I changed the channel when Battle Hymn of the Republic started

[davidthegnome]

304. I'm an agnostic from northern Maine

When I was growing up, most of my neighbors were very strict baptists - the sort that didn't believe in dancing. I was raised Catholic myself - and there was constantly some kind of argument going on between baptists and Catholics. Being a boy, I didn't understand it terribly well. As I got older I realized that nearly every branch of Christianity is closed minded, judgmental, ignorant. I became a very angry atheist at the age of 14 and was frequently getting into shouting matches with my Father about it. I felt that I had been brainwashed, forced to go to a church and become a member of a cult of idiots and sheep. I was young, I was arrogant, I was foolish. The intention of my parents was the important thing - they brought me up Catholic because they felt it was a good way to instill moral values, to make me someone honest and good.

As I get older, I continue to have a strong prejudice against religion and the religious. Yet I realize that bias for what it is - my own ignorance, my own judgment, my own mind closing up. There really isn't anything wrong with someone displaying faith in public, provided they aren't using it as a means to intimidate or oppress another group, which in this case I don't think they were.

It's perfectly fine, even perhaps, righteous, to be intolerant of intolerance. Yet there is such a thing as an innocent display of faith, tradition. I may think of it as nonsense, but it's not my faith. So long as no one tries to ram it down my throat I'm fine with it. This is why I listen to Jehovah's Witnesses when they knock on my door. I completely disagree with most of what they say, but there's no harm in being polite and listening.

Perhaps I'm odd in that regard. I can remember very clearly a Catholic Priest telling me I would go to hell, or that the devil was having a "hayday with me" because I began to question my faith. I remember Baptists who lectured me on sin - and the millions of things that were sins, I remember them explaining to me that I'd go to hell if I didn't accept Christ as my lord and Savior. It sure made me angry - and others have even more right to be angry, but not necessarily at all religion and at anyone who practices it.

No, live and let live is generally my philosophy. I just don't see a point in getting angry about religious traditions in an inaugural ceremony, it's a tradition that's much older than our Country and it's generally innocent.