Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Invasion of the Theocrats

"I feel bad about the turmoil, but I don't feel bad about my convictions, which are based on the Bible," said Tom Swartley, a minister at First Christian Church in Elm Creek Nebraska. The problem is not that he apologized to God for our “33 year nightmare” with Abortion rights and for teaching the “religion” of evolution to our children – the problem is that he said it as a morning prayer before Congress.

Too bad he didn’t go on about slavery, genocide, wife beating and giving your daughter into prostitution – other things the Bible seems to oppose very little, if at all.

"We put our children in the same category as other mammals and then we wonder why some act like animals," said Swartley, ignoring the millennia-long history of religious crimes against humanity. Perhaps he would like to repeat this to the nearly countless children molested by priests, ministers and other shameless shamans. Children in the Bible belt are more likely to grow up criminals, to wallow in poverty and dependency and they are more likely to fail at marriage.

Babbling about the Bible doesn’t prevent religious leaders from stealing from the poor or leading lives of luxury, or persecuting heretics or unbelievers nor does our beleaguered freedom of speech prevent them from lying. If our tax subsidized opinion shouters hate anything it’s freedom, whether it’s freedom to choose to terminate a pregnancy, freedom to disbelieve legend and believe evidence or to think logically and associate with whom we will in any way that does not hurt anyone. Tom Swartly’s opinions are a demonstration of the danger of mixing religion, whether legitimate religion or psychopathology and stupidity like Swartly’s religion, with government.


Too bad our Idiot in Chief isn’t honest enough to tell us that the staging of elections does not define liberty, only a constitution that protects the minority against the invidious and occasionally demented passions of the majority can allow liberty to flourish. If believers are free to impose their will on others, there is no freedom.

1 comment:

RR said...

Don't forget about molesting children... The priesthood seems to provide excellent cover for that.

While I'm sure there are many sincere folks out there, the hypocrites that use the bible and religion as a pulpit to expound their virtues are some of the biggest scum society possesses.

The bible is simply an idiotic book. And anyone who believes the word of god contains instructions on how to sell your daughter into sexual slavery, how to stone children for ‘disrespecting’ their parents, etc. etc. shouldn’t have the right to vote.