Godless Americans
March On Washington
Frank R. Zindler
Godless Americans March on Washington

A GOVERNMENT
IN THRALL TO RELIGION

The government of the United States of America kneels in thrall to religion. Priests and preachers have triumphed over the Constitution of our country.

The wall of separation between state and church has not only been mined, sapped, and breached by the forces of superstition, the parts of it that remain appear to be about to be incorporated into the walls of a church -- a state church.

With the victory of faith-based forces, science and learning -- the age-old victims of religion -- now face a danger such as they have not seen since the time of the Holy Roman Inquisition.

The threat to science posed by religion is a peril to us all, for it is science that has been our great benefactor, liberator, and secular savior. It is science that has buoyed us up over the dark and swelling tide of superstition, faith, and ignorance, and has carried us to within sight of a world more beautiful by far than any paradise conjured in the ancient dreams of primitive priests.

It is not only our liberty for which we must fear if religion consummates its conquest of the Capitol, the White House, and the Supreme Court. Our very lives and those of our descendants are in jeopardy.

Given the grave environmental dangers confronting a species that has soiled its nest -- a species that has multiplied beyond the carrying capacity of the spaceship it calls Earth -- facts, facts, and more facts relating to the problem must be discovered, evaluated, and used to find solutions that will allow the survival of Homo sapiens.

The fantasies and prayers of religion simply will not do. Nothing fails like prayer.

If a government relies upon a god, who can rely upon that government to find solutions to the world's problems? If elected officials believe in an undetectable world beyond the reach of science, who can trust their judgment in the real world?

Since science is the only antidote to the lethally wishful thinking of religion, it is worrisome to the edge of terrifying to discover that the chief executive of this great nation is woefully ignorant of science. Although these United States of America are the fruit of the period known as the Enlightenment -- a period when religion was subjected to scientific study and many had cast off its shackles -- they are now governed by an Evangelist-in-Chief rather than by a scientist and discoverer of truth such as Thomas Jefferson.

The man who has his finger on the button that could launch a nuclear Armageddon cannot even pronounce the word "nuclear." Worse yet, his mispronunciation of the word nuclear would seem to signal the total depth of his understanding of physics.

The threat to us all from this embarrassing situation would not be so grave if the president had realized the danger in his disability and had surrounded himself with competent scientific advisers. But alas, his very ignorance of science has prevented him from realizing the urgency of seeking good scientific advice. Formerly, the national science adviser, as head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, held a near-cabinet-level position with the title "Assistant to the President." Dr. John H. Marburger, the president's adviser, does not have such a title nor does he have much clout with his chief. An executive order simply refers to him as a "Federal Government official."

At first, when George W. Bush came to power, it seemed there might not be a science adviser at all, and it was not until October 23, 2020 ­ nine months later ­ that Dr. Marburger was confirmed. This initial disdain of science has translated into a number of actions which have put us and the whole human race in peril.

The Web-site of Health and Human Services and the NIH have yielded to radical religious pressure and have removed important information relating to reproductive health.

David Hager, author of Stress and a Woman's Body, a book that promotes "the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one's life," has been appointed chairman of the Health Drugs Advisory Committee of the Food and Drug Administration.

The Bush administration has stacked an advisory panel on childhood lead poisoning with lead industry allies. Apparently thinking scientific truth can be voted on, Claude Allen, deputy secretary of HHS, explains this shocking situation by noting, "in getting broad views... we think industry has a voice and should have a voice."

Why shouldn't we set foxes to guard our hen houses?

The president has deprived the U.N. Population Fund of $34 million dollars. This will gravely impair population control efforts in the Third World, where 80 million pregnancies per year are unwanted.

The Bush administration has sided with polluters. It has given the green light to arsenic pollution, air pollution, and water pollution.

Again and again, advisors who should be selected for their scientific expertise are being chosen for their ideology and ties to Bush-friendly industries.

Mr. Bush pulled out of the Kyoto Accord (an international treaty on global warming), since he doesn't believe global warming is a reality.

Perhaps the greatest scientific discovery of our president is his finding that the best way to prevent forest fires is to cut down the trees.

