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I just logged on, and found I'd received a chain PM titled "Dont read unless you have time for God". I find it very strange that people feel the need to "stand up for God", as several people who'd forwarded the message before it reached me put it; if God is really omniscient and omnipotent, why does he need anyone to stand up for him? confused

I probably shouldn't make fun of things such as that; there's a part of me that does grasp the concern with the increasing secularization of society, and how something seems to have gotten lost in the process. But at the same time, messages of that sort always seem to have a dictatorial element to them. They always posit Christianity as the only possible choice-- you must accept a specific concept of God, or you're not going to be saved. And in presenting the situation as a struggle between Christian faith and atheistic secular humanists, the evangelists leave out a huge part of the picture: the significant number of people who believe in some sort of religion, but not Christianity.

I've always thought that one of Thomas Jefferson's greatest accomplishments was the Statute For Religious Freedom, as it laid the groundwork for the separation of church and state established in the Constitution. In his time, Jefferson was often attacked as an atheist, though he was in fact a Christian of a highly individualistic sort (as illustrated by the Jefferson Bible, which extracts what he considered Christ's most important teachings and leaves out everything else); these attacks seem to have been prompted more by his unusually modern notions about the freedom to choose and practice one's own religion than by any factual evidence. And it seems times have not changed that much, even though we've lived with those Constitutional guarantees for more than two centuries.

I don't have any quarrel with people practicing their religion; and I have no particular problem with Christianity, though I'm not especially fond of organized religion in general. What does bother me is when people attempt to impose their beliefs on others, and imply that you're somehow a lesser person if you don't accept their view of the world. The people who send these PM's may think they're performing a service by spreading the word; but to me, it's an annoyance and an intrusion. I'm not about to abandon Buddhism because someone sends me a chain letter preaching about "standing up for God"; and I would hope no one capable of individual thought would be influenced by such a message.