“Science Flies You To The Moon. Religion Flies You Into Buildings”

I see the religious fundamentalists in the North Dakota Legislature are continuing their jihad against abortion with House Bill 1527, another attempt to set aside Roe vs. Wade. Only an idiot would deny that life begins at conception. But that’s just where the fun begins.

North Dakotans seem to have a proclivity for spending millions on losers. The name “Fighting Sioux” and the 3,000 images in the hockey palace come to mind. How many millions are involved in that losing cause?

Now the conservative jihadists want to waste up to $8 million in legal fees trying to get a “life” smaller than the period at the end of this sentence enshrined in law. I see the sponsor of another “abortion” bill, HB 1445, which would ensure that a woman would know that an abortion would end the life of a “unique human being,” says about both bills: “I guess you have to deal with this and vote with your heart.” I would hope that legislators would vote with their brains, but maybe that’s too much to hope for after they have constructed another “stupid woman” law for passage.

Every year in the United States over 26,000 babies die during or after the 20th week in their mother’s womb or during birth. In at least half of the cases doctors don’t have a clue about what caused the problem. Sometimes we have fetuses with two or three sets of legs, half a brain or no brain, no eyes, or two heads. Do we want politicians to make medical and religious decisions for us in those cases? Do we want rosaries to dominate ovaries?

It doesn’t help to have Republicans always busy sniffing around the crotches of the populace and putting their “auras” and trying to put pictures of a blond Jesus in every bedroom. They are like the mythical mosquito in the form of Stan called Beelzebug that gets in your face all day and night and won’t leave.

They are persistent nutcases. They just won’t stay out of private and personal lives until they have foisted their religious ideas on all of us. Perhaps there should be a federal law limiting sponsors of abortion bills to those who have a combined obstetrics-home economics-economics-gynecology-philosophy-demography degree.

In Oklahoma, for example, the Republicans are trying to pass a bill that would prohibit a doctor from performing abortions solely on account of the gender of a fetus, even if they have no evidence that this has happened anywhere in the United States!

Why don’t legislators go pass an economic stimulus for more fish houses, name a post office after an apostle, put statues of Ronald Reagan on every mile marker, rename the North Dakota State Mill and Elevator after Lenin, the state bank after Karl Marx—or do something else as useful?

It Often Depends On The Day Of The Week

When the actor and comedian W.C. Fields was on his deathbed, a friend who knew him well sneaked into his room to see if Fields was awake. He was shocked to discover him paging through the Bible, which might have been the first time for Fields.

The visitor said: “Bill, I didn’t know you were religious!” Fields responded, “I’m not. I’m just looking for loopholes.” I am somewhat in the same condition, but I suspect there are a lot of people with me in church on Sunday who are looking for loopholes too.

So, I am a lukewarm Lutheran on Sundays, but sometimes something happens there so I am an agnostic by Monday. By Tuesday the possibility exists I will be an atheist, and by Wednesday I will have recovered enough to join the pagans for dances around some huge rocks. Influenced by a full moon, I may be a Wiccan celebrating earth, wind and fire by Thursday. By Friday the thoughts of such witchery might bring on the bloody sacrifices of the Aztecs and the passions of Mel Gibson and his father, members of the conservative Catholic tribe called Opus Dei. I often enjoy fishing and sight-sunning on Saturdays so I turn into a pantheist. And so it goes.

Shakespeare stated this religious conundrum best in Hamlet: “Who would fardels (burdens) bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, / But that the dread of something after death, / The undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will, / And makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others we know not of? Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all…”

Was Hurricane Katrina God’s Work?

Pope Benedict has been putting most of his appendages in his mouth lately while trying to make the case that his is the only path to Heaven. In one of his latest teachings he stated “a world without God is a world without hope.”

It’s funny that there are millions of atheists who want the same things as Christians: peace in our time, just for all, a good life for all children, an end to all poverty, and an opportunity to enjoy life. How many atheists are suicide bombers? How many agnostics have burned churchgoers at the stake? How many pantheists have cut the hearts out of living humans on sacrificial altars, waved them triumphantly around, and pleaded with their “gods” for rain?

Benedict recently tried to promote to bishop an Austrian priest who preached that Hurricane Katrina descended on New Orleans because the city was “sinful.” He added that New Orleans was “spiritually polluted” because it “had the best brothels and the prettiest prostitutes.”

Geez, had the priest checked out all of Christendom? The priest claimed there seemed to be an unnatural increase in the number of disasters lately. Well, maybe God was busy with other tragedies. I recently saw an animal program which featured a woman insisting that her God had answered her prayers by curing her cat of cancer. Was God too busy with treating the cat to save New Orleans from Katrina?

I think this society has made some progress by putting so much heat on the crystal-balling priest that he asked Benedict to withdraw his name. But what point was Benedict making?

