For those of you that are familiar with this 'blog, you will then know of my loathing for religion. All religion.But recent events have turned this loathing into a growing fear of what is gradually emerging from the very thick buckle of the Bible Belt of North America
that seems to be somewhat at odds with the rise of a similar blind, many-armed monster rising out of the East.
"Cory Burnell [or Charleston, South Carolina] wants to set up a Christian nation within the United States where abortion is illegal, gay marriage is banned, schools cannot teach evolution, children can pray to Jesus in public schools and the Ten Commandments are posted publicly."
I'm not entirely clued up on American law, but what I do know is, the United States of America chose British case law as the basis of its own. Also, like Britain, America has a very clear division between church and state, and with good reason, too.
To that end, Burnell, 29, left the Republican Party, moved from California and founded Christian Exodus two years ago with the goal of redirecting the United States by "redeeming" one state at a time."
A redirection is somewhat of an understatement. But then again, the current president of the United States of America seems to be complicit with such intent and would hardly stand in the way:
"The push comes at a time when Christian fundamentalism is a growing force in U.S. politics, displays of the Ten Commandments in government buildings are spurring litigation and President George W. Bush is touting the evangelical Christian credentials of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers."
More worryingly:
"The organization's Web site says if it does not meet its goal of change, it will work to secede from the United States.
South Carolina was the first state to secede from the union in 1860, and the first shots of the U.S. Civil War were fired from Charleston's Battery onto Fort Sumter."
But
things get worse:
"A British-based professor of sociology has testified in a US federal court that intelligent design (ID) is a scientific concept, not a religious one."
For those of you not familiar with so-called Intelligent Design, it is merely a re-branding of the old and tired and thoroughly exhausted Creationist movement.
A change of name is simply one more pathetic tactic in their never-ending denialist vendetta against the scientific community.
"Professor Fuller was called as a witness by the Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania to help defend its decision to allow intelligent design to be taught in science classes, The Guardian reports.
Subsequently, a group of parents began legal proceedings against the school board, demanding that ID be removed from the science curriculum. They argue that it violates the constitutional separation of church and state, and is merely creationism in disguise."
Which is entirely correct.
Any connection between church and state must be a tenuous one.
"However, Professor Fuller holds that because scientists have inferred the existence of a designer from observations of biological phenomena, it should count as scientific.
"It seems to me in many respects the cards are stacked against radical, innovative views getting a fair hearing in science these days," he said."
My loathing for such talk-speak enrages me to the point of exhaustion.
There is nothing .. nothing even remotely 'radical' or 'innovative' about Intelligent Design:
"But the idea that an intelligent designer might be responsible for complex forms of life is hardly new or even radical. It was first put forward in 1802 by William Paley in his book Natural Theology."
Put simply, Intelligent Design is not an avenue for scientific enquiry. It is instead a means of closing down the very pursuit of knowledge, especially the pursuit of the kind of knowledge that undermines the values that these utterly blind and feckless morons believe in.
Put even more simply, the proponents of Intelligent Design would prefer that we take the word of their god and their teachings as holding to be true and cease and desist all further pursuit of knowledge.
Religion is a cancer. Over the years, we have developed ways of dealing with this cancer, and in time, we have managed to strip away those unhealthy cells and bring life to the dead flesh they occupied.
In time, we will remove them from the very body of society and we will be clean once more.
However, those remnants that now persist are only too aware of their impending demise and like all aggressive agents, their actions become ever more destructive.
In their shallow minds, this world seen through their coloured and blurred eyes would be better left as a baron husk, bereft of life than exist in any way, shape of form bereft of religion.
If there was ever a case for the existence of evil; of which I have yet to have such a thing presented to me, these people are the embodiment of evil, since it is in their minds that such things have a foundation in reality.
"For there is nothing either good or bad, thinking makes it so."
~ William Shakespeare 1564-1616, Hamlet, II.ii
Merely thinking such things makes them true...
