Religion is Destroying America

 

I intend no disrespect to you, personally, or your faith, if it’s observed in a quiet, humble, personal, and non-ostentatious manner, but the time has come for someone besides Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins to discuss the genuine danger to America. I'm alluding to the explanation Trump was chosen president. The explanation a lady's all in all correct to conceptive medical services is going to be upset by the High Court. The explanation we can't gain any firearm influence in this country. The explanation of sex training is so perilously deficient. The explanation LGBTQ freedoms are enduring an onslaught incorporates the probable renouncement of gay marriage.

Religion has spread like metastasizing disease all through bureaucratic and neighbourhood government, our sheets of instruction, our court framework, and the body politic. The best way to stop malignant growth is it kills it.

I'm targeting white evangelicals, a minority of fanatics that has an extremely tight grip on American legislative issues, the NRA (through which a huge number of dollars in dim cash is piped to lawmakers), and the legal executive, yet I might want to go above and beyond than that. All religion is innately horrendous, eccentric, critical, disruptive, and hallucinating.

However much it might torment or infuriate you to hear this, there is no proof that God exists. Furthermore, for the people who reject their obligation regarding the obligation to prove any claims, who demand there's no proof that God doesn't exist (itself a sensible misrepresentation), I give you stargazer creator cosmologist Carl Sagan: "Non-attendance of proof isn't proof of non-appearance." all in all, demonstrating the non-presence of that for which no proof of any sort exists is wrong since nothing can be pertinent to the non-existent. The non-existent isn't anything. There is no such thing as it.

Assuming I say that Michigan J. Frog is moving in my clothing cabinet, you could request that I demonstrate it. I could then share with you, demonstrate that Michigan J. Frog isn't moving in my clothing cabinet. You wouldn't have the option to discredit that Michigan J. Frog is moving in my clothing cabinet since Michigan J. There is no such thing as a frog, wherein case I could priggishly attest that since you can't negate my assertion, it should consequently be valid.

There are 4,200 religions on the planet. Which one is the "valid" god? Also, assuming there would one say one is a valid god, doesn't that naturally negate most of them?

This we're facing, basically from the devotees. The ones who are involving the devotees as political gun grain and naïve treasure troves (Joel Osteen, Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr., Ted Rough, Jim Bakker, Oral Roberts, Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church of Dallas, Rick Warren, Ralph Reed's Christian Alliance, James Dobson's Emphasis on the Family, and Jerry Falwell's Ethical Greater part, among a huge number of others) could have begun as adherents, yet they sometime in the past failed to remember the Scriptural order about the implausibility of a rich man going through the opening of a needle.

The confidence economy rounds up north of $1.2 trillion every year, more than the ten greatest American tech firms consolidated, including Apple, Amazon, and Google. Dissimilar to those tech firms, strict establishments are Segment 501(c)(3) associations, meaning they pay zero in government, state, or nearby pay and local charges. Since the Principal Revision ensures opportunity of religion, the IRS adopts a hands-off strategy to chapels, despite the fact that most of these holy places are politically lobbyist and consistently violate the similarly hallowed detachment of chapel and state — a right which is likewise safeguarded under the law.

The confidence economy is, truth be told, the fifteenth biggest public economy on the planet. What's more, this is startling. How can it be the case to separate $1.2 trillion bucks yearly from something that has not any more evidentiality haul than a fantasy? Is the need to trust in an omniscient, all-strong god fundamental in the 21st 100 years? Do we truly require a whip (the wages of wrongdoing) and a carrot (Jesus' approval) to carry on with an ethically noble existence?

The zealous component of American Christianity is especially treacherous. In 1987, Christian writer George Award wrote in his book, The Top-down Restructuring: Scriptural Standards for Political Activity, "Christians have a commitment, a command, a commission, a blessed liability to recover the land for Jesus Christ — to have territory in common designs, similarly as in each and every part of life and righteousness. … However, it is territory we are later. In addition to a voice … Christian legislative issues has as its essential expectation the success of the land — of men, families, establishments, organizations, courts, and legislatures for the Realm of Christ."

With these chilling words and the occasions of the beyond five years, we at long last comprehend the grave peril we are in.

As a long-lasting common humanist, I would in general see evangelicals as ridiculous, confusing, a piece faint but on a very basic level — or Essentially — innocuous. I was absurd. Since the social commotion of the last part of the 60s/mid-70s, ultra-traditional Christians have been discreetly arranging. They were frightened by what they saw as a public attack on family esteems: the sexual upheaval, Roe v. Swim, and Weave Jones College losing its expense-excluded status over a prohibition on interracial dating. The GOP, covering its own white patriot distrustfulness with a way of talking about crooks and government assistance cheats, won over being the ideal vehicle for white evangelism. The white Christian patriots required political clout; the GOP required cash.

