Unchecked and Unbalanced: Evolution Continues

According to Freud, there are three stages of human understanding. This is wholly demonstrative with all cultures in history. The three stages are superstition, religion and science. One might say that superstition is the same as religion, but it’s clearly not. The belief in God alone is merely superstition. To believe that one must dance in a circle under the sun or the rains won’t come is superstition. So is believing that one must paint a red line down the center of one’s face or else the gods will not look well upon you is only superstition. Superstition becomes religion when certain fables, rituals, morals and values are attached with the original God myth. This combination is what we see today as religion. The third and final stage of human understanding begins when rational thought enters the spectrum, causing either new people to question the faiths of the past, or followers of said faith to question their own beliefs through rational thought.

But what is happening today is that more and more people are being ruled by what could be deemed the new stage of evolution. Over the past four thousand years, people have continued to physically evolve. People have gotten taller, produced less body hair, lost more of their tailbone, less people are born with wisdom teeth, and people are living upwards of three times the life expectancy when compared to even two thousand years ago. But now we’re seeing a great neurological evolution happening. More and more people every year are replacing faith with reason, belief with logic, prayer with scientific medicine, bigotry with tolerance and acceptance, and, most of all, religion with science. America stands dead last in the westernized world in this new stage of evolution, but it still holds a strong and growing 16% percent of people claiming no religious affiliation. In many other westernized countries, the numbers are as large as 67%.

But there is a danger. This danger threatens to halt this new stage of evolution and human understanding. You see, as secular culture begins to take the lead, what its doing is involuntarily radicalizing what is gradually becoming the world’s religious minority. More and more are seeing radical religion as a means of holding on to what they’ve been tricked into believing is their “traditional” values. This happens not because the change they see around them is necessarily negative, but because it’s different and this frightens them. Therefore, they plot harder and harder by the day to attempt to discredit scientific achievements. They make up lies about scientific leaders like Richard Dawkins and Charles Darwin. They create elaborate conspiracy theories about inoculations causing Down Syndrome or condoms causing AIDS. They waste tax payer money (to which they do not even contribute) to sue schools and other secular, educational foundations, to try to force them to stop teaching evolution and other scientific discoveries, only to replace them with myths. They help fund children to be sent to unregulated schools where they’re taught myths in place of science. They publicly demonize those who don’t act accordingly to their predisposed agendas. They picket clinics, screaming at innocent people, pushing them, spitting on them, to convince them that they will burn in some magical fire land if they do something responsible in the face of society. They post websites to pass the private information, including addresses and phone numbers, of abortion providers. They shoot people outside clinics, in parks and even in churches. They bomb institutions which are contrary to their fables. They kill, slaughter and maim those who would refute their beliefs or predisposed morality. They even fly planes into sky-scrapers, killing thousands of people. And what’s worse is that their actions become more extreme the more the world moves into this new stage of human understanding.

All of these actions remind me of past atrocities and even past regimes. “Believe in this. I have no proof of this, but believe in it anyway, or else someone, somewhere, at some point will hurt you.” This is basically the root of imperialism. This is the technique that was employed by the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Pol-Pot, the first popes, the Romans, the Churches of England and Spain… Wait a minute, what were those last three? This brings me to my point. The basis for imperialism is the same basis for religion: believe in this, or you will be sorry.

This was best put by a man named Dr. James Luther Adams, when he said, “The Nazis were not going to return home with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors in America had found a mask for fascism in patriotism and the passages of the bible.” He was really on to something there, and as a holocaust survivor and Harvard Ethics professor, he truly knows what he’s talking about.

How do nationalistic imperialism and religion tie together on a mental scale? They do in the same way the conspiracy theories do, which is why both movements have so often employed conspiracy theories for the purpose of recruitment and manipulation with such great success. It all lies in the dominant area of the brain. Or, rather, the dominant hemisphere and lobe. You see, humans until now have generally been controlled by the central lobe of the brain. This lobe is responsible (namely in its right hemisphere) for many things in the body but primarily, emotion and faith, thus, this is the area of the brain that allows for the proverbial leap of faith. A leap of faith, by definition, is the act of either buying into a system, or believing in something without rational evidence (without influence of the left hemisphere or the frontal lobe). Dominance of this part of the brain makes people more susceptible and gullible, and less scrutinous, reasonable or rational.

