During the election season, I was quite interested in how the process was playing out, who was winning, what methods they were employing, and all the minutia about the campaigns. For me, it was not only riveting but also a personal experience to see just how much a citizen can actually be empowered in our democracy. I'll write or do a podcast about that sometime in the next week, but right now I want to talk about how paying attention to politics has made me a critical thinker and questioner, and how that has led to a reverse of my religious beliefs.

I've said before that I have not ever paid much attention to politics in my entire life as I have starting with the Bush the Lesser presidency. I remember my husband telling me, after 9/11 and before the invasion of Iraq, that we were going to invade Iraq and start a war. At the time, the television media was beating the drums while saying "No, that's not going to happen" and I told him "You're wrong. The US is NOT going to start a war with Iraq. Why in the world would they? Iraq has nothing to do with 9/11". I then remember being glued to the television to watch "Shock and Awe", which was a very cold detached way to watch a city be attacked, and then watching the footage from tanks going across the desert. I honestly thought that the people embedded as reporters were neutral reporters-it didn't occur to me then that the Pentagon would want to control what Americans would see and present it from the standpoint of the military. I don't actually recall what it was that broke apart my (wrong) feeling that what I was being told was mostly 1, it was probably a series of events and actions, and articles I read or pictures i saw.

Over time I have gotten to the point where if I read something or see something on the television, I have to go read more about it, research the background, who is saying it, why they might be saying it, is it PR, is it pro-military propaganda, etc. It's wearying to be this way. I read something in the local paper about someone presenting a symposium at the local high school and I want to know who's behind it and what is their viewpoint or agenda. I can't just accept what is being told to me at face value; oh, sure, I might not say anything when I first hear it, especially if it's new information, but I will after I research it a little. In other words, I do not take what the government, at any level, tells me on *faith*, especially after the governments have proven that they have and will purposely mislead or hide things. And the methodology I've developed of usually looking up more information on a subject has become ingrained.

The same methology has colored my religious beliefs. As readers here know, I was raised as a Southern Baptist, which religion used to believe and have as part of its creed the separation of church and state. I stopped attending the SoBapt church some years back. I considered going to one of the local churches here if only for social companionship and because I love the Baptist Hymnal music (we went to a funeral recently and my husband was astonished to hear me singing "Love Lifted Me" which I remember these years later). But I didn't at that point (and still don't) agree with the Baptist trend of being involved in politics, supporting the military, and some other fundamental teachings.  But I still considered myself to be a basically religious person, just without a formalized church to go to. I thought about going to the Methodist church here in town, which is more inclusive than the Baptists and also more involved in social works to help the poor and needy.. but because I don't believe that christianity has a lock on how others ought to worship God, leaving out muslims, hindus, buddhists, etc, I again decided that simply attending for friendships wouldn't be the right thing to do.

Now comes the convergence of how I have been examining politics and my investigation of religion. I had some questions about a year or so ago that I wanted to explore.

Is there any proof that there was a historical Jesus?

Is the Bible inerrant or does it have contradictions that might, even at the simplest level, be due not necessarily to deliberate transcriptiion changes but errors?

What was the history of christianity and why, since there were so many beilefs, were other thinkings necessarily heretical, and why the inquisitions?

That doesn't, of course, address any of the philsophical problems with a just God that would allow, among other things, actions like the Holocaust, or approve war. On a political level, it doesn't address why a particular political party, the Republicans would be so eager to try to look like THE christian party that they would allow all manner of fearmongering and hatred, besides, of course, having no lock on morarilty.

The question, to me, was being able to question itself. When you have any entity that says that one must beieve, without any crtical thinking and without any evidence to prove a point, and take a given position strictly on faith, you have a population that will allow anything to be put over on it.

Anyway, the upshot of it is that, while I don't call myself an atheist-I mean, there might be a God, but I think he or she is much more along the lines of what the Deists believe, that it was a God of some type that set the world in motion but doesn't involve himself in the day to day business of people-I don't believe in religion. I think religion has led to some of the worst abuses in the history of the world and there's really no point to it. Doesn't mean that I don't think others can worship as they please, even if I believe that their beliefs are part of the problems plaguing mankind. It does mean that I don't want others pushing their beliefs on me, even in the form of hand-joining prayer outside of church in otherwise secular meetings.