Debate goes on, seeming forever, about the issue of religious belief in a secular society.  The validity of sacred texts becomes grist for the mill and sides line up over What Would Jesus Do bumper stickers.  We see competing fish on cars–Darwin fish with feet in answer to the unembellished christian fish symbol, then a bigger fish labeled Truth swallowing the diminutive Darwin fish, and on and on.

What is really at issue here hasn’t got one thing to do with who believes in god or evolution.  Belief is a self-contained, private matter.  The issue that gets lost in all the polemic is very simple: behavior.

Those who would sap the poison from the “inerrant word” crowd are defending their assumed right to live the way they want.  One might argue that belief in god doesn’t really limit people, and as far as it goes, that is true.  If you, as an individual, choose to believe in god, then you have elected to reform your life according to the tenets of your new faith.  You may adopt whatever modest or byzantine traditions and habits you wish.  After all, you have chosen this, you get to do it.

What you don’t get to do is tell everyone else to behave accordingly, and that’s where the meat of the issue lies.

Because fundamentalists–and we’re talking about fundamentalists here for the most part, of any stripe–do not adopt such an extreme view of faith out of intellectual curiosity or even spiritual need.  They do so to join a Program.  They want to be part of an army, marching in the cause of righteousness.  And for an army on the march to make any sense at all, there must be enemies to fight and victories to win.

None of which has anything to do with getting to heaven or living your own life according to a select set of principles.  It has to do with making changes in everything around you.  What would be the point of going to war, metaphorically or otherwise, if after you win you leave everything as it was before you marched?

We who disagree with these programs are defending ourselves in the most civilized way we can–by arguing over the justifications, the framework, and the legitimacy of the governing creeds.  We dissect Scripture and demonstrate that it is riddled with inconsistency, error, contradiction, and, by the way, a  lot  of bad advice in order to assert that those marching to change our lives do not  have the authority, much less the responsibility, to enact those changes.

What changes am I talking about?

Women, to put it as plainly as possible, are not chattel.  They are human beings first, women more or less next, and as such cannot–may not, must not–be stripped of their prerogative to live lives of self-choice in the same way as men.  Almost all fundamentalist programs seek to reduce the public and private status of women to a subserviant role.  The justification for this is taken from the Bible.  This is part of the “bad advice” I mentioned.  It is inhuman, uncivilized, and ultimately immoral because it creates a slave condition which binds not only women but the men who must work to keep them in that condition.

Science is a tool for investigation.  It is not something subject to the whims of frightened, superstitious people who don’t like the idea of their children growing up smarter–and therefore less frightened–than their parents.  If what is discovered contradicts the stories set down in Scripture, you may personally reject the results for yourself, but you may not ban books, burn them, or enact laws to constrain science or the free inquiry therefrom.  Science has done more in the last two centuries to improve individual lives than all the praying and hapless mucking about with incantations and charms have done in thousands of years.  Granted, it has caused some new problems, but just the fact that we now live past 35–almost to 70 or more now–and have more productive, fruitful lives is a pretty good reason to preserve the practice of science.  In any case–it is certainly one’s personal prerogative to reject the benefits of science, but you do not get to make that choice for other people, especially (for you Christian “Scientists” out there) not for your children or other people’s children.  They are individuals, too, and deserve the chance to live long enough to learn how to choose.

You may not tell us what books we may read, what music we may listen to, what movies we may watch.  “Uplifitng family viewing” tends to be boring, cliche-ridden, and trite, because it usually ignores Life and the truth of it in exchange for comforting bromides and reassuring plattitudes.  If I wish to read James Joyce’s  Ulysses  or see a pornographic film or listen to obscenity-ridden hip-hop, that is my choice, and you may not take them away for fear your children might read, see, or hear them.  Maybe if you stopped being afraid of so much, you might find the value in some of the things you wish to eliminate from the world and raise your children with the perspective and intelligence to understand them, choose sensibly among them, and not be afraid of them.  You may not prune my cultural landscape because you don’t like the particular trees in the garden.

You may not tell us how many partners we may have, singly or in groups, or under what conditions we may marry each other, or conjoin our estates, or choose to interact.  The Bible, the prize bastion of such fake morality, is a casebook of alternate relationships, but it is also a compendium of sexual tyranny, constituting that bad advice I mentioned earlier.  We do not wish to live that way anymore, and probably, if you’re honest about it, neither do you.  Limiting everyones choices is nothing but a weak-willed way of eliminating so-called temptation for yourselves.  If you can’t handle the choices of others, too bad.  We attack your justifications because it is the only way to point out that this is your problem, not something from god.

We also do not wish to conduct national policy in accordance with a Chosen People vs The Heathen perspective which requires us to treat people who believe differently as enemies or potential converts.  This is a democracy, which means it is also a pluralistic society, which means that point of view must be taken on merit, not weighed in a scale of whose god is bigger, which can only lead to–well, the mess we’re in now is, in part, a result of a fundamentalist response on our part to a fundamentalist attack from the outside.  If the attack was not justifiable according to religious dictate, neither then was our response.  You cannot find compromise when the rules of engagement demand an “our god or nothing” approach–on one side, the other, or both.  This is bad foreign policy born of bad domestic policy born of the meddling of frightened religionists in control of a major political party.  It has hurt us all.

In short, the real fight here is over life choices–behavior–not faith.  There are many people of faith who would reject fundamentalist proscriptions on lifestyle.  The “real issue” is over who gets to tell who how to live.  So let us not deceive ourselves about the nature of the fight and the reasons for it.  This has less to do with eternal truth than it does with temporal power.  Much less.

Thank you for letting me get that off my chest.  Back to our regularly scheduled diatribe now.