Yes, Shatner-worship is a pervasive and highly disturbing problem, all right. Fortunately, only harmless idiots generally fall prey to it... :-)

Well, Deacon Blues, I would be as happy as you to see the political right in the USA robbed of their success in using primitive Christianity to manipulate public opinion. I would be happy to see politicians of any stripe thwarted in using religion in that fashion.

And I believe in God...but I don't belong to any given religion. To put it another way: the caveman-mentality "god" that religious fundamentalists seem to imagine (a combination of Santa Claus and the "Hanging Judge") is not what I imagine when I think of God. Not even close. I imagine an energy and intelligence that informs and imparts and loves and is inseparably joined with all that exists, right down to the atomic level.

Fundamentalists would envision me as some sort of dangerous heretic...as would most practical politicians, I suppose, given the fact that I am about equally suspicious of the hidden motives of both camps...their primary motive being greed for power and control over others.

- LH