Tuesday, September 1, 2009

You Sir, Are No Jimmy Carter!

Yes, may the real Jimmy Carter stand up. The venerable ex US President Jimmy Carter recently declared himself severed from the Southern Baptist Convention, an organization that couldn't distance itself any sooner from its past attitude towards slavery than 1995.

I pity those that need the words of Jimmy Carter to wake up to the notion that rational thinking is the enemy of religion and believe itself. Had he gone one step further he might as well have condemned the "Holy Scriptures" of the world as having been written by men if not perhaps with the singular aim to control women, but to enslave mankind itself with silly tales of virgin birth, talking snakes and burning bushes, all the way through to denying millions proper education, life-saving birth control, and the practice of free thought and freedom itself.
As much as I applaud Carter's long-delayed moment of clarity, the case for equality will not succeed as long as people are either born into a controlled environment of a singular belief system, forced to adopt one, or persecuted for having a different belief as these religions are more than cults, they have grown into massive mind-controlling powers that influence trade, governments, social life, and human interaction.
Carter's ascend to the club of Elders conjures up images of the wise men and women of the past who'd blow smoke up on youngsters' asses by relishing in the respect they hope to have earned by those that don't remember their youthful mistakes. So, yeah, we may listen respectfully when someone of stature makes an unexpected statement, like breaking with a splinter cell of the larger belief franchise, but until the same rationale is applied to those aspects of "Holy Scriptures" that don't (yet) fly in the face of currently fashionable conversation topics the liberation of women and logic will only pay lip service to those that hold the reins of the various clergies. By the very belief their foundation is based on they will delay any and all attempts to undermine it.
So, I humbly invite Jimmy Carter to put his thinking cap on once more and draw the only logical conclusion he can make when beginning to question why we need to be told what to believe by a "higher authority" that defies much, if not all, common sense, and when it comes to discrimination, decency.