When I say “leaps of faith,” I’m referring to a number of beliefs. One belief could be that (A) the world is run by a global elite who are all descendent from an alien civilization of lizards who started the central bank in 1913 to fund the poisoning of water supplies with LSD. Another belief would be that (B) the Jews are plotting a grand scheme to take over the country and even the world by campaigning central banks and financial institutions, and must be stopped. Another would be that (C) despite archaeological evidence, the world was created in six days, six thousand years ago; the first man was made from sand and the first woman was made from his rib; they lived in a magical garden full of dinosaurs and talking snakes, the same snake who told the rib-woman to eat from a magical tree, which thusly ended paradise.

These are all connected in the sense that they would’ve made for great novels, but also in the sense that people rarely believe in one without the other. If we look at those in order of A, B and C, as I laid out, we can illustrate a great connection. This is that it’s not all that uncommon for people to believe in C without believing in either A or B. However, it is extremely uncommon for people to believe in either A or B without believing in C (C being a general belief in any of the world’s major religions, not only the anecdote I stated before).

Why would they believe in one without the other? All three are radical beliefs with absolutely no evidentiary foundation. They’re, again, not only identical in essence, but also identical in origin: the central (temporal) lobe and right hemisphere of the brain. When a person believes in any one of these, it is a clear indication of temporal lobe and right brained dominance (as is illustrated time and again through studies of brain wave activity and its reactive similarities). This solves the puzzle as to why these beliefs tend to go hand in hand. There are more moderate religionists who may believe in a god, but also challenge many of the tenants of organized religion with rational thought. In my search, I found exactly what I thought I would: These people were merely moderately susceptible to outlandish conspiracy theories, but only those which have a clear, factual and structural foundation, while the outlandish theory was merely the icing on the cake (Alex Jones was a hit for these people). The third group in the human understanding progression (seculars and atheists), tested a clear negative in every research experiment of this type, to the conspiracy theory books and documentaries; showing a consistent skepticism toward the sources of the makers and writers, even often questioning their motivations. This is a clear indicator of frontal lobe, left brained dominance (the more skeptical and logical lobe and hemisphere of the brain).

Another startling find was when I noticed that the part of the brain that is dominant in these religionists, as well as most reactive to conspiracy theories, is also the same part of the brain responsible for schizophrenia, delusion, paranoia and even epilepsy. Looking back, we’ve seen that many exorcisms in history have been performed on epileptics, but apparently, it can be demonstrated, that we can easily say that there was a time when we called epileptics prophets. Post Mortem, we’ve diagnosed many different figures of religious ideation with epilepsy. We can do this because it seems that many of them, the spells they experienced anyway, seem to resemble epilepsy. Joseph Smith was said to have long standing blackouts, sometimes up to three days at a time. Other reports of possession (shaking, foaming at the mouth) as well as constant head aches were attributed to other religious leaders like Muhammad and Joan of Arc. Other symptoms like speech arrest and visual and auditory hallucinations, and lapses of consciousness have also been mentioned in religious texts.

What does this tell us? It tells us that there is a clear and demonstrative difference between religionists and atheists. Could this also be an evolutionary difference?

It is well known that during our stages of evolution, we’ve become more and more prone to logic. We came from animals who scavenged, to using crude tools to pick ants out of trees. This age of invention continued as we started using tools to hunt and eventually build. Along the lines, we harnessed the concept of agriculture, growing fruits, vegetables and grains for survival, which led to the breeding and domestication of animals as a food source. As time continued, our inventions have become more and more complex. The spear became the axe, and eventually became the sword, then the musket, the cannon, the rifle, and eventually, the nuclear missile. Likewise, the wheel became the buggy, then the bike, then the train, then the car and eventually the airplane. This has happened because the more we use the logic centers of our brains, the more developed they become, and the easier it is to grasp more complex concepts. After all, I highly doubt that the man who invented the first wheel could even come close to developing the technology in something as relatively simple as a printing press, let alone, an Apple computer. This is precisely why there has been such a leap since the agricultural revolution. The more complex the technology of the parent generation, the more exponentially developed will be the ability to grasp complexity in the offspring. A point: a child today is more technologically savvy than the man who invented the first super computer only a generation ago.

