Open Your Mind, Just Not So Much That Your Brains Fall Out

I just sent an e-mail to a minister who wrote a letter to the editor in our local paper. His letter accused people who don't want intelligent design taught in schools of not being open-minded. It also hit on the topic of the recent proposed legislation in Florida to force a woman seeking an abortion to get an ultrasound.
This legislation failed, but barely.
Anyway, I pointed out to the minister that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of creation myths and if we are indeed open-minded, then we should be teaching some of those too. And I added that when he gets a womb, he should definitely consider getting an ultrasound to see what's going on it.
Of course, my e-mail to him was a big fat waste of time and I know it but sometimes you just feel compelled to do something and I was and I did.
This all brings the question to my mind of why some people seem to be able to throw themselves so fully into specific religious beliefs while others seem to be completely unable to accept any of them.
And really, I have no idea. My theory is that there's a gene that determines it, like a gene for red hair or a gene for left-handedness.
That minister has the gene for god-belief and I do not.
And this makes me sad because it's such a huge rift between people. Devout Christians may love me in theory, but in their hearts they have to believe that I'm going to go to hell because I don't accept Jesus Christ as my savior.
And me? Well, I may love a Christian person but in my heart I can't help but wonder why in the world someone would believe the things he or she does.
Which doesn't make me an open-minded person.
But what value is there to being open minded to any and all beliefs?
Would it behoove me to believe in UFO's? I mean, it's possible they exist. I have no idea. But I don't think it matters to my daily life if I do or don't. And UFO believers don't go around knocking on doors to tell people that if they don't believe in aliens in spaceships who are visiting our planet for whatever reason they're going to hell.
And I don't go around to churches to stand up and tell the congregations that I think they're wasting their beautiful Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings to sit around and discuss things that I think are foolish.
If either of these two things happened, police would be summoned and sanity would be questioned and yet, it's perfectly acceptable (and even required, in some instances) for churches to send people all over the world to try and convert others to their beliefs. Witness. Testimony. Missionary. These are words that have weight and substance and authority.
But why?
And why do Christians believe that their particular beliefs must not only be tolerated by others in our society but have a place in the classrooms and in our government?
Daniel Webster, our Florida Republican Senate leader, wants everyone in the state to pray on the first day of hurricane season so that we may yet again be spared any devastating storms this year. He claims that it must have been prayer that spared us last year because everything was in order out there in the ocean to set us up for some big ones and yet, we didn't get a one.
What I want to know is, why don't we just pray for God to undo the entire hurricane thing and then we won't have to worry about them ever again? Why not? God's God, right? If He created hurricanes, can't He now see the foolishness of His wisdom in that particular part of His Intelligent Design and UNDO them?
Perhaps while He's at it, He could undo disease, poverty, faulty genes and unwanted pregnancy, too. In fact, why doesn't He just rethink this whole sex thing and allow babies to be born as a direct result of devout prayer? Because honestly, sex is weird. So are hormones and ovulation and desire and all that stuff that goes into the creation of babies and which so often gets perverted and contributes to things like out-of-wedlock sex and same-sex sex and so forth.
Anyone who truly believes in intelligent design has to admit that there's a lot of stupid design too, if they want to start putting the values of good and bad and holy and evil on nature. And that includes human nature.
Me? I do believe there is good and evil in this world but I think that all of it comes from people and the things they do. The things that happen in nature are just what they are. When we watch the nature channel and see a snake devouring a rabbit, we may want to avert our eyes and think of the snake as evil but there is no more evil there than me eating a hamburger. We may think of disease as evil, but the fact is, it's just the result of a bacteria or virus finding its way into a body and thriving at the expense of its host.
And I happen to think that instead of everyone praying on the first day of hurricane season, we would be better off if we all went out and bought flashlights and batteries and canned goods and secured our homes as best we could.
Or, you could do both at the same time. Pray AND prepare.
It's up to you.
And that's the point.
But please don't use your position in the government to tell people to pray to your god and please don't use your position in the government to force teachers to teach about your own personal god's creation myth and please don't use your position in the government to try and legislate what women can do with their own personal wombs. At least not until you start legislating what men can do with their own personal penises in the context of creating babies which may or may not be wanted.
Which believe me, is not ever going to happen.
So yes, let's keep open minds about things but let's not close them to the fact that we do have separation of church and state here in this country no matter what your genes tell you.
And I got that image above from this web site which has some very, very interesting shots on it.