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Aug. 22, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
05:41
God Has No Place in Politics
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I know that I have a bunch of people who are of the um religious persuasion following me.
If you're one of those people, I suspect you're probably one of the more sort of rational religious people who understands that not everyone shares your faith.
Anyway, Ben Carson, a man running for the Republican nomination for presidential candidacy, destroys atheists.
What he said will have you cheering.
There are a couple of things about this.
A, I guess he's proving that God exists, because that's the only way you're going to destroy atheists.
But secondly, I love that the right wing have discovered clickbait.
It's just, it's brilliant.
It's not enough that it was confined to the progressive left.
Now the desperate right have it.
Anyway, let's see how Dr. Carson has destroyed atheists.
We have to stop listening to these people who tell us that we cannot talk about God.
We cannot talk about our faith.
So you're proposing some kind of faith rape then, are you?
They're saying literally, I just don't care about your invisible friend in the sky, who you can't prove exists and I'm not interested in talking about.
An entity that has absolutely no bearing on how a country can be run because nobody can contact it to ask it its opinion.
All this does is make for remarkably uncomfortable conversations.
Excuse me, can I talk to you about God?
No, thank you.
I don't believe in God.
Yes, but I really want to talk to you about God.
Okay, which one?
Well, Jehovah, but I don't believe in Jehovah.
What do you mean you don't believe in Jehovah?
I believe in Thor.
You're a fucking infidel, aren't you?
Yes, I'm an infidel.
Well, fuck.
I wonder.
Do they realize that our founding document, our Declaration of Independence, talked about certain inalienable rights given to us by our Creator?
Our Creator, but not God.
AKA God.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
I don't believe in your God.
That's the, you can't just go aka God and assume that we're all on the same page.
We're not.
You see, I'm a Gnostic.
So I believe the world was created by Satan.
In fact, you are created by Satan.
Your laws are created by Satan.
Your Bible's written by Satan.
Everything about this world was created by an evil god called the Demiurge.
So you can't say, oh, our creator, God, because that's not our creator.
Our creator is an evil, evil creature, an evil entity that likes to see humans suffering, which is why he made humans that can suffer.
Now why don't you tell me about the bullshit you believe, and we'll agree that it's not compatible, and we'll agree to just leave it out of political conversations.
Do they know that the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag says we are one nation under God?
Not originally it didn't.
Originally it said, I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
You know, the sort of pledge that someone in an independent secular republic might have written.
The reason your Pledge of Allegiance has under God in it is because in the 50s, as a response to those darned atheist commies, Eisenhower had it put in.
I guess you'd just be thankful that by this time they'd already taken out what appears to be the nazi salute.
It wasn't actually a nasty salute.
It just happened to look a hell of a lot like it.
That many courtrooms on the wall it says in God we trust.
Every coin in our pocket, every bill in our wallet says in God we trust.
So fucking what?
Again, and sorry for all the Wikipedia links, but this is so well documented.
This was added in the 50s, presumably as a response to the godless red menace.
So if it's in our founding document.
Which it isn't.
Yeah, in the 50s, you know, long after the founding of your nation.
It's in our courts and it's on our money.
All of which proves very little.
But we're not supposed to talk about it.
You don't even know where you're going with this, do you?
What in the world is that?
It's because it's not conducive to discussion.
People who don't share your beliefs or your religion or your opinion, you can't persuade them to believe in God via your holy book.
They're aware of it already.
And you're not willing to have your opinion changed either.
So you both reach an impasse where neither of you is prepared to change your opinions on the subject.
So what's the point of discussing it?
In medicine, we call it schizophrenia, a form of craziness.
That's probably the lowest I can imagine anyone sinking.
Because you don't understand your own country's history.
You don't understand why people don't believe in your God.
And you don't understand why people don't want to talk about your religion.
You think that they have a mental illness and may be a danger to themselves or others.
The great irony of all of this though is that anyone from history who claims that they are speaking to God or talking to angels or seeing things or whatever, they probably actually did have schizophrenia.
Like legitimately thought that they were in contact with a higher power.
There was probably something wrong with their mind.
And now, thousands of years later, a neurosurgeon is standing before a group of people saying, Hey, you remember that crazy person from 2,000 years ago?
We should talk about the things they said thousands of years ago when discussing policy.
And you can't see why that's stupid.
And you know, it's time.
It's time for us to realize that there is nothing wrong with living by godly principles.
No one said there is or isn't.
The debate that you're having with yourself on this stage is whether your personal beliefs about God are relevant to political debate.
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