Religion is something that was created by mankind to do three things: keep people sane, make them easier to govern and give them a reason to unite as one people.
Did you hear about the good Christian man who lost his faith? He was a respected and active member of his church community for decades. Then one day, a gay couple walked into his restaurant. He served them coffee. And just like that, in a flash, his faith abandoned him. His soul was extricated. In an instant, he had become a morose, atheist heathen. He got a nice big A tattooed on his left buttock. He started sacrificing goats to honor the memory of Christopher Hitchens. He even started writing snarky diatribes on Facebook.
When I was younger, my mother tried to set me up on a date. It was cringe worthy, to say the least. Please, take a moment to picture this: me being nagged everyday about if I talked to Christopher, how Chris was doing, her waving to him across the parking lot when she picked me up after class as I shoved my head under a rock somewhere. What I find most interesting about the whole ordeal is that my mom did not base her desire for us to end up together off his personality; in fact she barely knew anything about him. Except that he was Catholic. And that’s all she needed to know. Perhaps then I am saying this because of how I was raised, but to me, religion should play key role in determining relationships.
I was advised by a fellow writer at The Statesman to preface this argument by saying that half of my household growing up was Jewish, therefore giving myself some sort of religious immunity to any part of this article sounding racist. Sage advice I thought at first, but after some thought, I realized not only that this perpetuates the idea I am attempting to dispel, but also that the audience I am trying to reach here will find this offensive no matter what.
I find the politically correct atmosphere placed around the holidays utterly abhorrent. In pressuring Americans to say “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” we have inadvertently placed all of our interest into words rather than the meaning behind them.
That being said, the separation of church and state has become one of the founding principles of our society. Though the interpretation of the law may vary, the belief in its legitimate standing in our body of law is generally unquestioned. But one has to be careful that their religious and moral beliefs do not subtly or bluntly become public policy. Governance is a difficult business, especially over a vast and diverse country like the U.S.
For the purposes of this article, I consider Creationism, also falsely know as "Creation Science," as the same thing as "Intelligent Design." While in reality, there are subtle differences; the Intelligent Design movement is merely a renewed attempted at hijacking science for the sake of religion, by the religious right in this (and other) countries.
