The Separation of Church and Everything

I won't pretend: This will be a rant. It will be a rant because I'm annoyed. In spite of that, I'll do my best to remain civil and relatively unoffensive. I'm not naive enough to believe you can talk about religion and offend no one. But I'd rather this be a conversation or even a debate than a Bill O'Reilly screaming match. Or a Glenn Beck cryfest.


(If by the end of this you have any questions about the validity of my statements (those that aren't opinion), ask me for proof. I'll gladly find the appropriate sources.)

I do not believe in gods. Not in Allah, Yahweh, or Jesus Christ. But I also don't believe in Krishna, Enlil, Thor, Zeus, Apollo, Xenu, Shiva, Buddha, or the thousands of other gods society has deemed man-made, and thus not real. All that separates us is one god. Wrap your head around that for a minute. Of all the gods mankind has created, from Mesopotamia to Mecca, we disagree about .001%. But, as it turns out, that makes all the difference.

Here in 'Murica, I'm in the minority when it comes to religion (and race, since I'm a Cuban-American, suckas!). It didn't used to be that way. I was raised Catholic. Went to Catholic school from 3rd grade until I graduated high school. And I was practicing the entire time. Things changed during my second year of college. After a super-religious first year, I found myself faced with an interesting conundrum. Dinosaurs are easily the coolest animals. There's no debate about this and if you say otherwise, once the Bronco is fixed, I will drive to your house and slap you. So there I am, taking a class all about them. Evolution comes up. I never learned about it, but hot damn, did it make sense. It clicked. And despite all the concessions the Catholic Church will and has made to try to be compatible with science, it went against the natural history presented in the Bible. (Not that I was ever a young-earther, but I do remember (and I'm embarrassed to admit this) saying something along the lines of, "I didn't come from a monkey!" in the seventh or eighth grade.) And let's all be real. Whether you're Muslim, Jewish, or Christian (and since I only know about the big 3, those are my focus), you pick and choose what to believe from your particular book. No one follows anything to the letter. But they do make excuses for a lot of it. "Oh, we don't believe the passage about selling our daughters into slavery, but those queers better not ruin the sanctity of marriage!" The same sanctity of marriage that demands you kill your wife if she's not a virgin? Anyways, at that point in my life, I was making excuses, and creating my own beliefs. But this whole evolution and dinosaur thing, that made sense to me. I didn't have to make excuses for the existence of a Tyrannosaurus. The thought never once crossed my mind that fossils were put in the ground by Satan to confuse us because I'm not an insane person. My decision essentially became dinosaurs or God. Yes, this is a giant simplification. But looking back, that was the turning point.

The first time in this country's history a president acknowledged non-believers as equal to believers was when President Obama mentioned us during his inauguration. In fact, good old George Herbert Walker Bush, while campaigning in 1987 said, "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." (Keep in mind, of course, that "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, in response to the Red Scare and as a distinction from the godless commies. And keep in mind the fellows who framed the Constitution and wrote the Declaration of Independence were mostly deists.)


I want you now to replace "atheists" from Bush's quote with Muslims. Or gays and lesbians, bisexuls and transsexuals. Blacks or Asians. No one would be that ignorant, right? How could someone so blatantly discriminate against a significant amount of the populace and still be elected president? It's disgusting. And I'm not saying that as the persecuted minority. When Bush said that, I was probably being taken to St. Lawrence every Sunday as an infant. I'm saying that as a human being who can't wrap their head around such flagrant discrimination.

And that, I guess, can lead into the heart of this blog: Separating religion from public life. It doesn't necessarily start with politics, but that's where I'll start. Take out "under God" in the Pledge. Why? Because it's not necessary. It never was, and certainly not now. Were we a Christian nation, as so many inane talking heads insist, I could understand that. But we aren't. And so long as "God" remains in it, the country is discriminating against every religion but Judaism and Christianity. After that, get the 10 Commandments off of government property, like courts or governor's estates, etc. Again, this is a blatant endorsement of a specific religion. In the same vein, if you're going to allow Christian-themed holiday decorations on govt property, you had better make room for all the others, and that includes the Flying Spaghetti Monster. That stuff I could see happening in my lifetime. This, not so much: If a church contributes to a political campaign of any sort, they should lose their tax exemption. And presidents, how about we keep God out of our speeches? I'm glad Obama is president, but what the hell was he saying about the oil spill during his Oval Office speech? That we ought to be praying? It's a cliché, but two hands working do more than a thousand clasped in prayer. And let's not forget Dubya calling the French president before the invasion of Iraq and telling him that demons, written about in the Bible, needed to be fended off, and that's why 'Murica was heading to war. That man was in charge for eight years.

