I'm not even going to get started on this. I'm just too afraid of what seems like a very, very scary trend to me. Damn... I just started didn't I.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=621347

I know that we must all have a 'moral compass' and I am also aware that for most of the people in the U.S. it's some form of religious teaching. Even in my current atheistic state, I am forced to admit that as a young man I developed a deep fascination with religion as a source of moral grounding. I studied various forms of Christianity, paganism, pantheism and Zoroastrian, not to mention about 30 different flavors of Buddhism, and I'm sure that I walked away from it having been influenced. There are good ideas in all of the teachings that I studied. But I also walked away from it all with a deeper understanding of how I wanted to make decisions, and that was to do so under the force of my own will. Each decision that a person is faced with is an opportunity to evaluate the situation rationally, and a final conclusion can be arrived at by weighing out the effects of the possible outcomes. This understanding lead me to believe that, especially in important cases, relying too heavily on your moral compasses is just plain lazy.

The article above implies what I have been perceiving as a trend for the last decade or so. It could be that I am just slowly becoming more aware of the presence of actions being executed in the name of and through the schema of religion. But I am fairly sure that lawmakers weren't trying to influence the teaching of creationism in public schools.

I understand that these beliefs are held by millions of people, and that they wish to pass their beliefs on to the generations that follow them, but what I do not understand is the desire to have them taught in venues where they have not traditionally been taught. Isn't that what church, bible study and youth groups are for? It makes me angry that teachers have to be afraid of being sued for not giving intelligent design any facetime in class.

On the other hand, and in America as on Shiva there is always another hand, I understand that the infrastructure of the community must change with the desires and beliefs of the Majority. I don't like it, but I understand it. That is why my perception of a growing 'religious class' and their respective power in numbers is so frightening to me. I am the minority, and their beliefs, no matter how contrary to my own, will eventually effect me or any children that I might have.