Sometimes I can’t believe what an idiot I am!
Here I’ve been getting madder and madder about Obama’s decision to leave Rev. Gene Robinson’s opening prayer out of HBO’s coverage of the events at the Lincoln Memorial yesterday.
The Presidential Inauguration Committee and HBO took turns blaming each other at first. And everybody is SO SORRY as usual. Fuckers. First they invite big fat homophobe Rick Warren, then they throw us a crumb with the openly gay Gene Robinson, then they take away the crumb!
But wait. While reading the responses at AfterElton, the dim bulb that is my brain suddenly lit up. To quote one of the commentors:
“As an American, I can’t tell you how much it pisses me off that ANY pastor is participating in an official government event. Regardless of whether the pastor is pro-gay or anti-gay, the Consitution specifically states that not only should the government NOT take preference to any religion (the first amendment), but that no religious test is required for an official (Article VI, Section 3). Having somebody spouting platitudes about god before the president takes the oath of office (his hand should be on a copy of the Constitution, not a Bible) is deeply offensive to me as an American.”
Too fucking right! Thanks ‘Joseph’, whoever you are, for reminding me. xo
Important point to remember. The no preference is a reminder to us all to be inclusive and tolerant, so hell that’s us PAP smearers stuffed!
The Constitution does not, in fact, “specifically [state] that not only should the government NOT take preference to any religion…”
The First Amendment to the Constitution specifically states that Congress shall pass no law respecting the *establishment* of a religion. That means that there can’t be an official state church, as in the UK. That’s it. That’s all. The Constitution is silent on the question of religious content during activities that are purely ceremonial, even those that may give the appearance of “preferring” a religion. (Note that the inaugural ceremony itself is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution; it’s purely for show, as transfer of office from one president to another could easily and legally take place without it.) Moreover, a voluntary religious gesture on the part of an official taking office is not even remotely a religious test.
People not understanding their own Constitution is deeply offensive to me as an American. Worse, people not bothering to use Google to verify things that they claim that a document “specifically states” is deeply offensive to me as an Internetizen.
(Internetian? Internetite?)
Make Do – NO, it’s good and noble to try to prevent a religious fundamentalist from becoming the VP and making it legal to kill endangered species etc etc.
Nephew Wolf -I share the sentiments even if he is misreading the constitution. No god in government and no god in the classroom! (you are a webizen AND a contrarian.)
I must correct you wolf nephew. The Church of England is the “official state church” of the UK. A number of its archbishops are automatically granted seats in the House of Lords and the Queen is its nominal head. A “state church” just means one that is officially recognized by the state. It usually has its roots way back when some monarch decided to tell the Pope to go fuck himself and is relatively harmless in its modern form (eg. the UK, one of the few (only?) countries in Christendom that had a Jewish prime minister, and of course Sweden, which has the largest percentage of non-believers in the world).
A “state church” therefore is not the same as a “state religion,” which would be more along the lines of a theocracy like Iran or evangelical America.
I await your fact-checking.
Maybe the visiting priests will stage a miracle service with Cheney and his wheelchair. “Be healed, my brother. Get up and dance!”
I just hope they won’t prophecy.
The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. Close quote
* ALBERT EINSTEIN
It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him.
– Arthur C. Clark
An honest God is the noblest work of man.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s blunders?
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Praying is like a rocking chair — it’ll give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere.
— Gypsy Rose Lee
Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?.
— Douglas Adams,
For the religious the holy is truth, for the philosophic the truth is holy
-Feuerbach
People are crazy. They can’t create a fly, but they create gods by the dozen!
-Michel de Montaigne
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
–Voltaire
If it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever.
— Woody Allen
God is a sound people make when they’re too tired to think anymore.
— Edward Abbey
From the point of view of a tapeworm, man was created by God to serve the appetite of the tapeworm.
— Edward Abbey
Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is.
— Jean Anouilh
To no form of religion is woman indebted for one impulse of freedom.
— Susan B. Anthony
I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world, and yet they lay their hands on everything they can get.
— Napoleon Bonapart
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
— Napoleon Bonapart
Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
— Napoleon Bonapart
No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.
–George Bush sr.
Those who oppose capital punishment and war are moral perverts and degenerates; they have lost the capacity for righteous indignation.
–Rev. R. H. Charles
We recognize the Negro the way God, and God’s Book and God’s Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him — our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude.
–Jefferson Davis
The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.
AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.
–Rev. Jerry Fallwell
The difference between the people of Israel and the nations of the world is an essential one. The Jew by his source and in his very essence is entirely good. The goy, by his source and in his very essence is completely evil. This is not simply a matter of religious distinction, but rather of two completely different species.
