The God Bullshit

“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” -The United States Constitution, Article VI, section 3

Somehow it has become some sort of generalized idea that the more pandering dogma a presidential candidate can throw out, the better suited they would be to become President of the United States of America. I don’t find this much more plausible than the idea that the better cannon fodder a person was impacts the type of President they would be.

Sadly, a person’s religion, and indeed their marital fidelities (or lack thereof) supposedly grant us insight into their souls, or at least into what sort of leader we think they’d be.

Weirdly enough, Americans have some sort of inane xenophobic fear that swarthy foreigners will turn them into witches communists homosexuals Muslims. Of course, in the mind of Joe Inbred, this somehow means “terrorist”. Ignoring, of course, the fact that the majority of Muslims don’t blow themselves or anyone else up. That’s about as ignorant as saying that all Christians are ignorant morons who don’t believe in science.

There are some people who say that religion shouldn’t preclude reason, but you generally tend to see that otherwise reasonable people can disregard that reason when their faith is involved. That scares the daylights out of me. What happens if the President decides that god is talking to him and telling him to start World War III? It’s not like Presidents haven’t claimed divine guidance for stupid things before. I mean, tax cuts for the rich kinda smack of a different kind of Jeebus I think. And last I checked, the same guys we rebelled against claimed the same thing… and that didn’t turn out so well.

I just want a good, real energy policy (not the ol’ drill ’till it’s gone) and some Universal Healthcare up in here, but for some reason, none of the Representatives from my shithole state are in support of HR 676, with no apparent explaination. Or maybe it’s because of what Connecticut is/was. I know, I know, vultures whose only job is to make money by denying care are the best people to provide healthcare for Americans. Not like we couldn’t follow the example of grown up nations like the UK, France, Canada…. even CUBA has healthcare for their citizens. We can’t even beat Cuba at anything anymore.

Well, can’t really blame this on god. It’s not god, it’s his fan club I can’t stand, to paraphrase a popular meme. I’ll defer to George Carlin (rest in peace) for the conclusion to this:

“I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.” – George Carlin

Also, I’d like to apologize to Penn and Teller for stealing their title. Apologies, guys.