25 November—Why is toilet paper called bath tissue? Do people use it when they bathe in toilets, perhaps? And what’s the big deal about displaying the Ten Commandments in government locations and teaching the Bible in public schools? Jesus Christ!

After all, the commandments that don’t directly pertain to religious practice are really common sense and necessary for the maintenance and preservation of any society. The ones about not murdering, stealing, and lying are, anyway. And there’s nothing particularly religious about honoring parents and not committing adultery.

Getting back to toilet paper, then, in the United States it’s generally Christian theocrats and other sanctimonious hypocrites (including but not limited to the ones who run Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana) who want to do an end run around the Constitution and allow or even mandate teaching of the Bible in public schools. Would they allow the Old Testament about the Jews to be taught or only the New Testament about Jesus? (The Old Testament is also known as the Hebrew Bible, of course. And, just so you know, Hebrew is to Jewish as bath tissue is to toilet paper.)

The American theocrats’ insidious plan is to officially and formally Christianize the country. And they must really think that indoctrinating young kids with fairy stories will convince the impressionable brats that they must believe in a god that will do nice things if they pray and pay. And nasty things if they don’t. It means nothing to the theocrats that America has been a Christian country, albeit unofficially and informally, since the first Europeans arrived here.

Hope and fear, incentive and disincentive. That’s what religion is about. Okay, tradition, such as it may be, and ritual also help to hold religions together and keep the adherents coming. And paying. Religions like to claim earthly relevance, too, so that adherents can identify with something closer to home than imaginary gods in heaven. That’s why most religions stress charitable works. While practicing otherwise.

Religions are thus essentially like political parties and social organizations, with specified purposes, rules, rituals, traditions, incentives, and disincentives. (Yes, even the Rotary and your bridge club. Think about it.) So where, you wonder, do the gods come in? Good question.

The fact is, religions are created by men, not by gods. That’s evident in any religion that’s ever existed. Religions may purport to serve gods but actually are created and continue to exist for the control of men, for better or worse as the case may be. So where, you still wonder, do the gods come in? Still a good question.

Notwithstanding purely incidental earthly relevance, religion is really nothing but a means of control with insubstantial earthly rewards for followers—that’s why they’re called spiritual—and nonexistent omnipotent enforcers to make sure you follow the rules—that’s why they’re called gods. And that’s precisely where the gods come in. You don’t mess with a super-duper-power you can’t even see. And you’ve got to trust the people who claim they know all about it. Such is human nature.

Religions, then, are really no more than mind games. Problem is, too many people take those mind games far too seriously. And that can’t be overemphasized.

If you believe otherwise, it’s irrelevant anyway. In all events, coming back down to Earth, the Constitution prohibits the government—the Congress, by which is inferred (although not necessarily implied) any level of government—from establishing an official religion and also protects the people’s right to practice religion however they see fit. For better or worse, it must be said, and for worse as we see all too often. Moreover, it’s not unlikely that the Establishment Clause is in the First Amendment only as a recognition of and reaction to Great Britain’s established church—the Church of England, of which the sovereign of the state is head.

After that explication of religion, then, we must nevertheless accept that because people are subservient to a herd instinct just like sheep and are emotionally needy and gullible, religion is an all too powerful force even in a nominally secular society.

So inasmuch as the Bible is undeniably important in the history of literature and the world, it most certainly should be taught in schools. But not as the word of or stories about a deity. Not as indoctrination. On the other hand, since deities don’t exist, why worry?

Then again, say a person has found and believes in a god, real or otherwise, but chooses to deal with that god in his own way—rather than within an organized religion. That’s heresy pure and simple and is considered by many mainstream organized religions to be even more heinous than non-belief.

God forbid that anyone should be an heretic. Even in America . . .