Carl, there is a venerable tradition of rather amusing and even very funnu free-thinking and irreligiosity going back to Hume's dryly hysterical essay On Miracles, Voltaire's Candide, and Paine's The Age of Rewson. And of course Twain. Not to mention Nietzsche. My experience in Ohio was that that literature iis still liberating for some people from fundie backgrounds. But it's best when it's funny -- mockery is the right mode for the critique of religion. If youa sk me, which you didn't, your stuff is too serious and sounds too defensive. jks
--- Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Jon Johanning <jjohanning at igc.org>
> >
> >On Nov 8, 2004, at 9:28 AM, Carl Remick wrote:
> >
> >>... If you let that toxic stew simmer for decades,
> it's really no wonder
> >>that holy rollers are running the country now.
> The electorate will be
> >>baying at the moon next.
> >
> >I think it's a gross exaggeration to say that holy
> rollers are running the
> >country. I think that the statistics will show that
> the majority of Bush's
> >voters were in fact not "holy rollers" (whatever
> you mean by that) ...
>
> Nothing good.
>
> >... and of course nearly half the electorate, and a
> lot of the non-voters,
> >don't support Bush. The holy rollers have more
> political clout than they
> >did some decades ago, but they are far from being
> in complete charge of the
> >country.
>
> I'd say the circumstantial evidence is strong that
> religious loonies are in
> complete charge of the country. Above all else, the
> election results
> represent adamant denial of reality -- belief that
> Iraq was responsible for
> 9/11, that Bush has alleviated rather than worsened
> the potential for
> terrorism, that the US can pile up endless external
> debt while telling other
> nations to go fuck themselves, etc., etc. That
> amount of fantasy is
> compatible only with a thoroughgoing religious
> worldview. Faith, as Mark
> Twain memorably observed, is believing what you know
> ain't so.
>
> Carl
>
>
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