And then we have the situation of the Pope bringing back into the Vatican fold the conservative bishop who believed the Holocaust never happened because only 200,000 to 300,000—the mentally handicapped, the disabled, gays, and Jews—were killed.

What was the Pope, a former member of the Hitler Youth and the Nazi Army, thinking? What did the bishop think the gas chambers and the ovens in a dozen concentration camps such as Belsen, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald were used for? Storage of meat and neighborhood barbecues? What about the pictures of thousands of corpses—a few of the six million killed—stacked like cordwood?

There was enough evidence to convict millions of Germans of war crimes. I see the Pope is now forcing the bishop to recant—but only after the world has expressed outrage.

Elephants Treat Each Other With Respect

Many animals treat members of their herd, gaggle, or pride with respect. Elephants mourn their dead, assist in treating the sick, and form long-lasting relationships with each other. They have no religion that we know of. Why do they have a conscience?

The next time you see your rabbi, minister, priest or guru ask him: if he lost faith, would he rape, commit adultery, murder, covet his neighbors’ goods and steal them, or try to garner all of the world’s wealth for himself? Do only those who have “faith” have consciences? If we look at what 5,000 years of religion have done for us and what the last 100 years of science have done for us, which would you pick?

Certainly the faithful do marvelous things for society and its impoverished minions. Religions give us a sense of community, a reason for missions, and might add a little love for our fellow man. But practically all of the wars of the last 2,000 years have been caused by a mix of religion, race, and economics. Right now about 100 little and big wars rage around the world. Most of them are religious and racial.

The Muslim Taliban rewards honor killings and the beheading of women for sexual offenses or divorce. They insist women should be kept illiterate, in the kitchen, and Nadya Suleman-pregnant. The Afghan Taliban blows up schools for girls as fast as they are built. Women who do not wear a veil have acid thrown in their faces by the Taliban Department of Vice and Virtue. To convict a man of rape a Muslim woman must have four men testify they were witnesses.

I recently read of an Iraqi radical Shiite whose ambition was to marry four wives and have 50 children. He already had two wives and 20 children. He had convinced a 16-year-old son to become a suicide bomber and destroy Sunnis. He was very proud of his son for accomplishing the mission. He was eager to supply another son as a suicide bomber.

Shia fundamentalists in Iran recently lowered the age of consent to nine for girls because the Prophet Mohammad’s youngest wife in the 7th century was of that age. A New York state Muslim who operated a TV station with his wife with the goal of representing American Muslims as moderates is in jail for murdering and beheading her in a station hallway. She was seeking a divorce and had gotten a protection order. So much for Muslim moderation.

Where Are The Most “Religious” People In The United States?

According to a poll of 350,000 Americans, about 15 percent say they have no religious “identity,” while 65 percent say that religion is important in their lives. Mississippi leads the country with the “most religious” at 85 percent.

Other leaders are as follows: Alabama (82&), South Carolina (80&), Tennessee (79%), Louisiana (78%), and Arkansas (78%). Generally these states also lead in murders and other crimes per capita. The “least religious” states—Vermont (42%), New Hampshire (46%), Maine (48%), Massachusetts (48%), Alaska (51%), and Washington (52%),—have much better records. Utah at 69%, filled with Mormons and the radical polygamist sects, did not make the “most religious” list. Strange.

Another fact from the survey: Catholics no longer are more religious than the average American. Another: evangelical teenage Christians are more sexually active than Mormon teenagers.

The states with the highest divorce rates were all “red” (Republican) states in 2004: Nevada, Arkansas, Wyoming, Idaho, and West Virginia. States with the lowest divorce rates were all “blue” (Democrat): Illinois, Massachusetts, Iowa, Minnesota and New Jersey.

The states with the highest teenage pregnancy rates are all Republican states: Nevada, Arizona, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas (The political affiliation of the states was based on the 2004 elections). The states with the lowest teenage pregnancy rates were all Democrat (except North Dakota): Vermont, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Maine.

The five states with the lowest median age at marriage are all red states: Utah, Oklahoma, Idaho, Arkansas and Kentucky. The states with the highest median age for marriage are all blue: Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Jersey.

If social conservatives and evangelicals are “most religious,” why are their offspring so screwed up? Do these stats prove that teaching only abstinence is ineffective? The blue states teach comprehensive sex education, including such bizarre topics as contraception. Recent surveys indicate that abstinence education is no more effective than sex information obtained in the back alley or in Southern middle and high schools.

I wish the American Taliban would concentrate their conversion efforts on improving the individual rights of all instead of trying to make us all jihadists for religions that are designed to function in the 13th century. We have had enough murders by jihadists trying to change people’s minds by hijacking symbols of modernity and flying them into towers.