Faith can move mountains – and it has. Faith can build mountains – and it has; witness the pyramids and other testimonies that there is life after death. Faith also masquerades as responsible thinking in the absence of raw, concrete evidence. No one (note: not even Jesus) has come back to life after death. There probably is something like a soul but when the body rots and bare bones are left, where is that soul?
Faith is also used handily in place of medicine. When the body does not heal, people turn to faith so the soul feels better. But reliance upon faith to the exclusion of the best scientific fact used in medicine flies in the face of reason and reality. But there are those people of faith who decline outside intervention while they rely on prayer.
What is happening in this country and in much of the world is a return to arcane beliefs that pass for faith. Rejection of the real world with all its terrors is matched by carriers of faith, along with weapons of destruction that prove their unswerving devotion to belief, faith, morality and specific aspects of unseen gods.
Faith may move or build mountains but it is also a deadly carrier of disease that rots the body politic and destroys monuments built by builders of democracy and progress. Mr. Bush may be trying to doge the bullets of reason by appointing people of faith. But these will construct a stairway to heaven while we need bridges and highways to bring people together here on earth.
Loyalty and familiarity of cronies from the great State of Texas, champion of education, are NOT qualifications required of members of the Court of Last Resort, the Supreme Court. That is why it is called The Supreme Court. This was proven when its members were enlisted to select the current President. That President is now turning the court into a body that will be in fact if not in essence an American body of Mullahs imposing “Shariah” on Americans.
This Shariah will have an American cast and be called by American names such as Reactionaries, Fundamentalists and particular names of Christian groups. These will enter the 21st Century and fight battles lost years ago about prayer in school, abortion and the rights of people not to believe what they are told to believe.
The test for Americans will be religious conformity if not just a declaration that they have faith. Perhaps a small badge will be required worn on one’s sleeve