WEEKLY SOUTHERN ARTS
"Sometime the boogaloo 
  • Home
  • Guns, Faith and Murder
  • The Million Dollar Store
  • Artistic Con-cepts
  • Judy Garland - "Soul Singer"
  • Robert & Jimi and the Twenty Seven Blues
  • The Great Pretenders
  • Imagine
  • Me and Junior Parker
  • The Republican
  • Sweet Home Chicago (The Obama Shakedown)
  • The Ballad of Hunter & Joe
  • The 22-yr-old Bottle Blonde
  • Is It Alright...To Be White?
  • Resist the Devil and He Will Flea
  • Music & Reminiscence
  • Lowell George searching for authenticity
  • A Telling Lie
  • Part One: The Monster Is Summoned
  • Like Billy Eckstein Singing to an Empty Club at 1:00 AM on a Saturday Night in 1975.
  • Bent
  • Kelly Joe Phelps
  • Why The Devil Don't Come Around No More
  • Hearing Junior Wells “On Tap'' one more Time
  • Muddy and Me
  • American Youth: The Rise of The New Media
  • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Talk About Slavery and Shit
  • Just Smoke
  • The Big Maybe
  • The Skinny
  • Florida in Images and More Images
  • "Muthafuckin' Chains!"
  • The Inner Man
  • This is Not a Political Article
  • A Tale of Wine and Murder
  • Jesus Was a Sly Dog
  • The Existential Croûton
  • The Prison Yard Blues
  • Conspiracy Theory
  • 4 More Poems, 4 More Pictures
  • "Are You Freaking People Insane?"
  • 4 Pictures 4 Poems
  • The Ballad of Carlos Slim
  • Pretending What's in Your Head is True
  • The Cognitive Dissonance of a Faithful Democrat
  • The Human Snakepit
  • George Freeman - Unsung Master of the Jazz Guitar
  • The Price of Milk
  • Suspicious Minds
  • Bill O'Reilly Sexual Predator?
  • The New Soldier
  • Orwell Revisited
  • Larry Coryell - The Godfather is Dead
  • A Tiger Beat
  • South Florida - HOT & COOL
  • Jean Paul Sartre & the Existentialist Mojo
  • Culture Matters, Immigration Matters, Sharks Matter
  • Thomas Sowell
  • A Tree Falls In Central Park on a Gay Banker
  • Black Codes From The Underground
  • Man Talk, with Donald Trump pt. 1
  • Man Talk, with Donald Trump pt. 2
  • Brexit Was the Shot Heard Around the World
  • I Love The Dead
  • The Game
  • Goodbye Scotty Moore
  • If a Bluebird Plays the Blues Why Can't it Play Free Jazz
  • When David Slew Goliath
  • Why Cream still Matters 50 Years Later
  • Goodbye Lonnie Mack
  • Black Lies Matter, All Lies Matter
  • The Folly of Foibles
  • The Life of an Imaginary Historian
  • Angel: part 7
  • Wayne Cochran "Going Back to Miami"
  • The Last Damned Healthcare Article You'll Ever Need
  • The Gospel According to Mark
  • Angel: part VI
  • Ted Bundy & The Hunt For The Devil
  • Charlie & Clint: Dead & Deader
  • Trayvon & George : An American Hate Story
  • Jury Duty
  • Little Tommy & The Blues Kings
  • Kayaking "The Big Cypress" with Crocodlies
  • The Birth of The Jazz Guitarist
  • Gay Marriage
  • Garage Band - The 1960's
  • King Arthur, Pelagius and Original Sin
  • The Story of Ricky
  • Hidden Miami
  • I Hate the 60's: A Personal Rock Odyssey
  • Crocodiles and Alligators in Florida: Monsters in our Backyard
  • The Legend of Robert Pete Williams
  • Saturday Night At Big Tinys
  • The Case Of The Infinite Monkeys
  • The American Heritage Series
  • The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
  • Blue And Green

               Losing My Religion 

Picture
“There are no Christians, as far as I know, blowing up buildings, I am not aware of any Christian suicide bombers. I am not aware of any majority Christian denomination that believes the penalty for apostasy is death.”

​“I have mixed feelings about the decline of Christianity, in so far as Christianity might be a bulw
ark against something worse.”

Richard Dawkins
If we eliminate religion, reason and science will take its place, or so some folks seem to think. In fact, recent studies have shown that as traditional religion becomes more scarce, people tend to revert to mysticism and superstition, not science.

This was found to be the case in Europe where agnosticism is common, but so is the belief in fairies, ghosts, and other related phenomena. Nature worship isn't far behind. And, if you don't like religion, but wish to believe that the universe has got your back, " The Law of Attraction" is a fine substitute for a generous God. That way you can have your cake, without any accountability to a consciousness higher than your own. Think of it as prosperity teaching for people who're pissed at God, but don't want to be left out in the cold.


I realize that for many good people, all religion is viewed as superstition. In the case of actual historians or social scientists, however, religion's role in the formation of our system of laws and moral codes is indispensable and indisputable. So is the notion of "Inalienable rights" that's found in our own constitution, which grew out of the conception of 'Natural Law" as espoused by enlightenment philosophers like John Locke and Thomas Jefferson. Judeo-Christian tradition played an even more, profound role in the process.


But hey, don't tell anybody because the separation of church and state is a hot topic of discussion. At least, it is for folks who want eliminate any hint of religion on the basis of a non-historic reading of the First amendment. Who cares about centuries of legal and historical precedent. You don't need that, not when you've got really, really smart people to do the thinking for you, except when it comes to abortion, of course, then a few decades of precedent are beyond question.


Does the hypocrisy ever end? I'm afraid not.


Lastly, but certainly not least, is the whole, "I feel betrayed by my pastor, my religion, and my church, etc, etc, etc... Why? Because, that version of God came up short. I'm not responsible for believing it, though, because I was helpless, caught in the grasp of evil religious folk."


​To this, I say, "Yes, there are some cults, both mainstream and not so mainstream, that work feverishly to indoctrinate impressionable, vulnerable people, who, in fact, may be in deep need of genuine love and help. But, for most of us, we choose our religion like someone eating at the local smorgasbord, "I'll take some of that, a bit of this." And, if, in the end, that version of God comes up empty, it almost certainly says more about us, than it does about God.


Mark Magula