As has become usual for Fridays, the strip for March 30 will be posted sometime before noon… since Thursday is my Friday at the moment, I’m given toward relaxing when I get home (read: drinking) and don’t have much inclination to break out the Bristol board. But Friday mornings are fountains of creativity, so I will do the strip when I come to… er… wake up. Thanks for your indulgence.
To entertain you until then, here’s a particularly funny YouTube video:
While I myself don’t have a religion, my usual attitude since growing to adulthood has been “live and let live” — even though I regard the beliefs of religious people as ridiculous, I have tried not to let that color my opinions of them. Be tolerant, in other words. After all, what do I care what they believe?
I have been starting to re-think that attitude. September 11 was a big part of that, as I don’t really make the distinction that’s so popular in this country between fundamentalist Muslims and fundamentalist Christians. So one is acting up at the moment and one is laying low. So what?
I came across this quote from Richard Dawkins:
Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where’s the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let’s now stop being so damned respectful!
Christians have long claimed that there is a “culture war” in this country. They claim that we godless liberals are out to take their Christ from them, banish the ten commandments, and cancel Christmas. We, as is our wont, have always demurred, saying “Oh, no, no, we respect your beliefs, we’re not anti-Christian” and being good little ecumenical sycophants.
They’ve stated there’s a war, which is itself a declaration of war. We have not rose to the challenge. Perhaps we don’t think the stakes are high enough. Maybe in a world in which one religion is sending people with bombs strapped to them into cafes, another religion which is merely trying to enforce its backwards moral codes on our nation’s laws seems, well, harmless. Maybe we’re complacent in the victories we’ve made in the last hundred years, and don’t think that the Christian right can regain the ground it’s lost. Well, it’s doing so. The stakes are that high. They don’t blow up buildings, but do you really think if they keep getting their way for long enough, they won’t put gays in camps? They will. “Re-education” first, then when that doesn’t work, extermination. You don’t think they’ll make denying God a crime? It already is in some states, they don’t even need to pass new laws, just start enforcing the old ones. It would happen slowly. Trust me — if these people keep winning, not being a Christian in the United States will end up amounting to second-class citizenship.
Each victory emboldens them. We must not cut and run. It’s time we stopped denying there’s a culture war, and started focusing on winning it.
You are currently browsing the Monkey Law archives for the day Thursday, March 29th, 2007.
