church & state

they said it was a division of church and state but really they can't be divided. what people realized is that religion is not the best way to represent a government (ok for a tribe in the amazon maybe but not good enough for everybody), so they wrote their own.

it's really equivalent to writing your own religion - which is fine as long as you don't tell people - they'll think you're a nut.

what is left of religion when they are divided is not that much - it's like recreational activity. americans choose their recreational activity - that's what is meant by choosing religion.

what's good and bad - a bunch of rules that tend to work. one would think God decides what is good or bad, but God doesn't decide anything (more specifically, maybe God does decide, but nobody is listening). even if God exists i'd bet large sums of money that he (she, or it) did not write the bible and doesn't communicate with us directly. so we are just defining what is right and wrong. the government has the monopoly on the teeth (men with badges and guns) so they have the monopoly on defining good and bad.

so i think the church / state division is a bit of a ruse, everybody in america is forced to have the u.s. government religion. (and that might be ok) at least they let you choose your own recreational activities, like singing with people on sundays or whatever... and they call that religious freedom.

under the assumption that God doesn't interact with us, religious freedom doesn't matter much. even if the government forced us to worship paper clips 5 minutes a day, who cares? what they actually do is worse - force people to go to crappy schools like 7 hours a day.

modern government is just another way to milk people (the older way was religion). you have to suck taxes and obedience out of people somehow - and you can do that by either threatening with hell or with the IRS. our government doesn't give a flip about religion because they have the milking system totally in place, regardless.