“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
~ Carl Sagan
I ran into this most amazing quote by chance, and was blown away by it. I mean, Carl Sagan always was amazing, but I don't think that I fully realized that while he was still alive. He was the science guy, and came on the PBS channel. My grandfather, who's interests were wide and varied (maybe that's where I get it from?) liked him, if memory serves me correctly.
That amazing quote was taken from The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. This is a book written by Carl Sagan to urge them to think more critically and independently. He wanted everyone to understand the difference between scientific fact and what was often mistaken for fact. More specifically, he was referring to religious thought that got in the way of science, because it refused to accept the conclusions that science tended to come up with, which have noticeably been detrimental to religious thought and practice.
There are four states presently that are weighing bills that would limit the teaching of biology, and science in general, in schools. Our children, and their education, are at stake. Not only in those four states - Colorado, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Montana - but in the rest of the country, as well. remember how the anti-union spirit spread like wildfire across the nation, following the events in Michigan a couple of years ago?
This is a threat. A real threat, against independent thinking. A real threat against the education of our children. A real threat against the democracy's well being in this country. A real threat that would favor mythology and fantasy and, ultimately, tyranny, over reality.
It cannot be allowed to stand.
We talk so much about being "the shining city on a hill", that perhaps we have lost sight of just how dark things have turned in this country, and in this world, in general.
Whether people like it or not, there IS a separation of church and state, AND it should be maintained.
If we do not maintain it, we lessen ourselves as a country, and as a thinking, rational people, in general. Furthermore, we will lose our standing in this world even more than we already have, because we would be entrenching ourselves in positions that some among us want to believe, rather than need to understand.
For too long, we have allowed ourselves the indulgence of believing things that simply are not true. The results, which have been detrimental, speak for themselves. You might not like what you have to hear about reality, but that does not give you the right to not only to pretend that it is not true, but to impose that willful ignorance upon others.
The irony of such a thing happening in this country is not lost on everyone. Given our history, which included those who sought freedom from religious persecution in their own lands (although, unfortunately in too many cases, subsequently imposing that same spirit of religious persecution once they got here), and then even fighting a revolution and securing the independence of a fledgling new nation to free it from the shackles of ruthless tyrannical traditions, we should know better than to simply voluntarily make way for that same spirit of intolerance. Some may say that Well, then, let's examine what some of those founding fathers had to say about religion to begin with:
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
~ Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity."
~ Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
How about some words on the subject from other sources?
"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?"
~ John Adams, in a letter to FA Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816
"I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself."
~ John Adams, in a letter to his brother-in-law, Richard Cranch, August 29, 1756
"When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it."
~ John Adams
"God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world."
~ John Adams
I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!
~ John Adams
"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."
~ Benjamin Franklin
"Original sin was as ridiculous as imputed righteousness."
~ Benjamin Franklin
"We hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth that religion, or the duty which we owe our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. The religion, then, of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man: and that it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate."
~ James Madison
"The civil government ... functions with complete success ... by the total separation of the Church from the State."
~ James Madison
"What is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us? -- to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith."
~ Thomas Paine
"Science is the true theology."
~ Thomas Paine
“The strongest weapon against all kinds of errors is Reason. I have never used any other, and hope I never will.”
~ Thomas Paine
"Only by using reason can man discover God. Take away his reason, and man could not understand anything.”
~ Thomas Paine
"Wild and blasphemous ideas of God are formed because man has wandered away from the unchangeable laws of science, and the right use of reason; and because something called revealed religion was invented."
~ Thomas Paine
I leave the last word from the Founding Fathers, once again, to Thomas Jefferson, who summed up the arguments quite nicely here:
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."
~Thomas Jefferson in a letter to a committee of the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut, January 1, 1802
There were plenty of other quotes to choose from, but in the interests of time, I had to limit them somewhat. But these speak for themselves, and give you a good idea of where the most enlightened thinkers of the time were on this crucial issue, which remains relevant right up to our present age. Not exactly an unconditional or unanimous endorsement of the notion that the United States was a Christian nation from it's inception, or that there is no real separation of church and state, now, is it? We may be led to believe otherwise, by those with vested interests in having us forget history. But the truth lies elsewhere than in the prejudices of those who want to manipulate history in their favor.
We Americans often times take great pride in recalling that mythical fighting spirit of earlier Americans, and we glorify the sacrifices of many who gave everything that they had on the battlefield. Lest we forget, those are not simply dates in a history textbook to remember for exams, or on patriotic holidays. There are reasons that they fought, and sacrificed so much. They wanted a new nation, a new spirit of greater individual freedom. That meant greater freedom from huge, domineering institutions, whether some monarchy in a land thousands of miles distant from American shores, or whether it meant an institutionalized religion that always seemed to place gaining more of a following over all other endeavors.
In this regard, despite the obvious changes over the time, the issues are fundamentally the same.
This is too important. This is something that we need to fight.
I leave you with one last quote, from that noted revolutionary, Thomas Paine, to show that while this is not for the lighthearted, it is a fight that we must engage in:
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
The article, "Anti-Science Bills Weighed in Four States", was written by Larry O'Hanlon of Discovery News
http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/anti-science-bills-weighed-in-4-states-130128.htm
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