It is obviously evident that extreme neurological development has happened over the past few thousand years, and it is more evident that this evolution continues today. The more we evolve neurologically, the more logical and rational we become. This is physically evident in each generation’s brain activity, moving ever so gradually and delicately into the left hemisphere and the frontal lobe of the brain. Could this mean that skepticisms like atheism and political independence are simply the next stage of evolution? Well, according to the research: yes.

But as I mentioned before, the more skeptical, agnostic, atheist and secular the world’s culture becomes, the more our world culture pushes religionists and moderates into radicalism. When looking at the three stages, moderates could either be defined as those who never evolved past the first stage of understanding (superstition), as they’re less likely to apply strange rituals or myths to their god or deity in which they believe. However, this makes no sense as they are truly willing to compromise religion in the name of science, realizing that science isn’t some grand conspirator against religion. They still hold their deistic beliefs, but won’t attack science if more contemporary revelations contradict their previously held beliefs. Instead, the evidence points to the conclusion that religious moderates are more of a transitional phase of evolution. They’re sort of the Lucy, connecting the furry beasts with Einstein (also an admitted atheist).

This is demonstrative in matters of conversion. What I said before may have been misleading, it’s not the radicals who are being pushed to radicalism, it is those who already hold a fundamental and literal belief in religion, far beyond moderation. In fact, as a case in point, I’ve never heard of a single moderate who has been converted into a radical system by secular culture. However, I’ve heard of literally dozens of moderates who have converted into secularism since September 11^th. They have been pushed into agnosticism and even atheism by the religious radical right, demonstrating a previous presence of left and frontal brained activity which just needed a final push to weed off the effects of nurture. There are plentiful amounts of tales telling of those who completely skipped the middle step and were pushed from religion into atheism, as is the case with one of the country’s leading atheists. There seems to be not only a trend, but a clear pattern here. It seems very consistent that progress is leading in one direction. Using A, B and C again, I’ll illustrate what I mean (A: Religious, B: Moderate, C: Atheist). We have heard of plenty of cases of person A becoming person B. We have heard plenty of cases of person B becoming person C. We have heard of plenty of cases of person A even going as far to become person C, but never has there been a case of person C becoming person A., except for a schizophrenic who later became infamous in California as the famous Night Stalker. It is an all too rare case as well for person B to become person A. I know of none, personally. Therefore, this clearly establishes a line of progress, and quite possibly another olive branch on the tree of life (evolution).

It is, however, quite possible that we’re seeing two branches forming. As I said, the religious group may be leaving their churches and putting on the rainbow pins and lab coats in refreshing numbers, but what of those who are not? Is it not fair to say that following the lines of the progress of complexity that I just outlined, that the least frontal lobed and left brained parents will produce a like offspring? Especially as it will more than likely be educated outside of the secular school system, and also, the radicalism of the parents will be passed on to the offspring by both nurture as well as nature. Again, we’re talking about the evolution of brain function. One might think that the bloodlines that do not evolve would just cease to exist, but that is not the case. In the past, in more of a “fend for yourself” type of society, the case would have certainly been that those capable of greater brain function would thrive over the incapable. Adaptability, not strength, is the essence of evolution, after all. Those with a higher or more evolved brain functionality would be more likely to survive because of their ability to see patterns and trends, and to build and invent. Trust me, if evolution were about physical strength or even speed, the dinosaurs would still be ruling this planet, and humans would be nothing more than a walking, running and shrieking food source. We likely would have never evolved past Australopithecus. Even something as intellectually simple as basic addition and subtraction is what led to our survival into an agricultural species.

