Ah, yes. What would a year be without a cacophonous missive from the battleaxe of biblical blather. It’s a real quandary to me that Roy Moore, Alabama’s latest and greatest embarrassment; feels it necessary to come to Chattanooga to beat his particular dead horse. And I think it’s telling to all those who just aren’t sure if Christianity is for them, that Highland Park Baptist Church can be filled to overflowing with people who, like the crusaders of old, would show their compassion to non-believers by offering a choice of conversion or being separated from their head. They showed their arrogance and callousness to people of the Jewish faith when Moore was last here and they presented him with a “trophy” fragment of a desecrated Torah to use like some sort of campaign banner for his attack on America. Oh yes, these people are just the model to bring forth the message of their “prince of peace.”

What a crock!

When the Supreme Court finally puts this to rest and sends the angry little man from Alabama home to run for governor (a good corollary to that other ‘alien’,) maybe we will be momentarily given respite from the ill wind of theocratic extremists and we can get back to things that really matter. Things like voting to remove our lying pResident and his greedy band of thieving neocons from office before the country is irretrievably harmed. Things like fending off efforts to destroy public education. Things like stopping the robbery of the world commons by corporate greedheads. Things like turning our attention back to the accelerating deterioration of natural systems upon which all life depends by reversing the Republican destruction of environmental laws. Things like putting our military back to work defending America, not being used as expeditionary forces for Bush’s hitleresque drive for world domination. Things like putting enough police on our streets to bring sanity back to our roadways and safety back to our living rooms. The list extends ad infinitum.

All of these things and more can be accomplished in an atmosphere of cooperation, mutual respect and sincerity without even the mention of religion. In fact, that is the only way the things America needs most will ever be accomplished. When the people of the world can look upon each other with regard only to their humanity, with no regard to their cultural traits or ethnic origins, and without imposition of any tribal religious affiliations and the poisonous divisiveness and prejudice which it engenders; then and only then will we be able to begin talking about world peace.

Yes, Ms. Griffin, I’m talking about Humanism. The philosophy that will, despite your best efforts, one day emerge as the chosen path for all of humanity, if it is to survive. A philosophy that will join all the peoples of Earth in a communal goal of health, happiness, equity, love and realization of a shared destiny. After all the religious wars have been fought, after all the tribal religions (particularly the ‘revealed’ religions) have been abandoned as the vacuous vessels that they are, and the last of their “holy” books has turned to dust, the humans of that day will either seek a way to sustain a life that fosters the aforementioned communal goal or the entire Earth will inevitably be reduced to another Martian wasteland for some other galactic intelligence to explore for faint signs of life. The choice is yours - you can wait for jesus until the sun burns out, or you can adopt the philosophy that can make the world we know as full of happiness and enrichment as it is capable of being.

The Declaration of Secular Humanism is clear, concise and makes perfect sense. It is built upon logic and reason, eschews the supernatural, and is the best roadmap to the destination physical beings living in a physical world must seek. It is available on the web for all to see at http://www.secularhumanism.org/intro/declaration.html. Face it - there’s simply no heaven out there in the ether. We’re standing in ‘the garden’ and it’s about time we quit tearing it down and blowing it up and started making it bloom. The Declaration of Secular Humanism is a terrific gardening guide. Check it out - it’s the future.

Bruce Wilkey
bwilkey@bellsouth.net