{"id":16,"date":"2010-05-22T17:34:03","date_gmt":"2010-05-22T22:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cymbalmonkey.com\/wordpress\/?p=16"},"modified":"2023-07-14T16:49:40","modified_gmt":"2023-07-14T21:49:40","slug":"on-not-equating-religion-with-virtue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cymbalmonkey.com\/wordpress\/2010\/05\/22\/on-not-equating-religion-with-virtue\/","title":{"rendered":"On (not) Equating Religion with Virtue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From FB, today:\u00a0 &#8220;&#8230;in between elections, these spineless, godless, socialists are able to foist immeasureable destruction to the country and our American way of life.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Oh, hell.\u00a0 This is the kind of crap that I hate to see in the middle of my morning coffee.\u00a0 Or my afternoon Coke.\u00a0 Or my evening wine.\u00a0 Or, really, the spit in my own mouth, at any time of the day or night.<\/p>\n<p>Because I do not agree that lovers of peace and proponents of diplomacy are spineless.\u00a0 In fact, as I recall, even the Bible has some advice against warmongering.\u00a0 And I do not agree that all programs designed to serve the public welfare amount to socialism.\u00a0 But most egregious here, as far as I am concerned, is the insinuation that godlessness somehow equals treachery, that\u00a0godlessness (almost certainly used here to mean a lack of Christianity, rather than a lack of spiritualism or religion in any form&#8211;remember, I am acquainted with the author of the quotation) is, must be, the same as anti-god-ness, or evil.\u00a0 Leaving aside for the moment that of the &#8220;socialists&#8221; in question &#8211;current members of the United States&#8217; legislative, executive, and judicial branches&#8211; about 98 percent describe themselves as affiliated with an established religious group, the very idea that religion equals virtue and that, conversely, inevitably, then, lack of religion equals immorality or indecency, is reprehensible in my eyes.\u00a0 This is the worst kind of othering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From FB, today:\u00a0 &#8220;&#8230;in between elections, these spineless, godless, socialists are able to foist immeasureable destruction to the country and our American way of life.&#8221; Oh, hell.\u00a0 This is the kind of crap that I hate to see in the &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/cymbalmonkey.com\/wordpress\/2010\/05\/22\/on-not-equating-religion-with-virtue\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cymbalmonkey.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cymbalmonkey.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cymbalmonkey.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cymbalmonkey.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cymbalmonkey.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/cymbalmonkey.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19,"href":"http:\/\/cymbalmonkey.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/19"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cymbalmonkey.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cymbalmonkey.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cymbalmonkey.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}