The EPA is now allowing mining companies to dump waste into America's rivers and streams.

Mr. Bush has announced a rollback of power plant pollution rules that will allow more mercury, sulfur, and nitrogen oxide emissions.

In his original budget, the President cut funding for research and development of renewable energy sources by approximately half.

Bushıs blueprint for NASA involves discontinuation of priority remote sensing and environmental application projects.

He cut the budget of the US Geological Survey by 22%.

On August 9, 2020, President Bush placed crippling restrictions on research done with embryonic human stem cells.

The president also wants to outlaw human cloning of any kind -- both reproductive and therapeutic.

Therapeutic cloning potentially is the greatest breakthrough in the history of medical science. It offers a prospect of practical immortality. President Bush, like the angel who chased Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, does not want us to have a chance to eat the fruit of the tree of life.

Certainly, Mr. Bush's most generous campaign supporters will benefit from his antienvironmental decisions, and the priests and preachers who supplied him with votes will benefit by the harm he has done to health and reproductive programs and research.

But can all the president's actions be explained as simply the product of greed and self-interest? I don't think he is really that evil. Rather, I think his ignorance of science allows him -- with a clean conscience -- to harm the environment and block our prospects for life-saving medical break­throughs.

He knoweth not what he doeth.

If he had a firm grasp of the science of ecology, he would realize that his children and later descendants are imperiled by planet-wide pollution, by destruction of forests, by runaway population growth, and by greenhouse warming of the earth.

He can collude with greedy and conscienceless corporations because he does not understand the reality of climate change and the dire ecological consequences of Earth's warming.

He doesn't understand that ecologists are scientists. He thinks they are just wacko tree-hugging bird-watching eccentrics who don't understand economics. He is unaware that economics is simply a subdiscipline of ecology.

If the president could understand how overpopulation is a major contributor to the strife and violence so rampant in the world today, he could not have caved in to the pope and withheld funding for the UN population fund.

If the president realized that acorns are not oak trees, he would not be trying to suppress abortion rights.

If he understood that embryos are not persons, he would not oppose therapeutic cloning, a technique that potentially could allow us indefinitely to replace worn-out body parts and give us a shot at practical immortality.

Alas, our president is so uninformed on this subject, he thinks mad cloners would be producing identical twins of people who would probably be kept in some laboratory limbo and mined for body parts.

Scientific ignorance is the root of most of the problems facing us at the beginning of this new millennium, and we must not forget that it is the job of religion to keep America ignorant. Priests and preachers are secure in power only if their minions are ignorant of everything except the self-serving propaganda fed them by their brain-washers.

It is the ignorance fostered by religion that now threatens our very species with extinction. It is this ignorance that has gained control of our federal government. This ignorance must be dispelled.

This ignorance must be expelled from the governmental side of the wall that once separated the state from the church in this dear land. Only by expelling religion from the government of this nation can we repair the damage done by the failure of reality testing that it has fostered.

A burden has fallen upon us ­ the godless Americans who assemble here today allong with the millions of our cohorts who had to stay at home.

It is we who must restore America to the status of being "one nation under the Constitution" instead of "one nation under God."

It is we who must bring the enlightenment of science into governments ­ governments all the way from school boards to the White House. We must start next Tuesday.

In the long line of generations stretching into the unmeasured prehistoric past, no generation has been saddled with so heavy a responsibility as that which we must now assume.

Never before have the stakes been so high. Never before has the penalty for inaction been so horrific. We might not have a second chance.

Religion has slipped a Trojan Horse into the public barn, so that priests secreted inside can feed at monetary mangers created for the public weal. That horse must be put out to pasture in the churchyard. Let the churches provide the green stuff to feed it!

We godless Americans are the ones who have to do it. We must act, and we must act forcefully and decisively.

We must expose the fallacies of religious thought both inside and outside of government.

We must prevent the relapse of our society into the Dark Ages.

We must set government once again upon the road of reason, the road of reality.

We must rebuild the wall of separation.

We must restore a semblance of sanity to government.

We must educate our representatives and our endangered nation.

We must not fail.

We dare not fail.

Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 by American Atheists.