And On The 8th Day

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789

I'm finding it discomfiting to watch the current 'network battle of comparative mythologies' being played out before the nation, at the expense of policy debate and active discussion of solutions to truly pressing problems facing the planet and those creatures that share it.

It is always a distasteful thing to observe grown men trying to outjesus each other, glibly conspiring to nimbly filch the true light from their opponents and hold it over their own heads in such a pandering fashion...And frankly, how 'holy' one might be, or aspire to be is not and should not represent a serious criterion for holding public office in the 21st century.

Now, I was baptized, attended Sunday School and have read the Bible several times, if it matters... And indeed, I might have committed myself further into Christianity at critical junctures, but found myself in a state of receding interest brought on by certain logical inconsistencies and the imperfect filtering of greater plans through lesser minds.

What is my religion now?...I won't discuss that even if I have one, as I don't care to pretend that I am some sort of example or have a glimmering insight toward a true path, but if I have faith in anything it is not in any religion that claims to hold all the answers if one would just suspend objective reality for a critical moment.

Nor would I want such a belief structure, as I prefer the adventure of exploring celestial mysteries independently of dogma or cant.

Also, I am certainly not a friend to the timorously faithed folk uncertain of their beliefs at best, or sanctimoniously corrupt Januses at worst, who seek to legislate public morality so as to ensure that everyone else is as unhappily occluded as they.

All too often this is done by such characters as a ersatz form of 'balance' which more closely resembles their own desperately repressed subjective uncertainties that are then writ conspicuously in the public sphere to complete their hoped-for personal exorcism.

When the faith needed to maintain a fictive lid on reality becomes so needy that legislative pressure is deemed necessary to reinforce some type of communal ethereal belief, lest the whole construct tumble into the morass of cognitive dissonance...

One no longer has a religion, but suffers from a delusion.