Nice metaphor for religion in policy

News

SAN FRANCISCO (Aug. 5) - Previously hidden writings of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes are being uncovered with powerful X-ray beams nearly 800 years after a Christian monk scrubbed off the text and wrote over it with prayers.

(emphasis mine)

I'm don't usually take an active interest in finding chances to speak my mind about religion, but when i read this passage I had a sickness in my stomach that compelled me either to speak or to vomit. I have chosen the former.

Some must certainly wonder what this has to do with religion in government. Consider this: religion, by its own admission, aims for a personal relationship between the worshipper and God. Prayers can be one of the most personal aspects of this relationship.

But in this case, some misguided individual in a presumably less enlightened time saw fit to commit his prayers to paper and preserve his private conversations with someone he didn't have to correspond with. One must wonder if he wrote down all of his dialogues in this manner if he stuck just to writing down his side of his private conversations with God.

In the course of pompously making this private belief a public spectacle, this person found in necessary to silence something of greater public use because it was in his way. When the collective knowledge of humanity clashed with the private desire to record his religious zeal, this person favored the latter.

I believe this is exactly what is happening with religion in government in modern times. Stemcell research is perhaps the most analogous topic. In that subject as well the public good is made secondary to the private wish to make a spectacle of one's zeal.

The question I have, particularly for believers, is what you think of the man who destroyed Archimedes' work to record something that didn't need to be recorded. Would you do the same thing for the same reasons, and if not, why do so many christians still insist on bringing private belief into public policy?

Well, Im not Christian, so I cant answer that.

i do however, see and whole heartedly agree with your point. religon has its place, and should be freely expressed, but not given rein to offical public policy and the handling of priceless knowldge and data.

The institutions of education, science, librarys, and all scholarly topics should remain totally neutral, neither promoting religon nor disbelief, simply catalouging and analyzing the data.

I felt that similar when I read that, 'he scrapped off archimedes and wrote over it with prayers'

Dear lord, I mean, whats the purpose even!?!!?

I believe this is exactly what is happening with religion in government in modern times.

I find the stem cells bit shocking. In the past, the pious refused to allow bodies to be dissected after death, for study, because the body was sacrosanct. Heck, they wouldn't even cremate bodies, because they had to remain intact for 'the ressurection'.
Of course, once it became a problem for the church, (millions decaying in teh streets from teh black plague), then cremation was permited and popular.

Its the same situation that we see in the middle east, islam is presented as a religion and a guide for society, thus things that don't fit with religious interpretations of islam can be prohibited within society.

Its disgusting. Just look at the RCC preventing kerry from getting communion, because he was pro-abortion. How many other people does the church deny it to? Apparently only when its a worthwhile political ploy do they bother. Meanwhile, they're enabling child-rape.

And the other extreme is true, soviet russia was an atheist state, and took its ideology to the extreme. Thus they had Lysenkoism, they backed a horrible biological-agricultural theory that was killing masses of people and destroying the state, because it was 'ideologically consistent'. More politics. What we need is real politics.

yeah, i felt sad to be from st louis when i heard about kerry being refused communion. i priest i know even disagreed with that saying "communion is between you and god" but he is a hippy and a jesuit.

religious leadership is just so detrimental