News that reads like the funny papers!
I wonder if Bill O’Reilly counts close to a million witches (whatever they call themselves) in his 90% of godly Americans, when he’s expounding on how religion proves our moral superiority to the rest of the world?
Hey, did you atheists out there (call yourselves what you like in private, but that is your government designation) know that you too have an officially approved government symbol?? A team mascot if not a “real” god to worship? Because of course you are religious too . . .
Praise the Goddess and pass the magical candle — the Federal Department of Veterans Affairs has finally recognized the Wicca religion.
You’ve heard of the Wiccans, right? They’re the group perhaps 700,000 strong in this country who sometimes call themselves witches — but sometimes don’t. They believe in the power of the seasons, the Goddess of the earth, and the United States of America, which some of them even died for. Until Monday, however, none of these vets were allowed to be officially buried under the Wiccan symbol, the pentacle — a five-pointed star inside a circle.
After a 10-year fight, the VA finally relented, agreeing to add the pentacle to its list of 38 other approved religious symbols, including an atom for atheists.
Despite such blind faith in the secular power of government and its official list to define approved religions so as not to entangle itself WITH religion, our government hasn’t cleared things up for me.
So I went looking for that atheist atom, the official government symbol of Faith in Reason, and indeed I found —
a larger-than-life supernatural hero called The Atom!
Despite being fanciful and having been created by man instead of the other way around (or so I believe!) The Atom looks like he could singlehandedly create and then destroy or save the world, as opposed to his merely natural and much less nattily attired lower-case atomic counterpart, the atom scientists believe actually performs all these unbelievable feats.
How comical then– in more ways than one! — that I have no faith Uncle Sam will approve ungodly belief in the cosmic powers of The Atom as official religion.
Although don’t they sound divine?
Abilities
Superhuman strength, speed and endurance
Flight
Durability
Time-travel
Energy blasts
Minor atomic transmutation and huge atomic absorption
There are so many different images of him and endless dispute, no artist can ever KNOW, of course. But the general outlines of the story seem universally agreed on by now, in all the books. . .
Cocking A Snook! 
Well, at least our symbol is a hunk. 🙂
Oh, that’s not. . . never mind. . .
Nance
Favorite Daughter and I were in the car today, discussing whether the Darwin fish would be a more apt symbol than the atom for those with Faith in Reason — maybe some way to combine them? — when along our daily route, we passed a big columned house with a large blue pentagram hung on the front door (a new thing, unexpected) . We vaguely wondered if it were some Jewish statement for an upcoming remembrance or one just past. True, it was blue and a star, although it didn’t exactly look like the “approved” Star of David but then what do we know?
Anyway, it got me thinking about “cultural” Jewish people as opposed to actual practicing and maybe even orthodox Jews, proud of being Jewish but not necessarily “believers” that Jewish teachings are literally the Word of the Divine being about to send the real messiah and then armageddon.
I told FavD we were “cultural Christians” and I asked her if she’d ever read this about my own spiritual upbringing (she hadn’t, but she will after dance class tonight.) Then I said maybe what Christians in Europe have done (being culturally older by many centuries than we are here) is to move in the same direction as Jews have, with most of them being cultural Jews by family and heritage and not denying it — proud of it and happy to remain in the fold in that sense, to be tied together by it — but NOT immersed, absorbed, and governing every aspect of life and society by it as religion.
Do you think there’s any hope that could happen in America, eventually, and then we (I!) wouldn’t be boxed into these ridiculous extremes and have to be at war with my own family culture just to be true to myself as a Thinking Parent too?
And I meant to add — I am guessing Bill O’Reilly is counting a WHOLE bunch of cultural rather than “buying in wholesale” folks in his American believer statistics. Wonder what the real percentages would be, has anyone credible studied that?
This must be the paper O’Reilley was talking from? You think? I just saw it blogged at Greg Laden’s . . .
[…] Hmmm, and maybe they could start by helping me figure out why “The Atom” has a Jewish backstory yet “the atom” is the US Government’s official symbol for non-believers. […]