Furthermore, kid, did they convey: Reagan, Bramble, Trump, SCOTUS Judges Amy Coney Barrett (zealous Catholic), Brett Kavanaugh (outreaching Catholic), John Roberts (fervent Catholic), Samuel Alito (zealous Catholic), Clarence Thomas (fundamentalist Catholic). High Court Equity Sonia Sotomayor, similar to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Biden, is a commonplace Roman Catholic, an undeniably less venomous example of the variety.

The full degree of the strict right's financing of the GOP, and by the degree of the NRA, is covered up, considering that numerous Christian moderate associations are enrolled as holy places, which don't need to unveil data. Assuming the twentieth and 21st century have shown us anything by any stretch of the imagination, it's that haziness in any association (the pederasty of the Catholic Church, for instance — where 216,000 kids were manhandled by Catholic clerics somewhere in the range of 1950 and 2020 — or the 500 names delivered such a long way regarding sexual maltreatment executed by Southern Baptist church authorities, or even the worked to-reason dinkiness of cryptographic money) prompts obscenity and debasement without fail.

Evidently, individuals truly are just basically as great as they must be, including strict individuals. The moment we think nobody is watching, we surrender to our basest motivations: tranquillizing and assaulting ladies (Jim Bakker), improper contacting, attack, and assault (Bill Gothard), pool young men, spouse trading and voyeurism (Jerry Falwell, Jr.), wedding an eight-year-old young lady (Tony Alamo), pornography dependence and attacking a four-year-old (Bounce Demure), ownership of kid erotic entertainment (Dave Reynolds), jerking off on a fifteen-year-old while she cried and beseeched him to stop (Casual get-together Moderate/Duggar mate Doug Phillips), gem meth and male escorts (change treatment defender Ted Run down). On the off chance that a raving band of crazy-looking nonbelievers slid on America and serious even 1/tenth of these wrongdoings, they'd be drawn and quartered in a public square.

For a really long time, skeptics, freethinkers, common humanists, and unaffiliated non-devotees have stayed quiet about their absence of confidence. It's difficult for certain individuals to concede they don't have confidence in god or a higher power. They might have profoundly strict relatives they don't wish to outrage. Likewise, in a socially Christian culture, conceding you're an exception has innate dangers. You could be missed for advancement. Your children probably won't be welcome to specific birthday celebrations. The outcomes of breaking with the crowd are genuine, and not every person has the advantage of boldness, particularly in more modest networks.

There are no agnostics in foxholes. I understand that strict conviction can be of extraordinary solace to individuals who are languishing. Also, assuming adherents were content to rehearse their confidence without anyone else, without causing their frightening "ethical quality" on others, I wouldn't compose this article.--

3

Listen

Share

The Founding Fathers every Christian nationalist claims to revere understood the fundamental importance of the separation of church and state. We no longer have any. The time to act is now if there is any hope left of saving our country from becoming a chapter out of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Here’s your call to action.

1. When and where possible, assert your belief that Christian nationalists are breaching that lawful and necessary divide between church and state.
2. Vote for Democrats, especially those who “wear their religion” lightly.
3. Join the Freedom from Religion Foundation. They are doing good work.
4. Remind your Republican friends that in any presidential election, God seems to back at least three or four candidates. How is that possible?
5. Watch for, and object to, religious encroachments on public property. The Satanic Temple took an amusing (and effective) approach to protesting a Ten Commandments monument by erecting this goat-headed statue.
6. If you are a non-believer, when and where possible, tell people that you are a non-believer. It will give others the courage to do the same.
7. Heighten your awareness of subtle and not-so-subtle societal pressure to keep your lack of belief a secret. I have certainly felt it. Perhaps you have, too.
8. When I was younger and frankly sweeter, Christians used to proselytize to me like crazy. When you live in a Bible-belt state, that kind of thing can happen a lot. I always gave them a politely neutral stare, but I now see how wrong that was. If someone is witnessing to you, don’t be afraid to shut them down. Don’t let them badger or intimidate you. Tell them how offensive you find that kind of talk and then change the subject or walk away.
9. Lead by example. Secular humanism/agnosticism/atheism is like vegetarianism. You don’t win hearts and minds by preaching, but by leading a moral, compassionate life free of religion.
10. Remember these words: “Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”