Americans Don't Read

When it was pointed out to John Foster Dulles that anyone who took the time to actually read all 26 volumes of the Warren Report would easily see for themselves that Oswald did not kill JFK, his response was, "Americans don't read." Sadly, that fact has been made over and over again, to our peril. This is particularly true when it comes to the two documents we claim to esteem so highly--the Constitution and the Bible. More people have read the Bible than the Constitution, but even those few who have actually read the Bible have read no more than those selected verses chosen by their Sunday School teachers. Having read the Bible from cover to cover, I have to say that anyone who believes it is God's divine word and that we should accept it as literal truth, is either stupid, or thinks the rest of us are.

To me, there are just too many inconsistencies, not to mention outright contradictions, in the New Testament, for me to accept it as literal truth. And if you do accept that it is God's divine word, to be accepted as literal truth, you have to accept ALL OF IT, not just those parts of it that support your particular position on things. If you believe that the Bible as we have it now, both Old and New Testaments, are the inspired word of God, then you must follow the tenets in both. That includes animal sacrifices for the remission of sins (and if you accept that Jesus' death fulfilled that obligation once and for all, you shouldn't keep those parts in your Bible because they are unnecessary), the stoning of adulterers and Sabbath breakers, and keeping away from menstruating women, to mention just a few. And I challenge anyone to find any Scripture in which Jesus condemns homosexuality or abortion. Yes, I know Paul ranted about gays, but he is not Jesus, and as a secondary source who started out by persecuting Christians and was a savage misogynist, he is suspect as far as I'm concerned.

And then there are all the different versions of the Bible itself--the King James, the Catholic version, the New Revised American Standard--if you compare verses side by side, you'll come away with a different understanding from each one because they didn't just paraphrase, they substantially changed the meaning of certain passages. If you think God really did write the Bible, how can you justify editing His words like that?

And when most people talk about the Constitution, they mean specifically the Bill of Rights (even though they probably haven't even read all of those either). I've been hearing a lot of talk from fundamentalist Christians running for President about "restoring the Constitution," even though they want to throw out the First Amendment. Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee both want to make this a "Christian nation," which would probably require another Amendment or at least a law of some kind specifying Christianity as the State Religion. That is a direct violation of the First Amendment which states:

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Plain and simple: Congress shall make NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion. That includes a State Religion. It's not just freedom of religion, but freedom from religion. The government can't force you to attend any church, let alone any particular church. If it can, then how are we any different from those who want to make Islam the State Religion? What's the difference between an Islamic Caliphate and a Christian United States?

We are engaged in a war not just of rockets and bombs, but of ideologies. And in any conflict of ideologies, the best way to arm yourself is with knowledge. READ the Constitution, READ the Bible, both of them, all of them, while there's still time to stop the Holy Express.