Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (97 page)

They are all quotes from the most important Founding Father in our country’s history. The guy who drafted the Declaration of Independence, a product of the Enlightenment, our nation’s third president, and often quoted as our best: Thomas Jefferson. (In 1962, JFK invited forty-nine Nobel Prize winners to the White House and said, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House—with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”)

Early in
Jefferson’s first term, he wrote a letter to the Connecticut Baptists with the
famous “separation of church and state” reference.

Believing
with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God,
that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the
legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I
contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people
which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building
a wall of separation between church and state.

So maybe
Jefferson was the lone nut of the Founding Fathers, the crazy uncle of the crew
constantly farting in public and telling saggy boob jokes. James Madison wrote
the famous “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” in which
he outlined over a dozen reasons why the government should not be involved in
or support any religion.

The Reverend
Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister from New York, gave a famous sermon in 1831
regarding the Christian orthodoxy of the Founding Fathers. The sermon appeared
in the
Albany Daily Advertiser.

The
founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who
had thus far been elected (George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson,
James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson), not a one
had professed a belief in Christianity.

Furthermore,
Wilson goes on to state:

When
the war was over and the victory over our enemies won, and the blessings and
happiness of liberty and peace were secured, the Constitution was framed and
God was neglected. He was not merely forgotten. He was absolutely voted out of
the Constitution. The proceedings, as published by Thompson, the secretary, and
the history of the day, show that the question was gravely debated whether God
should be in the Constitution or not, and after a solemn debate he was
deliberately voted out of it. . . . There is not only in the
theory of our government no recognition of God’s laws and sovereignty, but its
practical operation, its administration, has been conformable to its theory. Those
who have been called to administer the government have not been men making any
public profession of Christianity . . . Washington was a man of valor
and wisdom. He was esteemed by the whole world as a great and good man; but he
was not a professing Christian.

Confused? You
should be. You have been led to believe that God preordained the United States
of America as his prized jewel of human civilization. The biblical tenets run
through our nation’s origins. The idea that the Christian conservatives would
protest the removal of the Ten Commandments from federal buildings is proof
that we have been duped by those rewriting our own history. The Founding
Fathers would be rolling over in their graves if we erected nativity sets at
federal sites, not if we removed them.

In June of 2009, the American Civil Liberties Union won a
decisive battle against the county commissioners in Haskell County, Oklahoma. The group sought
to promote their personal religious beliefs by erecting a Ten Commandments
monument on the front lawn of the county’s courthouse. From the ACLU press
release:

This decision
is a victory for the cherished American value of religious freedom,’ said
Daniel Mach, Director of Litigation for the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion
and Belief. ‘The government should not be in the business of promoting
religious viewpoints. In our country, people should be free to express their
faith—or to exercise their right to hold no belief at all—without government
interference or favoritism.’

Not
only is the connection between Christianity and the founding of the United
States nonexistent, it’s unconstitutional as well.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,
and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.

Sound
right? Do you think the Founding Fathers would have put “under God” in there?
That part was added by congress in 1954 after the Knights of Columbus, the
world’s largest Catholic fraternity, began inserting the phrase as early as
1951. See how easy it is to change the past?

***

The Constitution
of the United States does not mention God. Not once. It is a completely secular
document that abhorrently rejects any supposed connection to religion. In the
Treaty with Tripoli drafted during Washington’s presidency and ratified under
John Adams, it states, “The government of
the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” The
Founding Fathers were deists, not Christians. According to Wikipedia:

Deism is a religious and philosophical belief that a supreme being created the universe, and that this (and religious truth in general) can be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without the need for either faith or organized religion. Deists tend to, but do not necessarily, reject the notion that God intervenes in human affairs, for example through miracles and revelations. These views contrast with the dependence on revelations, miracles, and faith found in many Jewish, Christian, Islamic and other theistic teachings.

Deists typically reject most supernatural events (prophecy, miracles) and tend to assert that God (or ‘The Supreme Architect’) has a plan for the universe that is not altered either by God intervening in the affairs of human life or by suspending the natural laws of the universe. What organized religions see as divine revelation and holy books, most deists see as interpretations made by other humans, rather than as authoritative sources.

Our
Founding Fathers believed in a supreme being that created the universe and has
a plan for it, but that plan cannot be changed by his (her?) intervention or
the acts of humans.

***

Chuck refused to
stand. He remained silent during the song until his protest graduated to the
next level.

Chuck was a kid
of mixed racial ethnicity which probably set him up as different from the
beginning. His father, a white musician, traveled the country performing, rarely
showing up for school events. Chuck’s mom was black and drifted in and out of
his life like a good beer buzz. He wore his black hair in a mohawk and never
went anywhere without his green army jacket. Chuck maintained a strictly vegan
diet, which was quite a feat for a kid in sixth grade. He often sipped his soy
milk while munching raw vegetables while other kids in the dining hall tore
through pizza and hamburgers. In addition, Chuck proclaimed himself an ardent
atheist. He was as gentle as a summer breeze and rarely spoke an unkind word
about anyone. However, his lack of belief in God, specifically a
Judeo-Christian God, made it difficult for others to relate to him.

Most of the kids
tolerated Chuck, but they did not go out of their way to befriend him, either.
Some were plain scared of him without knowing why. Two other kids from the Land
of Misfit Toys hung out with Chuck; one remained at the school while the other
was expelled after flashing a knife on the school bus. Chuck loved Jimi Hendrix
and played an electric guitar solo for the middle school talent show. It was
terrible, but Chuck did not care. He existed within his own reality.

Seventh grade
became difficult for him as the pressure to conform grew. The two lead teachers
in that grade espoused classic institutional perspectives, conditioning kids to
respect authority and tradition, both of which meant nothing to Chuck. His
silent protest began innocently and then blossomed into a school-wide dilemma.
Chuck refused to sing the National Anthem at the beginning of our assembly.
Although our school did not require an American flag in every classroom or the
recital of the Pledge of Allegiance, it did hold on to a few artifacts of
patriotism. At first, the teachers had no idea how to deal with Chuck. A few
dismissed him as a troublemaker out to get laughs, but his convictions went
much deeper than that. He felt no allegiance to the United States, did not feel
as though he owed anyone a song. Therefore he chose not to sing it. Meetings
were held to find a way to “make” Chuck sing the National Anthem. The result
was his new refusal to even stand during it.

I remember
having a talk with Chuck about it. Being the hyper-individualist (the weird guy)
on the faculty, the administration thought I could talk some sense into him.
Chuck told me that he was not trying to disrespect his teachers or his school
but that he felt no pride towards a nation that treated his ancestors as they
had. He said he did not want to get in trouble but that he would not sing or stand
for the National Anthem. I tried appealing to him, tried getting him to do it
until I realized I was applying the same pressure to Chuck as the others had
done. I wanted him to conform.

Chuck left the
school after seventh grade and took the controversy with him. No other students
challenged the system in the same way, and that is very unfortunate. Chuck has
graduated from high school and no longer sports the mohawk. He does still wear
the army green. On a chance meeting, we spoke for only a few minutes, but
somehow I felt defeat in his voice after years of conformity were pounded into
his head with a sledgehammer of religious dogma and nationalistic fervor.

***

In
2008, comedian Bill Maher released
Religulous
. His irreverent humor and
pointed interview tactics pulled the hood back on organized religion to reveal
all of its inner workings. His reasoning behind the documentary is posted on
the film’s website.

Since
starting on Politically Incorrect in 1993, it has been my pleasure over the
last decade and a half to make organized religion one of my favorite targets. I
often explained to people, ‘I don’t need to make fun of religion, it makes fun
of itself.’ And, then I go ahead and make fun of it too, just for laughs.

With
religious fanatics like George Bush and Osama bin Laden now taking over the
world, it seemed to me in recent years that this issue—this cause of debunking
the man behind the curtain—needed to have a larger, more insistent and focused
forum than late night television. I wanted to make a documentary, and I wanted
it to be funny. In fact, since there is nothing more ridiculous than the
ancient mythological stories that live on as today’s religions, this movie
would try to be a real knee slapper. Unless, of course, you’re religious, then
you might not like it.

The shadow of
religion falls on all educational institutions, both public and private. While
not overtly present, it ruminates under the surface like a weed ready to burst
through the soil. Prayer in public schools is still an issue. Many athletic
teams use it in a pre-game ceremony. The most chronically unconstitutional
abuse of separation of church and state can be seen in the “evolution vs.
creationism” debate.

Dictionary.com
defines “religion” as follows:

1.
a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe,
esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies,
usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a
moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

2.
a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a
number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.

3.
the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a
world council of religions.

4.
the life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion.

5.
the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith.

Assuming this
definition is accurate, can evolution be a religion? If not, how does one argue
that creationism or intelligent design should be taught as alternatives when
they clearly require faith and ritual as a component of belief?

The inclusion of
faith-based theories of creation clearly breaches the separation of church and
state as well as the First Amendment’s proclamation of religious tolerance.
Claiming evolution as a religious theory is like saying rainbows prove the
existence of leprechauns (magically delicious). The courts have repeatedly
struck down efforts to incorporate religious theories in public education.

In
Peloza v.
Capistrano Unified School District
(1994), the court made it clear that
evolution is not a creation theory and does not claim to explain the origins of
the universe.

We
reject this claim because neither the Supreme Court, nor this circuit, has ever
held that evolutionism or secular humanism are ‘religions’ for Establishment
Clause purposes. Indeed, both the dictionary definition of religion and the
clear weight of the case law are to the contrary. The Supreme Court has held
unequivocally that while the belief in a divine creator of the universe is a
religious belief, the scientific theory that higher forms of life evolved from
lower forms is not.

The American
Civil Liberties Union fights this front on a daily basis. In June of 2009, they
helped to block the Louisiana Science Education Act, which would have allowed
teachers to “use supplemental instructional materials not approved by the
State purportedly to help students foster critical thinking skills regarding
various ‘controversial’ subjects, such as evolution and global warming.”