I'm An Atheist, Why Aren't You Pt. 2

If you are a sincere person of faith believing in god and your religion I have no problem with you as an individual. In my lifetime, thus far, my friends have been Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian but never set foot in a church, spiritual but thoroughly confused and only one admitted atheist. One of my closest friends was an Orthodox Priest who died at the age of 57 of a variety of catastrophic diseases. He passed away over sixteen years ago and I still regularly think of him. At his funeral his wife told me that he considered me his best friend. We never talked about religion or God, that's not what he wanted. He needed a refuge from the pettiness of Church life and the bullshit his lay council subjected him to. We smoked, drank, ate, stretched our intellects and bitched about the then destruction of the Batman movie franchise. He was intelligent, perceptive and spoke four languages, including Russian and I assure you he knew that I was not simply a lapsed Catholic but an atheist and he didn't care.

If you seek to spread your religious beliefs like an infection then it's a problem. The religious institutions themselves are the root of crippling free thought and human development, but the individual adherent who practices their faith for themselves and their fellow travelers and do not attempt proselytization and injecting their doctrine into secular laws then I say live and let live. I will stand and fight for your right to believe as you wish, sadly, experience and history teach that the opposite is not true. Then there's the other problem, the constant attempts to inject that religious doctrine into secular law, it happens everyday in every part of the country. With the staggering statistic that 74% of Americans believe in God, it is incredulous that politicians and their religious supporters continually say that they are under attack and their ability to worship God is threatened. Who is attacking them? If we believe that the other 26% are against them, logically 26% cannot harm 74%. Of course logic has nothing to do with religion, particularly fundamentalism, and the lies about being under attack by those godless secularists helps them to raise large sums of money for their churches and political pacs. They use the false attack strategy to attempt to pass laws which are about institutionalizing bigotry and denial of equal rights to all citizens. There is not now nor has there ever been an assault on God and your ability to worship your God as you see fit, except for Jews and Catholics who were greatly despised by the mostly Protestant original generations of our country. Jews and Catholics were dirty disgusting immigrants polluting our country and taking jobs away from good wholesome American folk. (Do you're homework, that's all true and long before Donald Trump decided to blame Mexicans for everything.) Let's not forget the God Squads decades old assertion that there is a war on Christmas, there isn't. This occurred because some businesses use the phrase, Happy Holidays, clearly these well wishers should be flogged in the town square. I don't want to interject too much reason here and cause confusion but there are actually other holidays occurring at that time of year, not just Christmas. My experience has and continues to be that I hear have a Merry Christmas constantly after Thanksgiving. The retail industry would collapse without Christmas, it is the profit engine which enables them to endure the leaner times the rest of the year, so it would be quite insane to wage a war on Christmas. And what about our Christmas celebrations? Every bit of it is based on the Pagan holidays of the Winter Solstice, from the trees to the gifts and large feasts and special sweets. Absolutely none of it has anything to do with the man known as Jesus of Nazareth. A more appropriate celebration for him would be to contemplate political radicalism, because that's what he was, a radical and threat to the system for which he was executed. A rabbi and carpenter who held rallies and talked about social justice, sure he may have encouraged the whole messiah thing, but it grew the crowds. Naturally he ran afoul of the authorities and was executed by the standard practice of the day, crucified, this punishment was not invented for Jesus, the countryside was littered with these things to send a message to lawbreakers.

God bless you, when you sneeze. You announce an illness and you will immediately draw the ever popular "we're praying for you" and everyone's favorite, "it's in God's hands now". We sing God Bless America, every political speech ends with the same God Bless America. Evangelical fraudsters permeate the airwaves. We recite the Pledge of Allegiance with a stunningly ignorant populace that has convinced themselves the word God was always in it. We do not speak of the fact that many of our founding fathers had no use for religion or God and who made it clear in their day that the United States of America was in no way founded as a Christian nation. In God We Trust is emblazoned from government buildings, where it should never have been, to money to license plates. A large segment of our society exerted great influence for generations to guarantee gay people were not just ostracized but outlawed and denied basic human rights, all in the name of God and and their religions condemnation of homosexuality. Now that the LGBT community has begun to make progress, including the right to marry, which is an institution that predates monotheistic religions, many of the faithful are losing their minds and trying to attack "the gays" through other forms of discriminatory legislation, even though most in the LGBT community believe in God and practice some form of religious faith. Segments of our society applaud when County Clerks refuse to issue marriage certificates to gay couples, completely ignoring the separation of Church and State and failing to acknowledge that no marriage is legal without a secular government issued license. The religious institutions have no power to confer legal authority. Those who have applauded these illegal acts and dereliction of duty would be singing a different tune if those Clerks looked at them as a straight couple and said I cannot issue you a marriage license because I don't believe you'll raise your children in an appropriate religious environment.

If that 74% of Americans who believe in God are under assault for their beliefs and their right to worship is facing annihilation from Hillary Clinton, a devout Methodist, it was Barack Obama but he's leaving office now, another Christian that failed to destroy religion, you may also insert the name of any Democrat because they're all godless minions of Lucifer, then why are they still here and doing more than just fine? If they're in true danger why doesn't God come to their defense and smite their enemies or at least send a battalion of Angels to wage war on the infidel? Remember 77% of Americans believe Angels are real.

If God and religion are under assault in America, whoever is leading the charge is doing a shitty job.