Letters to the editor in Colorado seem to draw out a special breed of nut. And the Rocky Mountain News provides them with a stage to showcase their idiocy where they stagger about looking like targets at a BB-gun range.
Recently, comments by Mr. Silverman of the ACLU regarding First Amendment rights led me to do some research into those rights.
…
[The First Amendment] only states that Religion shall not be a requirement for holding Government Office …”
Try doing some research again, genius.
The First Amendment doesn’t say anything about religion not being a requirement for holding government office. That provision is laid out in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution.
As for the rest of the senseless blather, the letter writer appears to be utterly incapable of understanding what was just written? First, the letter writer says:
Government shall not support any specific Religious Sect or Group
And then follows that with:
Neither does forbid an opening Prayer at the beginning of any session of Government.
Why is it necessary for government to support or advance a religion by enshrining it in government observances? Is the religion of Christianity so frail that it cannot stand on its own?
Of course, it’s obvious to rational-minded folks that Christianity (in fact, all religions) are little more wishful thinking about an Invisible Voo-Doo Daddy in the Clouds. There are people who believe that they hear voices (from “God”) and can speak to someone who is unseen to everyone else (e.g., “God”), and that this invisible person can read their thoughts, and judge them based on those thoughts. But those are people we classify as clinically insane and generally lock away in buildings designed to treat severe mental illness. Churches are simply a hospital for those with a different strain of mental illness.
2 responses so far ↓
1 nerflom // Aug 6, 2008 at 23:56 pm
when i was a kid going to catholic school being trained to believe in the invisible cloud being, the practices I was taught seriously conflicted with my own notions of the invisible “under-the-bed being” and the invisible “in-the-closet being” and the various other underlings that my creative mind invented to deal with the usual childhood night-time fears. I was sometimes afraid to pray the rosary (in silence, no less) because I didn’t want to offend the imaginary monster entities hiding under my bed and elsewhere that I was sure could read my mind, just like this God thing could – and who held so much more sway then “God,” that i actually created an “on/off” switch in my head making it safe to pray. I would turn the switch to “off” so I could pray, and therefore not alert the monsters that I doubted their power at all, and then would turn the switch back to “on” as soon as I was done praying so the monsters wouldn’t be on to me. I don’t know if god was onto it at all, but clearly was not to worried about whether he took me as seriously as the other imaginary beings…
2 nerflom // Aug 7, 2008 at 0:21 am
I suppose I would have some recourse claiming this is mental illness,
but, seriously, what recourse do modern kids have? How do they counter the Voo-doo daddy nonsense? how do we substantially help them?
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