The Dangers of Fundamentalism of Any Kind

"From the first moment I looked into that horror on September 11th, into that fireball, into that explosion of horror, I knew it. I recognized an old companion.  I recognized religion."  So said Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, professor of theology at St. Joseph's Seminary in New York:

There were no atheists flying those planes.

As has happened so often beginning with the Obama run for the office when I became truly involved with politics, I've been up front about the fact that I'm not religious and have taken, by some people, a real pounding for that.  How can you be an atheist and be a moral person?

To clear that up right now, a moral person is someone who does what is right no matter what they're told.  A religious person does what they're told whether it's right or not.  Like strapping bombs to themselves and climbing on crowded city buses; or gassing millions of people because they're Jews - Christ killers.

How can I possibly be a conservative if I'm an atheist?

Well, I confess I do fall down a little there.  While I have issues with abortion, I have a deep belief in personal freedom and if someone makes gay slurs in front of me, they have to deal with the consequences.  If someone labels all Muslims as extreme Islamists, I have an issue with that.  The list goes on.

But I have also met many lovely Christians who have opened their hearts to me and accepted me after  some initial skepticism with a live and let live attitude that matches my own. 

There are some over-zealous atheists who demand Christmas displays, etc. not be on government property.  I admit I would personally prefer to not see the Ten Commandments in a courthouse.  It's a bit disconcerting to think the people judging you believe they're working for a power higher  - or other - than the law of the land.

But the usual atheist, as Sam Harris has said, is in the best sense of the word a happy and positive person who gives religion very little thought.  I'm not against any religion.  I don't want to fight Christians; don't want to fight Muslims; don't want to slaughter Jews.  I have respect for all beliefs. 

Imagine a world filled with atheists.  And don't trot out that old canard Stalin.  He didn't kill because he was an atheist.  He was just a bad man.  There would have been no protestants killing Catholics in Ireland or the other way around; no crusades; no planes flying into the towers in New York; no Holocaust, no war in Serbia.  Mothers and fathers wouldn't be losing their children even as I write this and Israel would be at peace with its neighbors and there would be no crazy men in Iran plotting its annihilation..

Some Christians seem offended that there are Muslims who believe the Koran verbatim, yet feel it's all right for them to believe the Bible verbatim.  They believe the way their preachers or priests interpret the  Bible and teach it to them, but are offended that Muslims believe the way their Imams interpret  and teach the Koran to their flocks.

There are radical fundamentalist Christian preachers.  There are radical fundamentalist Muslim Imams.  Neither are good things.  During the crusades, the Christian preists were more dangerous.  These days, the Muslim Imams are the more dangerous.

These days, to not  be a fundamentalist Christian means that you pick and choose which parts of the Bible you believe and which parts you discard as either too fanciful and science has won you over or, frankly it doesn't suit your lifestyle.

And while many Christians believe that works for them, they don't allow the same latitude for Muslims who have assimilated into western culture.  Of course, it's not true for all Muslims, but it is for a great many.  Their religion, their belief in their God, provides them with comfort, and just because they have rejected some parts of the Koran doesn't mean they have to reject all of it.  The fact that they have lost their fundamentalism doesn't mean they are no longer Muslim, any more than a Christian who isn't a fundamentalist is no longer a Christian.   

And being and atheist, which simply means you reject the idea of a supernatural power altogether, doesn't mean you're a wicked person.  If someone can name specifically the last time there was a war declared in the name of atheism, I' d like to have it pointed out. 

Some atheists get a little carried away at times, in my opinion, in separating church and state, but they are being watch dogs because they understand how dangerous it can be when church and state grow too intermingled.  Our Founding Fathers understood that very well.  In the Fifties, God made his way onto our currency and a little later into our pledge of allegiance.  It is critical that we not lose site of our Founding Father's concerns.

There are statistics on how few atheists there are in the United States, but I tend not to believe them.  I think we've been driven underground because to declare you're an atheist in America is tantamount to declaring you're in personal touch with satan.  He has the direct number to your iPhone.

In the United States - the United States - we have this creeping theocracy.  In an age where an Osama Bin Laden can convince men to act on scriptural ignorance and blow up innocents, we need to think about what we're doing and what we're teaching our own children.  Are we enlightening them?  Or are we taking them back into the dark ages. 

This is a country where a politician can't get elected unless he professes a  belief in some religion.  Aristotle said, "A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion.  Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious and less easily  inclined to move against him."

How can we be an enlightened nation in 2009 where one of the criteria for electing a good, honest, conservative man is his lip service to a religion?  Shall we give him a lie detector test to see if he's sincere or just putting on a show to get elected?

Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and John Adams rejected not only organized religion but the divinity of Christ.  To a man, they were Deists, meaning that they believed the  road to knowledge, even knowledge of God, was reason.

Edward Abbey, an American author wrote: "Fantastic doctrines (like Christianity or Islam or Marxism) require unanimity of belief.  One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions.  Thus the fear and the hate; thus the torture chamber, the iron stake, the gallows, the labor camp, the psychiatric ward."

He also said, "Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues...Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination."

Wayne Adkins, an American military officer who served in Iraq in the mid 2000's was a fundamentalist Christian who wanted to be a Baptist minister.  He studied the  Bible intensely and after much study he, quite simply, stopped believing.  "How do you choose between believing in Jesus, Bigfoot, leprechauns, witchcraft, Islam, alien abductions ... or the myriad other assertions that people have made over the course of human history?  (Faith is) like rolling the dice and hoping you have placed your faith in a true proposition."

Wayne has expressed something I've found  troubling.  I've studied various mythologies and religions and seen how all of them have taken a little from this culture and a little from that one, altering each over time to suit its needs.  And all, with this mixture, Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc., have what my son calls The Certainty.  We're right.  You're wrong.  We're going to heaven.  You're going to hell.  And in Christianity, they can't even agree among the differing sects.  For example, if you're a Baptist, the Pentecostals are going to hell.  It is all based on 'faith'.  Not fact.  Faith. How can any one faith know which is correct?   And how can any one faith condemn another?

Lebanese born "Adonis" (born Ali Ahmad Sa'id), said "The religious interpretations that compel Muslim women to wear the veil in secular countries where church and state have long been separated and where equality of the sexes is firmly established, reveals a mentality that is not content merely with veiling woman, but seeks to shroud man, society, life in general-to pull the veil over the eyes of reason itself."

Read those words.  "...pull the veil over the eyes of reason itself."  How are Christians pulling the veil over reason?  By teaching creationism instead of science in school, perhaps? 

Again, I have to ask, how is it possible to live in a society with all of the science at our command, the geology, the genetics, the astrophysics, and not believe in evolution?

I make no apologies for my atheism, though I used to be ashamed to utter the word because of the backlash. 

I ask no apologies from my Christian friends, though I would ask that they stop 'praying' for me.  I know they mean well, and from some of those gentle souls, I accept it in the manner it's intended and say an appropriate 'thank you'.

But there are those who say it with great superiority and arrogance and to them I say, "You pray for me.  I will think for you."

What we need to do is stop hating each other and work out intelligent solutions to complicated problems, and select men and women to go to Washington based on their abilities, not their church attendance.  There might even be an atheist out there ready to lead us out of the wilderness - so to speak.

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