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Catholic school was my formative religious experience. In parochial school, at least two hours out of each day were devoted to Mass or religious instruction. As a child, I always assumed that my classmates were as skeptical as I was about the religious indoctrination to which we were subjected on a daily basis--and that they remained silent only because they feared the wrath of the nuns. I was wrong.
When President Bush told The Washington Post's Bob Woodward that he consulted a "Higher Father" before going to war in Iraq, he unintentionally offered what has always been one of the most common and revolting rationalizations involved in one war after another. "God wills it." "A mighty fortress is our God." How do you argue with that?
As a freethinker and a feminist, I have always found it baffling that women, as a group, are more religious than men. Every public opinion survey reveals this "faith gap" between the sexes, in spite of the fact that the world's major religions have treated women as inferior beings throughout most of human history.
In my most recent posting on women and religion, I raised the baffling question of why women are more religious than men. Astoundingly, many readers seem to think they know the answer: women must be stupider than men. They cite "studies" indicating that there is a correlation between atheism and a high IQ. These studies are nonexistent, except in the fantasies of those atheists (a minority, I am sure) who, ironically, need to bolster their high opinion of themselves with junk science.
Since the beginning of the Bush administration, we have witnessed -- and are still witnessing -- the reprehensible results, affecting a wide variety of what are literally life-and-death issues, of a governing philosophy that exudes absolute contempt for the separation of church and state.
Since I do not believe in any supernatural being, I have nothing to say about prayer. The National Prayer Breakfast, however, is another matter.
What Islam Really Says About Violence, Rights and Other Religions
Gomaa, Fadlallah, Mubarak, Khan, Siddiqi, Ellison, others | On Faith
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