way we'd all exist today, if we came from the same starting point. Somehow I find this unlikely. As unlikely as when Gepetto was swallowed up by a giant whale. Though that might have been Pinocchio, and not the Bible. Either way. It's kinda silly.
Did Jesus exist? I absolutely believe that there was a man named Jesus who affected the lives of many others in his time, but I believe he was a great philosopher of his time, and not the son of God.
Then, there's the hypocrisy of some evangelical leaders - the "celebrities", like Jerry Falwell, or the hucksters like Jim Baker and those who followed in his footsteps,
Finally, personal experience:
I used to go to CCD (or whatever you call it) on Monday afternoons after school throughout my grammar school years. At this point, the routine in my family (well, my mom, my brother and me - my dad usually skipped it, as I remember) was to go to church at least every other week (which eventually devolved in the Easter/Christmas masses schedule only). My dad would drive my brother and me to CCD, though, and pick us up afterward. He was a carpenter by trade, and did some work in the rectory on occasion, though I don't know if this was voluntary or paid. I don't recall, and my dad died in '95, so it's kinda hard to ask him ... But unlike his mother, my bingo-playing/church-going grandmother who has a picture of Jesus in her room, I don't remember him being particularly religious. Ever, really.
One year, I mysteriously got sick every Monday afternoon in a row for about two months. Go figure. Crazy stuff, illness. Hmm. Anyway, I went back for the final week of classes before summer recess, and the priest in the rectory stopped my dad and me on the way out. He'd noticed that I was absent for quite a while, and he wanted me to repeat the "course" when CCD re-opened in the fall. My father (my actual father - my birth father, not my "Father" Father) must have heard my heart sink (or seen my shoulders slump), because he turned to me - right in front of the Priest - and asked "Do you want to do that?" I told him I didn't know. "Do you want to come back in the fall at all?" No, I told him. Not really. This was before Confirmation, and I didn't have a lot of "authority figures" in my life, so saying this to a priest was a pretty brave move for me at the time.
My dad calmly turned to the priest and said, "We're going to go home and talk about this, and I'll give you a call with his decision."
We went home and talked a bit with my mom, who said she would really like me to get confirmed when the time came, but if I promised to get confirmed, she'd be OK with letting me skip CCD.
I don't know if my dad ever called him back, but I know this: I never went back to CCD, I never got confirmed, and I've only been to church once ever since.
That one time was the clincher, really.
That one time was for my father's funeral service.
My dad died very suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack during my senior year at BU (which messed me up pretty bad mentally in a lot of ways at the time).
The service was led by a priest I didn't know - he'd joined the church my family used to attend after I'd stopped going. He only introduced himself to my brother and me very briefly before the mass, and I have no idea what my mother and/or (religious) grandmother may have had conversations with him about.
He went on to tell a story about how my father's death was a loss to him personally, because he'd see my father "regularly" at the rectory, even when he wasn't doing carpentry work, because my father liked to share his "great faith" with the church community.
He told another story about how my father was so proud of his sons for also sharing that faith, and that we were carrying on in his fine tradition of service to the church.
At this point, my brother and I hadn't been to church in years. My father gave us the green light to stop going to CCD. My dad was an avid dart player and spent a lot of his free time in a league or hanging out in the local townie bar with his friends - even on Sundays. He definitely wasn't hanging out in the rectory.
To top it all off, the priest mispronounced my family's last name - repeatedly.
We didn't know this priest, and he didn't know us.
At my own father's funeral mass, the priest was lying about my father and my family's relation to the church.
I know he was doing it because he was trying to provide "comfort" to my relatives (and to me, I guess), but ... man. You know? A priest who didn't know how to pronounce my last name is standing there, telling everyone about how much "faith" we had, when we all knew he was full of it?
So yeah ... I'm not a religious person.
My stance is not malicious. It's certainly not intended to be, at least, and when I make jokes about religion, that's all they are to me - jokes. Because I don't take them seriously. Because, in all true seriousness, I find it incredibly difficult to take religion seriously.
To so many people, it causes so many more problems than it resolves. Look at the wars we're fighting now, for instance - both globally, and politically in our own country.
And it's another terrific reason for me to endorse Obama's candidacy for President over that of a ticket that features someone like Sarah Palin, who would use her religious beliefs to govern the lives of others.
There you go. Hope nobody out there is offended.
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