10,000 Monkeys and a Camera

A Joan Osborne earworm has been playing in my head ever since I read Sam Harris’s provocative There is No God (And You Know It) on the Huffington Post this morning. I’m still wading through the comments, but the responses to the post are, I think, the best part.

I don’t really care what my neighbors believe as long as they are good people — in theory, at least. I mean, it shouldn’t matter. If the dude across the street wants to worship Jesus, Buddha or the honeysuckle bush behind his house, who am I to stop him? What he believes and how he attends to those beliefs should have no bearing on my ability to go about my daily business. The problem is that there are a growing number of people in the world who do want to intrude on my personal business, and further, want to use their belief systems as a source of public policy, and they’re becoming more and more insistent about it, and many people continue to die as a result.

It can be hard to separate the message from the messenger, just as it’s hard to distinguish the fanatic from the object of his obsession. That is why, I think, we are seeing more public criticism of religion from atheists. Back when people were fairly private about religion, most atheists were content keep their thoughts about religion to themselves. But that is no longer the case. Religion is increasingly in our schools, courtrooms, pharmacies, and in the highest reaches of our government. Anyone who is not alarmed by that probably hasn’t given it a whole lot of thought.

Religion itself is fairly harmless, but combined with a love of money, politics or a desire for power, it becomes a very dangerous thing, as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and others of their ilk are so fond of demonstrating. It would be one thing if James Dobson actually focused on the family. But he doesn’t. His blatantly political agenda calls for such things as the elimination of the Department of Education and the barring of women and homosexuals from military service. Where in the Bible is the issue of public vs. private education discussed? And I’m afraid that until the real Christians rein in the pseudo religious leaders and politicians who use Christianity to line their pockets and enhance their power, the division between the religious and the secular in this country is only going to get wider and more combative. And people like me, who would ordinarily identify as Christian, will become more and more reluctant to do so.

UPDATE: See the Boston Globe, Washington Post, and New York Times for articles about Dobson’s involvement in recent political controversies.

UPDATE: video of an interesting discussion with Bill Maher, Salman Rushdie, Ben Affleck, and Andrew Sullivan