"CONFLICTING VIEWS OF DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION..." 'Bettejo Dux' (Vintage Bettejo)

Bettejo Dux has lived on the cosmic Garden Island of Kaua'i for over 40 years.

Bettejo is a regular opinion writer in the Garden Island news and is the author of the

famed novella, "The Scam."  Her latest fiction

 "Children of Extinction" is now  released and available on Amazon!

www.bettejodux.com

www.amazon.com

CONFLICTING VIEWS OF DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION

 If you deny there are conflicting views, you’re in denial. Religions, all religions, are hard-nosed. You quote your books, chapter and verse, you quote your silly Gods, you interpret your books and fight with each other over the interpretations. But all over the world, in the Islamic world, in Israel, in America, South America, voices of reason,  voices of the people,  are rising.

We speak out against war, we speak out against dictators, religious fanatics and other un-evolved humans. Strong words here, but appropriate. 

Muslim women are fighting for the right not to wear the veil. Our troops, many of them, come home sick to the heart about our senseless carnage of innocent people, men and women and children who have done us no harm. We speak out about a ridiculous economic system that never has and never will work. 

We dare to speak out against those who silence us with guns, with ridicule, with lies, with stupidities. Dare I mention Limbagh, Grundge, and other purveyors of your drivel.

How was your God in America been hijacked by the rich? By the powerful? By the killing machine?  By Cheney, by Palin, by the Waltons, by the lunatic religious televangelist? Who was it that said, wisely, “We love you, Jesus, we just don’t like the guys you hang around with?”

At the very base of this madness lies, in his crypt, your murderous patriarchal Gods. I love to hear the nonsense from the leaner brained evangelical bunch who sputter, “God has no sex.” Are you nuts? He seems to be everybody’s father and as most of us recall fathers are usually male. And, further, we are all sinners in his eyes. Well, I ain’t baby and you ain’t gonna stick that thorny feather in my blue bonnet. May I quote a few quotes?

“Religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves.” John Locke.

“There are scores of great religions in the world, each with scores or hundred of sects, each with its priestly orders, its complicated creed and ritual, its heavens' and hells'. Each has its thousands or millions or hundreds of millions of ‘true believers’; each damns all the others with more or less heartiness–and each is a mighty force of graft.” Upton Sinclair.

“I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam-good people, yes-but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system.” 
Gore Vidal

“The way to see faith is to shut the eye of reason.” 
Benjamin Franklin.

And last, but not least, “…the government of the United States, is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…” 
President John Adams on June 10, 1797.

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