Freedom of Faith

I have been getting lots of e-mails lately pertaining to prayer in schools, prayer in the work place, etc. I am personally sickened by these pointless discussions of faith in our lives. I thought we lived in the United States of America. A country where you are free to believe in what you want. A country where the government can not force you to believe in something if you choose not to. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" (first half of the first amendment of the Bill of Rights.) So why are we having all this stupid crap being debated when there are more important things that should be worried about. Why am I having to rant on this right now because people are not capable of generalizing things to strip their faith from a proposed good thing? I guess that is the million dollar question isn't it.

"I would like to thank God for giving me the strength to...." "God made it possible for me to..." "I would like to thank God and my family for..." God's gift made it possible for me..." Who hasn't heard these lines in someones comments before? Seems like there is always a famous person or sports figure thanking God for their success and talent. And that is their right to do so. I don't care if they do, I say good for them for having something to believe in. Good for them that they have something in their life that makes them strive to do great things or to do the best they can do. So why rant about this, because I have to read e-mails like this forwarded by people who think they are doing the right thing, but for whom?

"If you look closely at the picture above, you will note that all the Marines pictured are bowing their heads. That's because they're praying. This incident took place at a recent ceremony honoring the birthday of the corps, and it has the ACLU up in arms. "These are federal employees," says Lucius Traveler, a spokesman for the ACLU , "on federal property and on federal time. For them to pray is clearly an establishment of religion, and we must nip this in the bud immediately.""

I think why is bowing your head praying? Why does it need to be? Every time I bow my head I am not praying! When people ask a group to have a moment of silence to remember those who have died or given their life in a war or what ever they are asking for a moment of silence for I bow my head. It is habit for me, I do not pray when I am doing it, I usually take that time to think of those people I know that fit the description of the silence I am being asked to take. After all I do not think about those people on a daily basis and it is nice to remember them in those moments. I was chatting with someone and they linked me an article and for the life of me I can not find the chat so I am going from memory here. I think Illinois passed a state law making it mandatory for public schools to have a moment of silence at the beginning of class for students to be able to pray if they wish. Now where is the harm in that? I will tell you where! It is in the phrasing of the request, if you were to drop the "to pray" part no one would care but because it is implying religion in it people have to be all bent out of shape about it. WHO CARES!!!!!!!!!!! Let students have a moment of silence at the beginning of the school day. Did silence ever hurt anyone? Can you go deaf from too much silence? Will silence get you pregnant? Can silence be harmful to your health? No it can't.

Here is my proposal, if you are gong to write a law write it the way you would like to see it presented. Get it all set up properly, make sure you cross every T and dot every I and then proof read it of course. I mean it would be silly to have said something you didn't mean to say in a law right? Get someone who has the same views as you to read it over and make sure you got it all down right. Then go back and remove every religious reference. Make it so general and not related to religion that no one can complain about your forcing your beliefs on them. Again proof read it to make sure you got everything about faith out of it. Then read it one more time, if it makes sense it is a good idea and you should roll with it. If it becomes a mindless blabbering of crap it was too faith based to begin with, just drop it. I think a moment of silence in public schools is a great idea! It gives people a chance to collect their thoughts, get into the frame of mind they should be in for learning, go through that mental check list of your day, and for some yes pray. How we handle OUR moments of silence is OUR business. But if you don't get a moment, you can't do what you want with it.

I say all of you sorry people who spend your time blabbering on about why religion is part of the United States need to shut the hell up and all of you people who are trying to force your godless beliefs on everyone also need to shut the hell up. After all it is my right to tell you you both suck at life and fail at being compassionate people. I find your pursuits to be pointless and worthless. It is time you start caring about things that need to be fixed then you can take all the time you want to dispute these other things when all other problems are fixed.