To those bemoaning the presence of the divine in the inauguration

[patrice]

180. Is Palin at the inauguration today? Weren't you referring to thousands of people who like to pray

at an inauguration? Most of whom you don't know, so you don't know whether they are ignorant or not.

Granted there are ignorant religious fools, but that doesn't mean that everyone who believes is ignorant, nor a fool. Rationalism is, afterall, only a relatively recent development in human cognition compared to the total span of our existence on Earth, so what WAS all of that other "stuff"? Like Christianity, for whatever crap has been hung on it for whatever charlatans, spells and talismans and such, does that mean that it was/is 100% invalid?

Emanuel Kant came to something that others would call the teachings of Christ, or the will of "God", or the single commandment of the New Testament, to love. Completely by reason, he deducted as close to an absolute truth as it is possible to get: ""Act so that the maxim [determining motive of the will] may be capable of becoming a universal law for all rational beings." Whether your label for that is "the Categorical Imperative" or "the will of God" the truth that it represents is still valid.

I'm a little sensitive to this fad to bash spirituality and theology. Honest rationalists will recognize that this over-steps what limits and therefore defines them as rational. They know it is not rational to say: A is B; A is also Z, therefore Z is also B. Andrea is British, Andrea is also a Zionist, therefore all British are Zionists. Or, Patrice is ignorant about mathematics; Patrice is also a "fallen" Catholic, therefore all Catholics are ignorant of mathematics.

I'm sorry if I missed something and you were talking about Sarah Palin, whom I loathe.