There is a point where religion veers off the road of spirituality, of inner understanding and of deeper connection with what is outside ourselves, into stupid superstition of the "step on a crack break your mother's back" childhood nonsense to make walking along sidewalks more interesting, and into the sewer of superstition.One of the perils of superstition is that it acknowledges only a partial responsibility for human choice and human behavior. For the rest, it encourages buck passing, 'the devil made me do it' thinking. Although that doesn't seem to stop the higher threshold of responsibility to which the right holds everyone but themselves.Far too much of the so-called religious right is really more the anti-reality right, rejecting a more objective basis of understanding and connecting to the world for the most idiotic superstition, and sticking a badly printed, misspelled post-a-note over what it really is -- nonsense -- and trying to relabel it as religion and GOD.
This explains the right wing stupidity that rejects science, that rejects anything that challenges their swollen over-emotional amygdalas, to the exclusion of the use of the rest of their brains. The religious right finds pleasure a source of fear, on some level, be it sex, or alcohol, marijuana, or even relaxation through meditation -- or candy.
This is a prime example, the assertion of demonic possession if you get buzzed or high:
I put this on a par with the claims we had a few years ago that witches were flying around candy factories on their broomsticks, cursing all halloween candy --- presumably all candy, since some of it is not holiday specific --- and the claims that carving a pumpkin and putting a candle in it would lead to demonic possession.
In other words, a significant segment of the right replaces rational thinking with highly emotional not-thinking, and then tries to give it legitimacy as religious faith that deserves respect and credibility.
It doesn't.
But more than that, the radical right is bent on coercing the rest of the world to conform to their willful insanity and stupidity.
We must reject it, soundly, and as well we should treat it with the ridicule that it deserves. This is not faith, it is not spirituality, it is the worst aspects of who we are, and it should be rejected for the failure it is. 'Demon Drink' works as a metaphor, but not as a serious alternate reality.
When the religious right report hearing voices........it's NOT God, but it might be schizophrenia or some other kind of delusion. Contrary to predictions like the one below, Mitt Romney is not looking at beginning a two term presidency (the prediction from God last year), and it is not likely that Obama is going to retire to Florida this year to become a surfer. But hey, THEY BELIEVE this stuff on the radical religious right:
Religion, not government, appears to be the problem, not the solution; at least the kind favored by the radical right. Increasingly, this is the ONLY right.
