Wark This Way

Archive for the ‘religion’ Category

I found this interesting – not new but confirms other materials I’ve read on the subject – lifted straight from the Chicago Tribune…writer Steve Chapman

American culture is sick, and secularism is the cause. Such is the contention of religious conservatives such as Rick Santorum, who insist that feminism, sexual freedom and gay rights have undermined traditional morality. The argument has “the virtues of clarity, simplicity and plausibility”, says Steve Chapman, but it has one big flaw: it is refuted by pretty much all the evidence. As America has grown more secular over the past 20 years, “most indicators of moral and social health have got better, not worse”. Crime levels, for instance, have plummeted, while teen pregnancy has fallen by 39%. What’s more, the parts of the US with the worst social problems today are the Bible Belt states, not the supposedly sin-ridden blue states, with their dangerous “moral relativism”. Mississippi has the nation’s highest rate of church attendance, with 63% of people saying they go “weekly or almost weekly”, but its residents are also “far more likely to be murdered than other Americans”. Liberal Vermont’s murder rate, by contrast, is a quarter of the national average. Meanwhile, Massachusetts, the first state to legalise gay marriage, has the nation’s lowest divorce rate. So much for the theory that religiosity promotes virtue and the decline of religious faith “goes hand-in-hand with vice”.

If someone makes a racial statement that could upset as few as one person – they get into trouble – and rightly so (though right now that often usually only applies to the good guys) – but if someone predicts the end of the world, gets  that message onto national media in the sure knowledge that thousands of mis-informed people will believe the message and worry about it– nothing happens. 89-year-old Harold Camping did just that and predictably he was wrong – even more predictably he’s disappeared.

With any luck his god has struck him down – more likely he’s worried that some of his former supporters are going to strike him down.  Perhaps some authorities somewhere might like to charge him with incitement to riot?

The only thing he has achieved, sadly is to further challenge young people to ignore the older generation! As for Keith Bauer who travelled thousands of miles to California because “I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this earth” – should this guy be watched as a potential terrorist if he has so little regard for his own life?

How many times are the claims of those who believe in imaginary deities going to be given this kind of credibility before the world wakes up.  All of these people would be far better employed working for our common future instead of sitting there waiting for the end that is highly unlikely to come. Far more likely we kill ourselves in civil breakdowns when we run out of fuel if we don’t get our act together.