So, tonight I returned once again to that well of endless but terribly-pious
non sequiturs that is our old pal Jeremiah, only to discover his freshly-posted
latest take on the horrors of public schools. Let's deconstruct.
A new report finds that American adults who claim no religious affiliation increased from 14 million in 1990 to 34 million in 2008.
OH, dramatic and devastating! Until you consider that this averages to an increase of just 1.1 million per year, over that 18-year period. In the first year, assuming that average, it would be a 7% increase; and if you assumed the average increase for subsequent years, the percentage would actually
fall from year to year, given the higher base number. There's no way to know, of course, what the individual numbers were, each year, because this item's agenda was to go for the big astonishing leap and conveniently ignore the time scale over which it occurred.
Now, while the report says that there is less "religious affiliation" we need to first understand that religion itself is not faith, and is a great deal of the problem we are seeing today. The Church has failed to deliver the true message of Christ to the people...keep in mind, I am not saying that most churches or pastors, ministers are failing in this endeavor, but that many of today's mega-churches with extra large numbers in attendance, are bringing messages which do more to satisfy the sensibilities of human desires ... such as: "Oh you are a good person," and "believe in yourself" etc, which does much to rob the true message of Christ and the Church, which states that we are sinners in need of a Savior, and whatever sin that we may have in our life, we need to get it out and start living according to God's Will for our lives.
Because Jeremiah has The Answer (c). And isn't it interesting how he assumes that "religious affiliation" automatically means his preferred flavor of Christianity? Because, you know, none of these undeclared religious affiliations could possibly be a lack of affiliation with Judaism, with Islam, with Buddhism or any of dozens of other faiths. Again, viewing the matter through the wrong end of the telescope. And I would like to see some examples of these ego-assuaging mega-church messages. Most of the ones I have seen are just asking for money.
Why are people being more skeptical of having faith in God? Well, there are a lot of lies being spread in our government-run, public schools, and those lies have been disseminated across the country in our public schools for 46 years. So there are millions upon millions of folks today since the starting point of atheism in our schools who have no knowledge of the truth, because it has been effectively forced out of the debate through the preaching of tolerance...and this is what happens when the tolerance of diversity, which leads to polytheism (the worship of many gods), which leads to confusion and eventually mayhem and anarchy.
Er, no. The article doesn't say that people are "more skeptical of having faith in God." It quotes the report it cites as saying that "most of the religiously unaffiliated in the U.S. are not atheists, but 'embrace philosophical and theological beliefs that reflect skepticism rather than overt antagonism toward religion.'" An important distinction...especially since Jer has just pointed out that religion and faith are not the same thing. Self-contradiction, thy name is Jeremiah!
It's a painful exercise in pretzel-shaped logic to parse Jer's subsequent linkage of skepticism with polytheism and anarchy, but let's give it a shot.
Lies disseminated in the public schools? What "lies" would those be, Jer? Simply not talking about a specific God in that environment, and leaving all that to Sunday School or non-Christian faiths' vehicles for similar religious education...how is that a lie? (Of course I know he's dog-whistling for his nonexistent followers about e-v-o-l-u-t-i-o-n, but when he knows his arguments are going to be deconstructed this way he really ought to impose better standards on himself. This is pretty shoddy, even on his part.)
No knowledge of the truth, forced out of the debate through the preaching of tolerance? Hmm, seems to me that one Jesus Christ had a lot to say about tolerance. Jeremiah, as usual, omits those troublesome bits.
Diversity -> polytheism -> confusion ->mayhem and anarchy. So, isn't he arguing here that children need to be indoctrinated into cookie-cutter conformity with his own belief system, or it will all turn into one crazy cross-cultural reenactment of
Lord of the Flies? Even for Jeremiah, this is a genuine WTF stretch! Tolerate diversity, and you'll have a polytheistic society? Surprise, Jer! Society already embraces many different faiths, most of them monotheistic like your own, but many polytheistic as well. Life goes on. Anarchy hasn't taken over. Well, except from that crazy teabagger mob.
And isn't it fun to watch Jer try to claim that believing in
no gods (the dread spectre of atheism) naturally leads to believing in
many gods (polytheism)? Kind of like saying that being raised vegan eventually, and inevitably, turns kids into carnivores.
Although the report may say that the majority of those without any religious affiliation are non-antagonistic toward religion, any reported findings like that will inevitably prove a great deal of reluctance on the part of the individual/individuals to share their true feelings regarding the matter, and it is my contention that they are hostile to most religions, the faith of Christianity in particular. Why? Because of the reasons I mentioned, seeing how the majority of people have learned from the atheistic school system for the past 46 years.
Reluctance to share their true feelings? Golly gee, might that be from having to cope with multiple instances of zealots like Jeremiah taking any sincere expression of doubt or one's reasons for doubting as license to mount an all out convert-or-perish effort toward the individual in question? You want hostility? There it is in all its glory: not on the part of those who
decline an affiliation but on the part of those eager and determined to
push their own affiliation on all comers. It's nothing to do with the public school system, whose fault seems to lie in its failure to stuff Jeremiah's faith down all students' throats indiscriminately; and it's everything to do with fundamentalist Christianity's penchant for aggressively pursuing the conversion of those not predisposed to agree with them, and then the marginalization of those who refuse to be converted.
Sorry, Jer. You have to share the globe with those who disagree with you. There's plenty of room to share. Just lay off insisting that we make our space look exactly like yours.
Something must be done about our public schools. The atheism must go. It must be permeated from the learning process for all those concerned.
Permeated from the learning process? You keep saying that. I do not think it means what you think it means.
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All in all, a lackluster performance in terms of logic and cause/effect on Jeremiah's part, but a satisfactory restatement of his Greatest Hits. Can't wait to see what fresh tidbits he'll have for us in the coming weeks.
If so, that would be fucking sweet. 
WATCHER says: