I read this over at Shakesville, and I was going to comment, but then comment became post (as sometimes happens).
We believe in an Almighty, we believe in the freedom for people to worship that Almighty. They don’t. They don’t believe you should worship the way you choose. They believe the only way you should worship is the way they choose. And, therefore — and, therefore, they will do anything they can to spread that ideology.
The notion that “We believe in an Almighty” is so destructive, so harmful, so vile. It is what Chuck Colson thinks.
“We” sometimes believe in an Almighty. We sometimes believe in an Almighty, but a qualitatively different one than the dog-whistle intends us to hear. We sometimes do not believe in any supernatural being at all. We sometimes aren’t sure. We sometimes believe in one, or many supernatural beings who are not Almighty (that is, who is or are not omnipotent).
The varieties of religious thought in the U.S. are vast. “An Almighty” is a bad meme. It is as bad as “Judeo-Christian.” It sweeps vast diversity under a rug that should not be covering the beautiful and variegated hardwood. It doesn’t begin to touch upon who we are as a people. It seeks to restrict us, and it seeks to exclude and marginalize many of us.
Don’t let it. Don’t shrug when you hear these things. Say no.
Say no.
Variegated hardwood. Heh heh. Thinking about floors, are you?
Saying no is the right way to go. And it’ll be difficult. I remember years back when I was a young man when I told my parents (both Christians, one a moderate, one a Rush Limbaugh kind of guy – yet not an evil man, and I could never reconcile that) that I was an atheist, and to this day my mom is uncomfortable with that. Even the ones you think you’d have the least problem with have, well, a problem with it. The fact that my wignut pop isn’t provides some anecdotal evidence to the whole we’ll-latch-onto-any-view-to-win theory of the goopers.
Bush and his merry band of violent crusaders (and the views of the mainstream, unfortunately) are going to be a tough nut to expose.
Absolutely. Pagans, Jews, atheists, none of us worship the “Almighty” that Bush meant (he covered his bases by using a neutral phrase that theoretically includes Jews, but it’s a dog whistle). All of us are Americans, and the day we stop understanding America as a place where all of us can be Americans is the day the “grand experiment” fails.
Am I the only one having trouble reconciling “We believe in an Almighty” with “They believe the only way you should worship is the way they choose.”? (Emphasis mine.)
The implication there is that all those going on with the first part DO believe that people should worship as they choose…and yet that whole statement you quote is at least partly/implicitly against that, if by “way they choose” one means “not believing in the Almighty”.
Gaah.
Bush’s logic is much more advanced than our earth logic. We’re merely the idiots to his savant, apparently.
Alix: Definitely not the only one.