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After work yesterday I went to the gym to work out and read from my textbook for Finance (I do a lot of reading on the elliptical machine, being able to read while running without getting sick and being immune to poison ivy seem to be the trade-off for my allergies\/eczema\/asthma).\u00a0 On the way there, as I so often do, I found myself listening to NPR.\u00a0 They had a piece about the current supreme court case regarding the white cross in Mojave.\u00a0 To sum up the case, for anyone unfamiliar, Christian veterans erected a white cross to honor the war dead in 1934.\u00a0 However, it was erected on public land, which was eventually (in 2002) deemed to be in conflict with the separation of church and state.\u00a0 To get around this the government donated the land to the Vets and in return they agreed they’d take care of the land.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, what has happened is that the ACLU is (rightly) suggesting that this is still showing preferential treatment for one religious group.\u00a0 After all, the government didn’t donate equal tracts of land to Jewish Veterans, etc.\u00a0 What was interesting about this spot on NPR was that the correspondent read verbatim (some of) the argument between the ACLU, Justices Ginsburg and Scalia.\u00a0 For the full transcript, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n What shocked me was Scalia’s ignorance and inability to hold up the basic tenets of his office, to speak for the diffuse peoples of the United States, and not just for himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n At one point Scalia said: The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead.<\/em><\/p>\n The ACLU representative, Jewish, informed Scalia that\u00a0“I’ve been in Jewish cemeteries, there’s never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew<\/em>.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Not much was made of this, but it was shocking to me that Scalia could so freely admit that he can see no further than his own big Italian nose.\u00a0 “golly, when I go to my cemetery all I see are crosses, so that MUST be the only way anyone marks a grave, what are these dumb Jews carping about?”\u00a0\u00a0 I bet he thinks pizza and pasta are the only things the people of the united states eat for dinner.\u00a0 “Matzah ball soup??\u00a0 I’VE never seen that, so spaghetti must be the most common food people eat.”\u00a0 Notice the worst part, Scalia didn’t even qualify his remarks with an “in America” like so many misguided right wingers tend to do “America is a christian nation, America was founded on Christianity, America does not torture”, etc.\u00a0 So, Justice Scalia, a supreme court justice believes that all over the world the cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead?\u00a0 I’d say at best a nondemominational square stone is probably the right answer… hello… how many big crosses do you even see in your local christian cemetary?<\/p>\n By the way, when did something being “the most common” make it immune from separation of church and state?\u00a0 Isn’t that precisely why we have those laws?\u00a0 We have them so that minority religious beliefs aren’t pounded down to dust by a state sponsored majority.<\/p>\n But, at the end of the day, this is all nonsense anyway.\u00a0 Religion, I mean.<\/p>\n A friend sent me earlier in the day this link to Christopher Hitchens’ speech <\/a>in Australia (at the Opera House??).\u00a0 I downloaded the video and watched\/listened to it as I completed the painting.\u00a0 Many times during his speech I had to stop and look up at the screen (I was painting on the floor) as the reasons he was giving for disbelief in God were the same that I have and I rarely see brought up in those kinds of discussions.\u00a0 He even uses the topical event of Roman Polanski’s ummm “situation” as a proof against Christian (only) morality.\u00a0 Unfortunately the only people who will ever watch this video are the people who already agree with him.\u00a0 In America for some reason it is seen as welcome for cults to\u00a0proselytize (we all know what the Mormons wear when they do this, right? …how do you think we all know that?) and yet when any respected author, scientist, etc. speaks out against religion (essentially proselytizing for Atheism\/Agnosticism) it is seen as highly offensive.\u00a0\u00a0 Our school system is seen as a complete joke to other 1st world countries.\u00a0 Not so much because we’re falling behind in math and science, but because we actually have people on school boards even considering for one moment to put something as ridiculous as Creationism in science texts.<\/p>\n My disbelief in God was furthered along a few hours later when I saw the Daily Show’s interview with rapper Slim Thug<\/a>.\u00a0 Who, although I’ve never heard of him, and his wikipedia entry <\/a>is only one paragraph long, apparently has too much money to know what to do with and lamented that he had to settle for a Bentley Flying Spur instead of a Rolls Royce due to the current economy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Does Sufjan Stevens have enough money to buy Bentleys?\u00a0 Oh wait, Sufjan’s music has been used in commercials and in films, so people have actually HEARD his music, so that isn’t a good example.\u00a0 Or maybe it is, because I don’t believe Sufjan (and “Sufjan” in this sense is a stand in for any and all talented\u00a0young musicians who are widely recognized among music critics and have their music occasionally acknowledged in the mainstream media as well) is as rich as Slim Thug.<\/p>\n Slim Thug couldn’t get his new Rolls Royce this year.\u00a0 There is no god.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n