Eugene Leitl <Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de> writes:
> On Fri, 21 Sep 2001, Michael M. Butler wrote:
>
> > I consciously adopt the language of my audience. At the end of a
> > recent post, I mentioned God even though I'm an agnostic. Was the rest
> > of the content valuable, or rendered valueless?
>
> The latter. To cite a recent case, a superficially reasonable email on
> post-WTC policy sailed into my inbox a few days ago. It made sense right
> unto the final sentence, which read "God bless America". Now, I don't
> trust people basically driven by inscrutable motivations. One might
> support points of policy, warily so, but certainly not the person pushing
> it. Sooner or later, the dissonance must surface.
>
What is the big deal here? Saying "God bless America" speaks quite directly
to the 90% of Americans according to polls who have some level of theistic
belief. To ask for God's blessing on America in the face of 9/11 and that
level of belief is almost mandatory if you want to reach the people and speak
to their hearts. Why should those who are not theistic make such a big deal
about this?
- samantha
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:55 MDT