Miss-enlightened!

Religious leaders attack politicians every week; they cite the bible as a source for why our elected officials are not doing a good job. Politicians use their "faith" to promote their own opinions on everything; race, education, global warming, taxes, the war on "terror"- the list goes on and on, and nothing is exempt from religious scrutiny.

Religion, in a lot of cases, seems to be just a way for people to promote their agenda without giving a logical reason. It also serves as a way for people to remove themselves from any personal responsibility (i.e. "it's in God's hands" and "God told me to.").

The bible is an easy tool to use if you want to prove a point because it says contradicting things about pretty much everything. If you want to retaliate against someone you can use the doctrine "an eye for an eye." If you want to preach forgiveness you can tell people to "turn the other cheek." These two statements give people carte blanche to do whatever they please when confronting someone in a disagreement. If the bible is really the answer to everything, then how can such discrepancies exist? Whether you believe in God and Jesus, they did not write the bible, man did (and we all know how corrupt man can be).

Many people feel like politics should not be influenced by religion, but unfortunately that constantly are. Our country was built by people who wanted to escape religious persecution, how have we strayed so far from that?

Thomas Jefferson, our 3rd president and the cocreator of many of our founding documents, was skeptical of what we gain by following religion. Some of the things he was quoted saying include:

"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of
Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not
advanced one inch towards uniformity. "

"But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. "

"The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills. "

"Priests...dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live. "

Another American founder that disapproved of religion influencing politics was Benjamin Franklin. Some of Franklin's quotes include:

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."

"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies."

"The way to see by Faith is to shut the eye of Reason."

When people talk about returning to "good old fashioned values," why does it never include the sentiments of the men who built this country? I firmly believe that religion has no place in the political arena. For more information check out Religulous, it is a great documentary with a lot of information and interviews relevant to the topic.