It is Not a Good Idea To Talk About Sensitive Religious Issues in the Breakroom Where the Serbian Roman Catholic ex-Milita Member Can Hear You

It all started because we were talking about a NYT op-ed which suggests, in so many words, that Obama's nomination of Francis Collins for NIH director was irresponsible and maybe a little too bipartisan.

I'm not going to lie. I don't like it. Sure, he's one of the founding members of the Human Genome Project and yes, he's obviously a fine manager of both people and money having served as the head of NHRGI but...he's also an evangelical Christian well documented for his belief in theistic evolution; not quite as absurd and insulting as intelligent design and creationism, but close. Obviously I'm not as tolerant about religion as I'd like, but this smells like Rick Warren opening the Obama-inaguaration except instead of pandering to the religious right over something as, relatively speaking in terms of substantive action, an inauguration, he's putting a conservative Christian in charge of the 28 billion dollar operating budget of the NIH, basically all the non-industry funding for every branch of biomedical sciences in the United States.

Anyway, one thing lead to another and we found ourselves having a good old time bashing bible thumping religious wackos with the same old, same old arguments about the complete insanity of taking the Bible that seriously.

"Have you read Relevations?! What do you mean take this shit seriously?"

"If Evangelicals can choose to ignore the Old Testament, then I'm skipping the part about sodomy. Peace out you homophobes!"

"I don't mind religion, I just don't want a bunch of crazies who think we should murder women on their periods because some Old Testament prophet said to running public policy."

"Religion and land are the most common causes of violent conflict in the world today."

"Um, have you seen Jesus camp?"

"George Tiller was just fucking murdered in a church for performing legal late-term abortions"

"The Holocaust. Point."


I enjoy judgmental as much as the next graduate of a liberal arts university, and I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but where is this so-called line between religion and science and government anyway? When I put aside my own ignorance, I can see why Obama did what he did. He ran on a platform of bipartisanship which I guess can mean either getting along with moderate Republicans on the "other side of the aisle" or actually trying to apease the hugely influential population of conservative Christians in this country. I see this, I do. But on the other hand, I wouldn't believe for one tenth of a second that Collins' views on the Bible didn't play into his nomination. Should one's belief that God created the Earth be a credential for directing the Nation's agency for health related research?

Discuss.