Sunday, May 4, 2008

The Cult of God and Ethical Racism

This video made me furious. And the reason isn't because an atheist was discriminated against. What enraged me was that the community was so complicitous that they bound together to cover over any investigation into the charges made. How can you investigate discrimination when the investigators are all bigots? If the reason for my candor here seems unclear, I challenge you to do a little thought experiment. Just imagine that instead of Oklahoma, this story was set in Alabama, and that instead of being excluded for being an atheist, she was being excluded for being black. Then, you would see how horribly unbalanced, how viciously skewed that system is. Religion leads to bigotry and those bigots need to be exposed for the vicious scum that they are. Do Nazis have the right to hate Jews and black people, of course they do. Do they have the right to preach that hatred in the schools and from official office? Hell, no!

Religion leads to cult-thinking. The group amasses and is confident in their moral superiority for no other reason than that god tells them so. Defending their "morality" is a matter of course. Anyone who does wickedness for god is forgiven because doing for god must be noble, mustn't it? It's disgusting. And it underscores how insidious the religious contamination of our infrastructure has become. We need to kick god out of school and out of government. If you live in Oklahoma, write your representatives and senators in Congress. Write the school board of Hardesty, Oklahoma. Challenge any such decisions in your own community. Challenge creationism. Challenge intelligent design. Challenge Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. And speak up! Don't let their propaganda poison the world unanswered any longer. Your voices will help form the future. Get out there and fight! Run for office if you can. At least vote for reason if you can't.

Don't humor the madness thinking that well, the person spouting improbabilities is basically a "decent" person. If they had the opportunity and the influence they would have us all committed to that same madness. Wherever people of faith hold sway they create places like Hardesty or Saudi Arabia or Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia (if you include religious-like faith in society as a god). A society based on reason is a free society. A society based on god is totalitarian by definition. Why? Well, the only writer I've ever seen suggest a "Republic of Heaven" is Philip Pullman author of The Golden Compass, but he doesn't believe in god now does he? No, for all intensive purposes, the "army of the faithful" fights for the "Kingdom of Heaven". Well, we have no need of kings in America. Don't let them trick you into apathy or inaction. What religion represents in unabashed evil. And the horror is that it is an evil that smiles and promises you pretty things while asking you to sacrifice your soul and your mind to an impenetrable fog of fantasy and faith.

Don't be fooled! And don't give up! What we need now more than ever are rational leaders, men and women who will stand up to the challenges posed by wide-scale religious indoctrination in our communities and fight to keep those powers in check. Apathy will only hasten their victory. Action, even just at arm's reach, may be enough to tip the scales the other way. Don't let us be sucked into another dark age without a fight. We can't afford to risk the passive loss of all we have gained for reason in the last several centuries simply out of a misguided dedication to the tolerance of bad ideas. Anyways, check it out for yourselves. I hope it angers you as much as it did me. Thank you, Nicole for not giving in. You're an inspiration to us all.



And here is some info that could be useful for raising a fuss:

Hardesty School Board
P.O. Box 129
Hardesty, OK 73944
Texas County
PH: (580) 888-4258

District 3 Congressional Representative Frank Lucas


Senator Jim Inhofe (website was unreadable when I tried)

DC Office:

453 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-3603

Phone: 202-224-4721
Fax: 202-228-0380
Web Email
Website

District Office - Enid:
302 North Independence, Suite 104
Enid, OK 73701
Phone: 580-234-5105
Fax: 580-234-5094

District Office - McAlester:
215 East Choctaw, Suite 106
McAlester, OK 74501
Phone: 918-426-0933
Fax: 918-426-0935

District Office - Oklahoma City:
1900 Northwest Expressway, Suite 1210
Oklahoma City, OK 73118
Phone: 405-608-4381
Fax: 405-608-4120

District Office - Tulsa:
1924 South Utica Avenue, Suite 530
Tulsa, OK 74104-6511
Phone: 918-748-5111
Fax: 918-748-5119



Senator Tom Coburn

DC Office:

172 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-3603
Phone: 202-224-5754
Fax: 202-224-6008
Web Email
Website

District Office- Lawton:
711 Southwest D Avenue, Suite 202
Lawton, OK 73501
Phone: 580-357-9878
Fax: 580-355-3560

District Office- Oklahoma City:
2250 West Modelle Street, Suite C
Oklahoma City, OK 73102
Phone: 405-231-4941
Fax: 405-231-5051

District Office- Tulsa:
3310 Mid-Continent Tower
401 South Boston
Tulsa, OK 74103
Phone: 918-581-7651
Fax: 918-581-7195

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