That problem is that we don’t live in the world of survival of the fittest (most adaptive) anymore. In previous epochs, in inventive and agricultural neighbor would not have openly and freely shared his tools, grains or kills with those of other tribes, let alone other species. But in today’s world, person A has full access to all of the benefits of person C’s inventions, all the while declaring war against persons B and C. We must remember that scientific and medical research, autonomy, democracy; these are all inventions of the secular movement and the result of intellectual evolution. We started trying to cure diseases by dancing in circles, then we tried human sacrifice, then we tried praying, then we tried herbs, which led to today’s medical industry. However, those of the first and second parent intellectual species, who still insist that God can cure illness, see a specialist, they take medication and try experimental research; all of these, the advantageous benefits of the evolution of neurological comprehension, and frontal lobed and left brained dominance. Therefore, the parent species has not died off. Rather, they’ve survived because of the benefits of the offspring species. In any other type of evolution or society, the parent species would be relegated to relying on priests or shamans to heal illnesses and afflictions. Unfortunately, seculars, like myself, are not as cold-hearted as we probably should be.

Because of all of this, the parent species has survived. Therefore, we’re actually seeing a split in the evolutionary tree between the frontal lobe dominated and the central lobe dominated.

The human tree is awfully clear when we look at it like this. It starts with the central lobed superstitious, onto their central lobed, but slightly more left-brained and analytical religious offspring. The superstitious eventually either die off from war or poverty, or go into seclusion from the rest of society. Suddenly the branch splits again, forming the new, slightly more skeptical moderate who eventually becomes either deist or theist. Eventually, the moderate and secular split, as the secular (the most analytical and frontal and left brained of the species) is born. This clearly happened sometime in the 1700s in Europe, and eventually spread from there through ideals. All the while, the sectarian religionist continues farther and farther to the right (symbolically), as the moderates continued developing into new branches of atheists. As evolution dictates, somehow and someway, one species will thrive over the other, but in today’s society, this is unlikely to happen.

Or is it? We concluded earlier the similarities between religionists, imperialists, and conspiracy theorists. We saw how both sectarians and imperialists utilize conspiracy theories because the followers of both lines of thought are more susceptible to them because of their right brained and central lobed dominance. They are capable of leaps of faith, which the left-brained and frontal-lobed secular is not. And to be more apt to attempt a leap of faith is to be more likely to believe a foundationless lie. Again, which are the roots of nationalism, imperialism, religion, and for that matter, about 97% of history’s slain human life. It’s been my experience that those who are least likely to believe that there is a beautiful paradise beneath a blazing fire, are least likely to jump into it. But on the other hand, those who want you to believe it, with legions of central-lobed people around, will find it pretty easy to form an army to throw the non-believers into the fire. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. But what we cannot allow is for the parent species of evolution to halt the progression and evolution of the species. The offspring species MUST find a way to thrive over the parent.

Unchecked and Unbalanced: A New Face on an Old System.

The following blog is from the Fourth of July weekend, 2009.

I mentioned in the previous edition that things have certainly not changed since the inaugeration of President Barack Obama, when it comes to the endless fight against the takeover of the Evangelical Right (Wrong). Therefore, I decided to dedicate today's Unchecked and Unbalanced: A Moral Minority Report to the president and his pandering toward a group that is still coming in from the fringe at an alarming rate. I feel the need to raise the mirror once again to the country which surrounds me. Well, I guess the mirror would be pointed at our leaders as I scour the society around me asking the question, "Hey, where does this look familiar?"

Now watch this drive!!!

If you don't find it disturbing that only one week after Barack Obama delivered a press conference regarding his inaction with such promised motives as Don't Ask Don't Tell, and DOMA, he's out golfing with before the Independence Day BBQ. Yeah, it's the fourth of July, I get that, but this has been every weekend. And there's something about the president addressing the media while practicing his drive that just sends me back a few years into a sheer state of panic.

What I'm asking today on Unchecked and Unbalanced is, "Where's the outrage?" or better, "What change?" I ask this question with the best intentions. Look, I know that I’m about to alienate a wide, vast portion of my demographic, but we were promised change, and personally, the only changes that I’ve seen have been most antithetic to what I would refer to as, “in the best interest of our country.”

Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20th of this year. The world watched and the world waited to hear what this extremely well orator was going to say next. We all wanted to know what his plan was to make the United States a new paradise on Earth. Well, some of us did. Personally, after working on his campaign indirectly and single-handedly raising almost 30 million dollars for him, I was a little sick of hearing him talk. I was ready for action. But what I saw disturbed me greatly. I saw Rick Warren give the opening “incantation” at the ceremony. Personally, I’m hard pressed to name any person who shouldn’t be disturbed by this.

Pastor Rick Warren has been a long time opponent of civil liberties as well as choice. Warren was the founder of the southern evangelical Mega-church called the Saddleback Church. Since founding the sixth largest church in the United States, Warren has also written many best sellers, such as his most popular A Purpose Driven Church. While a person could greatly commend Warren for his encouragement of churches around the country to increase charity work and philanthropy, Warren has also been much the controversial figure in certain lights, namely choice and liberty.

Warren is famous for comparing gay marriage to incest, and has recently called abortion, “The Nazi holocaust for children.” Warren showed his disdain for choice in shelling out millions of dollars to get the California bill, Prop 8, passed, a bill that he called necessary. His exact quote is, “I’m opposed to having a brother and sister be together and call that marriage. I’m opposed to having an older guy be with a child and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.” Warren compared gay marriage to incest, pedophelia and poligymy, and this was only years after comparing abortion to one of the biggest atrocities in years.

There are have been other rumors regarding Warren, but these are all just rumors and therefore
cannot be confirmed, but from what I know, I don’t doubt them a bit.

Barack Obama made the decision, even after the criticism from his own party for having Warren, and I didn’t think that boded well for him after the revelations of his long-time reverend, Jeremiah Write, who was a greatly outspoken conspiracy theorist as well as a zealot of the highest regards. However, I, like many, kept the faith, but in June of 2009, yet another factor came about telling us that we’re not out of the woods of religious zealotry in public office, in fact, the woods are closing in on us.

On the morning of June 4th, 2009, Barack Obama made the decision to appoint Alexia Kelley as the Director of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the Department of Health and Human Services. I’m not going to ramble on about just how many ways the Faith-Based initiative is unconstitutional and irresponsible, but I will mention the fact that the person who fills that seat has a lot of power in regards to access to birth control as well as abortion. What’s scary about that, you ask? It’s because Alexia Kelley has been a long time opponent of birth control, abortion, and even gay rights.

Kelley was the co-founder and former executive director for an anti-choice organization called Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG). Jon O’Brian, the head of Catholics for Choice said on the morning of the appointment, “Ms. Kelley’s appointment would be a defeat for reason and logic and calls into question whether President Obama’s administration is serious about reducing the need for abortion. And, while it may not gain many headlines, the impact and significance of this appointment should not go unnoticed.” He later said in his speech, “If Ms. Kelley had been appointed to another position in the administration, there might be less reason for concern. However, the Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for providing and expanding access to key sexual and reproductive health services.” He continued, “As such, we need those working in HHS to rely on evidence based methods to reduce the need for abortion. We need them to believe in men’s and woman’s capacity to make moral decisions about their own lives. Unfortunately, as see from her work at CACG, Ms. Kelley does not fit that bill.”

Kelley and her organization has supported consistently, every abortion and birth control access

The positive results of a "Christian Nation."

restriction since its founding, and Kelley herself is a proud anti-choice public figure, as is shown by the smile on her face whenever she gains a new opportunity to oppose either choice or human rights. She, much like Pastor Warren, compares abortion to “torture and murder.”

While Obama continues to appoint people to his cabinet who have strong fundamentalist affiliations as well as radical intent, one must start to wonder about Obama’s real character. After all, what did he learn during his twenty some years of bowing to a radical in Chicago? After hearing about only three of his affiliations of religious radicals, is it any wonder that the Faith Based Initiative, DOMA and haven't been even addressed since Obama took office, and he claims to be "biting his time," with DADT? In this person's humble opinion, no.

