An unbiased, cursory review of history's violent conflicts, wars, etc. will undoubtedly show that religious strife is a core element of the vast majority of the bloodletting that mankind has perfected to art form.
This ancient and childish concept that "my invisible cloud being" is more powerful than your "invisible cloud being" has been the root of untold human suffering over the ages.
This story from right here in the good 'ol US of A is the gazillionth chapter in this sad, unending saga of human stupidity and is reason number ... (shit I've lost count) ... why krazee is not a Christian.
I'm convinced that when the next civil war takes place in this country, and every day by virtue of what I see happening here, my belief that it will occur compounds, fundamentalist religious beliefs adulterously connected with right-wing politics will be the centerpiece catalyst as to it's cause.
Frankly, I'm ready to just wall off a corner of the continent, shove all of the religious nuts in it and let them crusade, convert and conquer amongst each other until they're all mercifully extinct.
Back to this story from Ohio though -- about this middle-school science teacher John Freshwater shoving his fundamentalist religious beliefs down impressionable young people's throats -- who the fuck does this asshole think he is?? His buddy tries to defend him saying, "With the exception of the cross-burning episode [as if that act alone shouldn't be all the evidence needed to send this dickhead packing] ... I believe John Freshwater is teaching the values of the parents in the Mount Vernon school district." Really? Mr. Freshwater performed personal interviews with ALL of the parents of ALL of his students and made the determination that he and only he was capable of interpreting the values of these parents and his interpretation of those values gives him carte blanche permission to religiously proselytize to his captive audience of students? BULL FUCKING SHIT!!
It's truly a lamentable state of affairs that the sincere, humble, and decent Christians who don't thump their bibles, who don't feel it's their divinely inspired duty to convert non-believers and who don't view their religion as a superior philosophy and who are mindful and respectful of differing views and belief systems, are an underwhelming minority of Christians in this country today. The core humanist principles which Jesus Christ actually preached have been so twisted and perverted by this modern fundamentalist movement to the point where these people really have no goddamn right to call themselves Christians any more. If Christ were to come back today he would be horrified by the inhumanity, the selfishness, the arrogance and the idiocy that's been wrought in his name by these uber-pious, phony believers.
Anyhow, without question, this "Science" teacher in Ohio not only deserves to lose his job, he ought never be allowed anywhere near a public tax dollar financed school system ever again.
----k
