Lance Mannion: A Praise of Folly
In the course of discovering new and interesting blogs, I've recently come across one Lance Mannion ("You can't make policemen take the romantic view."). I must say that I'm very glad for it.
Lance describes himself as Catholic, ".. I'm not a lapsed Catholic or a recovering Catholic. I'm an angry Catholic." As I can relate to that mindset, being educated in RCC schools until I forced my way out of the system after the 10th grade, I was intrigued enough to read on.
By the time I came to the following, I knew I was going to post on one of the most moving and intelligent essays on our species' treatment of matters religious that I've yet to read.
Liberalism---Democracy---has to be hostile to religion, if by hostile you mean resistant to attempts to use politics to advance a religious agenda. A liberal, democratic society thrives on debate, on people being able to change their minds, on individuals being able to exercise their consciences freely. The "because God says so" argument short circuits the whole process. God trumps everything, including the right of an individual to exercise his or her conscience freely---that is, to dissent, to say no, to refuse to go along.Being me, of course I had to comment. And therein I focused on how individualistic is the nature of any belief in God. Anytime a person says "Hey! Here's what God is. You need to believe in this!", the only rational alternative to laughing in their face and pointing out the sheer silliness of their arrogance, is turning one's back and calmly walking away.
As I've said many a time on this site, Theocracy, Religious Rule, is utterly and completely disavowed by both the Letter and the Spirit of The Rules of our America. We are a secular nation where each individual is free to worship, or not, as they see fit.
Lance Mannion's essay speaks to the fact that such is more and more obviously NOT the Belief of our current crop of political leaders.
But it's much more than that. But I said in my comment on his site, that I'd not "review" his post here. My apologies to Lance, if I've misrepresented his intention here. I can get kinda carried away when something hits me as hard A praise of folly did.
I really have to recommend his post to anyone who finds any value at all in my own Silly Humans.
"...the only rational alternative to laughing in their face and pointing out the sheer silliness of their arrogance, is turning one's back and calmly walking away."
ReplyDeleteThat's really about all you can do. If their *beliefs* and their intent on wanting you to abide by their beliefs and only their beliefs -- that sort of thing is not based on any kind of logic that I can see. So, why would I think that I could somehow *reason* them out of their way of thinking?
Bottom line -- I wish they'd just leave us all alone and focus on themselves. We all have more than enough work doing that alone.