Pay No Mind To The Freakshow Careening By
In a book released last year titled "The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason", Sam Harris writes:"While moderation in religion may seem a reasonable position to stake out, in light of all we have (and have not) learned about the universe, it offers no bulwark against religious extremism and religious violence. From the perspective of those seeking to live by the letter of the texts, the religious moderate is nothing more than a failed fundamentalist. He is, in all likelihood, going to wind up in hell with the rest of the unbelievers. The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism."
Absolutely God Damned right. For the past week or so, we've seen the fundamentalist fringies, including the House and Senate Majority Leaders, come flying out of the woodwork to foist their theocratic agenda on a poor family in Florida, and while we have seen some medical ethicists weighing in on TV here and there, where are the religious moderates? It could be that the media is passing right over them, but shouldn't some of them come out vociferously stating that these lunatics are bad for most people of faith, and our culture and country as well? Jeebus Christ, who lets their ten year old kid get carted off in handcuffs? Why don't we just start burning witches at the stake again?
Back to Sam:
"Imagine that we could revive a well-educated Christian of the fourteenth century. The man would prove to be a total ignoramus, except on matters of faith."
Like Tom DeLay?
"With each passing year, do our religious beliefs conserve more and more of the data of human experience? If religion addresses a genuine sphere human understanding and necessity, then it would be susceptible to progress; its doctrines should become more useful, rather than less. Progress in religion, as in other fields, would have to be a matter of present inquiry, not the mere reiteration of past doctrine."
We as humans have been whacking away at those texts for over 2000 years, how much more can we possibly squeeze out of them?
When people run around killing doctors, and phoning Florida legislators saying things like, "I'm a Christian, and I hope you will die in your own vomit.", and praying that they die a painful death from stomach cancer, we've got a problem here folks.
Let's go to the dictionary: "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion". These people are terrorists, plain and simple, and until moderate, sane political and clerical leaders come out and officially denounce these freakish sideshows, they'll continue to heap their madness on us all and take our democracy and our country with them.
(thanks to Billmon for the link)
posted by FuzzFinger @ 3/24/2005 05:35:00 PM
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