Note: Since writing this blog, in fact, only days afterward, Dr. Francis Collins was appointed as the director of the NIH (National Institute of Health). Francis Collins is the scientist who is commonly misgiven the credit for mapping the human genome, when in fact, he directed the team of about 2,000 scientists who collectively mapped a small part of it. Collins, while a great director, is hardly a person who ought to be running a scientific cabinet of government in what is supposed to be a new and more science-friendly administration. Collins, contrary to other scientists, firmly believes that morality is a not a fortunate byproduct of evolution, but was actually given to us by God in later stages of evolution. Francis publicly stated on Real Time with Bill Maher that he literally believes in talking snakes, zombies, strange rib women, men made of nothing but sand and magical trees that have the power to end "paradise." He also refers to atheism as "dogma," thus outing his as a man who would serve better on the board of an intelligent disign institution as opposed to a legitimate, federal scientific foundation. Truly, this should scare the vast majority of logical and mentally healthy people in the world.

Unchecked and Unbalanced: The Inaugeration.

Welcome to the inaugural Moral Minority Report. This is the first in the series of First Amendment violations in the United States, and what we can do to stop them. Before we get started, let's clear up what the First Amendment is.

"Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech; or the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

No matter how much Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity would like you to believe that this amendment has little to nothing to do with religion, they're lying. Along with people like Falwell, Robertson and Bush, they've created a lie for you, in which they claim that the first amendment has nothing to do with the separation of church and state, and that this falsehood is merely a remnant of Soviet Russia's constitution. This is what I like to call "The New Lie."

America was not founded to be a Christian or even religious nation. That is everything that thousands died in the Revolutionary War to prevent.

As one of our more prominent founding fathers, James Madison, wrote, "That religion or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, being under the direction and conviction only, not of violence or compulsion, all men are equally entitled to the full and free exercise of it according to the dictates of Conscience; and therefore that no man or class of men ought, on account of religion to be invested with peculiar emoluments or privileges; nor subjected to any penalties or disabilities under..."

What this basically means is, although Madison was fervently against the foundation of religion in the first place, "In a free country, we can't dictate that you do or you do not practice religion, but religion is to be separate from state as well as separate from any establishment of state." Madison also wrote in later years, "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

Madison was not alone in his detest against religion, as John Adams wrote, "This would be the best of all worlds if it not for religion." This notion was well carried in the times of the early Americas when our fathers saw a nation being formed with as much religious persecution as the lands from which we sought freedom in the first place. Thomas Jefferson was a very outspoken opponent of organized religion, as one of his more tame remarks on the topic reads, "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government." He wrote this initially to James Madison who quickly and eagerly responded, "There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermiddle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation."

Withstanding the words of Hamilton, Paine, and Washington, do these statements sound as though our founding fathers intended a Christian Nation, in which people's rights and even medical research would be halted on the basis of religious faith? Absolutely not. America was founded on secular principles and should be as such today, in the spirit of our founding fathers. The first few editions of this blog is going to be chapters from my book "crUSAder," and I will start with a section on one of the more basic of religious rule, The Pledge of Allegiance and Child Indoctrination. Before you read this part, try to remember that the pledge did not have the words "under god" in it until 1954, 100 years after it was initially written.

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 United States of America. And to the republic, for which it stands, one nation under GOD—indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

As we can see here, America has become yet another theocracy, much like those countries in the middle-east, that the same conservative talk show hosts should revel in. In a country where our highest freedoms are dissent against our national legislation without imprisonment—most of the time—as well as our freedom of religion, this pledge that our children forcibly say on a daily basis, is the highest of abominations against those previously stated freedoms. When one forces a child not only to pledge their allegiance to their country as well as another’s religion, we are violating those very rights that separate America from middle eastern countries. And those separations that distinguish us from openly theocratic countries are those which many of us—outwardly, anyway—would die to protect. So then, why is it that they are tolerated? I’m afraid that I just don’t have an answer. Maybe it’s because there just isn’t justice for all.

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 intrical 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 America.