Keep religion away from science. They do not coexist, and pretending they do deludes both your faith and science's whole premise. The whole premise of faith is that it goes against reason, logic, and fact. It requires no proof. Thus the term "leap of faith." Now, what is science founded on? The scientific method. We all learned this in middle school. There's lots of hypothesizing, recording data, but what're the key elements? Experimentation and repeated results. You have to test something again and again and again and again and get the same results before something is considered legitimate. You have to PROVE it. Not to mention if one thing is proven false later on, you don't fight a war and slaughter thousands or millions because you dedicated your entire life to one set of scientific findings. No, you do some more experiments, and if one thing replaces another, well that's amazing! It's amazing because we're discovering more and more truths about the natural world. "God did it" doesn't fly. It doesn't answer anything. Just because we don't know it now, at this point in humanity, doesn't mean we won't have some more answers in 100 or 200 years. Just look at how far we've come in 200 years and tell me we won't know more about the planet in another 200.



Going off the science thing, the universe is amazing. It is the biggest thing you could ever imagine, but times 1,000,000,000,000,000. And you know what religion does? It takes a tiny rock, spinning in space around a mediocre star, which sits inside one of billions of billions of galaxies, and it tells the marginally self-aware inhabitants of said rock that you are the center of it all. That all of it exists purely for you. If you can't see the arrogance of that, I don't know what to tell you. Yes, it is absolutely amazing that we've gotten to the point where I can bitch and moan on a piece of hardware that connects me to the internet, which mankind invented. It blows my mind that we can do that. That I can wake up, in air conditioning, and turn on a TV, that I can pick up a pencil and a blank piece of paper and make something beautiful, that I can play a song. These things should never, ever be taken for granted. But I don't think for a second that this planet is mine. Or that the moon is mine. Or that the sun is for us. Why would it be? It's all been here billions of years before us, and it will for billions of years after us. Life existed before mankind. It probably does elsewhere in the universe. Why shouldn't it? And besides, it's not that conditions on earth are perfect for life. It's that life adapted to the conditions on earth. This wasn't made for us. I'm not scared to admit that I have no idea how it was formed. Either are scientists, the people who are actively searching for an answer. But chalking it all up to a god? That's the definition of deus ex machina, which all my writing friends know to avoid like Pat Robertson. Don't ever be scared to admit you don't know. That's how you learn.

When it comes to learning, religion has no place in the public education system. All this nonsense about creationism, or intelligent design? No. Just shut up. You want that in the science classroom? How about Scientology and Mormonism in history class? Let's all learn about Emperor Xenu casting billions of creatures into the volcanoes of Hawaii. Or how the Native Americans are actually Jews. Give me proof for creationism or ID, and I'll concede. I'll admit I was wrong. I might even apologize. But until then, until it has been put through the same rigors that evolution has, shut your pie hole! Teach the controversy? The only controversy is that this is given serious consideration by the people who decide what children will learn. Texas wants to amend history books so that the Founding Fathers are seen as Christians, and the United States of America is seen as ordained from on high. How about instead of that, we teach what actually happened? That means the ugly and the pretty. There's good and bad about the founding of this nation straight up through now, so show us both sides. Don't put your own politics and religious ramblings ahead of the education of the next generation. And you know what ought to be taught? Sex Ed. Not abstinence only. That doesn't work because teenagers are horny and want to see how things work. So teach them how to be smart about it. That means birth control in all its forms. You want to combat abortions and teenage pregnancy? EDUCATE. 

