All decent, caring people in all walks of life should take back God — not leave it to the zealots that profess to know what God is all about by insisting on blind faith for its own sake. On the contrary, God is political but not mercenary: he stresses the importance of all aspects of his creation being treated with respect and most especially those he himself has left shorthanded — in other words, the millions that are diseased and live in poverty. The strong, the gifted, should politica...

There is no denying that this country is God-fearing, loving, and that it is prefaced on religious tolerance. Whether one endorses the Ten Commandments or not, the law has transcended time and is a veritable symbol of law and order. Although it should not be used whimsically, distastefully and unilaterally zealous as did the Kentucky judge, it is not simply a bastion of the Judea-Christian belief , but universally accepted principles — but for a few items that I had pointed out in an earlier blo...

The difference between divine intelligence and evolution is barely perceptible until the creationists butt in and resort to the unsustainable six thousand year formula. Divine intelligence underlying creation is not far from Darwin’s “natural selection” whose inference is that “selection” did not start from a vacuum, but rather chemical reaction, however seemingly haphazard, somehow leaped from the inorganic to the organic by an inscrutably maddening but logistical design.   Copyright © ...

Why is evolution so upsetting to those who believe otherwise? Cannot those who believe in Adam and Eve still accept the theory that they were not created overnight — what’s the rush? If science shows beyond a doubt that the universe is fourteen billion years old and the Earth four billion years old and for more than half its life but a ball of fire, is it not reasonable to assume that God was in no hurry to put out the fire? That Adam and Eve or humankind as we know it took a good deal o...

Evolution is acceptable in theory and praxis by most theologies except for the origin of humankind springing from apes. The Big Bang is acceptable by the many provided it does not exclude the underlying spiritual impetus. Politics was born from the god of deceit and all too evident in modern times when the advertisers cleverly polished it to the degree of glossy delusion. Only mathematicians see the universe as an elegant equation. The history of mankind has never been in ...

I admire people of faith with childlike innocence unvarnished by theo-ideological passion. Those who truly believe that upon their death they will join or await their loved ones in heavenly bliss. However, those with damnation in their hearts that conjure up ferocious hierarchies that will intrude upon the living terroristic judgments to thwart the tranquility and splendor of faith, I have no use for. Neither do I possess saintly patience with physicists who lay claim to theory in solving the...

Creationists must go ballistic when reports of Hubble’s peering back into time approaching 14 billion years. Is it a matter of human ego that the universe was created by a Judea-Christian God? Surely, the believer of the Big Bang must feel hurt that he has not been graced by the will of God. For where lies the satisfaction whose beginnings is a mere piece of erratic stardust? Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: December 13, 2004. http://stevendedalus.joeuse...

The clamor for Creationism to be taught in public schools alongside evolution is absurd. Evolution is a theory concerning species as they were and have become by virtue of cell production; it is not a theory on how the universe came to be. Creationism, on the other hand, is a mythical or religious treatise of cosmology and the miraculous, instant bursting forth of species. For Creationism to be offered in a curricula, it should be one of many comparative religions, which, of course, will open ...

If religion is so ingrained in millions why is so much time devoted to justify it? Do people of faith really need “evidence” that a fishing boat discovered in the Sea of Galilee is the one which Jesus was on board? Nor should those with faith care that crucifixions victims’ feet were nailed by straddling the feet to the back side of the cross, contrary to artist’s imagination of one foot over the other. Perhaps it is simply to render material artifacts to a jaded faith or to justify vindi...

A compelling argument for the validity of the separation of multiculturalism and state — and religion for that matter — lies with Quebec’s current predicament. What with its division of language and culture between English and French languages, Anglican and Catholic, Canada’s history has always been naturally multicultural. According to a Times article, the province of Ontario passed a law permitting religious authorities, under limitations, to arbitrate civil liberties if the citizen was w...

The origin of religion is murky but there can be no doubt that primitives on awakening to a subhuman conscious world were inexplicably mystified. That they found themselves vulnerable to unpredictable phenomena soon drove them to surrendering to powerful elements over which they had no control, and ultimately worshiping thereof. Injury and disease led to witch doctors; death led to witchcraft under whose imaginative rituals the spirit of the deceased would hopefully endure. Eventually witc...

Notwithstanding that this blogger thinks that military intelligence — indicative of all US intelligence agencies — has brains in the seat of its pants in taking pictorial evidence in a digital world that was bound to leak out and thus invoke more chaos — such as the horrific beheading — in an already dangerous Iraq, the current commotion over the prison abuse is a legitimate concern not only that a handful of ignorant, poorly trained reservists were in the main responsible for its own inhumanity...

Putting aside my recent blog wherein I disputed the degree of power attributed to God, I am a Catholic, non-practicing, because it was in the main responsible for allowing the great artists of the Renaissance to flourish, giving pictorial grandeur to a religion the mostly illiterate faithful could finally understand why they had embraced it unwittingly. Though I disagree with its unwieldy authoritarianism, there is no disputing the symbolic beauty of Catholicism. In paraphrasing James Joyce, i...

  Islam has now become an imminent danger; no longer can the West continue to overlook its basic principle of jihad, whether violent or non-violent: the clear fact is that it professes an unmitigated surrender to the will of God by an authoritarian clergy that does the thinking for the masses, thereby reducing the value of the individual to having no rights whatsoever and living for an afterlife only. That it is in competition or outright intolerance of other world religions is of no conseq...

The conservative monopoly on values is bogus. And by the way just what are values? Family values cross political lines, and there can, you know, be family togetherness even without saying Grace at the dinner table. Besides, family together at the kitchen table is a forgotten art — at best having fresh bakery rolls together on a Sunday morning. Both sides of the aisle have the same problem in trying to reach their kids. Of course, it’s helpful to have money whereby you can kidnap your kids f...