Family values
January 26, 2003 by Bill
I am smiling as I write this column. Why am I smiling? Well, the Christian and political right have just about smothered us with an avalanche of hyperbolic rhetoric about the fantasy they call “family values”.
Now, are you ready for this? Get another cup of coffee, come back, and read slowly.
The Christian Bible Belt has a divorce rate, per capita, twice that of atheists and agnostics. The divorce rate in the Bible Belt states is also 50 percent above the national average. This was revealed in a recent press conference in Oklahoma City by Governor Frank Keating. Since Oklahoma has one of the highest Bible Belt divorce rates the Governor felt obligated to confirm the statistics and ask for help in solving the problem.
Answers that are being offered are centered around the fact that the very nature of Bible Belt fundamentalism contributes heavily to the problem. Why? Because they have that whole dogma of “this is right” and “this is wrong” and there is nothing in between.
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Vine Deloria, Jr.
January 19, 2003 by Bill
One of my great joys from last year, 2002, was becoming friends with Vine Deloria. This man has been a hero of mine ever since I read his classic “GOD IS RED”. Called “the flagship book on Native American spirituality.”
Last summer we were both invited to be speakers at the Frank Waters Centennial Celebration in Taos, New Mexico. When we met it was like I had known this man forever, a kindred spirit who shared the same passions and visions that I have lived with for so many years. A fellow maverick who took to heart the advice of Thomas Jefferson “Your own reason is the only oracle given to you by God.” (Jefferson always used the word “God”, as a Deist, not a biblical Christian.) In bringing truth to falsehood and deceit he has constantly lambasted so called “scholars” and scientists for publishing baloney and hogwash. He would confirm Goethe’s definition of evil, as “militant ignorance”.
Among my favorites of his books are “RED EARTH, WHITE LIES” and “CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS” Or you would enjoy “SPIRIT AND REASON, A VINE DELORIA JR READER.”
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Bible and the gullible
January 12, 2003 by Bill
I receive questions through email and regular mail, either at my address or through the newspapers that carry my column. A recent letter from a woman said this: “I attend the largest fundamentalist church in the Coachella Valley. The pastor is constantly preaching that the bible is reliable, without error and without contradiction. He loves the phrase ‘the bible is reliable’. Do you believe this? Would you please do a column on this subject.”
No, I do not believe that. There is not one major theological seminary …nor one Department of Religion in any major university that teaches that nonsense. Anyone who tries to tell you that the bible is without error or contradiction is a biblical and historical illiterate. It is ignorance at the most pathetic point.
Can you believe that in the year 2003, with distinguished biblical scholarship available in every book store, we still hear the stupid remark that “the bible is without error.”
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