My Name's Paul and This Shit's Between Y'all

Over at TPM Cafe the assembled bloggers seem to have religion on their minds. In particular they have in mind how to reach out to the religious voters in the red states, and elsewhere, who seem to think that us city folk are all left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers, without alienating left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers like me.

I'll have you know I'm not gay.

Here's the thing for me. Religious people who are of a centrist or liberal bent feel uncomfortable being lumped in with the James Dobsons of this world, and I can appreciate their position. As a secular person I'd hate to be lumped in with Objectivists. I certainly encourage devout lefties to do all they can to separate themselves from the religious right and I wish them well. The trouble is that apart from that there really isn't much more I can do. I'm outside the whole religious right/religious left conversation, largely because on one level I think both sides are full of crap. They both bought into the whole invisible man in the sky thing, and I can't follow them there. Their arguments over which elements of a common holy book they wish to emphasize bore and sadden me. I think they do a lot to stunt human progress and I wish they'd stick a cork in it so that we could get on with the problems of the real world.

I usually don't get what I want, though, so if you on the religious right and left feel you have to have these tiffs over the relative value of Leviticus or on whether commandment #5 applies to abortion doctors, go ahead I guess. I'll be the one impatiently tapping my feet while eyeing the British Airways flight schedules.