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 Great Britain so many years ago, as well as many middle eastern countries today. If you want to prove this, then why don’t you try something? Why don’t you call your local congressman or congresswoman, and tell him or her that you want to propose removing the term “In God We Trust” from dollar bills and replacing it with “In Allah We Trust”. What would be more fitting, since I’m sure I don’t have to bring up the statistic again, tell your leaders that you want to replace the religious phrase on the dollar with “There Is No God”. I’m sure that will get you laughed right off of the phone. That may actually get you kicked out of the capital building. If you want to have a larger laugh, why don’t you tell your school that you practice the faith of the Flying Spaghetti monster, therefore you must go to school dressed as a pirate every Thursday. Why don’t you ask for a bible other than a Christian one in a Juvenile corrections facility? Why don’t you ask a hotel if they have a free bible of a religion that is child friendly, and has no murder, rape or bloodshed. Why don’t you propose changing the word God to Buddha in the pledge of allegiance. Well, the fact of the matter is that we’re supposed to have freedom of religion as well as a separation of church and state. Therefore, why is it that anything other than a Christian based proposal is so readily laughed off the table. If you look at the actual numbers, the number of Muslims in America is actually higher than Presbyterians, Roman Catholics and Protestants combined. Therefore, this being a democracy, why would it be so ridiculous to propose changing the word God to Allah in those heavily Muslim areas? Do that and you’ll see the Christian Right pull the separation of church and state amendment out of their hands faster than the bible. The same amendment that they would usually claim doesn’t exist.

Proof of this is what I like to call the happening of 2004. A Jr. high school in Ohio experienced great controversy around Christmas time when the teachers of the school decided it would be a good idea to spend a week teaching children about the faiths around the world, and what they practice on Christmas. After all, December twenty-fifth was the birthday of about nine prophets and quite a few gods as well, even a hundred years before the birth of Jesus. And by the way, that date wasn’t even decided upon until about six-hundred years after the bible was written.

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 Ohio. Yeah, there is one. A few of the parents decided that keeping a holiday play in school was just a little too much when the play involved the birth of Jesus and other solely Christian references. They fought to get it out of the school, however Valerie and her heavily religious parent group fought against them, citing that the play was only a holiday play and not only for people of a certain denomination of Christianity. The other group fought back informing her that the problem didn’t lie with the fact that it only appealed to one Christian denomination, but the problem was that it was Christian in the first place and surrounded around Christian mythology, and not historical timeline. Therefore, this play shouldn’t be allowed in school because many of the parents in the school either didn’t want their children exposed to false history and religion, and others practiced other faiths such as Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and even a few Wiccan families.

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 Nevada for teaching the new and radical theory of gravity.

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 Vatican scientist will tell you, “The Bible is not a book of science, it’s a book of faith.” It would make as much sense to teach Mother Goose tales along side anthropology.

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 Vatican (outside of their science department, by the way, which has changed much since the time of Galileo). Have you ever tried to interview a person in the Vatican? Or have you ever tried to interview a Catholic, for that matter, about some of the more bizarre beliefs in the religious structure? If you were to ask a Christian why they believe that the world is 6,000 years old, if you were to find a person who even knew what you were talking about, you would not get an answer, you would get, “This interview is over.” This is because none of them really have any kind of scientific data to back this up, they just believe it because they’re told to believe it. And that is the entirety of religion itself. People who are just told to believe something, and after a few years, just believe it because they were told to. And the worse part about this, is that this is how people now perceive politics, because religion has merged into politics. People are told to believe that abortion is bad and that abstinence only education is good, therefore they eventually believe it, instead of looking at the facts and the numbers and deciding for themselves. It seems today that every issue of politics is also an issue of religion. This is the rise of American theocracy.

Note: This post was from earlier on this year, and this is the first time it has appeared on this website. Since writing this blog, I've been exposed to some horrible truths that do nothing but prove that the evangelical uprising was not only a problem of the Bush administration, but Barack Obama has since carried the torch. His election of Alexia Kelley to a high ranking position in the Department of Health and Human Services, his inauguration prayer being given by known radical, Rick Warren, and even the appointment of Mr. Francis (the scientist who is commonly and falsly credited with mapping the human genome, and a man who actually believes that God implanted morality into us during later stages of evolution) as a leading government scientist; proves the point that the fight is far from over, but has just begun. Our future depends on secular culture winning this war of ideals, else our future be as riddled with war and schism as it is now.

Thanks for reading,
C. Allen Thompson