Gee, given all that, I guess I have been wrong my whole life. I guess there really is an invisible man living in the sky who will grant my wishes and smite my enemies and protect me from hurricanes and guide my career.

Oh. No? Are you sure?

You mean that God in all his forms and faces doesn’t have room for me in His universe because I don’t believe in his omnipotence, omniscience, and omni-benevolence? This from the same Scripture that says ‘love thy enemies’? Or do you mean the old Testament God of the Jews and Christians? The one who called for the deaths of individuals as well as the slaughter of entire cultures who were not of the Chosen People? Maybe you mean the Muslim God who still calls for it? Or do you mean any of thousands other religions around the world and throughout history that have warred and destroyed in the name of their Gods and Goddesses?

Perhaps you mean I should believe in the cargo cults of the South Seas who believe that giant flying birds made of metal will drop gifts from the sky? How about I chose to believe in Kali and Shiva, the Destroyers of the Universe? Or maybe even Odin and his crows waiting for Ragnarök and hope that by dying in battle I would be escorted to Valhalla to fight on the side of order?

Is the Flying Spaghetti Monster a good enough God in which to place my Faith? After all He just got a statue put up in his honor. Perhaps you mean I should lend my Faith to the Old Ones? Or maybe some obscure Indian religion based on fertility rites and hopes for a good buffalo hunt?

Would you find me an acceptable political candidate only if I followed your idea of who God is? Or can I just put my faith into Fred, my favorite tomato plant. After all, Fred provides sustenance for my earthly flesh and if you ever ate Hazel’s tomato sauce, you could believe that Heaven itself had provided for your soul. Perhaps my dog Mal is actually God, after all, he killed a Serpent in our Garden and is universally regarded as The Best Dog Ever.

Would my lack of faith in some almighty being mean that I can’t have any morality? If that is the case, why did my own solemn oath to defend my country or to tell the truth in court be accepted either, since I said ‘I do so affirm’ instead of ‘so help me god’? If my lack of Faith is any indication, you couldn’t trust me to hold to ANY oath, regardless of the words I used, therefore meaning that my word has no value to anyone about anything. In that case, are you going to assume that everything I say is a lie and sign out a complaint or report me for perjury? Do you assume that since I have no Faith, I can’t have morals at all? That I am a murderous thief who would break all the commandments with no thought about consequences? Do you really think I’m that stupid?

If so, then you, sir, are blind. If so, then you are so godstruck that you cannot even be intellectually honest about your fellow human beings. Morality. Is. That is a complete sentence. Moral behavior doesn’t come from a book of law or a book of faith. It is simply a set of behaviors that allow society to work. Humans learn it from our mothers and fathers, then from our friends and siblings. When you strip away everything else from every religion on the planet, you are left with three things, and they are things that we learned as children:

1) Do no un-necessary harm. This basically means that harming another, or yourself, is a negative action; while at the same time acknowledging that sometimes causing harm is required.

2) Work toward perfection. This is essential to growth as a person. Even if you fail at reaching perfection, you will have improved yourself in the process.

3) Teach your children to be better people than you are. You may ask yourself ‘better’ on what scale? And you would right to do so. That is where that most slippery of religious concepts comes in: Free Will.

Within those three simple but wide guidelines can be found the core foundation of morality. “Sin” isn’t against any god, it is against yourself, or your brother, or your neighbor. “Sin” has real world implications, it is not spiritual folly. Within those three tenets are the basis for the morals of honesty, integrity, charity, kindness, ethics, education, wisdom, honor, love, joy, patience, work, and rest. Also within that trio is the understanding that sometimes harming another or yourself is required for the physical or emotional well being of another. It allows that criminals should indeed be punished for they are a blight upon society, but that the punishment should fit the crime and actually be carried out fully. Upon this triad sits the knowledge that abortion might not be right for YOU, but it might be right for someone else. Or that the death penalty is a commensurate punishment for some crimes. Or even that sometimes, you have to tell your child that his tonsils have to come out and he’ll feel better in a couple of days.

This triad doesn’t recognize a ‘soul’, but it recognizes human dignity. It does recognize that each and every single human being has a right to liberty up to the point where it interferes with the liberty of another. It recognizes that a person can have FAITH in themselves and their families and their countries and allows them to choose how best to live and function within the framework of their societies. “Sin” happens when a person fails to abide by the tenets of polite society. I don’t mean polite in a ‘good morning, ma’am, let me hold the door for you’ kind of way, although that social lubrication helps. I mean that when a person breaks with custom, and harms another, they have lowered themselves in the eyes of their neighbors; and, if they have any sense of dignity or self-worth, in their own as well.

