On the Conneticut School Shootings

On the conservative American Family Radio, Brian Fischer blamed the lack of prayer in public schools for the tragic shooting “And I think God would say to us, ‘Hey I’ll be glad to protect your children, but you’ve gotta invite me back into your world first. I’m not gonna go where I’m not wanted.’”

Also, Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee opined on FOX News “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," . “Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

Are they suggesting that God "allows" the slaughter of school children just because they don't pray to him/her in the classroom? This threatening, fearsome deity full of hate and retribution to which they refer is the god of the religious right, but not my god, and I suspect not the god of many Christians.  It seems logical that (paraphrasing Epicurus) if God could have stopped this and didn't, then he/she is a malevolent, vindictive, petty god, and certainly does not deserve my worship.  If  unable to stop it, then he/she is certainly not omnipotent.  In either case, why call him/her God?

As for returning "God" to the classroom, which god should be returned?  The Catholic god?  The (non-Christian) Jewish god?  Allah?  The pantheon of countless Hindu gods and goddesses (after all, Hinduism is the worlds 3rd largest religion)? Buddha (actually a philosophy)?  Wodan/Odin?  Or perhaps the god of Religious Humanism?  Our country's founders were careful to keep affairs of state independent of religion; they had seen the evils perpetrated by the alignment of kings and clerics, as well as the suffering by members of religious minorities in the presence of state-sanctioned majorities.  Tolerance and inclusion become exclusion and conversion.  Look what happened to native American religions in the 19th century when we put their children in schools where their native beliefs were severely suppressed and replaced with Catholic or Protestant indoctrinations.

Yes, we have some bad people perpetrating tragedies in this country and in the rest of world, but edging towards a state-sanctioned religion and eventual theocracy would bring more strife and death; just look at conflicts around the world where religion is tied to governance: Muslim-Jewish, Sunni-Shia, Christian-Muslim, Hindu-Muslim, Buddhist-Hindu, etc, etc.  This is not the time to seek governmental endorsement of any particular faith/religion.  We should remain a pluralistic, multi-religious (and non-religious) society wherein every citizen can maintain his/her own religious belief with the protection, but without the endorsement, of our government.