National day of unreason

Today is actually the national day of prayer here in the USA a day when that one religious segment of the country, albeit a majority, gets some pseudo-official sanction as the one true religion of this country no matter what our constitution says. This seems pretty unreasonable, but probably it will be found constitutional as has the phrase that was only recently inserted into our pledge of allegiance and put on our money, which isn’t for religious purposes, or to promote one particular religion, wink, wink, but just see who howls if you try to remove it.  Today will allow the sanctimonious to declare that all of our national problems would be solved if only we were more religious, and prayed more, or at least were reasonable enough to let the most religious run things the way they wish.  Could we pray that the sanctimonious learn that theocracies of all flavors have a terrible track record on human rights and freedoms, the kind of things that keep blogs like this from being declared blasphemous because it might hurt someone’s religious feelings?   Is that being unreasonable?  Now if we all would just pray for reason to prevail, and our prayers were answered, would religion just totally disappear thus proving the power of prayer once and for all, but when it’s too late? There must be some paper clips to sort or something else even less useful to do rather than think about this. 

The Sound of Silence

Yes folks students in public schools in Lincolnland will now have to observe a "moment of silence" to start the day since a court has ruled that silence per se is not about religion especially if your religion says you are to make "joyful noise". Now if really taken seriously this would not be a bad thing because the Phactor has long benefited from the silent reflection upon ideas and research during his walk to work. But of course this isn't actually about serious thinking, this is a shallow victory for those who favor forcing everyone to acknowledge their religious superstitions. This is what legislators do in our state rather than try to solve difficult problems. At least one judge wasn't duped and called a spade a spade - a moment of silence is about prayer in school as if people of that religious bent could not always pray whenever they wanted, but it's just so much better when everyone else has to play, er, pray along. Now if they decide to extend this to universities, no question we'll comply. It's easy to get a moment of silence. Just ask who's done the assigned reading?

Passing on the National Day of Prayer

Yours truly is going to pass on the national day of prayer. This is not because of any particular anti-religious fervor on my part, but it is based on a practical conviction that prayer alone just won’t do any good. When my students conducted a well constructed experiment, prayer couldn’t even help beans grow better, so I doubt it’s going to help with the national debt. Asking for gods’ continued guidance (Here use of the plural is deliberate so as not to offend any believers, e.g., in gods we trust.) does not strike me as particularly sound course of action because of late this hasn’t resulted in very impressive leadership given our unwise military actions, unwise business practices, and our policies reflecting considerable religiously rationalized bigotry. Perhaps messages are mixed, coming as they are from so many different deities, after all President Obama did invite “all people of faith” to join in, so maybe the one true God (mostly likely Odin) is pissed to hear so many prayers so wrongly directed, so the guidance delivered may be deliberately poor. And lastly prayer just strikes me as a bit childish and naïve, a rather poor substitute for hard-nosed pragmatic thinking, a most uncommon national practice.