Today's Topic: Religion!

Once again, greetings!



For all those reading this post or having read my first one, I'd like to note that my posts will most likely be weekly, every Sunday, from now on. Anyway, before I go into religion, the name of this blog is A Nerd's Life, so I'll go into that first.



I'd like to write this: Dear online databases, please go fuck yourselves. Signed, I will NOT take a free subscription, thank you very much. The reason I say this is because in my school over this weekend and for the first half of this week, my AP world history class is required to do a project where we create a newsletter based on the impact the Mongols had on an assigned region in the 13th and 14th centuries. Me and my bud were assigned to do the Middle East (Persia), the domain of the Il-Khans. We're supposed to use to online databases for Noodletools resources, but unfortunately in order to access them at home we have to sign up for a supposedly "free" subscription to the database that lasts at least 2 months. And each of the databases does this. Normally, I'd be fine with this, but these things ask for credit card info and social security numbers. Free subscription my ass. As such, I am forced to only gather my website resource info at home, and do ALL of the other note cards in class tomorrow and Tuesday, limiting the amount of time I can do the project. My bud also ran into the problem. This will surely suck.



Anyway, that's the weekly dosage of being a nerd for me here. On this week's topic, I'd like to discuss religion, or rather America's problems with it. If you're not like Helen Keller, then you know that evangelical Christians (and just Christians in general) are the base of the Republican party and conservative ideology. In fact, pretty much all conservatives are some sect of Christianity, from Catholics to Mormons (Mitt Romney). And unless you are very blinded ideologically, then you also know that Christian conservatives often attack just about any other religion than their own, especially when a liberal practices said faith. That is why if you go on Yahoo answers, all the conservatives on there will say Obama is a Muslim. Let's get some things straight here. First, Obama practices Christianity. He's done readings of the freaking Bible. Next, the fact that conservatives would attack him if he was a Muslim is astonishing. In America, the Constitution that conservatives claim to love denotes freedom of religion in the first amendment, which small-government advocates of the day strongly supported. It also says that religion will not play a role in government, and that a presidential candidate will not be denied the presidency due to the basis of his/her faith. As such, calling Obama a Muslim isn't just hateful towards Muslims, it attacks him for reasons that the Constitution itself contradicts. Conservatives treat Islam as though it is a hate-filled religion and that if any Muslim gets political power they think he will implement Sharia law. Islam is no more hateful of others than Christianity, and let's not forget that Christianity was a borderline genocidal religion back in the Dark Ages. This lasted several centuries. Terrorism? Not even 100 years old yet.



Next, Sharia law is not even a defined system. It depends on whether its implementation is made by Sunni or Shiite leaders, and even then it is still not a complete system as of yet. That is why Iran and Morocco can both practice it, but only one is a country that presents a world threat and treats its citizens poorly (Iran, of course). Even so, Sharia law is not necessarily a terrible, repressive system. It applies religious characteristics to government, yes, but it is in the hands of a nation's people to decide what form of governance they desire. It is not up to us to decide that. Even if Obama was a Muslim who preached Sharia law and had somehow made it our system, I would not truly mind too much. It dedicates help to the poor, and establishes Jews as a protected minority. Christians aren't in immediate danger either. Even under harsh Sharia law like that of Saudi Arabia and Iran, Christians still survive. They can't openly practice their religion, but very few people these days take the time to be full-time practitioners of their religion anyways. And you can always pray in your house, if necessary. Also, the merciless attacks I see on Muslims in general by conservatives disgust me.



While I cannot find the main base of their hatred, I do believe that it is hated for two main reasons. One: just like conservatives fear communism because it is different from us, they also fear Islam. Because almost all conservatives are Christians and Islam has a poor history with them, they still attack it as their religious rival in the world. Two: many of them probably just plain hate Muslims. Because it is a different religion that is smaller than Christianity, they deny it and attack it in the hopes of eradication of an opponent. Just like they do to leftists. Either way, hatred of a religion (especially the world's second biggest one) gets conservatives nowhere fast and also establishes them as the ideology of intolerance. That is why the majority of American Muslims attach themselves to the liberal ideology. My view of Islam? It's not a bad religion. It's no worse than Christianity like I said before. I've read the Qur'an, and as far as I can tell it is a religion that should be fully accepted. In our American system (and pretty much any system), you need to allow for a complete flow of ideas from all sources. I'm not sure if James Madison or Thomas Jefferson said this in the federalist papers, but you need to have an absolute exchange of ideals (at least in a democracy) to keep the system flowing at full capacity. If the system shuts out ideals, foreign or domestic, it is forced to abandon hope of adopting any good sides to said ideals. While isolation does sound tempting at first, it is no longer feasible at this point in history. The world economy is now fully globalized and interdependent, and we all know well that isolation of the economy constricts its abilities (the Cuba embargo). As such, when conservatives attack the ideas of leftists and Muslims, they effectively are preaching the isolation of the American system from political debate. This would cause the American government to become defunct, leading to a whole host of other problems. You need to some level of political debate in a country to keep it functioning properly, and whether this is within a political party or not, it must happen.



This is why systems like that of Iran and Syria don't work well. They do not allow opposition in their governments, so the opposition instead manifests itself in protesters time and again. If these governments would be willing to appease the protesters and accept new ideas, they could reform, move forward, and have a chance to progress with the world. Because both countries use militaristic force against their protesters, they shut out opposition ideas, constraining their government and forcing the country to sit back and regress while the rest of the world doesn't. This is what I see conservatives trying to do often in our system. They preach "tradition" and "good old Christian morals."



Trying to get back the "good old days" just continually forces the American system to regress, and this regression will only lead to systemic failures due to the fact that much tradition is now outdated and useless. Second, when conservatives say "Christian" morals, they say that they don't mean the religious ones, they mean the original morals of our society. Bullshit. They mean that they want America's morals to be based off the Bible, and they know it. Doing this effectively makes them no better than the Sharia law defenders they attack so much. We must allow all religions to have an equal say and strength in our government, or succumb to failure due to isolation and hatred.



That is all for this week, and if you'd like to try debating me do so in the comments. If you'd like to do it a little more privately, my email is zerospintop@live.com. Please no hateful things; they will be deleted if deemed so. This is SuperJew McLovin, a.k.a Ben Goldberg, signing off.