It used to be that religion was used as a method of separating fools from their money. Now, it seems, it is to be used as a method of separating fools from their rights. You know, those inalienable ones? The ones endowed by "their Creator"?

When I was a kid, I watched news reports of those political "prayer breakfasts," wondering why in the world a bunch of fat white guys needed to pray all the way through breakfast. Wasn't an initial supplication good enough? Were these guys of such little faith that they felt quantity was more important than quality?

Only later did I figure out that those fat white guys used the guise of prayer to hide the myriad of ways they planned to screw the "little people." I think it was a picture of Ed Meese praying that drove that point home to me. There's hypocrites and there's hypocrites, but Jesus Christ! Ed Meese praying? That's a scene from Airplane! or something.

So politicians are hypocritical bastards. No surprise there. This goes back at least to Moses, whose "acceptance" of the Ten Commandments from God happened to dovetail quite nicely with the social plan he'd already put together for the Israelites. The only way God handed Moses the Ten Commandments was if Moses had multiple personality disorder and one of the people inside his head went by the moniker "YHWH."

Have you figured out that I'm tired of all the shit? When only a third of the people in this country believe that evolution is a reasonable way of describing natural history, when fully half the graduating high school seniors in this country believe that the first amendment goes too far (and one-third think that newspapers ought to submit their pages for government approval before publishing), yes, I am tired of the shit. Ignorance has been peddled for a long time, but rarely in such shovelfuls as it is now.

We have a Prez who lies whenever it suits him--and a press and public that don't seem to hold accountable such reprehensible behavior. We have religious leaders who preach that gay marriage will bring on the apocalypse--even as they plaster another "In case of the Rapture, this car will be unoccupied" bumper sticker on the back of their Escalade. C'mon folks, you can't have it both ways.

But I guess you can. Just like really bad people can live long and happy lives, and really good people can live short and shitty ones. That's the way of the world--you can have it both ways, and there is no point.

Actually, I don't believe that. At least, I don't believe that it's true for me. I couldn't be happy if I fucked around on my wife every chance I got--a somewhat absurd statement, I admit, as I have damned few chances. But still. I couldn't be happy if I spent 60 or more hours a week at work advancing my career (whatever that might be) instead of spending time with my family. I couldn't be happy if I treated people like shit just to satisfy my selfish whims. So, I guess, acting vaguely altruistically is, in fact, a selfish act for me. Which means that in order to act truly unselfishly, I'd have to be a total peckerwood.

Okay, so maybe that "there is no point" thing might be closer to the truth than I'd like to admit. I'm wired to be a basically decent person. I can't get out of that. I suppose I shouldn't hold it against the Prez and all the other politicians and those religious hypocrites and the like that they weren't brought up right or whatever. I should just accept the world as it is and worry about my own life.

Except that worrying about my own life means fighting against ignorant bastards who seems to have only their own selfish whims at heart. Because a world overrun by peckerwoods isn't a world I want to live in. But I'm not suicidal or anything. Which must mean that I think most people are reasonably decent.

Shit.

I guess I'm an optimist after all. Even if I am an atheist infidel.

Jon Worley is not a philosopher.