Much ado about nothing

I don't know how many of you have been following the cases going on in the US supreme court about the display of the ten commandments. Sometimes I think that some people have a compulsive obsessive need to file a court case on anything that they can find a case on. This case follows in the footsteps of the case against using under god in the pledge. Some people call this a left wing liberal conspiracy, to undermine the freedom of the right.

I know that in a secular democracy everybody has the right to believe in what he/she believes, but that does not give you the right to make a asinine claims and waste the countries money on court costs. In the case for removing "under god" in the pledge, who in their right minds would have a religious conversion by hearing those two words??? Heck in the Indian pledge there is a sentence about respecting our elders and parents, if it were Uncle Sam I guess there would be somebody suing about it.

I believe that church/religion and the state should be separate in any democracy (allowing the church or any other religion to play a part in politics is asking for trouble - another post for me ;-) ), but that does not give cause for such frivolous suits just so one person's ego is satisfied at the cost of the rest of the country. The only other country and culture that I can contrast with this my own India. India too is a secular country with religious(atheistic) freedom and separation from the state. But if you go to any school you would see students have morning prayers, weather it be Christian, Hindu or Muslim. But you don't see anybody making anything about it(I am making a general assertion). Lots of people I speak to in the US talk to me about the lack of culture here and wonder why. Research shows that people with some sort of belief system in their family and self handle stress better and are more likely to be happy in adverse situation.

Some calling themselves liberals or broadminded secularist label all people with a religious belief as ignorant fools and narrowminded. What they show is that they are no better and are hypocritically narrowminded, because they don't want to extend the same freedom that they have (to not believe in anything) to those who believe. To me personally this is bunch of BS. Why should voluntary prayer be banned from school? The person who wants to learn his heritage with religion in it, has every right and freedom as the one who doesn't.

"An atheist is a person with no invisible means of support"