–Rabbi Saadya Grama
Therefore, I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord’s work.
–
Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith…. We need believing people.
–Adolph Hitler
We have enough votes to run the country. And when people say, “We have had enough,” we are going to take over.
–Rev. Pat Robertson
The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith.
–The Roman Catholic church in condemnation of Galileo
If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go to hell.
— Rev. Jimmy Swaggart
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself.
— Richard P. Feynman
I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.
— Benjamin Franklin
Perhaps God chose me to be an atheist?
— Stanislaw J. Lec
Sometimes the devil tempts me to believe in God.
— Stanislaw J. Lec
Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman.-
–H.L. Mencken
Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn’t!.
— George Bernard Shaw
I was dead for millions of years before I was born and it never inconvenienced me a bit.
— Mark Twain
Dexter provides us with an amusing list of quotations all of which make roughly the same error, that is, they confuse man-made religions with an altogether different proposition that there may be some mystery beyond us, the answer to which we do not yet comprehend, that is, the possibility of a non-human ‘prime mover’, if you like. For that reason I try to avoid the ‘God’ word because it only serves to muddy waters which are already fairly opaque. However, one does not have to be a raging (and most of them are, judging by this post and the comments) atheist, or a fundamental theist, to (in Lear’s words) “Take upon’s the mystery of things/ As if we were God’s spies”. If our early attempts to answer these mysteries appear in today’s allegedley rational(?) world to be foolish, well, that is a quality shared by the scientific world whose early theories were equally hilarious in retrospect, but no-one today dares to laugh at scientists! (Er, except me, and I laugh at some of them just as hard as I laugh at some bishops!)
annemarie -Thank you!
Juri -Ha! The wheelchair was a nice touch, wasn’t it?
Dexter – Wow. Christ.
David – I like to call myself a Devout Atheist. The truth is, I don’t even care if there is or isn’t a ‘god’ or supreme being. But I applaud your effort to avoid the G word!
Yes It Was! And I’m sure there was nothing wrong with his back. The chair was a con number to make people feel sorry for him and hate him less.
Sorry… sometimes the Devil temps me to excess..
(..but if God really wanted us to be happy he would have given us an atmosphere consisting of nitrous oxide..)
church stopped being interesting when religions stopped supporting the arts. although there are still some churches out there that put on a good musical show. and the best churchmen and women solidly support the separation of church and state.
and although I’m not much for religion, god bless the churchman who injected a little soul into yesterday’s inaugural ceremony.
I have a problem with the whole “God’s mandate” that came through in some of the inaugural address yesterday. Wasn’t that what Dubbaya kept saying? Hearing something like “This is the source of our confidence — the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny” from our new President is very disconcerting to me.
athiest groups in australia tried to copy the london uk ads that are featured in your image in this post. christian advertising is prominent on outdoor advertising here (the largest company is APN). APN refused to run the athiest advertisements for no reason. people say this would not have happened if there was a bill of rights or human rights act in australia and i have to agree.
i have not had a good experience with religious people. so i’m biased. but yeh. my 2 cents.
annemarie: “State church” is embraced by “state religion.” Banning the latter automatically bans the former, but it could be argued that banning the former does not necessarily ban the latter (and of course people trying to institute a state religion would have made that very argument, pointing out that they’re not saying which branch of Zoroastrianism gets the special treatment…). We can all be glad that the framers of the Constitution knew better than to leave that loophole open.
An official state church is an established church. That’s precisely what “establishment” means in this context, and it’s precisely what the framers were referring to. It’s what people still mean in England when they talk about establishment; even now they debate whether or not the C of E should be disestablished.
So you see, the framers didn’t just pull that word out of their asses. It has a specific meaning; it’s not a broad prohibition of the expression of religious sentiment by government officials or a mandate for rigid separation of church and state (a phrase which, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, appears nowhere in the Constitution).
My point, I guess, is to remind everybody that it is possible to lament the influence that organized religion’s uglier elements have on society without being an ahistorical and/or illiterate fucktard.
Hooray, HTML tags work here! *No* *more* *asterisks* *for* *emphasis*!
wolf nephew, I know this game. You try to bore the arse of people so that they finally just give in. Well I won’t. I’ll ignore you instead.
By the way, did you just call me a fucktard? You watch yourself mother fucker. I know where you live.
Of course it needs to be a 2 way street too.
Religions stay out of Govtment.
But, also Govment stay out of religions!
Both fall into temptation for each other.
Aww, come on, annemarie. It’s OK to be wrong (or so I’m told). And I was calling Joseph-whoever-he-is a fucktard.
all of you will be damned to hell for the things you have said and for turning your back on God our savior