Invocation Redux
When I was a graduate student in GaTech, I lived for 18 months in Cobb County, which became famous recently for putting anti-evolution stickers in biology textbooks. It was therefore heartening to read that a local atheist gave “invocation” at a meeting of Cobb County Board of Commissioners (via Pharyngula):
Rather than any form of deity, [Smyrna atheist Edward Buckner] invoked “the 700,000 people who live in this county — especially the majority (yes, over half) of those 700,000 who are not members of any church, mosque, temple, or other religious organization,” he said.
“I speak as well for those political leaders who despair that success in politics cannot be achieved without hypocritical piety from politicians and who would prefer to run for office and to govern based on competence and political philosophy rather than on beliefs, real or pretended, in any supernatural beings.”
I have written about invocation in India. Somehow, I found invocation in India to be bit more of “culture and tradition” thing while that in US to be purely a “religious” thing. In that sense, invocations here, though more frequent, have been less annoying than those in US. Perhaps this is because I was born to Hindu parents in India; so I find Indian type of invocation less of an affront to my secular sensibilities.
Interestingly enough, my grandmom, were she alive, would invoke 330 million gods (tehtis koti dev). I can’t help but wonder if her invocation was somehow similar to Buckner’s invocation of 700,000 people of Cobb county.
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