I don’t faith, capital “F” in any religion. I do however have faith that my fellow man wants the same things I do: to be treated honorably, to be allowed to live peacefully, to be allowed the liberty that all human beings have a right to enjoy not by grant of government or god but rather by the fact that I am a rational being. If I said I worship the words of our Founders, would you allow that I have least read them, and understand what they mean and studied to find out answers? If so, then I declare that I worship the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill Of Rights.

And that should be good enough to run for President, despite what Townhall says.

A Colorado Springs lawmaker referred Wednesday to unmarried, pregnant teenagers and the fathers as “sluts” who should be made to feel ashamed for their lack of morals.

Rep. Larry Liston’s remarks were made during a discussion with health care professionals at a Republican legislative caucus lunch about Colorado’s high teen pregnancy rate.

No, teens should not be having sex. They doubly shouldn’t be having unprotected sex. But they do have rampaging hormones, something of which the undoubtedly ossified Mr. Liston has only the dimmest memory. It is up to their parents to teach them the consequences of a lack of control, and to watch them like hawks to prevent windows of opportunity.

The trouble is most parents aren’t strong enough to put the fear of parental wrath into their children. Just knowing that I will extract something vital (with a spoon!) will serve to remind my children to use their damned brains in hormonally-driven situations. But many parents are either incapable of that level of attention-getting, or simply trust in the ephemeral threat of an Almighty-based smiting, oh, 70 or 80 years down the road. People, that is no kind of threat a teenager is going to take seriously.

Back to Mr. Liston:

“In my parents’ day and age, (unmarried teen parents) were sent away, they were shunned, they were called what they are,” Colorado Springs Republican Rep. Larry Liston said during the meeting in Denver. “There was at least a sense of shame.”

Would you like to know, Mr. Liston, where that sense of shame came from? The Church. Religion. The local preacher. This is the same sense of shame that prompts girls to keep the pregnancy secret and eventually abandon the newborn in a dumpster or bathroom. So, if anyone has anything to answer for, it is you holier-than-thou bastards who A) set up these horrible situations, then B) censure everyone but yourselves when they come to pass.

You want to know how to fix the problem of teen pregnancy?

#1 – Parent your children. Don’t leave the task to their school, their babysitter, their friends, or the pedophile in the nearest pulpit.

#2 – Remove the stigma you have painted on teen pregnancy. There are quite enough eager adopters out there that every single child accidentally brought into this world can have a happy childhood instead of a cold death.

#3 – And I suggest this even though I know there’s no way in hell you’ll do it…get OVER your problem with abortion. I realize funding is always a serious issue, what with Church A needing a new roof, and Church B losing constituents to Church C, but we are not your personal golden geese, bred for numbers and kept wing-clipped by evangelism. You can keep trying to sell that “birth control and abortion are forbidden” bill of goods, but we all know it’s just a cheap method of gaining new recruits. There are 6 billion people on this planet. You want more converts? Get your butts out there and get them the hard way…convince them you have something meaninful to offer.

Good luck with that, by the way.

Okay, this may not strictly count as a domestic nanny-state item, but since UN supporters generally come prepacked mailed-fist-in-velvet-glove with homegrown statists, I figure it merits a quick mockin’ here:

It didn’t attract much notice, but the General Assembly of the United Nations ended the year by passing a disgusting resolution protecting Islam from criticism of its human rights violations.

Lots of non-Muslims voted for it – a sign that more and more corrupt Third World governments are identifying with the ideology of Islam, even if they don’t accept its doctrines.

The resolution goes under the innocuous title “Combating defamation of religions” – but the text singles out “Islam and Muslims in particular”. It expresses “deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism”.

Wrongly associated? As of today, terrorists have carried out 10,277 separate attacks since September 11, 2001. They all belong to the same religion, and it ain’t Methodism.

It sure ain’t. Although, as we know from the incessant chirping and twittering of our own Tranzi/PC handwringers here, the Methodists are just as bad.

It’s just that it’s in, y’know, poor taste to notice the sins of the Islamic fundies. After all, if you make them mad, they might KILL somebody.