Even after four hours of back-aching yard work building a barbecue pit in back of our house, I seem to still have enough moxie to yield to passion (...no, not that kind). I follow my pal Dave Frauenfender's blog, Breakfast With Pandora, "religiously," and I respect his thought and his ability to express it in words. That's why I took a while tonight to post a response to his latest entry on "Magical Thinking." I don't see my post as an argument contrary to his - it is, I think, an effort to extend his argument. You can read his and mine on Pandora, but I thought it worthwhile to post my response here as well. Readers, judge for yourselves: Personally, I don't have a problem at all with people believing something beyond the senses exists - after all, I remember a quote from Buckminster Fuller to the effect that some 95% of 20th Century's scientifically demonstrated reality exists (macro and micro) beyond the normal range of the senses. And I'm not really concerned that humanity continues to anthropomorphize what remains undiscovered beyond our sensory capacities. What I do have a problem with is people like Bush and Palin who insist that this quality transcendental to demonstrable reality tells them to do things. Doubly so when national leaders allow such sensibilities to sway their thinking. When "exclusivity thinking" of this sort trumps a rational secular approach to life (whether in leaders or not), it always seems to lead to "I'm the chosen of the chosen ones, and you're not," leading to "You must come to your senses and accept my version of things," leading to war, genocide and, since the 20th Century, the possibility of MAD (mutually assured destruction). This is what the ongoing development of a secular reality is all about - to preempt religious and spiritual exclusivity with values and qualities that can be accepted universally. To me, secular reality yields the love, respect, cooperation, and other values that seem to get lost in a hierarchical world of faith in things that one may or may not be realistically attuned to. That Palin seems to think human efforts will fail or pale without her version of people's being "right with God" can be (at the very least) self-deceiving without some sort of limitation on how that belief leads her to act. That Bush seems to think he has divine sanction to wage war is little different from bin Laden's nihilism. And both his and Palin's approach to religious-belief-in-politics seems to tacitly demonstrate that this world isn't worth its salt - that the only sense of reality worth accepting is their favored, nebulous one beyond this world. To me, that seems a recipe for wholesale social and planetary destruction.