I'm surrounded

It's weird how sychronous the news ends up being sometimes...I'll get to that in a minute.

Everyone that knows me knows I am a declared agnostic, meaning that in my opinion I cannot either rationally or emotionally support the idea that a God does or does not exist. I mean, to me it's folly to declare that argument won one way or the other - if God is infinite, and our understanding of life, the universe and everything is finite, then we cannot by definition ever completely know for sure whether a God exists or not. That is the basis of faith, which is a concept I at least understand - faith means that in the absence of any sort of definitive evidence, you make a decision to believe in something anyway. Believing in God or being atheist are alike in that way, in that it requires a leap of faith to really be honest that you go one way or the other. And if you have made that leap yourself, in a way I envy you, because for the life I me I just can't do it. Despite all logic that God does not exist, I can't discount the fact that an existence like that might be beyond my understanding, which means the possibility always remains that it just might be true. At the same time, I see guys like Evander Holyfield walking down to the ring singing their hearts out to a gospel tune because they're just so...SURE...and that level of conviction that I feel would be necessary to have faith is something I may never be able to grasp. But at least I'm honest about it.

Anyway, that said, you can understand why I cringe when confronted with someone else's faith (either for or against). This has reduced the Bible to a text, and organized religions to social services that were once huge political forces...and are trying to be once again. That scares me, because faith is not rational, and this day and age I don't want someone at the helm making decisions who just makes decisions based on gut instinct and damn the cost.

Unfortunately, we have a president in the office who is the most uber-conservative, religious zealot in modern times. Bush makes Reagan look like a hippie by comparison. And he IS making his decisions based on faith, and that's scary - because this is not your average church-going guy, this is an evangelical Christian who believes that the Rapture is actually coming very soon, and seems to be going out of his own personal way to bring it about (not to mention line the pockets of his buddies in big business).

Don't believe me? Then I invite you to watch the program I watched last night on PBS Frontline called "The Jesus Factor" (available online in its entirety at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jesus/). And when you're done with that, read the following article from the Village Voice - "The Jesus Landing Pad" at http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0420/perlstein.php. That's what I meant about the news being synchronous. If either of those stories doesn't scare you, then you really ought to take a deep look at yourself, and understand that Bush is creating an American version of the Taliban - a govenrment based solely on religious values and ancient laws. We laugh at the Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran that have such governements in place, but the truth is it's happening right here, and that is just the tip of the iceberg as to the depth of my dislike for George W. Bush.