Letter to Ohio Representative John Patrick Carney re: HB 69

Please vote against House Bill 69, which would ban the use of red-light cameras and speed cameras in Ohio.  Such devices could be effective tools for improving public safety.  Arguments in favor of House Bill 69 boil down to the fact that people do not want to be told that they drive recklessly, and that cameras are more effective than police officers at identifying recklessness.  

Some of those who spoke against traffic cameras at the Transportation, Public Safety and Homeland Security committee on June 25th mentioned Elmwood Place, a village of 2,100 that used cameras to identify 20,000 speeders on one block during a two-week period last year.  This shows me that the use of speed cameras is effective, not abusive.  Most drivers are not aware of how carelessly they drive.  

If you feel that Elmwood Place or other municipalities violate due process in the way that they use traffic cameras, then please draft legislation to establish guidelines to help law enforcement officials comply with due process.  This would be a much better alternative than an outright ban.  As to privacy; streets and roads are public property.  It is unreasonable to expect privacy on public thoroughfares.  Violation of traffic laws is public, not private.

We could reduce traffic injuries by installing more traffic cameras.  It would help drivers to be aware of their recklessness and drive more carefully.  This would also allow police officers to spend more of their time preventing assaults, robberies and burglaries.

When the time comes for you to vote on House Bill 69, I ask that you consider the safety of all Ohioans and not listen to those who want to drive however they want.

Doctrine is Blasphemy

When I was a child I asked my parents questions about religion.  My father told me that he was an agnostic.  He told me that he regarded much of religion as silly, and that no one could prove that a God exists.  He also told me that he believed that it was equally silly and arrogant to assume that there is no God.  No one can prove that, either.  My mother did not speak much about her beliefs, but sent me to summer Bible school and took me to church sometimes.

I took an interest in history as I grew up.  I saw that religion may have been based on good intentions, but caused more problems than it solved.  The Crusades and The Inquisition galled me.  Those are merely two examples of people torturing and killing in the name of a person who preached about love and forgiveness and preached against idolatry.  The more I learn about Islam, the more I suspect that the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed have been corrupted by the greedy and those who need an excuse to commit violence.  Outside of books, some of the most angry and obnoxious people I have known have been fervently religious.  Some of the most bighearted people I have known have been criminal or foulmouthed.  Many atheists I have known have clearer ideas about morality and compassion than many people who consider themselves religious.

These experiences, along with some things I read, helped me understand that religion and faith are two different things.  The fact that Roman historians explained the darkness that accompanied the Crucifixion as natural phenomena made me suspect that this darkness actually occurred.  This does not by itself prove that the Resurrection also occurred, but I learned that many historians regard the Gospels as historical documents.  I had assumed that someone just made them up.  Jesus taught us the difference between faith and religion:

So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”  He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me

In vain do they worship me,

teaching human precepts as doctrines.’

You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”  Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!  For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’  But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban (that is, an offering to God) – then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on.  And you do many things like this.”  (Mark 7: 5-13, NRSV)

We “do many things like this” to this day.  The actions of the Westboro Baptist Church are the easiest examples to cite.  Here is an organization that wants to remind us that our sexual practices as a nation violate the will of God while they violate the Second Greatest Commandment.  I wonder if the Pope also noticed that many atheists have a better understanding of the teachings of Christ than many religious folk.  My father is one person I know who does not call himself a Christian, but lives more of a Christian life than many Christians.  I can think of others.

Enough things have happened in my life to convince me that there is a God and that He is looking out for me.  There have been too many coincidences.  I used to believe that it did not matter which church or even which religion I followed.  They were all different cultural expressions of the same universal love and morality with which we are all born.  I now see that many people who propagate religions have their own agenda and will lead us astray if we let them.  The love of money also corrupts our inborn inclination to love each other.  That is why Jesus went to the cross.  His Crucifixion and Resurrection gave us something on which to focus.  They are reminders of a loving God and that we can overcome death through love.  Remembering this sacrifice and victory makes it more difficult to be led astray.

All of this is a longwinded explanation of why I consider myself a Christian Deist.  I am a Deist in that I would be an agnostic because I do not know and cannot prove that there is a God, but I feel him.  I am a Christian because I believe that Jesus Christ is The Word Made Flesh.  He helped me understand the difference between faith and superstition and that we do not have to be victims of religion as a racket.