Religion and Politics

I'm sick of it.

I'm sick of a politicians decrying their faith to curry favor from the religious. I'm sick of religion in general, from the crazies pushing "intelligent design" to my neighbor who thinks a tattoo of Jesus on his back would be a wonderful thing.

I absolutely support the right of every person to believe whatever crazy thing they want to, but why is it that people who say they talk to aliens are seen as fruitcakes but people who say they talk to gods aren't? The evidence for gods is no better than that for UFO's; and the latter at least doesn't suffer from logical inconsistencies.

Yeah, I know, people need to believe this nonsense. People don't need to believe in UFO's. I get that. But it still drives me crazy that the religious seldom understand how irrational and ridiculous all this god stuff is.

Surrounded by the god-soaked, we atheists often feel like *we* must be the crazy ones. We are surrounded, out-numbered, overwhelmed. The U.S. Constitution seems to promise us that our government at least will be free of religious prejudice, but that promise has been steadily weakened. Our original money had no religious mottos, those were added in 1864. Our Pledge of Allegiance had no "Under God", but the religious jammed it in. There's nothing in there that says elected officials must have religious beliefs, but that's become the reality.

I've written more than I probably should have about religion at http://aplawrence.com/Personal/Philosophy/index.html - that's been my safety valve when the craziness gets to me. When I came across http://www.firstfreedomfirst.org/ and http://blogagainsttheocracy.blogspot.com I had to add my voice.