To borrow a phrase from the homophobic, fundamentalist religious right, a la "We don't hate the sinner, just the sin:"
I don't think religious people are necessarily stupid. It's just the things they
believe that are stupid.
To wit:
Former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee
attributed today’s deadly massacre in an elementary school in Newtown,
Connecticut to the lack of God and religion in public schools.
Addressing the tragedy on Fox News, Huckabee dismissed calls for
stricter gun control and claimed that future violence can be prevented
by solving matters of “the heart” and turning to God.
Putting aside for a moment the particularly annoying phenomenon that occurs anytime there is a disaster, wherein the religious are suddenly privy to the inner workings of their god (skipped Corinthians, did we? "For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him?"
The fact that he would simultaneously comment on a lack of god in the schools (how is he everywhere, then, Mike?) and dismiss the notion of man improving the world in which he lives is bad enough.
But then he goes on to say:
We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage because we’ve made it a place where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability?
First of all, that's pretty sweet, that you think your god is so evil he would punish little children for the sins of the fathers--who presumably are the ones who "took god out of the schools."
Second, um, accountability?? Responsibility?? From RELIGION? The place where you go to have your sins absolved? Eat a cracker, swig some wine, say some words, and boom, you're all set to go a'sinnin' again. That is the opposite of accountability.
And secondly, the place where you can blame or thank a magic man in the sky for everything that happens in the world is not the right place to seek personal responsibility. These dickheads would better serve the world--not to mention themselves--by just shutting up when these events occur, and letting their god deal with them. He's doing some fine work, by the way.
And I'm thinking that if people like Mike Huckabee and Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson can freely interpret the mind of god, so can I.
He says you should fuck off.