For those of you who don't know me already, I'm a secularist.... specifically, if you want to get down to hard and fast labels, guess you could call me a Existentialist Secular Humanist. What that means, in a nutshell, is that I am someone who believes that life is devoid of meaning and it is up to each of us to find meaning in it AND that I believe in ethics and justice... a morality, if you will, that specifically rejects the supernatural and spiritual as justification for that morality. That's right, I don't believe in ghosts, angels, demons, gods, devils, heaven, hell, limbo... furthermore, I don't believe in prophets, clairvoyants, psychics, or any other living human being who claims to see the future or speak to the dead.
My point in this is... it seems that conventional wisdom in the United States today and especially where I live, in Texas seems to lean toward an idea that religion is a virtue. I hear people say, "he's a good Christian." Or those people are "godless"... hell, one of the basic tenets for our side in the Cold War was that THEY were godless communists that wanted to destroy our way of life and that we were, god fearing and loving people that believed in freedom and self-reliance.
So, I will ask again, since when is religion a virtue?
More killing and destruction and oppression and generally bad things have happened in this world, in its history, because of the believe in a supernatural being that we deem worthy of our worship. I had a friend, with whom I argue about the current Iraqi conflict, say that the stated goal is Islam is the conquest of the entire world and conversion of everyone in it to that faith. I don't want to dwell on utter incorrectness of this statement too long. The fact is, Islam has done some pretty bad things.... But if you think that Christianity has done ANY better, you are sadly mistaken. The Christian faith has been about death and destruction and oppression from the time they gained power late in the roman empire. And if you look at a globe you can see the influence that a Christian Europe has had on the world in terms of spreading their way of life. And in just about every case, the Europeans justified their exploration and conquest of other cultures as ordained by God.
In fact, one only needs look at the history of our nation to see this pattern emerge. Many of these good Christian people enslaved, raped and killed many a Native American in the name of their God.. in fact, the perfect example of that is the concept of Manifest Destiny that arose in the mid-19th century. It was Christians that brought the slaves from Africa. It was Christians who established the missions on the west coast of the United States and proceeded to enslave the local indigenous people in the name of "teaching the way of God" and killed those who didn't. It was Christians who are responsible for the death most of the Native American tribes in this country in the 19th century because they were "savages", and it Christianity now that has taken over our government to the extent that they can use their influence our nation to bend to their will with regard to THEIR reason, THEIR ethics, and THEIR justice.
Once again I ask, Since When is Religion a Virtue?
In case you can't quite read the bumper sticker, it says, "This car is covered by the blood of jesus christ". If the owner of this vehicle put that sticker on there to be ironic, he's a f--king genius. But somehow, I think the irony is lost on the poor individual who placed the sticker on his or her car.