Yes, I am

The Christian Science Monitor asks, "Are you smarter than an atheist?" I correctly answered all the questions in the most annoying online quiz I've ever taken, so I guess I am smarter than an atheist, and everyone else, too:

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups in a 32-question survey of religious knowledge by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. On average, Americans got 16 of the 32 questions correct. Atheists and agnostics got an average of 20.9 correct answers. Jews (20.5) and Mormons (20.3). Protestants got 16 correct answers on average, while Catholics got 14.7 questions right.

How is the quiz annoying? It consists of 32 questions, starting with number 32. I nearly stopped right there, but they didn't: half of the multiple-choice questions are worded as yes/no questions. Number 30, for example: "Do you happen to know which of these is the king of gods in ancient Greek mythology?" There are three possible answers to that question: Yes, No, or Huh? Come on, CSM, sentences aren't that hard to build.

Heere endeth the pointless Rant.

More separation, please

Regarding yesterday's judicial overturn of California's Proposition 8, a facebook friend asks, "Why do religious people refuse to accept the SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE?"

If the separation of church and state is the issue, then let's well and truly separate them.  Let religion keep marriage, which it's had far longer than any state has existed, and let the state keep its laws off our sacraments and come up with its own relationship-defining contracts.

Even Jefferson's wall of separation was formulated in terms of a restriction on the actions of the state.  Nowadays, the restrictions seem to work only in the other direction.  Let religion so much as peek over Jefferson's wall and say something about the state's stuff, and we have screaming, shouting, demonstrations and lawsuits.  Meanwhile, the state is free to come and go as it wishes, plundering and regulating whatever it touches.

A note on Rush's 2112

Priests of the temples of Syrinx got you down? Dude, the bureaucrats in the government offices of Syrinx are far more likely to repress you. But priests don't complain when you kick them, so I guess they're safer to kick than almighty bureaucrats.