Thursday, August 29, 2002
A Secular Government
There's a worrysome trend in the ole U.S. of A. of religion becoming part of government platform. Witness the furor over the pledge of allegiance as an example. Why is this worrisome you may ask, isn't our very way of life based on religious conviction and values? Well, not entirely. The whole idea, and I've mentioned this before, was and is to sepearte church and state. You can have a free country with a secular goverment of no religious affiliation or you can have one rooted in religion but don't expect it to be free in the way we know. Let's put it this way since we're so close to September 11th here, name one muslim country with a secular government? There isn't one. And the muslim religion is obviously a very powerful political force. A great number of muslim countries strictly enforce their version of it as well and this should never mean to imply freedom of anything if you stop to think about it. Living in such a country would mean death for me if I were to post something saying Mohammed didn't know what he was talking about. If your a woman, well, you know that story already.
Ah but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves because we all know god is on our side. We won't mention there was a time when religion and the church held great power over European countries. The bible held all the answers to human knowledge and everything was self-evident. To question it via science or any other method could lead to death or other form of punishment. Nooo, that's not right you may say, well, just ask Galileo. He was just pardoned this century, a little late though.
Many muslim countries now find themselves in the same quandry as 13th century Europe. It was only when religious control began to weaken that Europe shed it's yoke of religion and moved out of the dark ages. The Muslim world is much like this today, in a dark age, moving backwards, with modernity shunned as herecy.
There's a worrysome trend in the ole U.S. of A. of religion becoming part of government platform. Witness the furor over the pledge of allegiance as an example. Why is this worrisome you may ask, isn't our very way of life based on religious conviction and values? Well, not entirely. The whole idea, and I've mentioned this before, was and is to sepearte church and state. You can have a free country with a secular goverment of no religious affiliation or you can have one rooted in religion but don't expect it to be free in the way we know. Let's put it this way since we're so close to September 11th here, name one muslim country with a secular government? There isn't one. And the muslim religion is obviously a very powerful political force. A great number of muslim countries strictly enforce their version of it as well and this should never mean to imply freedom of anything if you stop to think about it. Living in such a country would mean death for me if I were to post something saying Mohammed didn't know what he was talking about. If your a woman, well, you know that story already.
Ah but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves because we all know god is on our side. We won't mention there was a time when religion and the church held great power over European countries. The bible held all the answers to human knowledge and everything was self-evident. To question it via science or any other method could lead to death or other form of punishment. Nooo, that's not right you may say, well, just ask Galileo. He was just pardoned this century, a little late though.
Many muslim countries now find themselves in the same quandry as 13th century Europe. It was only when religious control began to weaken that Europe shed it's yoke of religion and moved out of the dark ages. The Muslim world is much like this today, in a dark age, moving backwards, with modernity shunned as herecy.