Most importantly, keep religion out of morality. One does not rely on the other. Not at all. What is moral about murdering all the men of a nation, taking the children as slaves and the woman as sex slaves? You can find that in the Old Testament. Please, explain to me all the death and destruction found in that book (for a body count of sorts, check this out: http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2007/01/how-many-has-god-killed-complete-list.html). There's nothing moral about forcing your beliefs on those around you, let alone killing them if they refuse to subscribe, as both the Bible and Koran call for. And this is where picking and choosing comes into play. Noah's Ark is suddenly a fable, not a story about the godly genocide of an entire planet's worth of life. Despite God decreeing that we can't touch the skin of a dead pig, man, tossing that football around is fun. Shananigans, I say, on picking and choosing, and fishing a few morals from the remains. No, religion is used to justify discrimination. It endorses slavery, casts homosexuality as a sin, and says there's something wrong with being human. I don't need a textbook to tell me the slave trade (which Texas wants to rename the "Atlantic Triangular Trade") was inhumane. I never needed to watch a trial to see that murdering an innocent person is wrong. Either did you. The 10 Commandments are mostly inherent. Well, the ones that pertain to living a decent life with the people around you, anyways. For some reason, despite the very words that are in the Bible and the Koran, people will sit and defend both as THE moral standard. Please, read either or both. As the person you are now. Do your best to look at them from the standpoint of a creative writer, or a decent human being, and push aside your emotional connection. Look at the words, and the stories they tell, that we've been told is truth. Come back and tell me it's moral. Without lying to me or yourself. 


Speaking of lying, what the hell is going on with Catholicism? I'm not just talking about the church-wide conspiracy to move molesting priests around to different churches so they can scar multiple children, but the uprising of Catholics to defend this BS. You're going to come to the defense of the Pope, the man who was responsible for covering up a ton of this, but not the children? He was aware of at least one instance, and stayed quiet about it. This is an organization that publicly reprimanded the man who blew the whistle, instead of praising him. It's not like this happened once. And it's definitely not a recent thing. This has been happening for decades. Hundreds, if not thousands, of children lost their innocence, their childhood, and likely a bit of their humanity and sanity at the hands of horrid, hypocritical, deranged individuals. And the Church has the audacity to blame homosexuality and atheism for pedophilia? I mean, WTF? And then there's the Pope telling AIDS-stricken Africa that condoms spread the disease. That man is infallible, and in contact with the Lord God, your savior Jesus Christ.

Which brings me to this: Keep religion away from children. I was indoctrinated. You probably were too. I wasn't given a choice; I was pushed into this and told it was as real as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny (I won't get into the pagan roots of Christmas or Easter). Children are, above all, impressionable. And trusting. As a kid, we trusted what our parents said without question. What most adults said even. So if you tell them this is the one true way to live forever, I bet they'll believe you. People get horrified when they see a kid in the Middle East holding an AK-47. "They've been brainwashed! They were taken advantage of!" Yup, they sure were. So was I. That's how religion takes hold. Get 'em when they're young and etch your beliefs in their mind. Does that seem wrong to anyone else? Why not, instead of taking your kid to church, you teach them how to reason. How to be inquisitive. How to logically think. Explain that instead of there being one way, one truth, etc., many people believe many things. That when it really comes down to it, no one knows the truth. 


I understand why people are religious. I've been there. It's comforting to believe there's something after this. But it lets you make excuses for not really living your life now. Had a crappy day at work? By golly, once you die you get to praise your god of choice for all eternity and be in complete bliss! I don't buy it. Not when I take into account everything the authors of the Bible and Koran got wrong. Not when I see the insanity that religion causes in the world. Of course, those people causing the insanity aren't true Christians, or Muslims, or Jews, or whatever. They never are. EVER. Islam is a religion of peace. Christianity is a religion of love. I call BS. I call BS for the people who died in the Crusades, and the Spanish Inquisition, for the families who lost someone on 9/11. Religion is not progressive—it's regressive.

By all means, be religious. But keep it private. Keep it in your place of worship and your home. Don't force it into science, education, and politics. It has no right to be there. At least, I don't think so. And you know, I don't know that there isn't a god. There might be something behind all this. But it's not the Christian god. Or the Greek gods. Or the Norse gods. Then again, there might not be anything all, except this life. How are you going to live it?

For those of you who stayed with me this long, thanks. I know this was an arduous read. But it's been boiling up for a while and I realized I have a forum to vent. If something said here bothers you, tell me. Let's talk about it. Too often talk about religion is just shoved aside, or deemed unfit for discussion. But these beliefs impact us.


P.S. Can we please ban, "Then God help us all," from movies, televisions, books, comics, etc.? It's a bad cliché. I'm tired of it.