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Monday, September 15. 2008

It Should Be Funny

Just the way to start the day Sunday. The headline of the lead story on the front page of the San Diego Union-Tribune says: “The Battle Over God’s Will.” Here it is, the 21st Century and we’re still having the debate over “God’s will”? As a public policy discussion? Are you kidding me?

We are having a political debate over a religion, which, by the standard of the First Amendment, were it strictly interpreted, should have no influence over public policy lest we exclude those who believe differently. Not to mention, this policy debate is based on a religion that was first codified no less than 3,000 years ago!

The current dominant religious belief of our nation was finally created and began to be disseminated globally towards the end of the Roman Empire, some 1,700 years ago, 300 years after the central figure in this religion died, we think, on a cross at the hands of a Roman governor and some jealous Jews.

And in 2008, the tenets of this religion, based solely on superstition due to a lack of understanding of the physical sciences, enters the political debate, not as to whether it is truth — relevant — but on who actually knows “God’s will.”

Abraham Lincoln, our 16th and greatest president, was even brought into the current debate.

So, recently I told my Canadian friend Witchy I would stop making jokes at Canada’s expense because we as a nation have no room to judge. She suggested we Americans lighten up and learn to laugh at ourselves, a suggestion that, on the face of it, has merit. But can we actually afford to laugh at the situation of someone who is so unqualified to be vice president, let alone president, being selected for the job so incompetently, for such cynical reasons that any reference to the quaint and hopeful faith that “the worst is behind us” seems suicidal?

Witchy stopped laughing when it was pointed out just how close Sarah Palin would be to having her finger “on the button” and just what that could mean to not only us, her entertaining neighbors to the south, but to the entirety of the planet, including the Great White North.

 Which reminds me, it’s doubtful I can stop making jokes at Canada’s expense as long as photos and videos of Bob and Doug McKenzie can still be found on the Internets. Sorry, my dear. My good intentions can hold my humor in check for only so long.

Then I read Bob Herbert’s most recent column in the New York Times and was struck by his opening observation: “While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.” (Italics mine)

Had to ask, “Where was he during the Reagan years? In 2000 and then again in 2002-03 when blatant dim-wittedness led us into a war and then again in 2004 when the current dimwit was elected to a 2nd term?”

All philosophical questions, rhetorical by the very fact that Bob Herbert is not likely to read this column, but the questions leapt from my consciousness directly to my keyboard, summed up with: Where has Bob Herbert been that last seven years at least?

Herbert has been a favorite columnist for a long time now and one of his unfailing characteristics has been his (usually) strong thread of hope and positive attitude. He rarely — if ever — allows himself to wallow in cynicism, unlike myself. Cynicism is so … post-Vietnam!

He might, on occasion, find himself feeling a little despaired, but there’s always been certainty that whatever is ailing us as a nation can be corrected, if we just have a little more patience and cooler, more informed minds prevail. Bob Herbert has been my comfort blanket, the story teller that told the tales that put me to sleep quietly and peacefully, while his colleague, Maureen Dowd, equally insightful, kept me awake, partying all night on a large serving of righteous and cynical intellectualism that, by its very design, pointed out with derisive and accurate clarity the superiority of “us” versus “them.”

Not on Saturday and if Bob Herbert feels as if this is doom, Sarah Palin actually becoming Vice President, I’m truly frightened. What’s more, the article in the Union-Tribune had nothing to do with Sarah Palin directly, but the two topics are undeniably connected.

In San Diego, come November 4, one of the many ballot initiatives we will have to wade through to cast our votes is Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage. The argument against same-sex marriage is purely religious; there is no data to support any suppositions that people marrying other people of the same gender causes any harm to America; socially, politically, economically or spiritually. The push to ban same-sex marriage is religious, nothing else.

The leaders of the movement to ban “gay marriage” are all religious leaders, predominantly of the various Christian sects and their rhetoric is all based upon their interpretations of a set of books within a book first written a few thousand years after the last Ice Age was retreating from the plains to make room for our amber waves of grain. Think about that. Part of their “evidence” that same-sex marriage is wrong is based on the Books of Genesis, Deuteronomy and Leviticus, first put to “paper” at least 1,200 years before Christ, some 3,200 years ago.

How could that be possibly relevant today? We know, for instance, the world (and universe) continues to evolve and has done so for hundreds of millions of years and the likelihood that all of humanity sprung from one man and one woman is not only unlikely, but there is evidence that humans evolved from different species of primates, quite similar in all the respects that make us human, but from vastly different areas of the planet.

We also know the world isn’t flat, the sun, moon, stars and planets don’t revolve around Earth and the sun doesn’t “rise” or “set,” the Earth spins on its axis. We know locusts swarm every seven or so years, the waters of rivers (and other bodies of water) will turn blood red with certain conditions that bring out parasitic algae-like creatures, and there isn’t a god sitting on a cloud throwing lightening bolts at us because we sinned or otherwise dishonored him.

We know all this because the hallmark of human development has been our quest for knowledge, not superstition, and science has advanced despite our desperate clinging to superstition. Genesis has been wholly refuted by intellect and the quaint laws first written in Deuteronomy and Leviticus have been, in some cases, outlawed in modern times. We, for instance, cannot legally own, buy or sell slaves. We still value a man more than a woman, as evidenced by the disparity in pay, but even that is falling away as the years march by.

We can’t legally stone someone for blasphemy or pluck out one’s eye for ogling women. And yet, we have a debate brewing over who knows “God’s will.” You’d think those who oppose Prop 8 would be using logic and science and facts, but no, the pre-eminent leaders of the anti-Prop 8 force are religious leaders who draw their “guidance” from the same religious text as those who support Prop 8.

You tie the reality that 3,000-year old superstition is the guiding force behind our collective political decision-making — on both sides of the debate — with Bob Herbert’s reason to lapse into pessimism, it becomes apparent, more real, that we as a nation are doomed.

You know Witchy, I can’t think of anything funny to write about Canada at the moment.

Posted by Tim Forkes in Religion and Society at 00:01 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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